"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sailed, Mr Simple. But that was not all he lost, Mr Simple; for the next cruise he lost his masts; and the loss of his masts occasioned the loss of his ship, since which he has never been trusted with another, but is laid on the shelf. Now he never carried away a spar of any consequence during the whole time that I was with him. A mast itself is nothing, Mr Simple—only a piece of wood—but fit your rigging properly, and then a mast is strong as a rock. Only ask Mr Faulkner, and he'll tell you the same; and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... will still be remembered how, some years ago when she was a few months younger than she is now, she appeared in her box at the opera on a MELBA (and therefore a tiara) night wearing a necklace of spar beads and a large ribbon bow on her head. An electric shock ran through the house; opera and singers were unheeded; and the beautiful Countess of —— tore the family diamonds from her head and neck, and, with a shriek of despair, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... farming going to the deuce, don't be tossing head over tip at the tail of the tourist. If you've got the pumping engine inside of you, in plain English, if you've got the indomable character of the rael Manxman, do as I done—go foreign. Then watch your opportunity. What's Shake-spar saying?" Pete paused. "What's that he's saying, now?" Pete scratched his forehead. "Something about a flood, anyway." Pete stretched his hand out vigorously. "'Lay hould of it at the flood,' says he, 'that's the way ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... anchor lay, (sl.) In the harbor of Mahon [Footnote 1]; A dead calm rested on the bay,— The waves to sleep had gone,— When little Jack,[Footnote 2] the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar,—and then upon The main-truck ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Portsmouth. The father of Thomas B. Laighton was a spar-maker and did a considerable business when shipbuilding was thriving in those times. Thomas B. in his youth was afflicted with a fever which confined him to his room for many months and from the effects ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... musketry-fire from Orchard Knoll disappeared to us behind a spar of the hill, and could no longer be seen; and it was not until night closed in that I knew that the troops in Chattanooga had swept across Missionary Ridge and broken the enemy's centre. Of course, the victory was won, and pursuit ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... out of sight when a topmast on the Rosan broke off short in a sudden squall. Bijonah Tanner immediately laid her to and set all hands to work stepping his spare spar, as he would not think of returning to a shipyard. Nat Burns, when he noticed the accident, laid to in turn and announced his intention of standing by the Rosan until she was ready ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... says Brown, chipper as a mack'rel gull on a spar-buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or only ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an troubles have come, an mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an shoo's flown far, far away ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... sufficient defence against the broadsides, even when delivered at close range. The eight-inch shells of the Hartford buried themselves about half their diameter in our armor, and crumbled into fragments. All of our casualties occurred on the spar deck; our gallant commander being mortally wounded there; and many of the mechanics, who were quartered on board the tenders alongside of us, were killed or wounded. The McRae and the Manassas were in the stream in time to take an active part in the conflict; the former being considerably ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... 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 ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... subjects on which I find notes are, a Paper on the forms of the Teeth of Wheels, communicated to the Philosophical Society on May 2nd; some notes about Musical Concords, and some examination of a strange piece of Iceland Spar. On Apr. 29th I was elected to the Northern Institution (of Inverness); the first compliment that I received from an ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... on board which we could use in the way of storm canvas, and the sails of the boat were too small to be of any use. Nor was there a spar which we could use as mast, save the yard itself. It must be that or nothing, ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... Bend. Used aboard yachts for bending on the gaff topsail halliards. It consists of two turns around a spar or ring, then a half hitch around the standing part and through the turns on the spar, and another half hitch above it around ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... to the Cathedral as a shipwrecked and drowning man clings to the spar of a sinking ship; this had been his hope, and he was beginning to realise it. The church would receive him, like an old and infirm mother, unable to smile, but who could still stretch ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... realization of the imminent danger threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling—no time for nice shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her brother's safety. As Donaldson's eyes met hers, she felt ashamed that she had hesitated even long enough for these thoughts to flash ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... save what one could not avoid picking up on the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be told that I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land or sea. I answer that I write of what I saw, and that is not altered by a miscalled spar or a misunderstood manouvre. But now I am aboard a craft I handle for myself, and must make shift to handle a second time ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... match for his heavier opponent if they came to hand grips, Hal stepped quickly back and threw himself into an attitude of defense. It was the lad's plan to stand off, if possible, and spar. ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... 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 ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Lucilius spar'd neither the Small nor the Great, and often from the Nobles and the Patricians he stoop'd to the Lees ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... one of huge enjoyment and with intense interest I awaited Frank's first spar for an opening. It came presently, in ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... curved yards from the south; Hainan and Kwangtung trawlers working upstream with staysails set, and a few storm-tossed craft with great holes gaping between their battens. All were nameless when I saw them for the first time, and strange; but in the days that followed I learned them rope and spar. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Their murmurs; yet 'twere surely worst of all Long to remain, and bootless to return. Bear up, my friends, remain awhile, and see If Calchas truly prophesy, or no. For this ye all have seen, and can yourselves Bear witness, all who yet are spar'd by fate, Not long ago, when ships of Greece were met At Aulis, charg'd with evil freight for Troy, And we, around a fountain, to the Gods Our altars rear'd, with faultless hecatombs, Near a fair plane-tree, where bright water ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of white 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 a-wen ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... thing there is you 'ave to watch the other man's eyes. But light-weights is always quicker at the duck than what heavier men are. You get the best boxing in the light-weights, though the feathers spar quicker.' ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... stories of encounter On plank and mast and spar; But never the brave barque I launched And waved ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... 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
... 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
... hour I sailed away. With the dawn I descended the tower and looked for wreckage upon the rocks, but what I found was only this: a strange dead bird whose hue was as of the azure sky, and a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that of the wave-tips or of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... begun to reel, but she clung to the central idea, as one in deep waters clinging to a spar. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... explained by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... broken for him? Queer, that I'll lie, like any innocent Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait. Sore-punished, I'm not yet knocked out: life's had My head in chancery; but I'll soon be free To spar another round or so with him, Before he sends me spinning to the ropes. And life would not be life, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... round it, and eight of them, one behind the other, hung on to it, when it suddenly snapped, seven fell backwards, and the forward one went overboard to be no more seen. Some house that night was desolate. Reeling downwards, the big mast and spar of the ungainly craft caught in a tree, giving her such a check that they were able to make her fast. It was a saddening incident. I asked Ito what he felt when we seemed in peril, and he replied, "I thought I'd been good to my mother, and honest, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... with a long white beard—this can be made of flax. The ladies at the table must be costumed in silk or satin dresses, ornamented with spangles, and any kind of jewelry that will look showy; hair decorated with spar beads, hair pins, and plumes. The gentlemen's costume consists of rich velvet suits; long beards. Servants in short white coats, with border on the bottom, red breeches, white hose, and light felt hats ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... withdrew. In August, land batteries reduced Fort Sumter almost to ruins, and in the following month Fort Wagner was abandoned. June 17th, the iron-clad Atlanta, armed with a torpedo at the end of a spar, ran down from Savannah to engage with two monitors guarding the mouth of the river. She got aground, rendering the torpedo useless. The fifteen-inch guns of the monitors pierced her armor, and in ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... her daughter, "you'se my moder an' I ought ter be de fust one ter help ease you up. I just dun declar dat you'se got ter take Vilet ter help you up. I kin spar her, an' I will spar her. She's strong an' gwine on twelve, an' de babies is gitten so dat dey ain't aroun' under my feet all de time. Vilet's spry an' kin run here an' dar an' fill de orders. She'd ease ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... 