"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long after this Robert's early tutor Murdoch returned to Ayr, and lent him Pope's Works; a bookish friend of his father's obtained for him the reading of two volumes of Richardson's 'Pamela' and another friendly soul the reading of Smollett's 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' and 'Peregrine Pickle.' The book which most delighted him, however, was a collection of English songs called ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... etiquette, rose, and, bowing to the king, retired. The queen followed with her ladies of honor. The queen-mother remained: the king's gayety was a mystery that she wished to fathom. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Hetty had so much reverence for, and faith in, the virtues of the Bible, her intellect was too shallow to enable her fully to appreciate its beauties, or to fathom its profound and sometimes mysterious wisdom. That instinctive sense of right which appeared to shield her from the commission of wrong, and even cast a mantle of moral loveliness and truth around her character, could not penetrate abstrusities, or trace the nice affinities ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. On this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously. In ways which we cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical being. Perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in certain conspicuous ways,—as in perceiving the "X rays" we recognise in a way less conspicuous,—the pervading influence of ethereal vibrations which ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... humorous good-nature, and he baffled the old gentleman as one is baffled by the play of sunshine over a rippling pool. Marshall would ask himself whether the depth of the pool was a finger-length or a fathom, and would speculate on what there might be lying at the bottom of it—strange deposits, perhaps, representing the social and business developments of another age, or at least another civilization. He sometimes questioned his daughter's capacity ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I am very fond of you—and yet I do not ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment in New England. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... may foretell with confidence—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his destiny. There ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... at him again and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered as ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... rather necessary to have some at home to look out for the women and children, and to raise food for the army and the people," replied the colonel with a smile, as he began to fathom ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Heneage accepted a chair and spoke of the performance. The conversation became general and of stereotyped form. Yet Wrayson was uneasily conscious of something underneath it all which he could not fathom. The atmosphere of the box was charged with some electrical disturbance. Heneage alone seemed thoroughly at his ease. He kept his seat until the close of the performance, and even then seemed in no hurry to depart. Wrayson, however, took his ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a very cruel beast, with a great and thick body after the fashion of a horse; it hath for a weapon a great horn, half a fathom in length, so sharp and so hard that there is nothing it cannot pierce.... When men need to take it they bring a virgin maid to the place where they know that it has its abode. When the unicorn sees her and knows ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... "She's not one of those hard-faced children; she's lovely—and I've come to the conclusion that she's pathetic. I'm beginning to rather hate this man Pollen. Back of it all are subtleties of personality difficult to fathom. You should know Blais Rochefort. I imagine a woman going about things the wrong way could break her heart on him like waves on a crystal rock. I think it has been a question of fire meeting crystal, and, when it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... before you turned to shut it. Can you deny that, or that you stepped aside while I ran in and gave my mother another hug? If you can and do, then you are a dangerous and lying woman, or I——But I won't admit that I'm not all right. It is you, base and untruthful woman, who for some end I cannot fathom persist in denying facts on which my honour, if not my life, depends. Why, gentlemen, you, one of you at least, have heard me describe the very room in which I saw my mother. It is imprinted on my mind. I didn't know at the time that I took especial notice of it, but hardly ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... his house. He had sent a telegram the day before; and his servant was waiting for him. In less than no time he had changed his clothes. Immediately he went back to his carriage, and went in search of the man, who, he thought, was most likely to be able to fathom this mystery. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... that the Creator made man to leave him in an endless struggle with the intellectual miseries which surround us: God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the communities of Europe; I am unacquainted with his designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... whole face darkening with an expression I could not fathom. "What was done at that time cannot be undone. For you and me there is no future. Yes," he said turning towards her as she made a slight fluttering move of dissent, "no future; we can bury the past, but we ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... surely fathom all the cunning wiles of Satan; for though many said Sidonia's power is now broken by Wolde's death, and indeed the poor sheriff was the only one who still played the hare, and kept the roaring ox safe up in the stall—still, so strange ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... was intended as a hint to Kennedy, it was unnecessary. He was working as fast and as surely as he could, going over in hours what others had failed to fathom ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... that Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. Fenelby proposed that he ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... chin of an old man plunged into a situation which he could not fathom. "Would it not be better to consult the police first?" ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study of savage races of men that have been unspoiled by civilization. Obviously, it is more interesting to fathom the mind of a creature in an absolute state of nature than of one whose ancestors have been bred and reared in the trammels of domestication and for many successive generations have bowed to the will of man. The natural fury ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we cannot fathom. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... himself had acted as almoner—the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... at their doings, never spoke of them in terms other than honorable to himself and to them. He persistently praised John Brown for his bravery and his endurance; and he was just as firm in declaring him the victim of shrewd and designing men, whose schemes he would yet fathom. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Jean. There was something about these things that presented to his understanding a wall of insurmountable height. Then, he recalled his last interview with Jean and the suspicions that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... comfort or enjoyment. It is too subtle for that! A supreme effort, even a supreme agony, may have more real living worth than years of "normal" existence. The youths whose graves now dot so plentifully the pleasant fields of France have drunk deeper than we can fathom of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the probability of his falling, and always thought that the odds were in favour of his falling. And to be perfectly frank (my object in writing this book is to tell the truth), nobody regretted the probability! If we had really known what kind of a man he was, if we had been able then to fathom beneath the forbidding externals, we might have felt very differently about it. But it is not given to man to know the future or even to discern the heart of his most intimate acquaintance! We only saw in him a man who was as unscrupulous as his ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love." ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... batteries on the waterside, to prevent the approach of ships; and they had raised a bar or sand-bank, that rendered the approach of our largest ships of war impracticable, and of the smaller craft difficult and dangerous. Within the bar, however, there was a place called Five Fathom Hole, with a sufficient depth of water to float second-rate ships; and here nine American ships were moored, under the American commodore Whipple. Behind the bar and Whipple's squadron there was Fort Moultrie, upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... may be called the paternal relation, there may seem no special Law—no Law except the highest of all, that Law of which all other Laws are parts, that Law which neither Nature can wholly reflect nor the mind begin to fathom—the Law of Love. He adds nothing to that, however, who loses sight of all other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds specific Laws everywhere ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not fathom. ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... whirled hurriedly; and not a fathom's length away rode a second small boat; and standing forward were two men, their revolvers levelled directly at ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... behind this, a secret that none is wise enough to fathom. The infinite fund of disinterested humane kindliness that is adrift in the world is part of the riddle, the insoluble riddle of life that is born in our blood and tissue. It is agreeable to think that no man, save by his own gross fault, ever ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... on our way. For the last few months she has been zealously corresponding with her brother; she evidently has some secret projects, but what they are—God knows! I am sick of trying to fathom her underhand schemes! But we're going, not to the country, but to Yalta and afterwards to the Caucasus. She can only exist now at watering-places, and if you knew how I hate all these watering-places, how ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nor have you in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep— The secret of a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... (in view of these Sokratic thinkers) an essential part of divine government; indispensable to satisfy their ideas of the benevolence of the gods; since rational and scientific prediction was so habitually at fault and unable to fathom the phenomena ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... It was a long point, and I knew I could touch bottom with my pole. I took my pole and just hardly got ashore. (Grand Lake runs nearly east and west, is over 40 miles long, and from 1 to 4 miles wide, and very deep, up to sixty fathom of water, and for the least wind makes a ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was agreed between them, that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... found the Variation to be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees West; distance 68 miles; latitude 19 degrees 46 ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... notion incredulously; for though Kinlay knew the coast very well, yet the idea of his starting with his limited experience as an Orkney pilot was droll to one who, like my uncle, had been all his life at the work, and knew every fathom of the waters. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and forgave him with unvarying regularity. In the end we came to be quite friendly over the affair. I found him diverting at a time when I was in need of diversion, though just what attraction he found in me, I have never been able to fathom. It was certainly not that he saw a future source of "stories," for he frankly regarded corporation law as a pursuit devoid of interest. Criminal law was the one branch of the profession for which ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... laws of peace they rule the happy land; While reason's page their statute codes unfold, And rites and charters flame in figured gold. All rights that Britons know they here transfuse, Their sense invigorate and expand their views, Dare every height of human soul to scan, Find, fathom, scope the moral breadth of man, Learn how his social powers may still dilate, And tone their tension to a ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... has said "While the story may have for a plot a subject involving complication, or mystery, each