"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fearful task. One moment the great seas lifted him high into the air, and the next down he came again till the massive spar crashed on to the deck of the San Antonio with such a shock that he nearly flew from it like a stone from a sling. Yet he hung on, and, biding his chance, seized a broken stay-rope that dangled from the end of the bowsprit like a lash from a whip, and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... utter impossibility of finding anything in this way, in all Leaphigh, befitting a lord high admiral of his length of keel; for, as to going in an ordinary monikin queue, why, he should look like a three-decked ship, with a brig's spar stepped for a lower mast!" Dr. Reasono, however, had kindly removed the embarrassment, by conducting him to the cabinet of natural history, where three suitable appendages had been found, viz., two fine relics of oxen, [Footnote: Cauda Bovum.—BUF.] ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is turned into a tent by erecting a gable-shaped framework: the mast or other spar being the ridge-pole, and a pair of crossed oars lashed together supporting it at either end; and the whole is made stable by a couple of ropes and pegs. Then the sail is thrown across the ridge-pole (not over the crossed loops of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... pilot on one side, and the seamen upon the other, were stowed like herrings upon "a platform laid across water-casks, whose surface they completely covered when they slept, and at so small a distance below the spar deck that their heads would reach it when seated." To these inconveniences were added the want of any room for exercise on deck, the attacks of innumerable vermin which their predecessors, the slaves, had left behind them, and (as the salted meat put on board ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... to spar with a private soldier led to remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... approach peace to all mortals brings, Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, Sole comforter of minds which are oppressed; Lo, by thy charming rod, all breathing things Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd, And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest. Since I am thine, O come, but with that face To inward light, which thou art wont to show, With feigned solace ease a true felt woe; Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace, Come ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... much pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth "setting to with," he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, "Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Thursday, June 7th, 'after six years and upwards in commission,' most of it surveying the Falkland Islands; 'has lost only two men during this long service, and those from natural causes;' 'never lost a spar, and has ploughed the ocean for upwards of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... occasion he ran us a rare race with the main-royal yard, we getting the mizzen spar below but a second or two ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... out she found him Lashed to a spar of Despair, The wreck of his Ship around him— The wreck of his Dreams in the air; Found him and loved him and gathered The soul of him close to her heart— The soul that had sailed an uncharted sea, The soul that had sought to win and be free— The soul of which she was part! And ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... pendency^, dependency; suspension, hanging &c v.; pedicel, pedicle, peduncle; tail, train, flap, skirt, pigtail, pony tail, pendulum; hangnail peg, knob, button, hook, nail, stud, ring, staple, tenterhook; fastening &c 45; spar, horse. V. be pendent &c adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle^, flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c v.; beetling, jutting over, overhanging, projecting; dependent; suspended &c v.; loose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Helen with relief. 'My uncle hardly meets any of us now without a spar. He has never forgiven my father for going over to the Liberals. And then he thinks we none of us consult him enough. No more we do—except Aunt Charlotte. She's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hill supported by my brother on one side and our friend on the other, and returned to the latter's home for tea, after which our host showed us some remarkable spar stones—dog-tooth spar we were told was their name—found in the lead mines, whose white crystals glistened in the light, and I could see by the covetous look in my brother's eyes that he was thinking of the rockeries ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... I had located him and distanced him. Then, like a shot, without turning head or body, merely by my arm I fetched him an open, back-handed slap. My knuckles landed flat on his cheek and jaw. There was a crack like a spar parting in a gale. He was bowled clean over, landing in a heap on the floor a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... rope altogether. As there seemed, however, no alternative, I did not hesitate, notwithstanding my comparative inexperience and awkwardness in such a situation, to throw my legs across the perilous spar; and with a heart extremely grateful that such means of deliverance, dangerous as they appeared, were still extended to me; and more grateful still that I had been enabled, in common with others, to discharge my honest duty to my sovereign and to my fellow-soldiers, ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... briskly through the crisp stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... this sedative and idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shadows. I move among men once more with no certainty that I am not absolutely alone. Even the passion I have felt becomes unreal as if enacted in the dim past. And that is the torture of it,—the torture of a man in a wide sea who beholds the one spar that was to rescue him drifting beyond his reach, beyond his vision. Ah, sweet Jessica, if only I could understand your grief so that in sympathy I might forget my own! But it all seems to me so unnecessary—that we should be sacrificed for the religious caprice of a frantic old man. From ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and the crew busy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the gentlemen who represent the monks in this scene playfully spar at one another, or lunge with walking-sticks at imaginary foes. The carpenters are busy measuring the stage in all directions with tapes in accordance with a plan which one of them holds in his hand. Before Mr. Irving returns, the "supers" group themselves "left" and answer to their names. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Brother, in regard of thee and of thy land, Did they remove that flatterer from thy throne. K. Edw. So, sir, you have spoke: away, avoid our presence! [Exit Kent. Accursed wretches, was't in regard of us, When we had sent our messenger to request He might be spar'd to come to speak with us, And Pembroke undertook for his return, That thou, proud Warwick, watch'd the prisoner, Poor Pierce, and headed him 'gainst law of arms? For which thy head shall overlook ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... transaction, he passed out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal talk, and often there was a suspicion that he talked for the same reason that prizefighters spar for time. "Here, Robbins, get off this telegram, and remember that if the rolling stone gathers no moss, it at least acquires a bit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... double-shotted with round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in several ways—by reflection, by transmission, but most commonly through what I have here, a prism of calcite, or Iceland spar, commonly called a Nicol prism. Light fully polarized consists of vibrations transverse to the direction of the ray, all in one plane. Ordinary light has transverse vibrations in all planes. Certain substances, due to their molecular ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... forgiven for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run—the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... Baltimore pilot-boat-built schooner, of about 70 tons burden, laden with flour, and bound for Bermuda. But three days before, in a sudden squall, they had carried away both masts short by the board, and the only spar which they had been able to rig, was a spare topmast which they had jammed into one of the pumps—fortunately she was as tight as a bottle—and stayed it the best way they could. The captain offered to take ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... signal had now been flying on board the frigate several minutes, and yet no symptoms of any preparation for an answer could be discovered. At length the halyards moved, and then three fair, handsome flags rose to the end of le Feu-Follet's jigger yard, a spar that was always kept aloft in moderate weather. What the signal meant Raoul did not know, for though he was provided with signals by means of which to communicate with the vessels of war of his own nation, the Directory had not been able to supply him with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... John Wilkes said, "and was as smart a sailor as any on board till he had his foot smashed by being jammed by a spare spar that got adrift in a gale, so that the doctors had to cut off the leg under the knee, and leave him to stump about on a timber toe for the rest of his life. I tell you what, Master Cyril: we might make the thing safer still if I spin the Captain a yarn ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... who protested that he would follow, were it to the world's end. I believed he would, too, for he had threatened to be the last man in Maida's world; the Countess was now the last woman in his, and he would hold on to her and her money as a drowning man grasps at a substantial spar. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... three hundred years to a day From the time she lost the ninth of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey, The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,— And the yearly galleon sails no more In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed patron ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... impression of power as a steamship, mistress of her own movements, scorning the control of the elements, and keeping straight on to her destination in storm and calm alike. But in some respects the weak is strong. The ship is equal to most of the chances of a sea-experience. If the spar break, it can be replaced. If the storm rend the sails to ribbons, there are skilful hands which can find or make new ones. But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... equatorial seas, A ship of gold lay on a sea of fire; Each sail and rope and spar, as in desire, Mutely besought the kisses of a breeze; Low laughter told the mariners at ease; Sweet sea-songs hymned the red sun's fun'ral pyre: Yet One, with eyes that never seemed to tire, Watched for the storm, nursed on the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... middle! Oh, the half of her goes down!" "God have mercy! Is his heaven far to seek for those who drown?" Lo! when next the white, shocked faces looked with terror on the sea, Only one last clinging figure on a spar ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... cross binding at G and H. (A better but rather more difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, M1. A ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... boom upon one mast; the prow and stern curve to a high point, and the depth being considerably greater than the width, the proa would, if unsupported, capsize instantly, but a hollow log or heavy-pointed spar rests on the water, parallel with the windward side, and, being secured in place, acts as an outrigger and removes the danger of overturning. The same name is applied to the boats used by the Malays, and which are propelled ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... where we were, or where we ought to have been, when we heard the surf first. According to this we were a good mile from the shore and the only shoal is that one and it's marked six feet at mean low water. There's a black-and-red spar buoy there, as you see, but we haven't sighted it. Now, what I want to know is how the dickens we could have got a mile off our course to starboard. Also, if we are off our course, where are we? Unless we've slipped over the beach and got into that ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... real men the world over; it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker more than his words, ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... smooth as glass. But it had to be done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the debris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... afternoon, the rudimentary remnant of the Jewish Sabbath, and the schoolboy's weekly carnival before Lent, he directed his walk to a certain fishing village, the nearest on the coast, about three miles off, and there succeeded in hiring a spare boat-spar with a block and tackle. The spar he ran out, through a notch of the battlement, near the sheds, and having stayed it well back, rove the rope through the block at the peak of it, and lowered it with a hook at the end. A moment of Davie's help below, and a bucket filled with coals was on its way ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Three more of the gunboats, following the example of the Pinola and Itasca, had their lower masts removed and moored to the shore. Of the four that kept them in three had their masts wounded in the fight, proving the advantage of this precaution. Thus prepared, and stripped of every spare spar, rope, and boat, in the lightest fighting trim, the ships stood ready for ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... "there are in the mineral world certain crystals, certain forms, for instance of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within them. In their case the potential has never become actual, the light is, in fact, held back by a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent is lifted, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... water; notwithstanding it high state the water remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... sea, day after day fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... world mantled in white simarre Arachne-spun with argent woof; her wede Starred with strange crystals wrought from frozen spar, Sprent with pearl frost-flowers; girt with diamond brede, Rubied with berries red as drops of blood, Befringed with gelid, many-irised gems; Broidered with lace weft of an elfin brood— Hoar filagree to deck ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... over the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... ether, his suggestive views of the structure of crystalline bodies, and his explanation of opacity, slight as they are, will possibly surprise the reader by their seeming modernness. And none can read his investigation of the phenomena found in Iceland spar without marvelling at his insight ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... virtuous living, that now shrieked out to the pitiless winds, the detail of crimes which had deformed their soul unseen. There were others who had seemed full of love to the beings who cherished them, and now stole the rope or the spar from their straining hands, that they might save themselves therewith whilst they left these to perish; but still, whatever shape the frenzy of that perishing crew might take, whether their cries were of remorse, or prayer, or impotent rage, but one desire and instinct ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... comfortable accommodation below. By these alterations and by the strong sheathing added to her bottom she was brought up to 242 tons burthen. It is a proof of the splendid seamanship of Captain Fitz-Roy and his officers that she returned without having carried away a spar, and that in only one of the heavy storms that she encountered was she in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... sports to-day and a sing-song in the evening. The sports were very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... said the Queen, "how soon these cock-chickens begin to spar!—with children and boys, at least, I may be a queen.—I will have you friends.—Some one send me Henry Seyton hither." As she spoke the last words aloud, the youth whom she had named entered the apartment. "Come hither," ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... was heavy and sweet, the smoke from a brazier arising in a thin, motionless blue spar which, when it had climbed up through the air for a distance of about four feet, broke into a sort of turquoise fan and this drifted on up to the ceiling in heavy wisps. The incense pot was very old, of black lacquer and brass, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... miles further another large one which might almost be termed a lake, being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... spar, with arrow head "above heart." Nicely carved, with ears and with small pieces of turquoise inserted for eyes; designated by Mr. Cushing as Prey God of the Hunt. S-ni-a-k'ia-kwe ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... smack, and the crew looking upwards at them as though they were a horserace. "Row!" said Willie Weeks. Once, too, at the bottom of a slope down which they had bumped dizzily, Duncan again looked out, and saw the spar of a mainmast tossing just over the edge of a grey roller. "Row," said Weeks, and a moment later, "Ship your oar!" and a rope caught him across ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... I wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, there were enow besides. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... now strong, and deep, and swift of pace, rushing madly in; and he was cumbered with that weight of osier and of weed, which yet he never yielded, because it had been her trust. With each yard that the tide bore him forward, by so much it bore us backward. There was but the length of a spar between us, and yet it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her—she was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the sailor, "have a care; you should keep a brighter look-out. You've run me down, and might have carried away a spar ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... to complain, and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on a stray spar in the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... ice: they sped along the ghostly hollows; the hues of the orient seemed to laugh through winter; the peaks blossomed with starry and crystalline flowers, lilac and white and blue; they faded away, pearl, opal and pink in shimmering evanescence; then gleams of rose and amethyst traveled slowly from spar to spar, lightened and departed; there was silence before my eyes; the world once more was all a pale and wintry green. I thought of them no more, but of the mighty and unseen tides going by me with billowy motion. "Oh, Fountain I seek, thy waters are all about me, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... leviathans of the ocean steaming up the river, with their powerful armament and each representing millions of dollars in its construction, along the shores of the second largest city in the world, and with flags and banners flying proudly from every mast and spar—not only the victory of our arms but the growth of the nation, from the sparse settlements in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers to a population of 80,000,000 souls, and from the thirteen little struggling provinces, at the outbreak of ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... placed under the heel of a spar, or other weighty mass, to save the deck. In some cases intended to slip ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... were ready to attribute the firing of those guns to some supernatural agency. The Oldest Inhabitant remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun that didn't make any report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast, and hulk, like a piece of ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "good night," and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay The Somerset, British man-of-war: A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon, like a prison-bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... dream of a "private bank account" had gradually faded from my memory. I saw the last spar in that fair wreck go down, now, without a sigh. And the "loans solicited," in labored phrase, as "mere temporary conveniences," from the friends at home—these, I was satisfied, must remain only as the sweet ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... of sailing on the Great Lakes, it was requisite to dress the yacht in her proper array, with her high tapering masts; the cords of her rigging stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture; and so equipped, as to give her the appearance of a majestic, white winged sea-bird ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Friday, but I have gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either—nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as cheerily as you please—no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in the hold. I believe it generally happens ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... and lighted with a curious simplicity and grandeur.' Here, again, the coffin had to be lifted, and 'it was most striking to see the absolute silence with which the men moved the monstrous weight at a sign from the captain's hand.' The only sound was when a spar snapped in the hands of a 'giant of a fellow, who was lifting with it. There was a respectful delicacy in every motion of these men which combined beautifully with their immense, quiet, controlled ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a more romantic situation. The garden lies extended beneath, gay with flowers, and glittering with compartments of spar, which, though in no great purity of taste, has an enchanted effect for the first time. Two large marble basins, with jet-d'eaux seventy feet in height, divide the parterres; from the extremity of which rises a rude cliff, shaded with firs and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... bonbonniere, a Breakwater-marble ruler, several varieties of pincushions, a pen-wiper with a doll in the middle of it, a little dish of money-cowries, and another of Indian shot, the seed of the mahogany tree, some sea-eggs, a false book made of the wreck of the Royal George, and some pieces of spar and petrifactions which Helen had acquired on an expedition to Matlock with the Stauntons. The book-shelf, however, was to Anne the most attractive object in the room; and whilst Helen was untying the strings of her portfolio, she went up ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spar went. It would have been a heavy job for three young men of their size in civil life, but midshipmen are constantly undergoing the ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... matey," said the other. "But I picked ye for that sort, hearin' you whistlin' as you came swingin' along. Light-hearted, I thinks, an' young, most likely; he'll help a stranded man. Give me the touch of yore arm, matey, an' I'll stow this spar of mine." ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know—eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our boy ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... did she reach the Congo alive. There was no one, from the butcher to the captain, including the passengers, who had not shielded Fanny from the cold, and later from the sun, fed her, bathed her, forced medicine down her throat, and raced her up and down the spar deck. Consequently we all knew Fanny, and it was a great shock when from the custom-house I saw her running around the blazing parade ground, her eyes filled with fear and "lost dog" written all over her, from her drooping tongue to her ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... to Hatton and had proved himself to be of real service in many ways. He was an honest man, but he could not box. He came down to the hall one night after I had given four or five lessons, to watch the boys spar. Of course, to the uninitiated eye it did seem as though they were neat in their work. The sight was very different from the absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... ridiculous, her sense of outrage that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been mercifully spared the fracture of this ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... been a godsend to her, and everybody else. She still talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy—and appeasement—which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the last abyss: I walked the cold black pools without a star; I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar; I heard the execrable serpent hiss; I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss; I woke alone with midnight near and far, And everlasting hunger, keen to mar; But I arose, and my reward is this: I am no more one more amid the throng: Though ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... a hook directly over the bench was a beautiful six-foot model of a racy-looking monoplane of peculiar and striking design. It was glistening in several coats of spar-varnish, and so light and delicate was its spidery frame that, as John reached out to take it in his hand, the exhalation of his breath set ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... last he had won, and the victorious pennon of the Privateer fluttered triumphant over the battered hulks which barely floated upon the spar-strewn water. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... you are riding into port, the people huzzaing and the guns saluting, and the lucky captain bows from the ship's side, and there is a care under the star on his breast that nobody knows of; or you are wrecked and lashed, hopeless, to a solitary spar out at sea; the sinking man and the successful one are thinking each about home, very likely, and remembering the time when they were children; alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of sight; alone in the midst ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... draw out of e hier fig{ur}e be mor{e} pan e hier figur ou{er} hym, &e next fig{ur}e of two or of thre or of foure, or how mony {ere} be by cifers, how wold {o}u do. {o}u wost wel {o}u most nede borow, &{o}u mayst not borow of e cifers, for ai haue no[gh]t at ai may lene or spar{e}. Ergo[{4}] how woldest {o}u do. Certay[n] us most {o}u do, {o}u most borow on of e next figure significatyf in at rewe, for is case may not happe, but yf {ere} come figures significatyf aft{er} the cifers. Whan {o}u hast ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... Beyond the spar-loft the sail-loft had been set aside and fashioned most elegantly for refreshment. An immense table crossed it, behind which servants stood, and behind the servants the wall had been lined with shelves covered with cakes, oranges, apples, early peaches, melons and nectarines, and late strawberries, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... didn't hurt me," he answered. "I'm all rawhide and whalebone, and it isn't in you to hurt me. Confound you, I'll get you at something or other yet. Want to spar with bare knuckles?" ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... bamboo mast and spar were fitted to each sledge. Immediately in front of the mast came the "cooker-box," containing in respective compartments the primus and a bottle of spirit for lighting it, as well as spare prickers, openers ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... volcanic stone and white lime, as hard as marble, in which impressions of shell-fish and coral can be traced. Further up the river the volcanic rubble disappears, and the containing strata then consist of the marble-like pebbles cemented together with calcareous spar. These strata alternate with banks of clay and coarse-grained soil, which contain scanty and badly preserved imprints of leaves and mussel-fish. Amongst them, however, I observed a flattened but still recognizable ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was you ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... on his part would have been sure to result in an ignominious disaster. The doughty old farmer, who was not less than six feet three in his stockinged feet, held on to him as a drowning man clings to a floating spar. It was not possible to get away without resorting to violence; and if he offered any resistance to what, just then, looked like manifest destiny, the rebel soldier would become an ally of the farmer, and the women could call in ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... power, adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... head. "My mother is dead," she told him. "She was drowned and I would have been drowned, too, but a brave sailor held me tight until he found a spar and he tied me to it and we floated and floated and floated until a big ship passed us and brought us here." She spoke between bites, very calmly, as though her tale, as thrilling as any of Samuel's dream adventures, was no uncommon story for a dainty little ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... these ends being attained, we advanced a few paces into the cave, and a sight of the most indescribable sublimity burst upon us. The appearance was that of a huge Gothic cathedral, having its roof supported upon pillars of spar, moulded into the most regular shapes, and fluted and carved after the most exact models of architecture. The roof itself was indeed too lofty to be discerned, nor could the eye penetrate to anything like an extremity, all beyond a certain extent being wrapped ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... earthquakes; continents raised from the sea; the Moon thrown from a volcano, has no atmosphere, and is frozen; the earth's diurnal motion retarded; it's axis more inclined; whirls with the moon round a new centre. 67. IV. Formation of lime-stone by aqueous solution; calcareous spar; white marble; antient statue of Hercules resting from his labours. Antinous. Apollo of Belvidere. Venus de Medici. Lady Elizabeth Foster, and Lady Melbourn by Mrs. Damer. 93. V. 1. Of morasses. Whence the production ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... thoroughly, looking in and under the boats and behind funnels and ventilators, but could discover no sign of anyone. When I got back to the promenade, a little crowd had gathered, attracted by the noise of the falling spar, which a dozen members of the crew were ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... "White spar," said Arden, authoritatively, "and containeth of gold ten pounds to the hundredweight. Moreover—" He sifted down upon the dark wood beside the stones a thimbleful of dull yellow grains. "The sands of Pactolus, gentlemen! Sure 'twas in no Grecian river ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... forever doing me a service. Now, in order to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a few moments ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exaggerated by the narrator, who had written it while fresh and warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors being aloft in the main-topsail rigging, the captain had ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with the cat-of-nine-tails. He who was the farthest on the spar, feeling the impossibility of passing his companions, and yet passionately dreading the disgrace of the flogging, threw himself desperately down to catch a rope considerably lower, failed, and fell senseless on deck. He only survived for a few hours afterwards, and the indignation of the ship's ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this spar would entail danger of a crash, or having their landing-gear torn away, which would prove a disaster. Consequently Jack held himself in readiness to once more start his engine when sufficiently near the object ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... made known to one another, and should, therefore, converse freely, as equals. To shrink away to a side-table and affect to be absorbed in some album or illustrated work; or, if you find one unlucky acquaintance in the room, to fasten upon her like a drowning man clinging to a spar, are gaucheries which no ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... not yet done with Sir John Hawkins. We shall hear of him again. He became the manager of Elizabeth's dockyards. He it was who turned out the ships that fought Philip's fleet in the Channel in such condition that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost. He served himself in the squadron which he had equipped. He was one of the small group of admirals who met that Sunday ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... out Captain Brown; and, his order being promptly attended to, the vessel was not taken aback—otherwise every spar would have snapped away, or else she would have ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for the boys to ride, and they shot rabbits in the Chase. Also, they appeared at dinner, a tremendous function, and were encouraged by some of the younger guests to spar (verbally, of course) with the duke's Etonian sons. Fluff looked so much stronger and happier that his parents, delighted with their experiment, were inclined to cry up the Hill, much to the exasperation of the dwellers ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... baryta is prepared by mixing six parts of finely powdered heavy-spar (BaO, SO{3}) with one part of charcoal and one and a half parts of wheat flour, and exposing this mixture in a Hessian crucible with a cover to a strong and continuous red heat. The cooled chocolate-brown mass must be boiled with twenty parts of water, and, while boiling, there must be added the ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... the southern part of the country were called Spar-tans, and they were noted for their simple habits and their brav-er-y. The name of their land was La-co'ni-a, and so they were sometimes ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... rocks, but without success, for it snapped assunder before it reached them. However, by the light of a lanthorn which a seaman handed through a sky-light of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks, and on this spar he ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Runnymede got a spar over her quarter, lashed to the mizen-mast, to shore her up, the heavy surf causing her to bump more than was agreeable. There was quite a fleet of canvas in the bay fishing and ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... he holds some false way, undebarr'd By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguish'd face and flying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Fainter and fainter wreck ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... been having a little spar, Mrs. Cullingworth," said I. "Your husband was complaining that he never ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... or middle-aged, consists in boxing, catch-as-catch-can wrestling, and chasing each other to and fro. Cubs begin to spar as soon as they are old enough to stand erect on their hind feet. They take their distance as naturally as prize-fighters, and they strike, parry and dodge just as men do. They handle their front feet with far more dexterity and precision than boys ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... worse for wear. They set off down the descending road, which wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... this frail spar, Bella bravely took up arms against her sea of troubles, and rode out the storm. When her lover came to know his fate, she hid her heart, and answered "no," finding a bitter satisfaction in the end, for Harry was right, and, when the fortune was denied him, young Butler did not mourn the woman ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... off here than battering about outside, and knocking the ship to pieces," observed Mr Pincott, the carpenter. "Now, if we could but get a fresh spar for a topmast, we ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post—for all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel more deserted—more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind, impersonal disaster. When it was a matter ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... that, our girls included; and they're all alike. Society makes 'em fit in together like tongued and grooved planks that will take any amount of holy-stoning and polish. It's like dropping into a dead calm, with every rope and spar that you know already reflected back from the smooth water upon you. It's mighty pretty, but it isn't getting on, you know." After a pause he added: "I asked them to take a little ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three .. minutes ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... hard pressed that he took to this rigging and ran up one of the ropes to the mast, where he perched on the end of a spar and ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... buoyancy. Each canoe should also carry a small repair kit attached to one of the thwarts, containing cement, a piece of canvas same as cover of canoe, copper tacks, rivets, and some galvanized nails; a good hatchet and a hammer; a small can of canoe paint, spar varnish, and copper paint for worn places would be a protection against termites and torrential downpours. In concluding the subject of canoes I can state that the traveller in South America will find no difficulty in disposing of his craft at the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... lusty, as the saying is—that is, in good condition. It's very strange that Mrs Oxbelly has an idea that she is not large. I cannot persuade her to it. That's the reason we always spar in bed. She says it is I, and I know that it is she who takes ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... way through the storm. I was almost suffocated by the spray which continually blew over me, and the heavy sea boots which I wore, filling with water, threatened to drag me down. I had given myself up for lost, when I noticed a spar floating near, which must have been washed overboard with me, and, making an effort, I succeeded in laying hold of it, so that I managed to keep afloat. Thus holding to the spar and swimming, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with the other, I kept my ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes |
