"Driftwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coming early that year, which gave an excuse for the fire in the big fireplace. This fire was made of that peculiar kind of driftwood whose flames show marvellous rainbow tints. Patty never tired of watching the strange-coloured blaze, and delighted in throwing on more chips and ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... of driftwood and peat was glowing ruddily. The Indians were already deep within their fur-lined bags, and slumbering with the utter indifference engendered of complete weariness of body. Marcel and Keeko were squatting beside each other over the cheering warmth which kept the night ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... forest, accompanied by Red Angel. In the proximity of the Falls. Decided to go in that direction. Reach the river. Searching for the spot where the boat was left and from which place it had been taken. No traces of the mooring place. Examining driftwood and debris along river bank. Amazing discovery of one of Investigator's boats. Speculation as to the mystery. Evidence that it came over the Falls. Disappearance of the lockers of the boat, similar to those on their own. Discussion as to the fate of their ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... clear of trees and brushwood, and cook one of the fowls and make some cakes. To this Tim agreed. Before long, projecting from below the trunk of a large tree, we discovered a bank composed of roots and driftwood, with mud washed over them. There was space enough to light a fire, so we at once landed. While I was engaged in collecting sticks for the fire, Tim wrung the neck of one of our fowls and quickly plucked it. He then cut the bird in two and stuck it up before the fire, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... the narrow glass neck and plugged it with a bit of driftwood. "Maybe somebody, 'way across the lake, will find this," he explained, as he threw the receptacle far out on the water. "Then they'll think ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... quadrangular fort of stone with a flag flying above its battlements stood at a little distance, pressed against the rocks, as if beating back the encroaching surges; between him and the fort but farther inland was a lagoon with a number of dilapidated, rudely patched cabins or cottages, like stranded driftwood around its shore. But there was no mansion, no block of houses, no street, not another habitation or dwelling ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... teeth of the enemy's fire, till he expired. What would the story have been without this example of devotion and fortitude? Then, holding the pursuers in check, they slowly retreated down the side canyon they were in to the main gorge, where they discovered an abundance of driftwood, and decided to make a raft with which to escape. This raft consisted of three sticks of cottonwood about ten feet long and eight inches diameter, tied together with lariats. They had abandoned their horses above, bringing only their arms, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... gates, no longer choked, rolled the wagon-train, a frantic stampede of men and horses. It caught the dog-cart and its occupants with it; it crushed the horse, seized the vehicle, and flung it inside the gates as a flood flings driftwood ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... in the midst of abundance, broken only by moments of firmer faith, and so of larger, happier possession, that make the poverty-stricken ordinary days appear ten times more poverty-stricken. The channel lies dry, a waste chaos of white stones and driftwood for long months, and only for an hour or two after the clouds have burst on the mountains does the stream fill it from bank to bank. Do not many of us remember moments of a far deeper and more earnest trust in Christ than marks our ordinary days? If such moments were continuous, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... is not easy to understand the advantages derived by the animal from the conditions in which he is usually found. Thus, for example, there is a fish, the Polyprion cernium, which accompanies driftwood on which Barnacles have fixed themselves. Yet the remains of these Crustaceans are never found in his stomach, and it is known on the contrary that he lives exclusively on other small fish. It is possible ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... such brave hearts. I have heard the story told how the great Columbus who found a new world was beset by his followers to return. How nature sent him messages that he was nearing land—birds and driftwood, branches of trees and floating weed. He read the message with the eyes of one who loves all nature well, and promised sight of land to his men in three days, a promise that ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.
... therefore, by telling you at once that no furry or hairy quadruped of any sort—no mammal, as I understand your men of science call them—was ever stranded alive upon the shores of my islands. For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some tiny mouse or shrew or water-vole might lurk half drowned in some cranny or crevice of the bark or trunk. But it was all in vain. I ought to have known beforehand that terrestrial ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... musket, to survey the neighbourhood, and to ascertain if there was any path by which an enemy might come suddenly down and surprise us; they were also to look out for water. We meantime collected driftwood and dry branches from under the trees to make a fire. We placed a pile some way up the beach close to the grove of trees, so that the flames might be concealed by the overhanging cliffs and hills on either side, and thus, although there might be natives in the neighbourhood, we might ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... skirted the latter to the lake shore. There he hid his rifle and his supplies in the hollow of a tree, so that he might have greater freedom of action. Then he worked his way cautiously toward the rude breastworks facing the blockhouse. A small fire of driftwood burned dimly behind these, and about it sat several blanketed figures. In no other direction was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... foolish speculations, and he was dependent on his granddaughter's slight earnings from music teaching and needlework. But he rented an acre of ground from Finley, and grew vegetables; he gathered driftwood from the river for his winter fire, and made up the accounts of the storekeeper occasionally. Yet it was merely keeping off starvation. He was not popular. He had no tongue for the meaningless village talk. People held him in a kind of awe, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Jerry, with fine scorn, "what's the matter with our building a shelter of logs, bark and driftwood on the shore of the lake, if the worst strikes us? It wouldn't be the first time we'd done such a thing ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... days have we wrought hard in fetching our things aboard, as likewise our water, and have been all about the eastern point, searching for driftwood. Our pinnace, on which hath been spent so much time and labor, we need not, having our ship afloat again, wherefore I have commended her to be sawn in pieces and brought into ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... human companionship, with naught but this roaring desolation about and the air above filled with screeching terrors. Even through thick log walls I can hear the surf roaring among the rocks and beating the white driftwood like a thousand battering-rams, almost at my door. It is a night to make one shiver, and in the lulls of the storm the tall pines above me whistle and wail mournfully as they straighten their ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... chimneys, did not inspire him, nor the twittering of the sparrows on the window ledge. There was nothing at all in the world but a long stretch of barren, lonely years. And he wondered how, without her at his side, he ever could traverse them. He was driftwood again. He had built upon sands as usual, and the tide had come in; his castle was flotsam and jetsam. He was drifting, and he didn't care where. He was very sorry for himself, and he had the blue devils the worst kind of way. Finally he crawled out of bed and dressed because it had to ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... was now narrowing, and there were often rapids whose ascent necessitated disembarking from the canoes, while the bogas strained and teased the lumbering dugouts up over them. In places the stream was choked by fallen trees and tangled driftwood, until only a narrow, tortuous opening was left, through which the waters raced like a mill-course, making a heavy draft on the intuitive skill of the bogas. Often slender islets rose from the river; and then heated, chattering, often acrimonious ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... driftwood, bumping its way along the side of the yacht, as logs will, as the ebbing tide carried ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... charity. Her mother's people had been English, and somehow she had not cared to see an Englishman thrown to the dogs in this country which was not hers nor his. In days when her word was law for the infatuated and brutal man whose death anniversary it now was, this bit of human driftwood—failure, drunkard, rascal—had been found trespassing on the ranch. If Carmen had not chosen to show her power over old "Grizzly Gaylor" by protecting the poor wretch, Harp would have met the fate he probably deserved. But she had amused ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... divine power. A mortal pardoned by God is not sick, he is made whole. He in whom sin, disease, and death are destroyed, is more than a fraction of himself. Such sermons, though clad in soft raiment, are spiritless waifs, literary driftwood on the ocean of thought; while Truth walks triumphantly over the waves of ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... love you madly, madly, Sabine—dear little one—but you and I are just driftwood, floating down the tide—not like Henry, who is a splendid fellow of great use to England. It is impossible that his whole life should be ruined and sacrificed for our selfishness. Darling—" and he paused ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... trudged on foot carrying the cargo, while four of the most experienced canoemen brought the empty canoe down the rapids. But on June 17 they found further progress by water impossible owing to masses of driftwood in the stream. They were now, however, less than a mile from the south fork of the Fraser; the men carried the canoe on their shoulders across the intervening neck of swamp, and at last the explorers 'enjoyed the inexpressible ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the driftwood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... picked up a bit of driftwood and belaboured Peter's gray sides, but the beating might have been a sand flea hopping on him for all it appeared to ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... though so far they had found an abundance of fresh air, a current blowing part of the time in their faces, and part of the time in the opposite direction. This proved that there was a good draft in the elongated cave, but it was voted best not to take any chances, though there was plenty of dried driftwood on the tunnel floor, and this could have ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... averting a fall; he felt the swift clutch of her fingers at his throat, the quick adjustment of her body, but her lips gave no utterance of alarm. His groping feet touched the edge of a hole, and he turned, facing the current, tracing his way carefully until he found a passage on solid bottom. A bit of driftwood swirled down out of the night; a water-soaked limb, striking against him before it was even seen, bruised one arm, and then dodged past like a wild thing, leaving a glitter of foam behind. The sand-dunes grew darker, more distinct, the water ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... one. The foundation of it really begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly shaped and affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every thing from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something (Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... hour later as they passed through the gloomy silence of the box canyon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters, he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and looked down upon Hidden ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel;—we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now large quantities of driftwood out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and inhospitable coast, unfit ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... approvingly. He and Anne were sitting before a bright fire of driftwood in the pleasant kitchen, while Mrs. Stoddard had gone to Mrs. Starkweather's for more scarlet yarn. Anne was knitting busily; her wooden doll sat on the floor, and the white kitten was curled up close to the little girl's feet. Captain Enos had several ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... with skill, and at Carrick's Ford a lively encounter was had. A mile or two further, at another ford and when the skirmishing was very slight, he was killed while withdrawing his skirmishers from behind a pile of driftwood which he had used as a barricade. One of his cannon had become stalled in the ford, and with about forty wagons fell into Morris's hands. The direct pursuit was here discontinued, but McClellan had sent a dispatch ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... high noon when Hubert Stane directed the nose of the canoe towards a landing-place in the lee of a sand-bar, on the upperside of which was a pile of dry driftwood suitable ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... the shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill, stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building—the ordinary log-cabin of the settler—was the half-round pilot-house of some wrecked steamer, while the other gable terminated in half of a broken whale-boat. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and burned within her. Yes, the old people were past hoping for; mere wreck and driftwood on the shore, the spring-tide of death would soon have swept them all into unremembered graves. But the young men and women, the children, were they too to grow up, and grow old like these—the same smiling, stunted, ignobly submissive creatures? One woman at least would do ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day, at least. Until noon the canoe sped swiftly down the chasm without mishap. The stream, to which each mile added its contribution of flood water from the mountain tops, increased constantly in width and depth, but only now and then was there a rock to threaten their progress, and no driftwood at all. When the gold seekers landed for dinner they were confident of two things: that they had passed far beyond the mad hunter's reach, and were very near to the first waterfall. Memory of the thrilling experiences through which they had so recently ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... south-south-east we found a strong current against us, which set only in some places in streams; and in them we saw many trees and logs of wood which drove by us. We had but little wood aboard; wherefore I hoisted out the pinnace and sent her to take up some of this driftwood. In a little time she came aboard with a great tree in a tow, which we could hardly hoist in with all our tackles. We cut up the tree and split it for firewood. It was much worm-eaten and had in it some ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... of tree jungle. Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large birds—as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; they ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Linda had handed her a shovel and the blackened iron legs of a broiler. Everyone was loaded promiscuously as they took up their march down to as near the water's edge as the sands were dry. Peter and John gathered driftwood. Linda improvised two cooking places, one behind a rock for herself, the other under the little outdoor stove for Katy. Eileen was instructed as to how to set up the beach table, spread the blankets beside it, and place the food upon it. While Katy made ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... his son George were hunting driftwood along the beach in the neighborhood of Peaked Hill bars, at the Provincetown end and came on a sack lying in the tidewash, which was found to contain 200 pounds of gamboge. It is thought their find came from the wreck of the ship ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... a right to expect will take the correct stand on great human questions. Yet the moment the barriers are down and jingoism floods the earth you give up without a struggle and join the great mass of the world's driftwood.' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... 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 ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... got some breath, but my invisible quarry was far ahead. I pulled off my heavy boots, carried them, and ran in my stockings, promptly cutting my foot on some cockle-shells. Pursuit was hopeless, and a final stumble over a bit of driftwood sent me sprawling with agony ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... saw that nearly the whole upper floor of the building had been converted into one gigantic room. Near a big stone fireplace, where burning driftwood sent up its many tinted flames, Heinrich stood rigidly at attention. Hans, the dachshund, crouched at his feet. When the dog started to meet Parker a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the late overflow—raw new gravel channels for Painted Creek; river willows bent low where the flood had winnowed; piles of driftwood jammed here and there; a single stone pier stemming mid-stream, ancient floor and cover gone. More of his work—or the consequences of it—this desolation; from which, under his horse's feet, rose a hawk, flapping, furious, a half-drowned snake ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... by a bit of driftwood and cautiously threw in, his arm extended, his figure alert. The squint on his face took a firmer grip. Suddenly his pole gave a leap, the water splashed, his line sang in the air and a fish went up like a rocket. As we ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... behind, and rolled down into the water. Mr. Perrowne and the fisherman doffed their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and waded in to get the logs in position as sleepers. Three spars of driftwood, bleached white, were found along the bank, and were laid over the logs at right angles, and kept in their places, as were the logs, by stakes hammered into the lake bottom. Mr. Errol and Mr. Terry produced some planks, saved from the fire that ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep side of the cliff to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom, foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend where the angry water flung itself against the ragged bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman appeared, bending low in the saddle for better protection against the storm. He rode along the edge of the stream on the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... grassy slopes and rocky ravines hidden, here and there, by grey mists floating lazily over depths of dark green forest at their feet. To our left broad yellow sands, streaked with seaweed and dark driftwood, and cold grey waters of the Caspian Sea—colourless and dead even under this Mediterranean sky, and bringing one back, so to speak, from a ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... experiences he had noticed that the shores of Greenland were strewn with driftwood of a kind also found on the shores ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... woman could ever have been more than an episode. He had shown her some of the many beautiful things and places of the world, and by her own words he had made her happy. Now their play time was over. He had his work and she hers. She had come into his life as a piece of driftwood floats to shore on the edge of a wave, and gone out ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... sparks far up, and the red heart In sea-coals, crashing as they part To tiny flares, and kindling snapping, Bunched sticks that burst their string and wrapping And fall like jackstraws; green and blue The evil flames of driftwood too, And heavy, sullen lumps of coke With still, fierce heat and ugly smoke.... ... And then the vision of his face, And theirs, all theirs, came like a sword, Thrice, to the heart — and as I fell I thought I ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... they all clapped their shoulders to the big stone, and pushed with such good-will that it slipped and went crashing into the stream, while the party went off at full speed after the horse. The poor animal was found at last stranded amid a mass of driftwood, with its saddle and baggage gone, but beyond this and the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... it would be better to proceed to winter quarters, and accordingly ran down the Asiatic coast in search of wood and water, of which he stood in need; but was disappointed, and making over to the other side was fortunate to find a considerable quantity of driftwood which served his purpose. Before leaving the ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... moment's notice—seemingly storing it up against future needs. But the evening came when the laughing river gurgled into Lake Nameless, and that night they camped below its frowning shores on a narrow strip of beach, where the driftwood of many years and many storms had stranded, seemingly forever. All three had rolled into blankets, with sleep hovering above and about them, when, noiselessly as the dawn, Fox-Foot slipped from his bed like an eel, dipped under the tent, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... What did it all mean: the waves roaring close at hand; the driftwood fire burning hard by; the circle of anxious faces? Through his dim senses ran the lines long familiar, never till now ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... and though once a cinnamon bear poked his muzzle out into the clearing, sniffed and departed with a grunt of disapproval, they could not bring themselves to any realization of animals as a real peril. Their camp-fire burned high all night, heaped with driftwood and windfalls; and beyond this protection, Stern had his automatic and a belt nearly full of cartridges. They discussed the question of a possible attack by some remnants of the Horde; but common sense assured them that ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... by my lady's diplomacy, and perhaps just a little disgusted. Again and again he told himself that this union with Geraldine Challoner was the very best thing that could happen to him; it would bring him to anchor, at any rate, and he had been such mere driftwood until now. But he wanted to feel himself quite a free agent, and this pressing-on of the marriage by Lady Laura was in some manner discordant with his sense of the fitness of things. It looked a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... from bank to bank. Has the Sahib ever been cast into much water that fights and will not let a man use his limbs? To me, my head upon the water, it seemed as though there were naught but water to the world's end, and the river drave me with its driftwood. A man is a very little thing in the belly of a flood. And this flood, though I knew it not, was the Great Flood about which men talk still. My liver was dissolved and I lay like a log upon my back in the fear of Death. There were living things in the water, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... I'll take my chance," said Oliver; "my good cudgel would have served me well enough, but it seems to have been swept away by the sea. Here, however, is a weapon that will suit me admirably," he added, picking up a heavy piece of driftwood that lay ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... where he was, and he pointed; but for some time I could make out nothing but driftwood, a tree floating roots upward, and some great patches of grass that seemed to have been scooped out of a ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... beach, composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quantity of driftwood, some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which we named Clark river, was about one hundred yards ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... sails, and in his hands were old regretted wrecks, and mast all studded over with golden nails that he had rent in anger out of beautiful galleons. And the glory of the sun was among the surges as they brought driftwood out of isles of spice, tossing their golden heads. And the grey currents crept away to the south like companionless serpents that love something afar with a restless, deadly love. And the whole plain of water glittering with late sunlight, and the surges and the currents and the white sails of ships ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... a tree and make a bridge, but the water drove him away. The house was finally carried away with most of the family in it. The father swam to a stump with one boy on his back and stood there till the water carried away the stump, then tried to swim with the boy for shore, but the driftwood soon engulfed him and all was over. Two of the bodies were never found. Their bones doubtless rest somewhere in the still waters of the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... again, his mouth set hard, his small hands shaking. He unrolled an old reindeer-skin full of holes, and examined it. At this the girl, who had been about to make up the fire, threw down the bit of driftwood and hid her face. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... some logs of driftwood on the upper sand, and she sank down upon them. He found a place ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I gathered me brush and driftwood, and striking flint and steel soon had a fire going and set about cooking certain strips of dried goat's flesh for my breakfast. Whiles this was a-doing I was startled by a sudden clatter upon the cliff above and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... me some method of escaping from the crate. He held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly; and I derived much consolation from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur-match. When they were in a bright glow, and the crow was neatly spitted in front thereof, Gunga Dass began without ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the exact center of the most grew-some collection of human skulls and bones I have ever seen. Bones were strewn on the floor of the cave like driftwood. Skulls were grinning at us from every corner of the darkness. We had stumbled into a big grave where some of the Indians had hidden their dead away from the wolves after a battle. It may be that none of us were superstitious, but we got out of there in a hurry, and braved the peril of ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... from his precarious position. His sole ambition was to get himself where it was safe and dry, and to do this he of necessity had to drag the pup with him. So Neewa tugged at the end of his rope, digging his sharp little claws into the driftwood, and as he advanced Miki was dragged up head foremost out of the cold and friendless stream. It was a simple process. Neewa reached a log around which the water was eddying, and there he flattened ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep sides of the arroyo, to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom, foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend in the arroyo, where the angry water flung itself against the ragged bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman appeared bending low in the saddle for better protection against the storm. He rode along the edge of the stream on the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... brightly coloured as a row of shining shells from a southern sea; tints of pink and blue and amber, translucently clear in contrast with the dark green of lebbek trees and palms, in whose shadow flowers burned, like rainbow-tinted flames of driftwood. Between our eyes and the brilliant picture, a network of thin dark lines was tangled, as if an artist had defaced his canvas with scratches of a drying brush. These scratches were in reality the masts of moored feluccas, bristling close to the shore like a high hedge of flower stems, stripped ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and the gospel to the boy, both in one. It is the mother heart, I suppose, and there is nothing better in all the world. I am reminded of the conversion of "the Kid" by one who was in a very real sense the mother of a social settlement up-town, in the latitude of Battle Row. The Kid was driftwood. He had been cast off by a drunken father and mother, and was living on what he could scrape out of ash barrels, and an occasional dime for kindling-wood which he sold from a wheelbarrow, when the gang found and adopted him. My friend adopted the gang in her turn, and civilized it by slow stages. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... ever trying to come up close to the barren and make its acquaintance, but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and flee at a fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver slipper, but purple driftwood and bright sea-weeds, brought in from the Gulf Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh from the edge of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for although at high tide the river was at our feet, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... good water can be obtained with facility; and on the beach there is plenty of driftwood. The coral projects one-half mile from the entrance of the river, and has 10 and 12 fathoms close to ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the Big Blue, early on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of May, we found the river booming, and the water still rising. Driftwood and good sized logs were floating by on a current so strong that all hope of fording it vanished even before its depth was measured. We encamped on the slope of the prairie, near a timber of cottonwood, oak, beech, and sycamore trees, where a clear brook rushed over ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight: And as we gaze, the unsearchable ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... any, except one only. Four of these lots, or quotas to the adventure, Musaeus's, Tieck's, Richter's, Goethe's, will be given in the final stage of this Series; the rest we willingly leave, afloat or stranded, as waste driftwood, to those whom they may ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... the bridge when they saw that the skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand. It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and pull ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... terms. And then, suddenly, a feeling of intense loneliness broke over her like a wave. She felt like a bit of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... had always rather thought that bears wore their skin tanned on the inside and lined, too. The next thing was to have a dinner of bear-meat, for, as Tommy well remembered, all bear-hunters ate bear-steaks. They were about to go down to the shore to hunt along for driftwood, when, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they found a pile of wood in the corner of the cave, which satisfied them that at some time in the past this cave had been used by robbers or pirates, who probably had been driven away by this great bear, or ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... the rapids we encountered the usual troubles that overtake the tracker—those of clearing our lines of trees and bushes, slipping into the muck of small inlets, stumbling over stones, cutting the lines upon sharp rocks, or having them caught by gnarled roots of driftwood. As we approached the last lap of white water the canoes passed through a rocky basin that held a thirty- or forty-yard section of the river in a slack and unruffled pool. While ascending this last section, the last canoe, the one in which the old grandmother ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... quite forgotten. Some of the young fellows whom fortune had buffeted had found a place in active, stirring life: he, with his education, refinement, accomplishments, and talent, was merely a piece of driftwood. Sylvie Barry had been right,—he was a useless appendage to the world. Ah, no wonder she despised him! Sturdy, honest Jack Darcy could find a place. His self-complacency was more than touched,—it was shattered, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... slave-driver," Jason mumbled to himself as he joined the others in searching the shore for driftwood. Ch'aka had all the weapons as well as a constant fear of assassination. If Opisweni tried to use the knife for anything other than the intended piece of work, he would get the crossbow quarrel in the back of his head. ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... small venomous spider of New Zealand and Australia. The name is Maori. The scientific name is Latrodectus scelio, Thorel.In New Zealand, it is generally found on the beach under old driftwood; but in Australia it is found widely scattered over the Continent, and always frequents dark sheltered spots. The derivation may be from Kakati, verb, to sting, and po, night. Compare Kakapo. It is a dark-coloured spider, with a bright red ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... fire very useful and pleasant, they went down as close as they could venture to the water, and employed themselves in collecting all the driftwood and chips they could find. They agreed that they would do the same every day, so as to have a good stock of fuel. They wanted also to secure some pieces which might serve as torches, so that they ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... mean, Mr. Polwarth, that I should solemnly acquaint my congregation next Sunday with the fact that the sermon I am about to read to them is one of many left me by my worthy uncle, Jonah Driftwood, D.D., who, on his death-bed, expressed the hope that I should support their teaching by my example, for, having gone over them some ten or fifteen times in the course of his incumbency, and bettered each ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... later, at the end of the afternoon, Baree crossed the Gray Loon on a bridge of driftwood that had wedged between two trees. This was to the north. Just beyond the driftwood bridge there was a small clearing, and on the edge of it Baree paused to enjoy the last of the setting sun. As he stood motionless and listening, his tail drooping low, his ears alert, his ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... she went to the hut she would manage to be absent from a meal beforehand, and going to Jean, would ask for her ration of whatever was going. Down in the hut she and Wullie would sit round the fire of driftwood, reaching down dried herrings from the roof and toasting them on spits of wood for their feast. And they would talk while the sea crept up and down outside whispering, or dashed almost ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was pitched and the Eskimos had spread the Explorer's sail as a shelter for themselves, Kumuk and Iksialook left us to look for driftwood and, in half an hour, returned with a few small sticks that they had found on the shore. These sticks were exceedingly scarce and, of course, very precious and with the greatest economy in the use of the wood, a fire was made and the kettle ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... these people had flint knives given them, and they cut up the bodies of the dead buffalo. It is not healthful to eat the meat raw, so Old Man gathered soft dry rotten driftwood and made punk of it, and then got a piece of hard wood, and drilled a hole in it with an arrow point, and gave them a pointed piece of hard wood, and taught them how to make a fire with fire sticks, and to cook the flesh of these animals ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... swept out. For the gulch hamlets between the Timanyonis there was still an industrial reason for being; but the railroad languished, and Angels became the weir to catch and retain many of the leavings, the driftwood stranded in the slack water of the outgoing tide. With the railroad, the Copperette Mine, and the "X-bar-Z" pay-days to bring regularly recurring moments of flushness, and with every alternate door in Mesa Avenue the entrance to a bar, a dance-hall, a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... The porcupines too are numerous, and so careless and clumsy that we can approach very near without disturbing them, as they are feeding on the young willows. Toward evening we also found for the first time the nest of a goose among some driftwood, all that we had hitherto seen being on the top of a broken tree on the forks, invariably from fifteen to twenty ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... they knew better. They had seen too many other formations of the kind in this shifting treacherous stream to be long deceived. A flat sandy island it was, sure enough; and what they thought was ice was driftwood. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... been rolled down a canyon, locked in the embrace of a furry fiend that he had stabbed in the throat one second before the fatal hug. He told of the melting of the snows in forest rivers; of the flood that swept away the lonely traveller's encampment, and bore him, astride on a log of driftwood, five miles amid wrack and boulders on its whirling current; of deliverance through a pious Indian and his canoe, which he entered as by a miracle in mid-stream, and without upsetting any of the three. He told of long wanderings in the twilight solitudes of Canadian forests; of dangers ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... around, and when that time had elapsed, we found ourselves in a small, battered city. There were no great buildings or infrastructure like in Nunami, nor any complex labyrinths like the Canitaur's military base. Instead there were only weak, unsound huts, built with a framework of oddly shaped driftwood and covered with a thick layer of insulating sod. A road ran through the center of the city, only distinguishable because it was packed down by constant use, and on either side were groupings of the huts in semi-circular patterns, with no space between them left unfilled ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... didn't go with me as I expected, and I got the despair of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,—for he really does something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... daily use and another name hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish patriotism—a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in the sunshine; but he preferred ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... back to the house, and King and Marjorie continued their explorations. The beach was flat and smooth, and its white sand was full of shells, and here and there a few bits of seaweed, and farther on some driftwood, and in the distance a pier, built out far ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... and subordination, where they have seldom to exercise the initiative of choice, but just to do what they are bid, by degrees all but lose the power of making up their minds about anything. And so a slave set free is proverbially a helpless creature, like a bit of driftwood; and children who have been too long kept in a position of pupilage and subordination, when they are sent into the world are apt to turn out very feeble men, for want of a good, strong backbone of will in them. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... were fortunately able to keep track of the chase from the baying of the hounds without entering the timber, and were watching its course, when suddenly it changed; the pack followed the scent across a bridge of driftwood on the Frio, and started up ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... does one get a glimpse of this shy little bird, that darts out of sight like a flash at the first approach. Balancing on a cat-tail stalk or perched upon a bit of driftwood, it makes a feeble, husky attempt to sing a few notes; and during the brief performance the opera-glasses may search it out successfully. While it feeds upon the bits of sea-food washed ashore to the edge of the marshes, it gives us perhaps the best chance we ever get, outside of a museum, to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... a net," called Bert, running toward a lot of driftwood in which an old net was tangled. Bert soon disentangled it and it proved to be a large piece of seine, the kind that is often used to decorate walls ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... one arm resting on the mantelpiece, the firelight glowing on her black dress. Her clever speculative eyes were fixed on the smouldering logs of driftwood. Lucille was moving about the room, exhibiting by her manner that impatience which the mention of my name seemed ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... some distance along its bed. Emerging on the opposite bank, we sped on through marshy fields, skirting high hills and bounding down through dry watercourses, over shelving stones and accumulated barriers of driftwood; now panting up a steep ascent, and now resting for a moment to rub our shoes with the resinous needles of the pine; always within hearing of the dogs, whose fitful cries varied in volume in accordance ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the arrival of the bride, it was known throughout the length and breadth of Wallencamp, to every one, I believe, save Lovell himself, who was gathering driftwood a mile or two down the beach, that Lovell ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the food supplies for the trip, I had a bag of meat, and another of buns, for my use when I should reach the village, where I was going to preach and to teach. I gathered a pile of clubs, which I cut from the driftwood on the shore, from which we had also obtained that for our fire. Then, putting the bag of meat, which was frozen hard, under my pillow, and giving the bag of buns to one of my Indians, with orders to guard it carefully, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... dominated by one unwavering aim. He is bound to win; the world stands one side and lets him pass; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. He does not have one half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield, because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. What a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... panelled simply in woods, furnished with the old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a space broken only by a painting, a Japanese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... dreaded of the little frogs, but timid of most things; there was a small snake of wonderful swiftness and as green as the grass into which it darted; there were the water pilots, sunning themselves in coils upon the driftwood in the water, swart of color, thick of form and offensive of aspect; there were the milk-snakes, yellowish gray, with wonderful banded sides and with checker-board designs in black upon their yellow bellies. Sometimes a pan of milk from the solitary cow, set for its cream in ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... a little sled which his father had made for him out of driftwood. No other boy in the village had one. Menie's father had searched the beach for many miles to find driftwood ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... past, express the love, the longing, the passion and the tragedies of life and its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his existence, a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home; and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the stream. Frequently, in such cases, if there is any small island in the centre, it is taken advantage of, and the dam is built out to it from either bank. They make use of a variety of materials; employing driftwood when it can be obtained, to save themselves the trouble of cutting down trees. This they tow to the spot, and sink it horizontally with mud and stones. They also employ pieces of green willows, birch, and poplars, intermixing the whole with mud and gravel, in a manner which ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Flag-Officer Foote, with seven gunboats, of which four were ironclads, led the way up the Tennessee, against Fort Henry. That day the furious current was dashing driftwood in whirling masses against the flotilla, which had all it could do to keep station, even with double anchors down and full steam up. Next morning a new danger appeared in the shape of what looked like a school of dead porpoises. These were Confederate torpedoes, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... wind made the windows rattle, and shook the door as if clamoring for admittance. A second later, something was hurled against the side of the house, as if the gale were using small pieces of driftwood for missiles. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... driftwood the castaways constructed a hut. Fish were in plenty, wild fowl offered easy mark, and in springtime the ice floes brought down the seal herds. There was no lack of food, but rescue seemed forever impossible; for no fishing craft would ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the sweetest and friendliest talk that I had ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... faint ledge made by caught driftwood from the current and the debris of the overhanging cliffs. Again the narrow footprint on the ooze was his guide. At last, emerging from the canyon, a strange view burst upon his sight. The river turned ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... be far gone indeed when an arrow point will not sting him to life. I was no longer a fever-riven log of driftwood. I knew where I was and what was happening. I had reached the Malhominis village. Working through the rice swamp, I had come into the main river too far to the west, but following the woman's voice I had floated back. I was caught in one of the nets that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... both. She put on her clothes with hasty, trembling hands, thankful to Guennik for helping her, pressed a coin into the strong toil-worn hand, and with an earnest thrill of thankful prayer opened the door. The driftwood fire was bright, and she saw Peregrine, looking deadly white, and equipped with slouched hat, short wrapping cloak, pistols and sword at his belt, dark lantern lighted on the table, and Hans also cloaked by his side. He bent his head in salutation, and put his finger to his ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... love is one of the severest tests of character in man or woman. Some sink into weak sentimentality, and mope and languish; some become listless, apathetic, and float down the current of existence like driftwood. Men are often harsh and cynical, and rail at the sex to which their mothers and sisters belong. Sometimes a man inflicts a wellnigh fatal wound and leaves his victim to cure it as best she may. From that time forth she may be like the wronged Indian, who slays as many white ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Kabekanka, and found that at its mouth the stream ran between low shores, and that its bed was so overgrown with wild rice as to make it almost impossible for a canoe to work its way through. Further up the river narrowed and ran more swiftly, the wild rice giving place to snags and driftwood, which made navigation even more toilsome. Almost worn out, our weary voyagers began to despair of finding navigable waters, when to their great joy they espied at a little distance what seemed like a pond filled with rushes. Struggling onward once more they soon reached ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... get some more," and he came back with a great armful of broken driftwood, and went again for as much gorse as he could carry in a rude wooden fork he found near ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... 23rd September, the carpenter died, and was interred the next day in the cleft of a mountain, it being impossible to put a spade into the ground, on account of the severity of the frost. The following days were devoted to the transport of driftwood and the building of the house. To cover it in, it was necessary to demolish the fore and aft cabins of the ship; the roof was put on, on the 2nd October, and a piece of frozen snow was set up like a May pole. On the 31st September, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... suddenly seemed to him that he heard something splash on the other side of the Terek. He turned again towards the horizon beyond the hills, where day was breaking under the upturned crescent, glanced at the outline of the opposite bank, at the Terek, and at the now distinctly visible driftwood upon it. For one instant it seemed to him that he was moving and that the Terek with the drifting wood remained stationary. Again he peered out. One large black log with a branch particularly attracted his attention. The tree was floating in a strange way right down the ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... to say F—— and the two men did so, whilst I ran backwards and forwards with the blankets and provisions, before the hurricane was upon us. Henceforth there was no stirring out of doors until the gale had blown itself out. We dragged in some driftwood, barricaded the door, and prepared to pass the time as well as we could. Oh, the fleas in the hut! The ground was literally alive with them, and their audacity and appetite was unparalleled. Our boatmen sat tranquilly by the tiny window and played ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... similar. In general, the island-bound channels are like rivers, not only in separate reaches as seen from the deck of a vessel, but continuously so for hundreds of miles in the case of the longest of them. The tide-currents, the fresh driftwood, the inflowing streams, and the luxuriant foliage of the out-leaning trees on the shores make this resemblance all the more complete. The largest islands look like part of the mainland in any view to be had of them from the ship, but far the greater number are ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... the shrinking river, Where the salmon-nets hang brown, Piles the driftwood of the freshets, And the naked logs move down To the clanking chains and shrieking saws of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... Ernest tied a bit of driftwood to the rope and put it into Laddie's mouth. The next minute the dog was swimming out to me. As soon as he came close I caught the rope. It was just long enough to stretch from shore to rock, allowing for a couple of hitches which Ernest gave around a small boulder ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that some mysterious power was leading him—he knew not whither—a feeling that he was soon to face some ghastly experience, came like an icy hand grasping his in the dark. He could not shake that feeling off, and as he gathered driftwood, bits of dead spruce—anything that would burn, and piled the fuel near his shelter—his dread increased. What strange spell was it that had kept him four hours beside that wall-enclosed harbor unconscious of ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... upland upon the borders of the marsh, awoke their tingling nerves to the happy but fruitless chase. And when night came, too soon, and they pigged together around the warm ashes of their camp-fire, under the low lodge poles of their wigwam of dried mud, reeds, and driftwood, with the combined odors of fish, wood-smoke, and the warm salt breath of the marsh in their nostrils, they slept contentedly. The distant lights of the settlement went out one by one, the stars came ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... surrender, for the gun-man would undoubtedly make good his threats; fidelity to such pledges is one of the few things sacred to the race. With some vague and desperate idea of defence, Bob picked up a heavy branch of driftwood. Then, as the man drew nearer, Bob scrambled hastily over the smooth apron to the tiny beach that the eddies had ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... on the sand from the plentiful supply of driftwood that strewed the beach, and at the cheerful fire they sat and talked as they ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... went much better. I was allowed a little tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle, with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but with skins and a couple of lamps I ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Estein entered the abode of Andreas the hermit. Lit only by a small window and the gleam of a driftwood fire, the rude apartment was dusky and dim; yet there seemed nothing there that should make the sea-king pause at the threshold. Was it but a smoke wreath that he saw, and did the wind rise with a sudden gust out of the stillness of the evening? It seemed to him a face that appeared ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... were a lovely dove grey; that soft tan grey, with a warm shade, almost suggestive of pink. I suppose the reason I thought of this was because at the time two pairs of doves, one on a heap of driftwood overhanging the river, and the other in an apple tree in the Aspy orchard a few rods away, were giving me much trouble, and I had dove grey on ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... experience, —India-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot iron! A man must have been five years absorbed in the pursuit of an object to comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus felt when he saw the land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the driftwood floating by. But, like Columbus, he was surrounded with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he showed his charred India-rubber to his brother, and to the other bystanders, and dwelt upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the way, the men scrambled up the outer wall of the fort and crossed the moss-covered ramparts at the run. Below them, on the sandy beach, were three men sitting around a driftwood fire that had sunk to a few hot ashes. Clay nodded to MacWilliams. "You and Ted can have them," he ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... pine-needles, which made a soft dry bed for those who lingered beneath them to gaze at the white-capped waves chasing each other in shore, or who, lying down, watched the fleecy clouds drifting across the sky. Near by was a pebbly beach where one could gather driftwood for a fire, or could pick up smooth water-washed stones to build walks and walls for tiny imaginary people. There was no end of the material the place afforded for amusement, and when they reached there, Molly eagerly fell ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... which made a capital deep-water bath. Dressing again was not such a pleasant affair, owing to the mosquitoes biting us in the most provoking manner. Afterwards we strolled along the shore, which was covered with cocoa-nuts and driftwood, washed thither, I suppose, from some of the adjacent islands, and on our way back to the hotel we gathered a handful of choice exotics and graceful ferns, with ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... own word, that it may keep His Church and bless the world. Let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm, which is calm sobriety, your love for that word. Let it make decisive your rejection of all that opposes. Driftwood may float with the stream; the ship that holds to her anchor swings the other way. Send that word far and wide. It is its own best evidence. It will correct all the misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... morning—just the right sort for a hunting-expedition. The air was just chilly enough to render paddling a welcome exercise, and just warm enough to allow intervals of pleasant drifting in the centre of the current when there were no shoals or driftwood ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... streets of London. Of the two, the officer has the worse time. A private soldier will be able to approach some one or other of the company cooks with the certainty of a rough welcome. If he is wise he will arrive armed with some stray piece of driftwood to add to the stock of fuel. Thus will success be assured, for Thomas of all men is the most unselfish. In the first instance, if he be a staff officer, he has probably too much to get done in a short space of time to think about his creature comforts. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... first day. The Balls made no outcry when they found that she had disappeared. And no near-port fishing craft came by. But the smoke from the chimney of the cabin, when she had swept and made comfortable its interior and built a fire of driftwood in the rusty pot stove, attracted ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... windmill, as he rolled over several times and disappeared. Well, we put ashore the moment we got into still water, and then five or six of us started off on foot to look for Francois. After half-an-hour's search, we found him pitched upon a flat rock in the middle of the stream like a bit of driftwood, We immediately waded out to the rock and brought him ashore, where we lighted a fire, took off all his clothes, and rubbed him till he began to show signs of life again. But you may judge, mes garcons, of my misery when I found that ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the hut on the heath was the very picture of abject poverty and dreary desolation. The earthen floor was broken and rough; the sunlight came sifting through the chinks in the broken walls. A smoky fire of wet driftwood smoldered, under a pot on the crook. There was neither table nor chairs. A straw pallet with a wretched coverlet lay in one corner; a few broken stools were scattered around; a few articles of clothing hung on the wall. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Abigail had descended the stairs to the sitting room. Before a driftwood fire in a big brick fireplace sat Captain Warren in his shirt-sleeves, a pair of mammoth carpet slippers on his feet, and the said feet stretched luxuriously out ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack also out of commission. About them the beach was strewn with a litter of miscellany,—nets, oars, cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood, a few fish too long forgotten and (one assumed) responsible in part for the foreign ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... light," Ronald said, "and light the torch which I brought with me. We are sure to find plenty of driftwood cast up at the highest point the tide reaches. Then we can make a fire, and while you remain here I will go out and find some of the natives, and engage a guide ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the crowd an apparition before which he quailed; his jaw dropped and his howl degenerated into a groan. Aun' Sheba had heard and recognized his voice, and she went through the throng like a puffing tug through driftwood. "Mister Buggone," she said, with the sternness of fate, "ef yer doan stop yer noise you'se 'lowance stop heah and now. Yer'll hab ter wuck shuah or starbe, fer if yer doan come wid me now yer neber ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe |
