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Driftwood   /drˈɪftwˌʊd/   Listen
Driftwood

noun
1.
Wood that is floating or that has been washed ashore.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Driftwood" Quotes from Famous Books



... himself at the bank of the river, a wide but shallow stream, filled with sandbars, rocks, and piles of driftwood. Not a great distance off was the ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... the wandering tribes of Tartary, of Kamchatka, of the Pacific, of the Siberian races in the northeasternmost corner of Asia. And these Chukchee Indians of the Asiatic Pacific told the Russians of a land beyond the sea, of driftwood floating across the ocean unlike any trees growing in Asia, of dead whales washed ashore with the harpoons of strange hunters, {6} and—most comical of all in the light of our modern knowledge about the Eskimo's tail-shaped ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... sites with a view to food supply, and to protection in case of attack. On the treeless shores of Kadiak Island and of the long narrow Alaska Peninsula near by, the Eskimo choose their village location for an accumulation of driftwood, for proximity to their food supply, and a landing-place for their kayaks and bidarkas. Hence they prefer a point of land or gravel spit extending out into the sea, or a sand reef separating a salt-water lagoon from the open sea. The Aleutian Islanders regard only accessibility ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter driftwood, while making slow but certain headway toward the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... Reaching the edge of the main forest, accompanied by Red Angel. In the proximity of the Falls. Decided to go in that direction. Reach the river. Searching for the spot where the boat was left and from which place it had been taken. No traces of the mooring place. Examining driftwood and debris along river bank. Amazing discovery of one of Investigator's boats. Speculation as to the mystery. Evidence that it came over the Falls. Disappearance of the lockers of the boat, similar to those on their own. Discussion ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... wind. Then he crawled forward along the rough cliff top, feeling his way with his hands. Soon he heard a distant shout. A faint glow of light shone over the edge of the crag. As he drew near, he saw, on the beach below, a great fire of driftwood and some score or more of men gathered in the circle of light. The distance was too great for him to tell much about their faces, but Jeremy was sure that no English or Colonial sloop-of-war would be manned by such a motley company. Their ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... yelping of the pack. Plunging into the first stream, we dashed for some distance along its bed. Emerging on the opposite bank, we sped on through marshy fields, skirting high hills and bounding down through dry watercourses, over shelving stones and accumulated barriers of driftwood; now panting up a steep ascent, and now resting for a moment to rub our shoes with the resinous needles of the pine; always within hearing of the dogs, whose fitful cries varied in volume in accordance with the broken conformation ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... at the seashore I saw a tiny boy, starting from the bath-house of his family, laboriously drag a rather large piece of driftwood along the beach. Finally he carefully deposited it in the sand at a ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... about Neb's pony making land, unless struck by some driftwood, or borne to the centre of the stream by the shifting force of the current. But if Neb had failed to retain his grip he might have been sucked under by the surge of waters. A hundred yards below he found them, dripping and weak ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... and perhaps just a little disgusted. Again and again he told himself that this union with Geraldine Challoner was the very best thing that could happen to him; it would bring him to anchor, at any rate, and he had been such mere driftwood until now. But he wanted to feel himself quite a free agent, and this pressing-on of the marriage by Lady Laura was in some manner discordant with his sense of the fitness of things. It looked a little like manoeuvring; ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack also out of commission. About them the beach was strewn with a litter of miscellany,—nets, oars, cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood, a few fish too long forgotten and (one assumed) responsible in part for the foreign wealth ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... which sends market prices up or down is far stronger than any man or combination of men. It would sweep any man or men aside like driftwood if they stood in its way or attempted to ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn

... boarding-house John Lloyd, the young Englishman of the Reese River days, had also established himself. On Sundays, no doubt to give the tired mother a long rest, he would take little Bel to the beach out by old Fort Point, where he made swords for her out of driftwood, played at Jack the Giant-Killer, and told stories about Mr. and Mrs. Sea-Gull and what they said to each other. He even borrowed fairy-tale books from the public library in order to learn stories to ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... more," and he came back with a great armful of broken driftwood, and went again for as much gorse as he could carry in a rude wooden fork ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... stopped for camp at the edge of the Burntwood. From his feet reached out the wide river, ankle deep in places, knee deep in others, rippling and singing between sandbars and driftwood where in May and June it had roared with the fury of flood Peter, half asleep after their day's travel through a hot forests watched his master. Since their flight from the edge of civilization far south he had grown heavier and broadened out. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... driftwood of conjecture came riding down on the swift, tumbling currents of the San Reve's thoughts, and to her these mad conclusions were as prophecy. What should she do—she and her poor love? She must not lose her idol—her Storri! What should she do? She had written this Mr. Storms of the French ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... say so. But she came and sat in Petro's den sometimes, crocheting in the old easy chair, when he was self indulgent enough to have a fire of ships' logs. The rose and gold and violet flames of the driftwood lit up for him the secret way to Dreamland and the country of Romance. What it did for mother, she did not say; but as her fingers moved, regularly as the ticking of a clock, her eyes would wander over the old furniture she had loved and back to the fire, as if ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... Place was filled with men from the ranges, freighters from the trail, and the nondescript driftwood that the waves of civilisation cast up upon those far-away shores of human society. With all of them Perault was a favourite. Carroll was out when he entered. On all sides he was greeted with exclamations of surprise, pleasure, and curiosity, for all knew that ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... rising. Now the bank will tell you about this. Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do you see this narrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the water was higher. You see the driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank helps in other ways. Do you see that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their leader, in the teeth of the enemy's fire, till he expired. What would the story have been without this example of devotion and fortitude? Then, holding the pursuers in check, they slowly retreated down the side canyon they were in to the main gorge, where they discovered an abundance of driftwood, and decided to make a raft with which to escape. This raft consisted of three sticks of cottonwood about ten feet long and eight inches diameter, tied together with lariats. They had abandoned their horses above, bringing only their arms, ammunition, and some food. Waiting for ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... children. The old man never spoke. He did chores about the house, made the fire mornings, attended to the parlour stove; he went about his work and no one ever addressed a word to him; he seemed to have no more live contact with the youth about him than driftwood has with the tree's new shoots. He had lived his life on a farm; he was a land captain; he knew the earth's secrets as a ship's captain knows the sea's. He paced the mild wooden pavements of Perry, booted, and capped for storm and wind, deep snow and all the inimical elements a pioneer might ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily. What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... application. "I believe that's rather what I was thinking about when you came, Nona. About how we just go on—flotsam. Don't you know on a river where it's tidal, or on the seashore at the turn, the mass of stuff you see there, driftwood and spent foam and stuff, just floating there, uneasily, brought in and left there—from somewhere; and then presently the tide begins to take it and it's drawn off and moves away and goes—somewhere. Arrives and floats ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... clinging boys looked down upon the black current, with its sharp, treacherous, half-seen rocks and ponderous driftwood. The wild idea of plunging into the tumult and trying to swim to the bank faded as they looked. Here in the crazy building there might be a chance. In that frightful swirl there lurked only a ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... As for the peacock, it alighted on the old dame's shoulder. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks; although every instant he expected that his companion and himself would go down the stream together with the driftwood of shattered trees and the carcasses of the sheep and cow. Down came the cold, snowy torrent from the steep side of Olympus, raging and thundering as if it had a real spite against Jason or, at all events, were ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... Among the human driftwood gathered here there was one old man who had been a cobbler, working at his trade as long as he had strength to do so. The bishop had known him for a long time before he gave up his work, and now it was the one delight of the old man's life to have a visit ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... union has made them strong and happy. We must profit by the example. I will go forth among the tribes of red men, and by the help of the Great Spirit unite them into one people; make of them a dam to stay the flow of this mighty water, lest it utterly sweep away our forest and cast us like driftwood, broken and scattered, on the far-off shores beneath the setting sun. We have warned the white stranger to come no farther, but have spoken to the winds that hear not; we have entreated him to come no farther, but have prayed to the rocks that feel ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight: And as we gaze, the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... kindled on the sand from the plentiful supply of driftwood that strewed the beach, and at the cheerful fire they sat and talked as ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... me some method of escaping from the crate. He held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly; and I derived much consolation from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur-match. When they were in a bright glow, and the crow was neatly spitted in front thereof, Gunga Dass began ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... one unwavering aim. He is bound to win; the world stands to one side and lets him pass; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. He does not have one-half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield simply because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. What a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Indian canoe—a carefully selected one and decorated in Indian fashion—was embarked on the sullen stream above the timber-boom. The holding back of the water and the driftwood had formed an angry stretch of river which under ordinary circumstances Ruth and the other girls who had accompanied her West thought they would have feared to venture upon. The Indian girl, however, seemed to consider the ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... spot, they resumed their paddles, and after awhile reached the mouth of the river Otonabee, which was divided into two separate channels by a long, low point of swampy land covered with stunted, mossy bushes and trees, rushes, driftwood, and aquatic plants. Indiana told them this river flowed from the north, and that it was many days' journey up to the lakes; to illustrate its course, she drew with her paddle a long line with sundry curves and broader spaces, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... trap and kill us for our valuable fur, and IT—the Wolverene—actually eats us! This is why we go to so much trouble to make our houses secure, so that when the frost has hardened the thick layer of mud which we place each fall over the thatch of stones and driftwood, neither teeth nor claws can ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... up close to the barren and make its acquaintance, but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and flee at a fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver slipper, but purple driftwood and bright sea-weeds, brought in from the Gulf Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh from the edge of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for although at high tide the river was at our feet, at low tide it was far ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... what I had thought a rock, and found when my eyes grew used to the light that I was in a house built of great stones, uncemented but wonderfully fitted together, and warm and bright with the driftwood fire, though I heard the spray rattle on the roof of flat stones, and the wind howled strangely around the walls. Both ends of this house were of the living rock of the sides of the gorge, and at one end seemed to be a sort of cave with ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... the smell of bacon frying over the camp-fire, or the crack of a fine, mealy Arizona potato, roasting in the ashes, or a whiff from the coffee-pot, just about to topple over on the burning sticks. The fire is made of driftwood washed down possibly from some storm-swept region where a Mormon dwells with his numerous family; or, mayhap, from a forest where the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... was like crossing from Dover to Calais on the ice. The passage made, the Alaskan mainland was reached once more, the Seward Peninsula left behind us, and our way lay across desolate, low-lying tundra strewn with driftwood and hollowed out here and there into little lagoons. Evidently the waves sweep clean across it in stormy weather when the sound is open; a salt marsh. In the midst of it reared a sort of lookout tripod of driftwood thirty or forty feet high, lashed and nailed together, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... could find clear of trees and brushwood, and cook one of the fowls and make some cakes. To this Tim agreed. Before long, projecting from below the trunk of a large tree, we discovered a bank composed of roots and driftwood, with mud washed over them. There was space enough to light a fire, so we at once landed. While I was engaged in collecting sticks for the fire, Tim wrung the neck of one of our fowls and quickly plucked it. He then cut the bird in two and stuck it up before the fire, as the quickest ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... glories of the Dulcibella. I struggled on as soon as I got some breath, but my invisible quarry was far ahead. I pulled off my heavy boots, carried them, and ran in my stockings, promptly cutting my foot on some cockle-shells. Pursuit was hopeless, and a final stumble over a bit of driftwood sent me sprawling with agony ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... an Aino village of thirty houses, we saw the last of the aborigines, and the interest of the journey ended. Strips of hard sand below high-water mark, strips of red roses, ranges of wooded mountains, rivers deep and shallow, a few villages of old grey houses amidst grey sand and bleaching driftwood, and then came the river Yurapu, a broad, deep stream, navigable in a canoe for fourteen miles. The scenery there was truly beautiful in the late and splendid afternoon. The long blue waves rolled on shore, each one crested with ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... no way in which he could get out. I had recovered a little by this time, and I seized a large piece of driftwood, plunged into the river again, and pushed this old limb of a tree across the stream ahead of me. Freeman was sinking out of sight when he got his hand on the bough. I was able to push him into water where he could get a footing, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... the name of the Czar. That will startle them, and they may all three rush to answer. Mr. Damon, you and the detective will stay by the window. As soon as you see the men rush for the door, smash in the window with a piece of driftwood and call to Mr. Petrofsky to jump out that way. Then you can run with him toward the airship, and I'll ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton

... American term for places where the navigation of rivers or creeks is rendered difficult by the accumulation of driftwood, trees, &c. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... Icelandic saga of Grettir, the hero mortally wounds himself in the leg while trying to chop up a piece of driftwood on which a witch ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... bedstead, with an exhausted flock bed and a rug upon it; and from one end of the apartment, a small dim space partitioned off, in which was a still less comfortable bed, laid on trestles made of driftwood. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... shone and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half attended to, their ears anaemic in hue, and their shoes broken in leather and run down at heel and toe. They were of the class which simply floats and drifts, every wave of people washing up one, as breakers do driftwood upon a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... when Hubert Stane directed the nose of the canoe towards a landing-place in the lee of a sand-bar, on the upperside of which was a pile of dry driftwood ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... was coming, but not very many got through. Some of the people asked Elder Brother to help them, but he did not answer. Only Coyote he answered. He told Coyote to find a big log and sit on it, so that he would float on the surface of the water with the driftwood. Elder Brother got into a big olla which he had made, and closed it tight. So he rolled along on the ground under the olla. He sang a magic song as he climbed ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... after night, over the unknown ocean; the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens of land—the cloud banks on the western horizon, the logs of driftwood, the fresh shrub floating with its leaves and berries, the flocks of land birds, the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore; the mysterious presentment that seems ever to go before a great event; and finally, on that ever memorable night of October ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... other side. The full moon was just rising over the eastern hills. There was not a sound to be heard except the gentle murmur of the stream and the faint rustle of the leaves on a few cottonwood-trees. There was plenty of driftwood all around, and after supper we built up the largest camp-fire we had ever had. The flame leaped up above the wagon-top, and drifted away in a column of sparks and smoke, while the three horses stood in the background with their heads close together munching their hay, and the four of us (counting ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... as it is certain so many do, become mere ecclesiastical flotsam and jetsam, incapable