scene must be easily understood, or the audience, taxed by trying to fathom motives or emotions with which it is unfamiliar, or with which it is not in sympathy, loses the thread of the story, and consequently pronounces the photoplay lacking in interest. Remembering the brevity of the film drama, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... things in books; were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery. That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... had heard them tearing along the avenue back to the stables, and had made a memorandum mentally that I must speak of it. It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to go to the stables now and make a few inquiries. It is impossible to fathom the minds of rustics; there might be some devilry of practical joking, for anything I knew; or they might have some interest in getting up a bad reputation for the Brentwood avenue. It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... such big bands of sheep and they are moving about I should not think the markers would be in the same place twice," persisted Donald, determined to fathom this puzzling problem. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... house; but my distress was much increased upon finding the snow so deep upon the ground, that it was impossible for me to attempt to stir, as upon stepping one foot out to try, I found it far too deep for me to fathom the bottom. This greatly distressed me. 'Alas!' said I to myself, 'what shall I do now? To proceed is impossible; and to return is very melancholy, without any tidings of my dear, dear Longtail.' But I was interrupted in the midst ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... observances, wealth, pleasure, and final release; and recognising that the Vedas—which teach the truth about his own nature, his glorious manifestations, the means of rendering him propitious and the fruits of such endeavour—are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself, whether gods or men, since those Vedas are divided into Rik, Yajus, Sman, and Atharvan; and being animated by infinite pity, tenderness, and magnanimity; with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... significant expectation with her brother, but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. "It's either something," thought Judy, "or else he's got a pain." But Tim's mind was quicker. "He's got it," ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... had a grudge against the Lookouts before ever she met them. Leila and I were always suspicious of the way Natalie Weyman acted about meeting you at the station. We could not fathom the object of such a performance. We both thought there was more to it than appeared on the surface." Vera ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of replying when she pressed him to go to Fern Torr, and his absolute avoidance of it, struck and puzzled her much as well as grieved her. She knew his loneliness, and could understand that he might be melancholy, but why he should shrink from the home he so loved was beyond what she could fathom. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hopeless task, my dear Andreas. Not even you can fathom all the ramifications of the intrigues in which I find myself an indispensable puppet. Those who control my movements will never let go the strings by which they hold me, and ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... diligent toil thy master is the bee; In craft mechanical, the worm that creeps Through earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee; In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths, All to the seraph are already known: But thine, o Man, is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... meeting Lorne had been "all worked up." She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent, unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked of a few days' rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of nothing but ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a surprise, and she emerged from her retreat to find her room-mates already filing towards the door. Thomasina led the way, staring at Rhoda's locks with an amusement which the girl found it hard to fathom. She had brushed out the curling mane with even greater care than usual, and was conscious that it was as tidy as nature had intended it should be. Then why stare and smile? She could not understand, but ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wandered over the world for many years, from one mining camp to another. He invariably got drunk on Saturdays, and, whenever he could afford it, on other days as well. For some reason, which I could never fathom, this strange being took a fancy to me, and used to inflict on me long homilies on the dangers to which youth was exposed. He continually urged me never to get drunk on anything but beer. When I suggested the application of his principles to himself, he would say ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... little reluctance that Solomon Mahaffy accompanied Yancy and Cavendish to Belle Plain; he would have preferred to remain in Raleigh in attendance upon judge Price. Intimately acquainted with the judge's mental processes, he could follow all the devious workings of that magnificent mind; he could fathom the simply hellish ingenuity he was capable of putting forth to accomplish temporary benefits. Permitting his thoughts to dwell upon the mingled strength and weakness which was so curiously blended in Slocum Price's character, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... cliff; for otherwhere was a litter of great rocks and small, hard to be threaded even by those who knew the passes well; so that men had to tread along the very verge of the Shivering Flood, and wary must they be, for the water ran swift and deep betwixt banks of sheer rock half a fathom below their very foot-soles, which had but bare space to go on the narrow a way. So it held on for a while, and then got safer, and there was more space for going betwixt cliff and flood; albeit it was toilsome enough, since for some way yet there was a drift of stones to ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... sea, which struck down poor Wilds with such force, the lifeboat stood straight up on her stern and reared, as the men expressed it, 'like a vicious horse'; and so much did the cable spring, that the lifeboat was driven to within a fathom, or six feet, of the wreck, and was withdrawn the next instant to fifteen fathoms distance by the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... edges of human nature, there was something unspeakably restful in the atmosphere of that quiet home; something soothing in the silent, steadfast affection, the depth of which he was only beginning to fathom. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... or some still less refined mode of torture. One day, some of us, while walking the poop, had our attention directed to a sucking-fish, about two and a half feet in length, which had been made fast by the tail to a billet of wood, by a fathom or so of spun-yarn, and turned adrift. An immense striped shark, apparently about fourteen feet in length, which had been cruising about the ship all the morning, sailed slowly up, and turning slightly on one side, attempted to seize the seemingly helpless fish; but the sucker, with great ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... granted that you would welcome a chance to brush Landis out of your path. It appears that I am wrong. I admit my error. Only fools cling to convictions; wise men are ready to meet new viewpoints. Very well. You wish to spare Landis for reasons of your own which I do not pretend to fathom. Perhaps, you pity him; I cannot tell. Now, you wonder why I wish to have Landis in my care if I do not intend to put an end to him and thereby become owner of his mines? I shall tell you frankly. I intend to own the mines, if not through the death of Jack, then ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... marked into lengths of six feet, called fathoms, by knots, or pieces of leather, or old sail-cloth. In narrow or intricate channels, it is sometimes needful to place a man in the chains on each side of the ship, as the depth will vary a fathom or more even in the breadth of the vessel, and it is of great consequence that the leadsmen give the depth correctly, as a wrong report might cause the ship to run aground. The time that the leadsman is employed in taking soundings is often a period of deep anxiety to the crew and passengers, especially ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... dupe of the two sisters; she guessed into whose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige the countess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all such embarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom the manoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass till I've ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... your letter, to hear you have not been well, and that you partly attribute it to want of exercise. I wish you were here amongst the green plains; we would take walks which would rival the Dolgelly ones, and you should tell stories, which I would believe, even to a CUBIC FATHOM OF PUDDING. Instead I must take my solitary ramble, think of Cambridge days, and pick up snakes, beetles and toads. Excuse this short letter (you know I never studied 'The Complete Letter-writer'), and believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... see," he said, gloomily. "In a short time we shall know why Montezuma thus tamely suhmitted to be made a prisoner. He may have some motives which we cannot fathom. I cannot believe him to be a coward. No Aztec monarch, yet, has ever shown want ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... it's made of?" asked Bill. "Why, sheets and blankets and ticking," replied Jack. "Yes," said Bill, "you are right; and with those selfsame sheets and blankets, and maybe a fathom or two of rope besides, underneath, I intend that we shall try to lower ourselves down to the ground; and when we are once outside, it will be our own fault if we do not get back to the harbour, and when there, that ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... responses, and Sam Buzza, his friend, whom few Trojans excelled in casting glances at the female congregation. Then, most gorgeous and bravest of all, the Admiral: he wore again his gold-laced coat, but the cocked-hat rested underneath the seat, and none could fathom the import of his gaze. By him sat his three daughters, a-row, in straight-backed dresses of like cut and colour, and peeped over their prayer-books; and Mrs. Buzza, timorous, in bright green satin. But of the throng of Trojan men and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this sleep? Was it connected with the papers? No, not that, for they had not sought to take them, and had not made any remark about their being gone. This showed their unconcern on that point. She could not fathom the mystery, but the suspicion of something irregular deepened. Her father could have no reason for injuring Sergeant Tom; but Pretty Pierre—that was another matter. Yet she remembered too that her father had appeared the more anxious of the two about the Sergeant's sleep. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flying. Lord Chesterfield directed a letter to the late Lord Pembroke, who was always swimming, "To the Earl of Pembroke in the Thames, over against Whitehall." That was sure of finding him within a certain number of fathom; but your ladyship's longitude varies so rapidly, that one must be a good bowler indeed, to take one's ground so judiciously that by casting wide of the mark one may come in near to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... fathom the pleasure of that precious memory throughout those four lives, as the story of Great Heart and Christiana followed Christian along the path that "shineth more and more unto the perfect day." While the father and sister were delighted with the crackle, sparkle and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... sixty-four fathom a conger may come, And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine; But late in the evening Kilmeny came home, And nobody knew where ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... it. If these beastly fellows hadn't been led by him to come after our money, we would not have had this schooner, and how we should have got those bags away without her,—to say nothing of ourselves,—is more than I can fathom. It is my belief that no craft ever comes within twenty miles of this coast, if she can help it. So I vote for letting him off. He didn't intend to do us any harm, and he didn't intend to do us any good, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... yet—and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel—some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised. She cared for him—how could he doubt it? But was the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... our circle of discovery, the wider our wonder; the more startling our conclusions, the more perplexing our questions. We have not exhausted the universe;—we have just begun to see its harmony of proportion and of relations, without penetrating a fathom into its real life. How and what is that power that works in the shooting of a crystal, and binds the obedience of a star; that shimmers in the northern Aurora, and connects by its attraction the aggregated universe; that by ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... which alone receives the salvation proffered to all; that the reason why the gift of faith is not bestowed upon all men, though Christ seriously invites all to come to Him, is a mystery known to God alone, which human reason cannot fathom; that the will of God proposed in Christ and revealed in the Bible, to which all men are directed, and in which it is most safe to acquiesce, is not contradictory of the hidden will of God. (Loescher, Hist Mot. 2, 229; Frank 4, 126. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... half-pitying admiration at the sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and underhand business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim perception that here was something he did not begin to be able to fathom—something that perhaps no one but those two themselves could deal with—between these various extremes he was lost indeed. And he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could fill that up and forget it," he ventured in a valorously timid tone which made it hard, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, to keep my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking my head from ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... resist this emotion; the understanding of things must be based, not on sentiment, but on reason. There must be justice, not charity. Kindness is solitary. Compassion becomes one with him whom we pity; it allows us to fathom him, to understand him alone amongst the rest; but it blurs and befogs the laws of the whole. I must set off with a clear idea, like the beam of a lighthouse through the deformities and temptations ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and read about Brutus, one of those mysterious men whose history we could not fathom, for as far north as York we read in a book there that "Brutus settled in this country when the Prophet Eli governed Israel and the Ark was taken from the Philistines, about 1140 B.C., or a century and a half later ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of the day the old chief had several private consultations with the guide, and showed evident signs of being occupied with some mysterious matter of mighty import. What it was, Captain Bonneville could not fathom, nor did he make much effort to do so. From some casual sentences that he overheard, he perceived that it was something from which the old man promised himself much satisfaction, and to which he attached a little vainglory but which he wished to keep a secret; so he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... children, remember—intellectual children—ignorant as babies because, poor souls, they had had neither books nor teaching. Savages are, you know, terrified at a thing they cannot fathom and these persons were as yet little more. Well, at any rate, clocks began to make their appearance. By 1286 one of these faceless mechanisms was put up on St. Paul's Cathedral in London; and before 1300, others were, by order of the clergy, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... you saw, you conquered," flourished Gordon, in high good humour with his own wit and grace. "We toasted you, madam, in the carriage, in an excellent good glass of wine; toasted you fathom deep; the finest woman, with, begad, the finest eyes in Gruenewald. I never saw the like of them but once, in my own country, when I was a young fool at College: Thomasina Haig her name was. I give you my word of honour, she was as like you as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nature he went on to read mystic meanings into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena and elementary human feeling. Blond Egbert was ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear Without corrival all ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Haeckel, Tyndall, Meyer, and other renowned scientists, have tried to find the missing link between man and animal; they have also exhausted their genius in trying to fathom the mysteries of the beginning of life, or find where the animal and mineral kingdoms unite to form life; but they have added to the vast accumulation of theories only, and the world is but little wiser on this ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... trees, and again pour seawater on them till the particles of salt are well separated, and pass with the water into a vessel placed below to receive them. This water, now strongly impregnated, is boiled till the salt adheres in a thick crust to the bottom and sides of the vessel. In burning a square fathom of firewood a skilful person procures about five gallons of salt. What is thus made has so considerable a mixture of the salt of the wood that it soon dissolves, and cannot be carried far into the country. The coarsest grain ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... keenly at him, as one weighing his words, and trying to fathom their meaning, but the taller man broke in ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... meantime remained silent, offering no comment to relieve his anxiety. What he was thinking under the shabby visor cap pulled so low over his brows it was impossible to fathom. His hand was now unscrewing the top of ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... you no more. But he won't. He'll tell you everything I've told you. He couldn't say different, for he's truthful and straight. And if it was anything less than the whole of my future life I wouldn't have come. But I feel there are things hidden in his mind I can't fathom—else after what I told him yesterday, he never, never could have been cruel to me, or changed his mind about coming to see you. And please forgive me for taking up your time. Only knowing that you cared for him so much made me ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... The man who had made so much fuss over the matter gave it up when he found that I wished to be quarantined, and sent for an all-important half-white, who soon came alongside, starched from clue to earing. He stood in the boat as straight up and down as a fathom of pump-water—a marvel of importance. "Charts!" cried I, as soon as his shirt-collar appeared over the sloop's rail; "have you any charts?" "No, sah," he replied with much-stiffened dignity; "no, sah; cha'ts ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... this world too much is overclear, Immortal Ministrant to many lands, From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands Rivers that each libation poured expands. Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire; Thy people fathom life and find it dire, Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, tho in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as Grief is in ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... sides and when Wilde said: 'Mr. Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by all his friends,' I knew it to be a phrase I should never forget, and felt revenged upon a notorious hater of romance, whose generosity and courage I could not fathom. ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... time it was," says his biographer, "that the philanthropist Howard, led by his benevolent enthusiasm to fathom dungeons, vindicate the wrongs, and alleviate the sufferings of the lonely and forgotten victim of vice and crime, arrived at Cork. A society had for some years existed in that city 'for the relief and discharge of persons confined for small debts,' of which O'Leary was an active and conspicuous ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... to fathom the motives which induced John Wilford to tell his wife and son that the money had been restored to the owner. Perhaps he had some plan by which he hoped to escape detection and punishment for his crime; or it may be that he told the falsehood to satisfy Lawry for the present moment. His ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... vaguely conscious of being the guardian of a woman's instinct for safety, an instinct which arrives with the cradle and only goes with the grave, and that made me feel somewhat helpless; a man in depths he cannot fathom, for such is the uncharted sea ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... too; to see Hermon, we must go to Calvary; to discern how the fashion of His countenance was altered, we must witness that other time in the garden, when "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down on the ground"; to fathom how the three disciples slept through the glory, we must remember how they slept ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Sea-king called all the crocodiles, and said: "His Highness Prince Fire-fade is going to the upper world; which of you will take him there quickly, and bring me back word?" And one crocodile a fathom long, answered: "I will take him to the upper world, and come back in ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... up at her; she stood with her pretty face turned away, a troubled look in her bright eyes, the usually smiling lips compressed with determination. The boy's quick wits began to fathom the drift of her intention and the cause thereof; he must know more to determine ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... see what Fielding proposed to himself by a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by anything of human feeling. ..."]. Some other critics have been neither more friendly than Sir Walter, nor more discriminating, in speaking of Jonathan Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a pretty consistent ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... declarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional Statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of an evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the men all gone to stables, dared to burst into that magnate's own room in search of his arms and clothing, and thereby roused a heavily sleeping soldier, who damned him savagely until, through wild raving, he gathered that some grave danger menaced Captain Ray. Even his befuddled senses could fathom that! And while guards and nurses bore the patient, shrieking and struggling, back to hospital, Kennedy soused his hot head in the cooling waters of their frontier lavatory and was off like ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... remember your wife very well. I could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different points; many indeed ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... to the eastern breakers, they were obliged to let go an anchor to save them from destruction. They could see nothing of the buoy, and no doubt was entertained that it was washed away by the current. Their anchorage was in three and a half fathom water, and the ground swell, which then set in, heaved the vessel up and down in such a frightful manner, that they expected every moment to see the chain cable break. As soon as they dropped their anchor, the tide rushed past the vessel at the rate of eight miles an hour. After the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... sunbonnet to view, and all the while the pan was still held against her side by the other hand. Fleming noticed that the hands, though tawny and not over clean, were almost childlike in size, and that the forefinger was much too small for the ring. He tried to fathom the depths of the sun-bonnet, but it was dented on one side, and he could discern only a single pale blue eye and a ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... before you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire—long heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for steam-boats and locomotives, Bloodless also here stretches out one of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man alone ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... asked me which was the narrowest part of the Channel, and I told him. Then he asked how Silly [sic] bore, if I had 75 fathom, red sand and gravel. I said, 'About N.W.,' and the old man said, 'Well, yes,—rather West of N.W., is not it so, Sir Richard?' And Sir Richard did not know what they were talking about, and they pulled out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Heaven help us both, Parson! That young hair brained fellow has sent us a brace of petticoats aboard; and these the profane reprobate calls his divinities! One may easily guess where he has picked up such quality; but cheer up, Doctor; one may honestly forget the cloth in five fathom water, you know." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper |