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 Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... a moment capsized her. Brock being a good swimmer, struck out to get clear of his companions, his ears assailed by their cries, mingled with the hissing of water and the howling of the storm. After a moment or so he swam back to help an old man to get hold of a spar; he then himself got on the boat, and stood upon its side; but finding that she was gradually settling down, he again struck off. By this time he supposed that all his companions were lost; and he began to think of the awful ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... was great with child, At length my life he spar'd: But bade me instant quit the realm, One trusty ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... a second I saw the mass of spar all tangled up with sail rise up on a wave as it drifted past. I found myself wondering why we had all been in the shadow of death only a couple of minutes before. There was no thought of danger now. I ran below for the balsam, which I ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... indicated showed the boys an object like a spar buoy apparently standing upright in the water. The next moment a swell rolled over ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... related in a conciser and equally humorous manner. It was to him that Farrar turned for an encouraging acquiescence when one of his latest Newmarket anecdotes threatened to fall flat, and with it all he found time for an occasional spar with Signor Bruno, just by way of keeping that ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... give Honora a certain repose—it was at least a spar to which to cling. With Kate's help she got over to the laboratory and put the finishing touches on things there. The President detailed two of Fulham's most devoted disciples to make a record of their ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... aboard us would have been bound to have seen her long before I had—I got a bit muddled there, with trying to think it out; and then, abruptly, the reality of the other ship, came back to me—every rope and sail and spar, you know. And I remembered how she had lifted to the heave of the sea, and how the sails had flapped in the light breeze. And the string of flags! She had been signalling. At that last, I found it just as impossible to believe that ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... the ship. "Oh, great Lord!" he loathingly drawled, "is it Damned Fools' Day again?" Her web of cordage began to grow dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out from her berth and started down the wide, swift river, a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... 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 ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... a "piece of Spar, seven feet long, and weighing two hundred pounds, has been taken from the great Spar Cave near Dubuque." We were not previously aware that O'BALDWIN, the "Irish Giant," was serving out his term of imprisonment, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... cut away the masts of the enemy's vessel, and, stripping her of everything except one old sail and a single spar, let her drift back to Tripoli, as a hint of how the new nation across the Atlantic was likely to ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of "Time!" the principals would rise from their seconds' knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until the next ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... mending sails, stretching new bunting, and getting in sea-store; boats were plying on every side, signals flying, guns firing from the men-of-war, and everything was lively as might be,—all but me. There I was, like an old water-logged timber ship, never moving a spar, but looking for all the world as though I were a settling fast to go down stern foremost: may be as how I had no objection to that same; but that's neither here nor there. Well, I sat down on the fluke of an anchor, and began a thinking if it wasn't better to go before ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... know exactly," he said, coloring; "but I'd have lashed you to some spar, or made a raft, and got you ashore ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... curtain of cloud. But Captain Macpherson coolly called out by name the men to handle the life-boat, and, with no evidence of disorder, they crowded in, none too soon! As the boat with its human freight hung in readiness for the lowering, the remaining spar of the Lord Nelson fell with ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... lips again. He had to spar for time: to divert for a while the vengeance he knew possessed the other's mind, so that he might find some chance, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... 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 quarters. The Harris farm, like fifty ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... 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 the rest As much as thou ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards a projection ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... sha-a-a-rk!" howled O'Rook, and dived under the broken main-yard, which he was piloting ashore. Coming up on the other side, he tried to clamber on it, but it rolled round and dropped him. He went down with a gurgling cry. Again he rose, grasped the spar with his left arm, glared wildly round, and clenched his right hand as if ready to hit on the nose any creature—fish, flesh, or fowl—that should ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 drooping tail. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... Humanity, Decorum and Sobriety of Manners; who with great Spirit, Genius, and Courage, to his lasting Honour, has publickly expos'd the Absurdities, Vices, and Follies, that stain and disgrace the Theatre; in which Censure he has not spar'd his own Performances: One who has express'd a warm Zeal on this Subject, and declar'd his generous Intention, if it were in his Power, to cleanse these polluted Places, and not to suffer a Comedy to be presented ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... ship of Rio Sailed out into the blue, And nine and ninety monkeys Were all her jovial crew. From bo'sun to the cabin boy, From quarter to caboose, There weren't a stitch of calico To breech 'em - tight or loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by their ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... 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
... classed as perfunctory, an essential part of the occasion. But at night the spirit of the people showed beyond mistake. Not only were the streets arched and bordered with festoons of colored incandescent lights, not only were the battleships in the harbor strung with fiery beads to the topmost spar, but every window in every house in the city bore its light. Fine houses had candelabra behind the glass, and the poorest mere tapers, but everywhere the same ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... shrill, guttural, savage war-cry of the Moslems rent the air, and the captain fell, the first victim to their blood-thirsty fury, with a deep cut across the face and forehead; in a moment, however, a heavy spar sang through the air down on the head of the Moslem leader and laid him low. The helmsman, the brother of the fallen pilot, had wielded it with the might of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... saying what might happen if there is only one. It has made me anxious many a time, when we had a bad spell of weather, as to how the Tiger would get on if I happened to be washed overboard by a sea or killed by a falling spar. Well, Master Embleton, I can see that I shall have no difficulty in making a first-rate sailor of you. Have ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... 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, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... everywhere now, and the uprights all in place. Moths were busy in all directions, showing the way, while bats by the dozen darted like black lightning from corner to corner, making sure that every spar and beam was fixed and steady. So exquisitely woven was the structure that it moved past them overhead without the faintest sound, yet so frail and so elastic that the whirring of the moths sent ripples of quivering movement through ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... was like a hare before the hounds, so quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set sails—not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. It was like having one's own country, and his cabin aboard was like his own castle—the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, and the compass above the fastened bed, the row of books, the Aberdeen ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... made a profound impression on Garfield. He happened to be on deck when the masts were carried away, but managed to scamper off without getting hurt. Whenever a vessel hove in sight after that having a broken spar or a torn sail, it was "a ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... so much better than we could her. We didn't want to fight 'cause we knowed enough to jest natu'ally be skeered. She was a one decker man o' war. We was a two decker with six guns on berth deck, an' five guns on spar deck. I never saw her after that, but I heard she was contacted by the Kearsage which sunk ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... war mare mast chart damp warp share cask lard hand warm spare mask arm land ward snare past yard sand warn game scar lake waft fray lame spar dale raft play name star gale chaff gray fame garb cape aft stay tame barb shame ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at the lad while he was telling his story. "You've got an honest face, my little man. I'll trust you. Bring aboard your baggage. People spar their way on the river every day in the year; you needn't be ashamed of it. Accidents will happen, you know." And the busy clerk turned away to ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... 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 of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... His speculations as to the 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 ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... teach him," replied I; "to-morrow I will send him into the sea after the piece of spar. I've no fear that he ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rock to rapid disintegration. Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature had cynically laid upon him. He had clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. To him it was the charter from which he could appeal to the world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse. To him it was the name, the dignity, and the fortune he brought her. It was the one thing that saved him from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of this nautical curse, she met with a series of disasters during the war, which were not attributed to ill management, but to ill luck. Thus, one time she was coming up the harbor of Boston, from a cruise, where she lost spar after spar, and topmast after topmast; and when in full sight or the town, and not much wind, over board went her fore-top-mast, and several men were drowned in their fall from the rigging. This was not ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... captain had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry words that ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... streamers; there another with nothing 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 well were the hulls of ships which had capsized, and whose ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... who had no eye for color, and no understanding of any merit in a work of art but that which arises from costliness of material, and such powers of imitation as are devoted in England to the manufacture of peaches and eggs out of Derbyshire spar. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... by fasting cannot mourn their dead; For day by day successive numbers fall; Where were the respite then from ceaseless fast? Behoves us bury out of sight our dead, Steeling our hearts, and weeping but a day; And we, the rest, whom cruel war has spar'd, Should first with food and wine recruit out strength; Then, girding on our arms, the livelong day Maintain the war, unwearied; then let none Require a farther summons to the field; (And woe to him who loit'ring by the ships That summons hears;) but with united force Against the Trojans wake ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... foolishly refused, the party of boys commissioned by the master to exact it almost always succeeded, either by force or stratagem, in securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the institution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until redeemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was stowed up over the rafters. These peat-expeditions, which were intensely popular in the school, gave noble exercise to the faculties. It was always a great ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian glass ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... fellows would be shocked at the idea of such a thing. All that happens now is exhibition sparring bouts between members of the club. It is true that next day the papers very tactlessly report the friendly exhibition spar as if it had been quite a serious affair, but that is not the fault ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... (sis' i ly). The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Silenus (si le' nus). The foster-father of Bacchus. Sleipnir (slap' ner). The swift eight-legged horse of Odin. Sonmus (som' nus). The king of sleep. Sparta (spar' ta). Ancient ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... masthead, there comes a whizzing, booming sound—and it is caught in the bolas! The mast is struck too, and the balls, whirling around and around, lash it and the yard together, with the frumpled canvas between, as tight as a spliced spar! ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... for your lives," cried Seymour, who was everywhere in advance, darting the still burning end of the large spar into the faces of his antagonists, who recoiled with suffocation and pain. It was, indeed, a struggle for life; the rage of each had mounted to delirium. The English sailors, stimulated by the passions of the moment, felt neither pain nor fatigue from their previous sufferings. The want of weapons ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly desired that his ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... five commissioned officers were crowded in the small cabin; the midshipmen and 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 Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... 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
... was lying, and Eudora knew it, but said nothing except to bid the girl get up and assist Sonsie with the supper. Mandy Ann had once said of her mistress to Jake, "She hain't no sperrit to spar," and Jake had replied, "Lucky for you, Mandy Ann, that she hain't no sperrit, for ef she had she'd of done pulled every har out ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... bit of the God in him, though the hero may have feet of clay and body of beast. Such were the old Vikings of the North, who spent their lives in elemental warfare, and rode out to meet death in tempest, lashed to the spar of their craft. And such, too, were the New World Vikings of the Pacific, who coasted the seas of two continents in cockle-shell ships,—planks lashed with deer thongs, calked with moss,—rapacious in their deep-sea plunderings ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... that had been gilding everything from masthead to floating spar gathered in its forces, and for one moment seemed to rest upon Liberty's torch, throwing the statue into clear relief, and then dropped rapidly behind the river's night-cloud bank, and presently lights began to glimmer far and near, the night breath rose from the water, and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Months, but Misson seeing him in a fair way of Recovery, took what Hands could be spar'd from the Bijoux, leaving her sufficient for Defence, and went out, having mounted ten of the Portuguese Guns, for he had hitherto carried but thirty, though he had Ports for forty. He stretched over to Madagascar, and coasted along ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... trickled down its side, These words it added: "Wherefore tear'st me thus? Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? Men once were we, that now are rooted here. Thy hand might well have spar'd us, had we been The souls of serpents." As a brand yet green, That burning at one end from the' other sends A groaning sound, and hisses with the wind That forces out its way, so burst at once, Forth from the broken ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... all these new things, I was eagerly on the lookout for the wreck of the Morgan City, on which my son had sailed. Nothing was visible of the ill-fated ship but a single spar, one long finger of warning held aloft. As we passed on, watching the busy boats plying from shore to shore, the Chinese on the boat chattered and jabbered faster with each other than before; we fancied they were making fun of their little Japanese brethren. We arrived at Yokohama about 9 P. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... target was then lowered over the side and cast loose. In a few minutes the six-pounders on the spar deck began to bark. "Getting the range, I guess," said "Hod," who had sneaked over from the powder division to get a look at ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... which his management of the Protestant princes was to him, and by the declaration of war which the King, as Elector of Hanover, made. I took up this negotiation therefore again. The Regent appeared to come into it. He spoke fair to the Baron de Spar, who pressed him on his side as I pressed him on mine, and promised, besides the arrears of the subsidy due to the Swedes, an immediate advance of fifty thousand crowns for the enterprise on Britain. He kept the ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... would not get out of such a row as that would be without being marked. I knows of a place over the other side of the water, not far from the New Cut, where they meet. Bill Lowe, him as comes here to spar twice a week, yer know, he goes there; he takes up with them Chartist notions, which I don't hold with no ways. I don't see nothing in them seven pints as would do anything for the ring; and that ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... dispatched a messenger to Baiae to inform Nero of what had occurred. The vessel in which she had embarked had been wrecked at sea, she said, and she had narrowly escaped destruction. She had received a severe hurt, by some falling spar, but had at length safely reached her home at Antium. She begged, however, that her son would not come to see her, as what she needed most was repose. She had sent the messenger, she said, to inform him of what had occurred only that he might rejoice with her in the signal interposition ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... tide rose so considerably at night, new moon occurring within an hour of high water, that we were much afraid of our bergs floating: they remained firm, however, even though the ice came in with so much force as to break one of our hand-masts, a fir spar of twelve inches diameter. As the high tides and the lightening of the Fury now gave us sufficient depth of water for unshipping the rudders, we did so, and laid them upon the small berg astern of us, for fear of their being damaged by ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... supposed, to the shore, he ventured upon it, only to find out that he had laboured under a mistake. He was immediately projected into the sea, and carried with the tide into the cavern; but succeeding in clasping a jagged spar of elevated rock, he gained by its aid a place of temporary safety. It is impossible to tell how many were killed by being thrown against these rocks by the relentless waves, but that numbers ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Right at the crown of the hill, most fortunately for the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... regarded by an Australian clipper or Western Ocean packet-ship in the writer's early days as a hard whole-sail breeze, perhaps with the kites taken in. It was rare that these dashing commanders ever carried away a spar, and it was not because they did not carry on, but because they knew every trick of the vessel, the wind, and the sea. It was a common saying in those days when vessels were being overpowered with canvas, "The old lady was talking to us now," ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the big field agen, I stood up on my feet, an' I sid that was my ship! She had n' e'er a sail, an' she had n' e'er a spar, an' she had n' e'er a compass, an' she had n' e'er a helm, an' she had n' no hold, an' she had n' no cabin. I could n' sail her, nor I could n' steer her, nor I could n' anchor her, nor bring her to, but she would go, wind or calm, an' she'd never come to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... given away suddenly possessed enormous values in the minds of their lucky owners. Some of the mines were developed extensively, and shipments began which have continued at intervals, but only a few of them furnished the best quality. The spar is shipped to the mills in New Jersey, where it is used for glazing crockery. Rare specimens of beryl are often found by ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... as if getting dead and buried were some sort of new indoor sport," interrupted Mollie, glad to have this old familiar enemy to spar with. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... mercury. The lower one was colored like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with a white sail and black spar, making an endless voyage across the lake of indigo. The black crosses in the sky were birds. The black lines on the left were bulrushes. And among these bulrushes a certain gloomy little object was either a ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... and like all other special buoys, such as bell buoys, gas buoys, and automatic sounding buoys, shall be placed to mark special positions either on the coast or in the approaches to harbours. (7) Buoys showing only a mast above water shall be called spar-buoys (fig. 5).[2] (8) Starboard-hand buoys shall always be painted in one colour only. (9) Port-hand buoys shall be painted of another characteristic colour, either single or parti-colour. (10) Spherical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... what makes the might of words,— Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard and wooed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the cold, green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish—let it not be he Whom thou art ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spar at each other in as knowing and English a way as we knew how—keeping a very respectful distance indeed, and trying to bear ourselves as scientifically as we could, with a keen expression ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor heard of those ridiculous wooden birds on green shafts which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, but he has something quite appropriate, and, all things considered, quite as "artistic." In the bow of his garden, astride a spar, is a blue-legged sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the lane. For this flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... pressure and tanked and aged. The different grades of varnish depend upon the treatment of the oil, the proportion of oil and turpentine, the qualities of the gums, the aging, etc. Some by rubbing give a very high polish, some give a dull waxy finish, some are for out-of-door use, as Spar varnish and carriage varnish, some are for floors, some for furniture, some are high priced, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... unconscious, drifting in the ocean, clinging to a spar, and were brought here by a sailing vessel. You had a fracture of the skull and you were half drowned. It