of giving carriage to any soul across the waters of this life, uncertain of their own arrival anywhere, and of all the waste of their generation, the most patent and disgraceful. God will have no driftwood for His sacrifices, no drift-men for His ministers. Self-consecration is the beginning of His service, and a sense of our own freedom and our own responsibility is an indispensable element in the act ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... beach, composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quantity of driftwood, some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which we named Clark river, was about one hundred yards wide, ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... circumference, was framed in a fine, sandy shore: long, natural jetties of rock had been flung out far into the softly rippling water. The tide was making, perhaps a dozen feet below the fringe of shells and seaweed, cocoanuts and driftwood that ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... straying of an elk from the upland upon the borders of the marsh, awoke their tingling nerves to the happy but fruitless chase. And when night came, too soon, and they pigged together around the warm ashes of their camp-fire, under the low lodge poles of their wigwam of dried mud, reeds, and driftwood, with the combined odors of fish, wood-smoke, and the warm salt breath of the marsh in their nostrils, they slept contentedly. The distant lights of the settlement went out one by one, the stars came out, very large and very silent, to take their places. The ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... her. The bottom was then carefully washed, and, after that, thoroughly rubbed with the sand-paper—about an hour's work, at which we all had a hand. Having got the sides and keel beautifully smooth in that way, Clump brought a kettle of pure grease, which was placed over a little fire of driftwood, and when the grease had become liquid, Walter, with a large fine paint-brush, anointed the entire boat's bottom in a most painstaking manner. We boys stood by, entering into the operation, which was supposed to prove wonderfully efficacious in increasing our boat's speed, with ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... We at once behold mankind forced to flee to God's kind institution of the family and the home to escape a desolation of the heart which follows fruitless efforts to kindle a blaze out of the damp driftwood ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... youthful pleasure in "Maidenhood," "The Rainy Day," "The Bridge," "The Day is Done," verses whose simplicity lent themselves temptingly to parody. Yet such poems as "The Belfry of Bruges," "Seaweed," "The Fire of Driftwood," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "My Lost Youth," "The Children's Hour," and many another lyric, lose nothing with the lapse of time. There is fortunately infinite room for personal preference in this whole matter of poetry, but the confession of a lack of regard ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... storm that lasted two days, after which the wreck having been broken up, was scattered in every direction. I however managed to secure the driftwood, tubs, spars, and chests, which were all got on shore, and proved of the greatest service to ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... two later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... amused ourselves by building an immense bonfire of driftwood on the beach, and hurling blazing firebrands at the leaping salmon as they passed up the river, and the frightened ducks which had been roused from sleep by the unusual noise and light. When nothing remained of our bonfire but a heap of glowing embers, we spread our bearskins upon the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... heaven, half woke to find herself sliding down stream at last in earnest. Her brain was very light and giddy; all her powers of perception were momentarily heightened; she took notice of her seesawing upon the ebb and flow, and understood that washing up and down the shores, a mere piece of driftwood, life would long have left her ere she attained the river's mouth, if she were not stranded by the way. The branch of a cedar-tree came dallying by with that, brought down from above the falls; she half rose, and caught at it, and fell back, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... Looking at them then, you would have seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall, powerful negro called George Washington, a man well known in this county town, to which he had come, as driftwood from the storm of war, in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in Washington—a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"—at the time of the great review, say, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... fishing, and we followed the old-fashioned custom as to bait. We discarded the fly, using only the angle-worm. At the foot of the ripples; under the old logs; where the water went whirling under the cavernous banks; in the eddies; among the driftwood; everywhere, we found trout—not large, none weighing over six ounces, and few less than three. We caught my basket full in less then two hours, and then rode home. It was a day of enjoyment to us, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... gathering driftwood, saw a sleeping Alligator, and, thinking it was a log, fell to estimating the number of shingles it would make for his new cabin. Having satisfied his mind on that point, he stuck his boat-hook into the beast's back to harvest his good fortune. Thereupon ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... you in Panuco town in less'n three hours, ... if we don't hit a log," Peter leaned back and shouted in Wemple's ear. "And if we do hit driftwood, I'll have you in the swim quicker ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... she started briskly for home, following the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood, and cocoanut shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea and sky. In the little village there was great clapping of shutters and straining of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their dooryards, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... the thinner sticks into the sand, fastening them at the top, and stretching the sail over them, I formed something like an Indian wigwam, strengthened by the heavier pieces of driftwood. I observed that Owen moved about with difficulty, and looked ill, but he made no ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... Fortunately a better way was suggested; getting into a wagon, I ordered the driver to go above some distance, so that we could move with the current, and then ford the stream. After many difficulties, occasioned mainly by floating logs and driftwood, and swimming the horses part of the way, we succeeded in getting over. I saw it was impossible to carry the sick back, and that there was but one way to render them secure. I had the horses unhitched, and told the driver to swim them back and bring ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... and down the ladder track shifting stuff to the distant spurs. At the river front an army of men moved like loaded ants over the dikes. Beyond them the eye could mark the boiling yellow of the Spider, its winding channel marked through the waste of waters by whirling driftwood, bobbing wreckage and plunging trees—sweepings of a thousand angry miles. "There's the Spider," repeated the West End conductor, pointing, "out there in the middle where you see things moving right along. That's the Spider, on a twenty-year rampage." The train, moving slowly, stopped. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... the same at lunch time. They landed on a crescent-shaped strip of beach, backed by rocky walls, where there was plenty of driftwood for their fire. There the captain gave his mind to the making of chowder, and Miss Matthews rendered expert service in the cutting up of onions and potatoes, and in the ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... a guide. Sartigan, the nearest French settlement where provisions could be bought, was nearly seventy miles away. The swift current carried the frail canoes down the first twenty miles in two hours. Here through the rapids, there over hidden ledges, now escaping the driftwood and the sharp-edged rocks, Arnold and his men ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand. It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down to the bridge, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... synonymous terms. And then, suddenly, a feeling of intense loneliness broke over her like a wave. She felt like a bit of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself at the foolish simile even as she ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... and ridges, and in the background on the south a few mountains were visible. There were many islands which, with the banks of alluvium, were evidently cut by the river in high freshets. Where the beach sloped to the water there was a little driftwood, and I could see occasional logs resting upon ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... a labourer, he had no art or craftsmanship; his little money was gone in foolish speculations, and he was dependent on his granddaughter's slight earnings from music teaching and needlework. But he rented an acre of ground from Finley, and grew vegetables; he gathered driftwood from the river for his winter fire, and made up the accounts of the storekeeper occasionally. Yet it was merely keeping off starvation. He was not popular. He had no tongue for the meaningless village talk. People held ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... be worked out in the South, and for a whole winter I carried my cough, my thermometer and my idleness from one fashionable orange-grove to another. In the vast and melancholy sea of my disoccupation I clutched like a drowning man at any human driftwood within reach. I took a critical and depreciatory interest in the coughs, the thermometers and the idleness of my fellow-sufferers; but to the healthy, the occupied, the transient I clung ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... growing along the margins of large streams is softwood. Hence, driftwood is generally a poor mainstay unless there is plenty of it on the spot; but driftwood on the sea ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... Sahib ever been cast into much water that fights and will not let a man use his limbs? To me, my head upon the water, it seemed as though there were naught but water to the world's end, and the river drave me with its driftwood. A man is a very little thing in the belly of a flood. And this flood, though I knew it not, was the Great Flood about which men talk still. My liver was dissolved and I lay like a log upon my ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... Mr. Grigg," said Byram, looking up from a plate of fried ham that Miss Crystal, our "Trapeze Lady," had just cooked for him over our gypsy fires of driftwood. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... the world has a right to expect will take the correct stand on great human questions. Yet the moment the barriers are down and jingoism floods the earth you give up without a struggle and join the great mass of the world's driftwood.' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... clean gone I gathered me brush and driftwood, and striking flint and steel soon had a fire going and set about cooking certain strips of dried goat's flesh for my breakfast. Whiles this was a-doing I was startled by a sudden clatter upon the cliff above and down comes a great boulder, narrowly missing me but scattering my breakfast ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... in profusion, for this island, Martin, is a very earthly paradise. That night, the moon being high and bright, I came to that stretch of silver sand beside the lagoon where they lay together rigid and pale and, though I had no other tool but his dagger and a piece o' driftwood, made shift to bury them 'neath the great pimento tree that stood beside the rock, and both in the same grave. Which done, I betook me to a dry cave hard by a notable fall of water that plungeth into a lake, and there passed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... busy for the last few minutes gathering driftwood and getting a fire started. The girls had decided to cook dinner down on the beach in order to show the visitors their skill in cooking in the most primitive way. A big kettle of clams was hung over ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... the way to Point Rodney. It was blowing a living gale an' the snow was blinding. In the dark Jarvis' deer wandered from the trail, got entangled in a lot of driftwood on the beach, which was half covered over with snow, took fright, an' finally wound up by running the sled full speed agin a stump, breakin' the harness, draggin' the line out of Jarvis' hand an' disappearin' in the darkness an' the flying snow. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give—and his ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... which Charles Turold heard by that grey Cornish sea—a story touched with the glitter of adventurous fortune in the sombre setting of a trachytic island, where wine-dark breakers beat monotonously on a black beach of volcanic sand strewn with driftwood, kelp, dead shells, and the squirming forms of blindworms tossed up from the bowels of a dead sea. It was there in the spell of solitude thirty years before that Robert Turold's soul had yielded to temptation at the beck ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... life—she spent her time lying in the full glare of the sun. She could stand any amount of it; she never had enough. All the same, it did not seem to warm her. Parched, withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece of tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though she was one of them, and the fact that she didn't care twopence about her house and called the servant Gladys "Glad-eyes," was disgraceful. Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... here divided into several branches, filled with fluvials, and so very shallow that it was with difficulty we could get the boat along, being obliged to get out and wade. We encamped on a low point among rushes and young willows, where there was a quantity of driftwood, which served for our fires. The evening was mild and clear; we made a pleasant bed of the young willows; and geese and ducks enough had been killed for an abundant supper at night, and for breakfast next morning. The stillness of the night was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... upon their stomachs a little to invigorate them, and, sending forthwith for a gang of coolies from an adjacent village which lay a little higher, he set the whole crowd to work to divert part of the stream by means of driftwood and damming, and was, in the end, able to save the houses and a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... them like a piece of driftwood. The roaring in his ears grew less, and he felt the touch of something under his feet. Sunlight burst upon him. He caught at a rock, and hung to it. His eyes cleared a little. He was within ten feet of a shore covered with sand and gravel. The water was smooth and running with a musical ripple. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... and often Marcella knew that Wullie was hungry, though he never told her so. Whenever she went to the hut she would manage to be absent from a meal beforehand, and going to Jean, would ask for her ration of whatever was going. Down in the hut she and Wullie would sit round the fire of driftwood, reaching down dried herrings from the roof and toasting them on spits of wood for their feast. And they would talk while the sea crept up and down outside whispering, or dashed almost at ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... of the forest persecuted her with torments which the modern sportsman will appreciate. She subsisted on such roots, bark, reptiles, or other small animals, as her Indian habits enabled her to gather on her way. She crossed streams by swimming, or on rafts of driftwood, lashed together with strips of linden-bark; and at length reached the St. Lawrence, where, with the aid of her hatchet, she made a canoe. Her home was on the Ottawa, and she was ignorant of the great river, or, at least, of this part of it. She had scarcely even seen a Frenchman, but had ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... driftwood enough to make a fire, and could get an old battered kettle and some water to make a soup of shell fish, "Little Sunshine" must be invited to dinner, for half the enjoyment would be ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews

... evil, was fast approaching. For years previously he had given up the struggle against the latter, and had sunk deep in moral apathy, making greater effort to doubt everything concerning God than to believe. Then he had lost even his earthly ambition, and become mere driftwood on the tide of time. But a sweet, true woman was doing a work for him like that of Elsie for Prince Henry in the Golden Legend. A consciousness of power to take up his burden again and be a man among men was coming back, and old Daddy Tuggar's words were growing into a hope-inspiring prophecy: "She ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... the first the children had since we left Scotland. It was late in the day when the boat got to the end of the canal; the conductor, who told us to call him Treffle, said we would wait and have supper before going on the lake. Driftwood was gathered and fires made, pots and pans being set on stones. The crew fried fat pork, which, with bread, was their supper. We made porridge, for we had still a good supply of oatmeal, and of ship-biscuit. The sails were hoisted ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... In truth, it is a terrible night to be afar from human companionship, with naught but this roaring desolation about and the air above filled with screeching terrors. Even through thick log walls I can hear the surf roaring among the rocks and beating the white driftwood like a thousand battering-rams, almost at my door. It is a night to make one shiver, and in the lulls of the storm the tall pines above me whistle and wail mournfully as they straighten their twisted ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... our supper we beat the willow thicket for driftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with the coolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made another futile effort to show Percy Pound the Little ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... up he met an aged man, who had been gathering driftwood in the torrent-bed. He had laid down his fagot in the road, and was trying to lift it again to his shoulder. And when he saw Theseus, he called to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... have been an easy matter for the boys to swim also, but they preferred to use a raft. Accordingly, they set to work, and it did not take them long to gather enough logs and driftwood to float all three. These were deftly fastened together by Deerfoot, who used hickory withes for that purpose, and, then, with a long pole which he cut and trimmed with his tomahawk, he pushed ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... madly, Sabine—dear little one—but you and I are just driftwood, floating down the tide—not like Henry, who is a splendid fellow of great use to England. It is impossible that his whole life should be ruined and sacrificed for our selfishness. Darling—" and he paused and drew ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... spring, after the water has retired to its narrow channel, and examine piece after piece of the rubbish that has been lodged here and there against a knoll or some willows, a patch of rushes or dead grass. We are studying the different modes by which plants travel. In the driftwood may be found dry fruits of the bladder nut, brown and light, an inch and a half in diameter. See how tough they are; they seem to be perfectly tight, and even if one happens to have a hole punched in ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... path which few can tell, till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last he found the three Grey Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of driftwood, beneath the cold white winter moon; and they chanted a low song together, "Why the old times ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... emissaries had left the library Hamilton Burton sat before his hearth and shook loose the reins of imagination. He burned driftwood in this room and as his eyes dwelt on the shooting tongues of blue flame that licked around the logs his dreams absorbed him. Yamuro, his Japanese valet, slipped in to see if his master required him—but his footfall was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... halted, and dropping upon their hands and knees, the three leaders crawled to the top of the break. Sheltered by a couple of sage-bushes and lying flat to the ground, Wilbur looked over and down upon the beach. The first object he made out was a crazy, roofless house, built of driftwood, the chinks plastered with 'dobe mud, the door ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... were hurled into their channels, roughening and half-damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where before they glided smoothly. Some of the streams were completely dammed; driftwood, leaves, etc., gradually filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches; and these again, after being gradually filled in, were changed to meadows, through which the streams are ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... wound was but a spur to urge His valour onward. In the last attack He rode before us as the crested wave That leads the flood; and lo, our enemies Were broken like a dam of river-reeds. The flying King encircled by his guard Was lodged like driftwood on a little hill. Then Naaman, who led our foremost band Of whirlwind riders, hammered through the hedge Of spearmen, brandishing the golden yoke. "Take back this gift," he cried; and shattered it On Shalmaneser's helmet. So the fight ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... sped swiftly down the chasm without mishap. The stream, to which each mile added its contribution of flood water from the mountain tops, increased constantly in width and depth, but only now and then was there a rock to threaten their progress, and no driftwood at all. When the gold seekers landed for dinner they were confident of two things: that they had passed far beyond the mad hunter's reach, and were very near to the first waterfall. Memory of the thrilling experiences through which they had so recently run the gauntlet was replaced by the most ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... "Smashed like driftwood. I tell you it's preposterous—and yet it's the fact. I think you'd better return at once, old man; you're only half an hour off. And come on the surface; it's getting light now, and you might pick up something. God knows what this means, Keith, but ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... shoulders, and abdomen were a lovely dove grey; that soft tan grey, with a warm shade, almost suggestive of pink. I suppose the reason I thought of this was because at the time two pairs of doves, one on a heap of driftwood overhanging the river, and the other in an apple tree in the Aspy orchard a few rods away, were giving me much trouble, and I had dove grey on ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... had descended the stairs to the sitting room. Before a driftwood fire in a big brick fireplace sat Captain Warren in his shirt-sleeves, a pair of mammoth carpet slippers on his feet, and the said feet stretched luxuriously ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... gun was covered with tarpaulins to protect it from the weather, and then all retired to the house for a bountiful meal. Late that afternoon nearly all signs of the flood had disappeared, save that along the edges of the creek was much driftwood, showing the height to which the creek had risen. But it would have gone much higher had it not been ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... no people," said Macartney blankly. "As far as I know, he was just a bit of driftwood. And as for finding out anything about his journey here, I don't suppose we ever can! All we'll get at was that he came back—and was found dead." And something made me look past him and Dudley, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt easily arrange for this. And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current, dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the trees. And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain that Mrs. Temple and Riddle might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... right away," proposed Bob. "Perhaps we can find some driftwood, or something to make a hut of, though it's warm enough to sleep out of doors ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... combustion of soft apple wood soon become familiar characteristics to those who have the opportunity to lay the fire in variety. Then there is, of course, the fascination and the weird coloring in a driftwood fire—most spectacular of all but unfortunately denied ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... the bridges Uncle Sebastian Burris halted. A great snarl of bleached driftwood had collected just above the bridge, and through it the clear water roared in a dozen tiny cataracts. Beyond the drift Uncle Sebastian had caught a glimpse of some living, moving object. He wiped his watery blue eyes with a red handkerchief, looked once more, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... with crooked sticks. Children played about, and a few canoes pushed out, to go fishing. But nobody worked any too fast. The sun beat down hotly, the air was moist and heavy, monkeys and parrots screamed in the trees, and ever the Chagres flowed past, brown and swollen from the rain. Considerable driftwood floated down, and this ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep side of the cliff to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom, foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend where the angry water flung itself against the ragged bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman appeared, bending low in the saddle for better protection ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... usual troubles that overtake the tracker—those of clearing our lines of trees and bushes, slipping into the muck of small inlets, stumbling over stones, cutting the lines upon sharp rocks, or having them caught by gnarled roots of driftwood. As we approached the last lap of white water the canoes passed through a rocky basin that held a thirty- or forty-yard section of the river in a slack and unruffled pool. While ascending this last section, the last canoe, the one in which the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... be seen two miles off at Lynn. There was a porch, too, with snow-white pillars, and an open fireplace, all tiled with adobe, in which might blaze fires of pinon wood, full of resin and burning as nothing else can burn save driftwood, sodden with salt and oil and ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... passage, even on ever so large and staunch a ship, seem like ants on a piece of driftwood, especially when the number of shipwrecks is considered, and that among the first-class steamships; and when friend parts with friend each understands the danger and uncertainty of ever meeting again, and consequently the partings are more pathetic, the handshakes more ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... bluff overlooking the Big Blue, early on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of May, we found the river booming, and the water still rising. Driftwood and good sized logs were floating by on a current so strong that all hope of fording it vanished even before its depth was measured. We encamped on the slope of the prairie, near a timber of cottonwood, oak, beech, and sycamore trees, where a ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... that sad event which the anxious mother had so often dreaded and predicted had come to pass. They had met a watery grave. Often and often were the whole chain of lakes explored, but their bodies were never found. Entangled in the long grass and sunken driftwood that covered the bottom of these basins, it was not likely they would ever rise to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... to the centre of the horseshoe; then, picking up a piece of driftwood, scooped out a comfortable hollow in the sand, about a dozen yards from the foot of the cliff; stuck her open parasol up behind it, to shield herself from the observation, from above, of any chance ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... Avenue. They were ugly, ill-nourished, devoid of all except the very lowest form of intelligence, and without even that animal exuberance that in itself brings color into life; they were lately vermin-ridden, cold, and hungry in a dirty town of a strange land; they were poor, friendless; tossed as driftwood from their births, they would be tossed as driftwood to their deaths. They were dressed in the uniform of the United States Army, and on the shoulder of each was the insignia of a drafted division from New Jersey, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... boat which is very easily made as you sit on the beach, and which is useful to play with when wading, and afterward to throw stones at. You take a piece of cork for the hull. Cut a line down the middle underneath and wedge a strip of slate in for a keel to keep her steady. Fix a piece of driftwood for a mast, and thread a piece of paper on that ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... much better. I was allowed a little tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle, with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but with skins and a couple of lamps I ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... peculiar sequence of events, mingled with a slowly growing belief that some mysterious power was leading him—he knew not whither—a feeling that he was soon to face some ghastly experience, came like an icy hand grasping his in the dark. He could not shake that feeling off, and as he gathered driftwood, bits of dead spruce—anything that would burn, and piled the fuel near his shelter—his dread increased. What strange spell was it that had kept him four hours beside that wall-enclosed harbor unconscious of the lapse of time? Why had ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... find pine-knots in wooded sections where pine-trees grow; or, if you are located near water where there are no trees, look for pine-knots in driftwood washed ashore. When secured cut thin slices down part way all around the elongated knot and circle it with many layers of shavings until the knot somewhat resembles a toy tree. The inside will be absolutely dry, and this ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... fire very useful and pleasant, they went down as close as they could venture to the water, and employed themselves in collecting all the driftwood and chips they could find. They agreed that they would do the same every day, so as to have a good stock of fuel. They wanted also to secure some pieces which might serve as torches, so that they could examine the smugglers' store as they called it, which ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... episode. He had shown her some of the many beautiful things and places of the world, and by her own words he had made her happy. Now their play time was over. He had his work and she hers. She had come into his life as a piece of driftwood floats to shore on the edge of a wave, and gone out of ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... had noticed that the shores of Greenland were strewn with driftwood of a kind also found on the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... rode a short distance up the river to the Whaleback, a small island shaped, as its name indicated, like a whale's back. It was quite flat, only slightly elevated above the surface of the water. On one side it had rather a wide beach covered with stones and littered with driftwood; behind this beach rose a dense growth of pines that extended down to the very edge of the water on the other side ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... quite likely. Human natur' is little better than a log of driftwood, when the life that was breathed into its nostrils is departed. That Iroquois will never harm any one more; but yonder skulking savage is bent on taking the scalp of my best and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... number or the shape of some of these marks or structural characteristics, the type and locality can be easily detected. The Eskimo have everywhere bows and arrows for land hunting, the former made of several pieces of bone lashed together, or of a piece of driftwood lashed and re-enforced with sinew. The arrows are of ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason

... it is said, my people dwelt across the waters upon that other land; but the wild beasts devoured them in such numbers that finally they were driven here, paddling across upon logs and driftwood, nor has any dared return since, because of the frightful creatures which dwell in that ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... had stabbed in the throat one second before the fatal hug. He told of the melting of the snows in forest rivers; of the flood that swept away the lonely traveller's encampment, and bore him, astride on a log of driftwood, five miles amid wrack and boulders on its whirling current; of deliverance through a pious Indian and his canoe, which he entered as by a miracle in mid-stream, and without upsetting any of the three. He told of long wanderings in the twilight ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair



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