"Planking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were sufficiently removed and shut out from the counting-house to blend into a busy hum, interspersed with periodical clinks and thumps. The patient figures at work were swarthy with the filings of iron and steel that danced on every bench and bubbled up through every chink in the planking. The workshop was arrived at by a step-ladder from the outer yard below, where it served as a shelter for the large grindstone where tools were sharpened. The whole had at once a fanciful and practical air in Clennam's ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... such numbers as the Jarrah, its field of growth being limited. Its timber resembles that of the Jarrah, but cannot be wrought so easily, though for purposes of street-paving it is superior. It is this wood which is so extensively used in London. It is also of value for bridge planking, shafts, spokes, felloes, waggon ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the team coming had jumped from his seat and pulled his rig to the very edge of the planking. All might have gone well ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... close to my head, against the starboard bulkhead, came the sound, like two gentle "thuds" on the planking, causing a distinct tremor to thrill through ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... me on loans and discounts. Spite of every caution, however, we lost occasionally by bad loans, and worse by the steady depreciation of real estate. The city of San Francisco was then extending her streets, sewering them, and planking them, with three-inch lumber. In payment for the lumber and the work of contractors, the city authorities paid scrip in even sums of one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, and five thousand dollars. These formed a favorite collateral for loans at from fifty to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... badly strained, but escaped for what might have been a worse fate—fire. Her cargo of coals caught fire, and after some days of hard work, the fire was extinguished; but when the vessel reached Hongkong and her cargo was discharged, it was found that the hull was a mere shell. Her frames and planking in many places ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... to our great delight, and soon left a gap between us of nearly half-a-mile. We ran through an opening in the piling, holding up close to the left side, and she apparently followed our course exactly. Suddenly there was a dull roar; a column of water, bearing with it fragments of timbers, planking and human bodies, rose up through one side of the vessel, and, as it fell, she lurched forward and sank. She had struck a torpedo. I never learned the number lost, but it must ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... advanced, each with one attendant, to the bridge. No sooner had the earl entered upon the wooden structure than he was slain by a Welsh spearman, who had hidden himself under it, and aimed a blow at Humphrey through the planking. Clifford was severely wounded, and escaped with difficulty. Discouraged by the loss of their leaders, the rest of the troops made only a feeble effort to force the passage. The same evil fortune attended the division that followed Lancaster. The archers ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in the northern coal-fields were made by laying a track of planking on wooden sleepers. This device was more than a century old when George Stephenson was born. In some places this had been improved by plating the planks with iron. While the Wylam lad was still a barefoot boy, cast-iron rails were being introduced in Leicestershire, a wheel ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... marked out from each other only by the series of our own affairs, and the sun's great period as he ranged westward through the heavens. The two birds cackled a while in the early morning; all day the water tinkled in the shaft, the bores ground sawdust in the planking of our crazy palace—infinitesimal sounds; and it was only with the return of night that any change would fall on our surroundings, or the four crickets begin to flute together ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wood strips attached to stakes driven into the ground provided templates for gaging the thickness of the base and for leveling off the surface. The wood covering consisted of a layer of 2-in. planks, covered by matched hardwood flooring. In placing the planking, the base was covered with a -in. layer of hot pitch, into which the planks were pressed immediately, the last plank laid being toe-nailed to the preceding plank just enough to keep the joint tight. After a few minutes the planks adhered so firmly to the base ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... fushionless and slack ye are to run my lord's errands! But quick enow to return home upon your trampling clattering ruck of horses, and every rascal of you expecting to ride over my bridge of good pine planking instead of washing the dirt from your hoofs in honest ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... loaded light that hole is above water line. The wrecking vessel that goes down to salve her will have steel plates, tools and mechanics aboard, and new plates can be put in temporarily. And if that cannot be done those holes can be patched with planking and cemented over." ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to him every moment. He had been no more than stunned. He walked out on the planking to ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... man's opinion, and found the people unanimous for the Streights of Magellan. To-day being fair weather, launched the yawl to go a fowling, shot several geese, ducks, shaggs, and sea-pies. Heeled the long- boat for planking. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... flat above, there lie, somewhat in the style of the grouping in a Dutch painting, the rotting fragments of canal passage-boats and coal-barges, with here and there some broken-backed hulk, muddy and green, the timbers peering out through the planking, and all around heaps of the nameless lumber of a deserted boat-yard. The low, clumsy archway is wholly occupied by a narrow branch of the canal,—brown and clay-like as the main trunk, from which it strikes off at nearly right angles. It struck us forcibly, in examining ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... it would be impossible to reckon on her making any way regularly and uninterruptedly. Add to this, that she is built of iron,—that is to say, an iron sheet of about two centimbtres thick constitutes all her planking,—and that her deck—divided into twelve great panels, is so weak that it has been thought incapable of carrying guns proportioned to her tonnage. Those who have seen the massive vessels of the fishermen ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... has no special love for England—the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the affections of her own household by neglect—but, perhaps, he loves his own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept over everything, and lay five deep on the top of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the captain said, neither Peter nor old Hixon would leave him. The latter was busily hauling pieces of planking and rope. Having collected enough for his purpose, he set to work to manufacture a cradle sufficiently large to contain the captain. Having arranged his plan he shouted to the other men to come and assist him. ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... capable of all—to do according to his will. The boats, dismantled and forlorn, are lowered upon the planking. One cries "Aid me!" flourishing at the same time the weapons of his business. A dozen launch themselves upon him in the orgasm of zeal misdirected. He beats them off with the howlings of dogs. He has lost a hammer. This ferocious outcry signifies ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... now six days out of Manila. For the past thirty-six hours, she might as well have been sunk in pitch, for any progress she made.... The ship's bell had just struck four. Bedient had finished clearing away tiffin things, and stepped on deck. The planking was like the galley-range he had left, and the fresh white paint of the three boats raised in blisters. The sea had an ugly look, yellow-green and dead, save where a shark's fin knifed the surface. The crew was lying forward under the awnings—a fiend-tempered outfit of Laskars and Chinese. Captain ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... see that it was perfectly clean. You know it's a hobby of mine to want everything just so; and I noticed that a little washing would improve the looks of our boat. So I took out the false bottom that keeps heavy shoes from cutting into the thin planking; and what do you suppose I ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... by planking over the street on stringers resting on transverse 12 by 12-in. caps. The caps were gradually undermined and supported on temporary posts which were then replaced by short posts resting on 12 by 12-in. sills about 7 ft. below the cap. The operation was then repeated and the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... beach, looking like a group of hooded old women watching for a belated sail, seemed to have caught the expression of their inmates' lives. At high tide the hulk of the Alcazar had been full of water, which was now pouring out through a hole in the planking of her side in a continuous, murmurous stream, like the voice of a persistent talker in a silent company. The old ship looked much too big for her narrow grave at the foot of the green cliff, in which her anchor was deeply sunk and half overgrown with thistles. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... and children and a few wounded will be coming down directly, Osgod. As soon as they have passed do you set to work with your men and pull up the planking of the bridge, all save a single plank; loosen that, so that you can if necessary at once cast it down after the rest. If you see the Welshmen pouring up the road, throw it over at once without waiting ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... several reliable observations of late, and I find that we are upwards of two thousand miles from the nearest known land, which is the Cape of Good Hope. I propose, therefore, that we should strip off as much of the planking of the wreck as will suit our purpose, get the carpenter's chest landed, and commence work at once. Now, what say you? If anyone has a better plan to suggest, I'll be only to glad to adopt it, for such a voyage ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... out the planking for the boat was going on, and the plowing had now been resumed, since the new yoke of oxen were fitted to do the work, the boys were not forgetful of the usual weekly outing. They had several quite important ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... hot! The sun poured down so that the heat pierced our awnings as though no awnings had been there, and the breeze which the ship created by her motion seemed like the blast from a furnace. The pitch oozed from the seams of the planking on the deck, and the deck itself became blistering hot to one's feet. There was not the least stir of the sails and only the faintest motion of the ship from side to side. Respiration became difficult, and, as I looked about, I could see the passengers ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of the 15th of July, 1718, anyone who had been standing on the low rocks of the Penobscot bay shore might have seen a large, clumsy boat of hewn planking making its way out against the tide that set strongly up into the river mouth. She was loaded deep with a shifting, noisy cargo that lifted white noses and huddled broad, woolly backs—in fact, nothing less extraordinary than fifteen fat Southdown sheep and a sober-faced ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... The walls were of wood, not of lath and plaster, so that there were no nooks and crannies in which he could have bestowed his hoard. The floor also was of single planking, forming the roof of the room below. There seemed no possible place of concealment here. Could there be any spot on the veranda that might have ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the conductor advised me not to buy a ticket had then a few yards of planking laid on the prairie for a platform and a small shed as a station building. The town consisted of three or four brick buildings and a huddle of wooden shanties. To-day it is one of the twenty most populous cities in the United States with tall office buildings, broad busy streets, and sumptuous private ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... sudden jerk to swing pendulumlike, head downward. Then the creature lowered away until Bradley's head came in sudden and painful contact with the floor below, after which the Wieroo let loose of the rope entirely and the Englishman's body crashed to the wooden planking. He felt the free end of the rope dropped upon him and heard the grating being ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the breaker the boys selected a small room on the ground floor, from which one window looked out on the half-deserted yard where the weigh-house stood. The room was perhaps twenty feet in size each way, and the walls were of heavy planking. The whole apartment was sadly in need of a scrubbing, but the lads concluded to postpone ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... addressing Master Gabriel in a half-drunken voice. "Is that where you are, poor boy? Bah! what an atmosphere! I only just came in to tell you to come down to the ship-yard when you get out of school; we are just beginning the planking." ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The English colours blew from her masthead; and from my high station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of her deck furniture. There, then, was my ship of refuge; and of all my difficulties only one remained: to get on ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... found, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah! One span was all afire. The flooring burned their feet, flames licked the wooden sides of the structure, thick, choking smoke canopied the rafters. With musket butts the men beat away the planking, hurled into the flood below burning scantling and brand, and trampled the red out of the charring cross timbers. Some came out of the western mouth of the bridge stamping with the pain of burned hands, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and the people gossiping from window to window across the narrow streets of the Lower Town. The Terrace itself was densely thronged, and there was a constant coming and going of the promenaders, and each formally paced back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly home, giving place to new arrivals. They were nearly all French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few young fellows, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... to my ears through the heavy planking of the door after the lock clicked was my first intimation that all was not as ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pointing to a circular cut in the planking of the vessel, "is the new hole. It is not yet driven through, but if your Excellency ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... what looked like a quantity of loose, floating wreckage at no very great distance away, but slightly to windward; and toward this we made the best of our way, ultimately arriving in the midst of a quantity of loose, jagged, and splintered planking tangled up with a raffle of spars, sails, and rigging. It was rather dangerous stuff to venture among, as some of the loose planks were lancing about in the wash of the sea with considerable violence, and a blow from a jagged end would have ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... putties, with a broad-brimmed hat looped up at the side, brought up his carbine and barred the entrance to the bridge. Twenty yards beyond a second trim black figure with a carbine stamped to and fro over the planking. They were of the Cape Police, and there were four more of them somewhere in reserve; across the bridge was the Orange Free State; behind us was the little frontier town of Aliwal North, and these were its ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... then, and walked over the planking above the race way, toward the river, where a pretty little footbridge crossed it here, from the end of the ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of vessel would be well adapted for petroleum tank vessels, for the transport of all kinds of cereals, flour, coffee, and sugar in sacks—these latter being held in position by an arrangement of planking and boards so as to prevent any overturning of the goods on the vessels being folded up or taken apart. Similarly in the case of a cargo of loose grain or other loose produce, the same must be prevented from being upset by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... port side out of ninety-eight timbers, eleven were sound, and sixty-three were uncertain if strained a little; on the starboard five out of eighty-nine timbers were good, fifty-six were uncertain, and twenty-eight rotten; the planking about the bows and amidships was so soft that a stick could be poked ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... succeeded in effecting a safe passage to the planking which formed the landing for the boats. After a glance of vexation at the soiled condition of his boots (Uncle Nathan was a bachelor!), he commenced his search for an upward-bound steamer, for he was about to begin his homeward tour. Two columns of dense ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... work again and at a new place. The Mexican general, having seen that his artillery was doing no damage, was making a great effort to get within much closer range where the balls would count. Men protected by heavy planking or advancing along trenches were seeking to erect a battery within less than three hundred yards of the entrance to the main plaza. They had already thrown up a part of a breastwork. Meanwhile the Texan sharpshooters ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... get in the wreck of the topmast, and to repair damages. A piece of planking was nailed over the side which had been stove in, and the fragments of the boat were ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr Rimmer, as they stepped down from the deck to where he was superintending the planking of the lugger, whose framework had been slid down on a kind of cradle, where it now stood parallel with the brig, it having been found advisable to get her down from the deck for several reasons, notably her rapidly increasing weight ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... prepared seaweeds.) A notice board there informed us that the road was maintained at the cost of the local young men's society. As we were on foot we felt grateful, for the road was well kept. We passed for miles over planking hung on the cliff side or on roadway carried on embankments. On the suspended pathways there was now and then a plank loose or broken, and there was no rail between the pedestrian and the torrent ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... 4x6 inches in size, set edgeways toward each other. If not sawed, they may be round sticks cut from the woods, or split from the body of a tree, quartered—but sizable, so as to appear decent—and the insides facing each other as they stand up, lined to a surface to receive the planking. Of course, when the posts are set in the ground, they are to show a square form, or skeleton of what the building is to be when completed. When this is done, square off the top of each post to a level, all round; then frame, or spike on to each line of posts a plate, say ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... and smoothed the planking, Till the King, delighted, swore, With much lauding and much thanking, "Handsomer is now my Dragon Than she ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ambitious of these pictures is one of Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends. We are supposed to be on a high scaffolding level with the frieze, and the effect of great height produced by glimpses of light between the planking of the floor is very cleverly managed. But there is a want of individuality among the connoisseurs clustered round Phidias, and the frieze itself is very inaccurately coloured. The Greek boys who are riding and leading ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the end of the automobile road. Here there is a small Parecis village. The men of the village work the ferry by which everything is taken across the deep and rapid river. The ferry-boat is made of planking placed on three dugout canoes, and runs on a trolley. Before crossing we enjoyed a good swim in the swift, clear, cool water. The Indian village, where we camped, is placed on a jutting tongue of land round which the river sweeps just before it leaps from the over-hanging precipice. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... glare, he looked around. He was lying on a floor of crude planking, the setting sun shining into his eyes through the doorless entrance of the building. There was a ploughed field outside, stretching down the curve of hill to the edge of the jungle. It was too dark to ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... and memorable were the depot platforms of our beloved country in war time! Whether the long, smoke stenciled, trainshed of the Metropolis, or the unsheltered, two-inch planking sort, of the wayside junction; they saw more of real life, the Tragedy of tears and the Comedy of laughter, than any stage dedicated to Drama. There, life was most real and intense. The prosaic words "All Aboard" seemed to set in motion a final wave ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... Lawrence, was Chambly, ten miles below. Flat-boats and long-boats could be dragged up stream, but vessels of any size had to be transported by land; and the engineers found the roadbed too soft in places to bear the weight of a hundred tons. Under Douglas's directions, the planking and frames of two schooners were taken down at Chambly, and carried round by road to St. John's, where they were again put together. At Quebec he found building a new hull, of one hundred and eighty tons. This he took apart nearly to the keel, shipping the frames in thirty long-boats, which ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... compass timber fayed abaft the lower part of the stern, and above the foremost end of the keel; that is, from the head down to the fore dead-wood knee, to which it is scarfed. It is sided to receive the fastenings of the fore-hoods or planking of the bow.—Apron of a gun, a square piece of sheet-lead laid over the touch-hole for protecting the vent from damp; also over the gun-lock.—Apron of a dock, the platform rising where the gates are closed, and on which the sill ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... two or three strakes that were pieced up at the ends to form the sheer. The sides of large sharpies were commonly 1-1/2 inches thick before finishing, while those of the smaller sharpies were 1-1/4 inches thick. The sharpie's bottom was planked athwartships with planking of the same thickness as the sides and of 6 to 8 inches in width. That part of the bottom that cleared the water, at the bow and under the stern, was often made of tongue-and-groove planking, or else the seams athwartship would be splined. Inside the boat there was a keelson made of three planks, ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... old-fashioned servant in being worth more than his wages. Vessons certainly was. He made stacks of cheeses, and took them to fairs and shows without the slightest encouragement from his master, who, when Vessons returned, red with conflict, and said, planking down the money with intense pride—''Ere it is! I 'ad to labour for thre'pences, though,' would merely nod uninterestedly. But still the Undern cheeses went to shows labelled 'John Reddin, Esquire, per ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... hidden from above, yet to all appearances uninjured. The very fact that it should have been thus left only added to the mystery of the affair. If it had been Kirby's deliberate purpose to leave us there stranded ashore, why had he failed to crush in the boat's planking with a rock? Could the leaving of the craft in fit condition for our use be part of some carefully conceived plan; a bait to draw us into some set trap? Or did it occur merely as an incident of their hurried night? These were unanswerable questions, yet the mere knowledge that the boat ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... position, Colonel," remarked Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon. "They are above us, and that planking on this side gives them a ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased. No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder to blow in the massive planking. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... concussion of a big gunfire had shivered every window in this quarter of town. There being no sufficient stock of glass with which to replace the broken panes, and no way of bringing in fresh supplies, the owners of the damaged buildings had patched the holes with bits of planking filched from more complete ruins near by. Of course there were other reasons, too, if one stopped to sum them up: Few would have the money to buy fresh glass, even if there was any fresh glass to buy, and the local glaziers—such ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... nose, "Here I am, here I am"; but when he got there, it was hiding somewhere else. It was like a game of blindman's-buff. Then he heard the munching of his horse and knew that the sought was found. He moved toward the horse, stepped on a rotten planking, and fell through the floor. Something caught his chin violently as he went through, and in a pool of filthy water, one leg doubled and broken under him, he passed the night as tranquilly as if he ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast, darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... had located one would-be killer behind a mass of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed him ten times over, but ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... anywhere. The terrible glare of the summer sun beat down upon the whole length of the wooden platform at Amberley. Hot as was the dry, bracing air, it was incomparable with the blistering intensity of heat reflected from the planking, which burned through to the soles of the feet of the uniformed man who ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the timbers undoubtedly gives them a value (for a shipbuilder) which they did not possess before. When they are put together to constitute the framework of the ship, there is a still further addition of value (for a shipbuilder); and when the outside planking is added, there is another addition (for a shipbuilder). Suppose everything else about the hull is finished, except the one little item of caulking the seams, there is no doubt that it has still more value for a shipbuilder. But for whom else has it any value, except perhaps ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of these ice-hills is very simple. They are rude towers of timber, twenty to thirty feet in height, the summit of which is reached by a staircase at the back, while in front descends a steep concave of planking upon which water is poured until it is covered with a six-inch coating of solid ice. Raised planks at the side keep the sled in its place until it reaches the foot, where it enters upon an icy plain two to four hundred yards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Here, one night, Thalassa sat drinking bad beer and planning impossible schemes for returning to his diamonds at the other end of the world. The place was empty of other customers. The Kaffir woman slumbered behind the flimsy planking of the bar, and "White Harry" sat on the counter scraping tunes out of a little fiddle. Thalassa remembered the tune he was playing—"Annie Laurie." Upon this scene there entered two young men, Englishmen. Thalassa discerned ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty road—one could scarcely call it a street—to an uninviting building with crooked windows and a high, false front ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... neighbors on the third story; but when he heard Hanne's light step on the planking over there, he used to peep furtively across the well. She went her way like a nun—straight to her work and straight home again, her eyes fixed on the ground. She never looked up at his window, or indeed anywhere. It was as though ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... water of the stream away in some other channel than over the dam, then a dirt dam is not objectionable, although always a dirt dam is best with a masonry core. A very good dam can be made by driving three-inch tongue-and-grooved planking tight together across a gulley and then filling in on each side so that the slope on each face is at least two feet horizontal for every foot in height. This last requirement means that if the dam is ten feet high, the width ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... rang hollow and sepulchral on the morning stillness. The creak of oars ceased abruptly. He shouted again, and was answered. The oars worked now at twice their former speed. The boat was alongside. Blows of a grapnel tore at the planking of the deck until there was a hole big enough to admit the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Damaris dropped a couple of shillings into Daddy Proud's eager hand—with a queenly little air; and, without waiting for his thanks, swung herself up on to the black planking and turned to go down the sand-strewn ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the crash and clamor of the knocker; and Kirkwood stood fully two yards away, his heart hammering wildly, his nerves a-jingle, much as if the resounding blows had landed upon his own person rather than on stout oaken planking. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... few hours of desperate rowing brought them to the river's mouth, where the company had camped about a fire. By the dawn of the next day the whole expedition was embarked, and the pinnaces (their planking cracking with the weight of treasure) were running eastward with a fresh wind dead astern. They picked up the frigate that morning, and then stood on for the ships, under sail, with great joy. Soon they were lying safe at anchor in the shelter of the secret haven at Fort ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... ahead with the light, so that he had to complete the ascent in darkness. When he was near the top, he saw yellow light shining through the crack of a half-opened door. His companions were standing just inside a small room, shut off from the staircase by rough wooden planking; it was rudely furnished and contained nothing of astronomical interest. The lantern was resting ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... ebony and iron-wood, cloth from the bark of the tapa tree, are now deposited in the Peabody Academy, where they form one of the largest collections of the kind extant. Even more interesting is the sword of a sword-fish, pierced through the oak planking of a Salem vessel for six inches or more. No human force could do that even with a spear of the sharpest steel. Was the sword-fish roused to anger when the ship came upon him sleeping in the water; or did he mistake it for a ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... provided along each side of the roadway, near the ends of the flooring planks. In hasty bridges it may be secured by a lashing or lashings through the planking to the stringer underneath. Otherwise it may be fastened with ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... skeleton ship lay her foremast, and so crushed and flattened out was the vessel that the men stepped from the sand at once into the hollow shell—and there they saw, still holding together, the little spot of planking, ten feet above them, on which the rescued man had stood, and where he had been lashed: and they took down and brought away as a memento the piece of canvas which he had fastened to the pole, and which had caught the eyes of the boatmen at Deal; but the bodies ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... broken bamboos, rotten thatch, over which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different angles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the agent's house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and clay; it had at one end a wide door of stout planking, which so far had not come off the hinges, and in one of the side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of window, with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps the girl turned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, "You were ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... father of a child then between five and six years old. He and his brother, three years older, were crossing a private way maintained by the railroad for the Essex Company, and the younger boy, while walking backward, stepped between the rail and planking of the roadway inside and was unable to extricate his foot. At that moment the whistle of a train was heard within a few hundred feet and out of sight around a curve, and it appeared from the evidence that the older brother, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... deliberately turned and watched the sailor. Hilderman and his companion strolled ahead while I stood beside Dennis. The man with the red hair fished among a pile of wire rope, and picked out a small marline-spike. Then he lifted a large stone, held the marline-spike on the wooden planking of the landing-stage, and hammered it in with the stone. Then he threw the painter round it, and made the ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... a fortnight's leave. Then I'm off. Wherever they send me. Secret Service. You know. It's no use planking Phyllis in a dug-out of her own"—shades of Oxford and the Albemarle Review!—"she'd die of loneliness. And she'd die of culture in the mater's highbrow establishment. Whereas, if you would take her in—give her a shake-down ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... again in the clutch of a heavy chill. Presently, his sentences having trailed off once or twice into peculiar incoherency, he fell to talking wildly of a hut in the Sherrill woods in which he had lived for days in the early autumn, of a cuff in a box buried in the ground beneath the planking. For weeks, he said, he had vainly tried to solve its cipher, stealing away from the farm by night to pore over it by the light of a candle. It ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... don't stand much of a chance to get out alive," mused the sailor, as he sat in the stern of his cockle-shell, with only a frail bottom of half-inch planking between him and the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... very irregularly broken, consisting of vast heaps of the nitrous earth, and of the ruins of the hoppers or vats, composed of heavy planking, in which the miners were accustomed to leach it. The hall was, in fact, one of their chief factory rooms. Before their day, it was a cemetery; and here they disinterred many a mouldering skeleton, belonging it seems, to that gigantic eight ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... tenement, the two listened intently. An instant before the thunder of horse's feet upon wooden planking had been plainly audible in the distance, and now the coming clatter could be heard on ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... of straight growth, and takes its name from the strip-like character of its bark. . . . The wood is of a brown colour, hard, heavy, strong and close in the grain. It works up well . . . in ship-building, for planking, beams, keels and keelsons, and in civil architecture for joists, flooring, etc. Upon the farms it is used for fences and agricultural implements: it is also employed for furniture ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... It seemed to have taken root in it. The bow had entered deep into this soft, treacherous beach, while the stern, high in air, seemed to cast at heaven, like a cry of despairing appeal, the two white words on the black planking, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... purpose of her foe. Then, seeing that soon the carack's prow must crash into her frail side, she shifted her helm and came round several points, so that in the end the Margaret ran, not into her, but alongside of her, grinding against her planking, and shearing away a great length of her bulwark. For a few seconds they hung together thus, and, before the seas bore them apart, grapnels were thrown from the Margaret whereof one forward got hold and brought ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... included a pathway of boughs strewn with wild flowers from the steamboat landing, across the planking, over the cobbles, under the old Gate of William of Orange, and so on to the door of the inn; the appointment of Tine, dressed in a Zeeland costume belonging to her grand-mother, as special envoy, to meet him with a wreath of laurel, and Johann in short clothes—also heirlooms—was ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... little cubby, one looking forward and the other to starboard. Neither was large enough to provide a means of escape, he judged. At the foot of the cot was a plain wooden armchair, both pieces of furniture being screwed to the floor. For exercise there was a strip of bare deck planking about six feet long beside the bed, where he ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... easy enough to get them," said Hans. "They've torn down the planking around the Holy Trinity churchyard, and dug up the earth to build a new wall. I saw it myself, as I came past the church. Lord, what a lot of bones they've dug out there! There's arms and legs and heads, many more than the Doctor ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... anecdotes of the wild pranks of the German students at the university. He was, I think, in some way related to descendants of Count Orloff, who was so remarkably strong and compact of muscle that he could push an iron spike, with his thumb, to its head in the sides or planking of a vessel. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them. Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and came down again ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... communicate itself to him. She also noticed that he moved his head sharply a moment, and then looked straight in front again. Then the birches seemed to fall away beneath them, and they moved out across the dim gully with the loosely-laid planking rattling under their feet, until they came to a strip scarcely three feet wide which spanned a gulf of blackness in the shadow of ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the while we sweltered in the terrible heat, for the sun pierced through the deck planking of the vessel, and I could feel by her lack of motion that we were becalmed and drifting. I stood up, and by resting my heels upon a rib of the ship and my back against her side, I found myself in a position whence I could see the feet of the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Great Western Road to much advantage, in deep cuttings and embankments, fine culverts and bridges, with lots of the sons of green Erin—"first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea"—and their cabins along the line of works, preparing the level for planking. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... inch in thickness and as long and wide as a large platter,—is a satisfactory device for broiling fish. For planking or broiling, fish steaks or thin, flat fish, such as mackerel or ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... Patty climbed stiffly to the sidewalk each separate joint and muscle shrieked its aching protest at the fifteen-hour ride in the springless, jolting wagon. Microby placed her foot upon the sideboard and jumped, her cow-hide boots thudding loudly upon the wooden planking. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the boardwalk at Atlantic City, Mr. Mulligan, the wealthy retired contractor, dropped a quarter through a crack in the planking. A friend came along a minute later and found him squatted down, industriously poking a two dollar bill through the treacherous cranny with ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... pitch-dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house. Our feet creaked and crackled over the bare planking, and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes's cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forwards down a long hall, until I dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blood-curdling way, how he saw the little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids—how first one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard, and where her planking began to break and part asunder—and how she did finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, I have really forgotten ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of ungoverned fury which gives such an expression of merciless, personal rage to a great fire. The terror of it at first possessed the lad, who was shouting himself hoarse. The flame was already running up and over the outer planking and curling down upon the thin snow of the shingled roof as he ran around the small garden and saw the front door open and Rivers come out. The rector said, "It is gone, John; I will go for your uncle. Run over to the Wayne and call up the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... worked half as hard in the afternoons as I do sometimes, you'd be tired in the evening, too," replied Jimmy, in an injured tone. "I'll bet I sawed through about a thousand feet of tough oak planking this afternoon for Dad, and I'll have to do the same thing to-morrow afternoon. He's got a big job on, and I have to pitch in and ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... contrivance, about twenty feet long by three wide, supported on hollow "barrels" of aluminum. The sledge itself was formed of a vanadium steel frame with spruce planking, and was capable of carrying a load of a thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... an even keel; nor did she leak, for she was well calked with fiber and tarry pitch. We rigged up a single short mast and light sail, fastened planking down over the ballast to form a deck, worked her out into midstream with a couple of sweeps, and dropped our primitive stone anchor to await the turn of the tide that would bear us ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by means of rods cut to length and sharpened by the local blacksmith, from 3/4-inch Norway iron. Hemlock logs are suitable for building the crib; and as the timbers are finally laid, it should be filled in and made solid with boulders. This filling in should proceed section by section, as the planking goes forward, otherwise there will be no escape for the water of the stream, until it rises and spills over the top timbers. The planking should be of two-inch chestnut, spiked home with 60 penny wire spikes. When the last section of the crib ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... of Norway and Finland assembled and gave the king advice. They told him that it was no use building a wooden ship, for the spirits of the Northern Lights would set it on fire. Then the king made a ship of silver. The whole of the ship—planking, deck, masts, and chains—was of silver, and he named his ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... but seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night the life-boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell; and there it hung dangling in the air: a mere faggot of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels were exposed and bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney, white with crusted salt; topmasts struck; storm-sails set; rigging all knotted, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the floors of the working compartments were often used, in the early part of the work, to support the timber face or loose rock, as shown in Fig. 1, Plate LXVIII. At such times the front of the extensions was held tightly against the planking by the pressure of the floor jacks. While shoving, the pressure on the floor jacks was gradually released, allowing the floors to slide back into the shield and still afford support to the face. The extensions also afforded convenient working platforms. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... beheld, nailed aloft on the stub of a dead tree, a square of white planking whereon ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... thing as cutting the hawser, and letting the boats drift down-stream, to bring up against some rocks that might stave a hole in the delicate planking. Who could tell but what the rope had parted under a strain? Sometimes a break may look like the work of a sharp knife; and anyway, as darkness lay upon the scene, with a cloudy sky overhead to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... that which little Inez would be likely to need. Pomp informed the officers that there was a small cabin a short distance away, which had no doubt been put up by the sailors of whom Grebbens had told the captain. It was made of planking that had come ashore from the wreck, and the fact that it had stood so long proved that it must have been built with much skill as well ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... luckily for us she did not succeed in accomplishing, else this story might never have been written. There was no doing on deck, even had we been capable of making an effort to do so, which we were not, as we could hear the large waves that swept over the vessel strike the planking with a heavy thud that shook the steamer from stem to stern, and then go rushing away into ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... other side of which, in the valley, was a bridge, we could not see one of Del Mar's men in hiding at the top. He saw us, however, and immediately wigwagged with his handkerchief to several others down at the bridge where they were attaching a pair of wires to the planking. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... bridge across the gully!" screamed another cadet, in terror-stricken tones. "They were mending it this morning. Supposing they haven't the new planking down?" ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... was a squat square-faced stone building within a court which opened on to East Street. The peaked oak door, spangled with broad iron nails, had a gloomy and surly aspect, but the hall within was lightful and airy, with a bright polished cedar planking, and high panelling of some dark-grained wood which gave forth a pleasant smell as of violets. A broad night of steps rose up from the farther end of the hall, down which as we entered a young sweet-faced maid came tripping, with an old dame behind ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to work. He did not mean to build a boat with boards and planking, but simply a flat-bottomed canoe, which would be well suited for navigating the Mercy—above all, for approaching its source, where the water would naturally be shallow. Pieces of bark, fastened one to the other, would ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... suspense became such that I thought I should have gone mad. Francois was already persuaded into setting to work with his pick, and, I should most certainly have been speedily interred, had it not been for the timely arrival of a village wag, who, planking himself unobserved behind a tombstone close to my coffin, burst out laughing in the most sepulchral fashion. The effect on the company was electrical; the majority, including the women, fled precipitately, and the rest, overcoming the feeble protests of the doctor, wrenched ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... hand, he walked in between the two brown women who held her hands. They moved aside and let go. Then O'Shea swung his arm; the blade of the hatchet struck into the planking, and the right hand of Sera fell ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... down his "flopper" and examined the board carefully, the excited Pee-wee joining him. It was evidently the upper strip of the side planking from a rowboat and at one end, under the diluted paint which they had here used, could be dimly traced the former ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... it proved, still outside the grinding-rooms, in that part of the mill where the water would pour in to turn the wheels. It was gaunt and unfinished, filled with the sound of dripping waters; with no flooring, but only a scanty network of beams and planking for them ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... on a level with the deck. The masts appeared to have been chopped away. The hatchways were gone. The hold appeared to be filled with sand, but there may have been only a layer of sand concealing something beneath. Part of the planking of the deck as well as most of the taffrail on the other side had been carried away. Astern there was a quarter-deck. There was no skylight, but only dead- lights set on the deck. The door of the cabin still remained and was ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the gale nearly on the beam. The wind was blowing but little, if anything, short of a hurricane. The great billows struck against the side of the vessel and the house on deck with tremendous force. It seemed just as though immense boulders were hurled against the planking that enclosed my state-room, the galley, and the engine-room. The sea swept over the hurricane-deck, and struck heavily ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... of the deck and looking always to leeward. Two of them were at the steering oar with my father, for Arngeir was worn out, and I had left him in the cabin, sleeping heavily in spite of the noise of waves and straining planking. Maybe he would have waked in a moment ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... now and then called and asked to see Alere Flamma at the business place in Fleet Street; people with titles, curiously out of place, in the press-room, gold leaf on the floor, odour of printer's ink, dull blows of machinery, rotten planking, partitions pasted over with illustrations and stained with beer, the old place trembling as the engine worked; Flamma, in his shirt-sleeves, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... vessel's ribs are of oak, and, for greater strength, preference is given to the best qualities of live-oak. As a ship's side curves, her outside planking has to be forced into place, and for the short curves near the bows and stern, the planks have to be steamed, and bent on while moist, as otherwise they would crack and split in the process. After these outside planks are all on, the calkers begin their work, which ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... expense, and matching the men against each other for small prizes. He had just finished what the old carpenter considered his chef-d'oeuvre, and a curious affair this same masterpiece was. In the first place it was forty-two feet long over all, and only three and a half feet beam—the planking was not much above an eighth of an inch in thickness, so that if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six oars, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... a white cloth upon a rammer. It is a signal for surrender. The sharpshooters stop firing. There are the four boats, three of them floating helplessly in the stream, the water pouring into the hulls, through the splintered planking. ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... that the leaks may be mended from the interior. By far the best way of repairing the damage would be to careen the ship, and to shift the planking, but the appliances are wanting for such an un- dertaking; moreover, any bad weather which might occur while the ship was on her flank would only too certainly be fatal to her altogether. But the captain has very little doubt that by some device or ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His sight plunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the greater part of which was hidden from him by the planking of the jetty. His eyes fell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the tiller in a queer, uncomfortable attitude of drooping sorrow. Another man, more directly below Heyst, sprawled on his back from gunwale to gunwale, half off the after thwart, his head lower than ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... was to be equal to the amount per ton collected on the materials required for certain defined classes of ships: on wooden vessels, eight dollars a ton; on iron, twelve dollars a ton; on composite vessels (vessels composed of iron frames and wooden planking), twelve dollars a ton; on iron steamers, fifteen dollars a ton. Where American materials were used in the construction of iron or composite vessels, allowance was to be made of an amount equivalent to the duties imposed ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... heard two shots, which I knew was the signal given by the cowboys, followed by a shriek of fright from Madge, for which she was hardly to be blamed. I was on my feet in an instant and ran down the tracks at my best speed. It wasn't with much hope of escape, for once out from under the planking I found, what I had not before realized, that day was dawning, and already outlines at a distance could be seen. However, I was bound to do my best, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... both contestants and the roar of the guns drowned the shrill cries of the wounded. The Dutchmen were now desperate and their guns were spitting fire in rapid, successive volleys; but many of them were silenced, as the great, brown side of the Palme rubbed its planking against the splintered railing of ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... to the mines, and with my boxes we were rather uncomfortably crowded for a long journey. The canoe itself was made from the trunk of a cedar-tree (Cedrela odorata). It had been hollowed out of a single log, and the sides afterwards built up higher with planking. This makes a very strong boat, the strength and thickness being where it is most required, at the bottom, to withstand the thumping about amongst the rocks of the rapids. I was once in one, coming down a ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... as the 'High Bridge,' crossed the Au Sable at the narrowest point, some eleven feet in width. A rumor was abroad that the British were about to march up from Plattsburg; whereupon the bridge, consisting of three beams, each nine inches wide, was stripped of its planking. A gentleman had left his home in the morning, and, ignorant of the fate of the bridge, returned quite late at night. Urging his steed forward, it refused to cross the bridge, and not until after repeated castigation would it make the attempt. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the crew of the Halfmoon ran hither and thither along the deck on the side away from the breakers. They fought with one another for useless bits of planking and cordage. The giant figure of the black cook, Blanco, rose above the others. In his hand was a huge butcher knife. When he saw a piece of wood he coveted in the hands of another he rushed upon his helpless victim with wild, bestial howls, menacing ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