is supposed that you were one of the passengers of the Abyssinia, which took fire and went down two days after leaving Cape Town, but as several passengers and officers ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... giving up the pursuit, as suddenly as a ship that has lost an important spar, the instant the accident occurred. Instead of following Judith's canoe, which was now lightly skimming over the water towards the south, the Hurons turned their bows towards the castle, where they soon arrived and landed. The girls, fearful that some spare paddles might be found ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... clear of the shore. The wind freshened. "The Curlew" dashed forward, rising and falling with the swells. The whole east was reddening. The dark spar of the bow-sprit rose and fell through it. It seemed a good omen to be going toward the light. Ere the sun met us on the sea, we were twelve miles out ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... sunlit cordage Behold the climbing tar, With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide, Climbing a shadow-spar! Up the glassy stream with issuing steam The cutter crawls again, All winged with cloud and buzzing loud, Like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... had roughly trimmed these giant oars, with the help of an assistant, who in the meantime seemed to have no other duty except to puff his charred black pipe, the old "Baptiste" balanced the piece of timber on a rock. Carefully testing the spar, in order to get the exact point of equilibrium, the oar maker then made a rectangular hole through the six inches of timber. The ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... some known friends face; Then coming to the body of the army He shews the sacred Senate, and forbids them To wast their force upon the Common Souldier, Whom willingly, if e're he did know pity, He would have spar'd. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... bright chamber His form we have laid; With spar, pearl and amber The walls are arrayed— Though high rolls the billow He wakes not at morn, And sponge for his pillow From rocks ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... lash you to a spar," said he, "for she can't last much longer." He ordered Sharpe ashore. Sharpe shook hands with him, and went on the rope with tears in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... all hands on the rock spontaneously gave three hearty cheers, as a favourable omen of our future exertions in pointing out more permanently the position of the rock. Even to this single spar of timber, could it be preserved, a drowning man might lay hold. When the Smeaton drifted on the 2nd of this month such a spar would have been sufficient to save us till she could ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the almost pond-like sea through which the Kammerboy steamed. Even the children were impressed by the beauty of the seascape. Far, far away against the rising moon appeared a fairylike ship sailing across its face, each spar and mast pricked out as black ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... a treat, don't they?" said Marah. "Another minute and they will be knocking away a spar." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... off the south side of the Zunga chya Ngombe, in Portuguese Ilha do Boi (Bullock), the Rhinoceros Island of our early charts. It emerges from the waters of the right bank, a mere "ponton" plumed with dark mangroves and streaked with spar-like white trunks. This is probably the "Island of Horses," where the Portuguese, flying from the victorious Hollanders, were lodged and fed by the courteous Count of Sonho; perhaps it is Battel's "Isle Calabes." The place is backed ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... they went, Shooting all in-fere, Toward the town of Nottingham, Outlaws as they were. Our king and Robin rode together, For sooth as I you say, And they shot pluck-buffet, As they went by the way; And many a buffet our king wan, Of Robin Hood that day: And nothing spar-ed good Rob-in Our king in his pay. "So God me help-e," said our king, "Thy name is nought to lere, I should not get a shot of thee, Though I ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... it be so:—And you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... I am quite ready to drop her now and for ever. But do not let us begin to spar when so little time is left to us. Let us talk of other things. Tell me that you love me, love me, love me, for those are the words that I would hear ringing in my years before they become deaf to this world and its echoes, and those are the words with which ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of Doughty's burning and spacious expanse; only to get bewildered, and the shins broken, and a great fatigue at first, in a strange land of fierce sun, hunger, glittering spar, ancient plutonic rock, and very Adam himself. But once you are acclimatized, and know the language—it takes time—there is no more London after dark, till, a wanderer returned from a forgotten land, you emerge from the interior of Arabia on the Red Sea coast again, feeling as though ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... covered it up immediately with rubbish, and defaced the country with their pick-axes; so that, to look at, no one could have suspected there was any load to be found near. I also saw them secrete a lump of spar, in which they had reason to guess there were Cornish diamonds, as they call them, and they carefully hid the bits of kellus[Footnote: 2 Kellus is the miner's name for a substance like a white soft ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... The flower, the flower of war it is, Where deep i' the midnight gloom Its waves are the waves of the sea, And the glare of battle grows, And red over hulk and spar it is, Till the grim black broadsides bloom ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... quantities of calcareous matter, which now forms a snow-white, highly crystalline basis to a breccia, including small pieces of black, glossy scoriae. A little above this, where the lime is less abundant, and the lava more compact, numerous little balls, composed of spicula of calcareous spar, radiating from common centres, occupy the interstices. In one part of Quail Island, the lime has thus been crystallised by the heat of the superincumbent lava, where it is only thirteen feet in thickness; nor had the lava been originally thicker, and since reduced by degradation, as could be ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... "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 own reflection ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... sailors descended again, carrying with them a spar some twenty feet long. With immense difficulty this was lowered to the spot which the boys had reached. One of the sailors had brought down a lantern, and by its light a block was lashed to the end, and a long rope roved through it. Then a shorter rope was fastened to the end ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... feet from the ground the air-craft buckled up and fell to the ground. A large piece of the lower left wing, composing the whole of the front spar between the fuselage and the first upright, was picked up at least 100 yards from the spot where the air-craft struck ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... to the house with ye, an' hev it done to onct," said Jim, sententiously. "I hev about an hour to spar, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... same time books on chemistry, 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 at another. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... standing under a mixed confusion of masts and spars and sails, marvellous to behold, which yet she also saw was no confusion at all, but complicated and systematic order. How much those midshipmen must have to learn, though, if they were to know the names and uses and handling of every spar and every rope and each sail among them! as Dolly knew they must. Her eye came back to the deck. What order there too; what neatness; why it was beautiful; and the uniforms here and there, and the sailors' hats and jackets, filled ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... thirty-two pounders opened fire on the 10th, and by hot shot set fire that evening to the "Charon" frigate, making a sight of marvellous grandeur, for the ship became one mass of fire from the water's edge to her spintle-heads, all her ports belching flame and each spar and every rope ablaze at the same moment. The morning of the 11th found fifty-two pieces of artillery mounted and hurling a storm of projectiles into the British lines; and that evening, a second parallel was opened, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly over backwards, and all the contents spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... high upraised, and nob held back, [1] In awful prescience of the impending thwack, Both kiddies stood—and with prelusive spar, [2] And light manoeuvring, kindled up the war! The One, in bloom of youth—a light-weight blade— The Other, vast, gigantic, as if made, Express, by Nature, for the hammering trade; [3] But aged, slow, with stiff limbs, tottering much, And lungs, that lack'd the bellows-mender's touch. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... thus chosen was a dark, circular object, about a hundred yards away, and certainly did look very much like the extremity of some spar, the rest of which was under water. Whatever it was, however, it served well enough for their present purpose, and no one took any further interest in it, except as the point toward which the paper boats should run in ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... that "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
... kint erzogen, dar an sie beide sint betrogen: sie brechent dicke Salom[o]nes l[e]re: der sprichet, swer den besmen spar, 445 da[z] der den sun vers[u]me gar: des sint die ungebatten gar [a]n' [e]re. hie vor d[o] was diu werlt s[o] sch[oe]ne, n[u] [i.]st sie worden als[o] h[oe]ne. des enwas niht w[i]lent [e]: 450 die jungen h[a]nt die ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... sighted a little full-rigged ship very close under our board in a haze; she sailed near as well as we did—I should be nearer truth if I said, near as ill; and we cleared the bow-chaser to see if we could bring a spar or two about their ears. The swell was exceedingly great; the motion of the ship beyond description; it was little wonder if our gunners should fire thrice and be still quite broad of what they aimed at. But in the meanwhile the chase had cleared a stern gun, the thickness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dazed and dumb, followed the others. They found the little room, where they had passed so many homelike hours, sadly demoralized. One of the great windows was shivered to splinters, and through it projected a heavy spar, now safely wedged from further harm, and as they gazed out through the other great panes, it was upon a scene of intense desolation. The deck was quite empty, all the crew being busy below, but it was one mass of broken timbers, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... shark and then running a little spar through his nose," whispered the bo'sun, as the men gave way and the boat surged through the water. "This here's lashed so as he can't get it out, and it keeps him from sinking, as he ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... turtle, and all the iron shore was firing at her.... She turned at last in freer water and came down the Roads. Through the port we could see the Cumberland that we had rammed. She had listed to port and was sinking. The water had reached her main deck; all her men were now on the spar deck, where they yet served the pivot guns. She fought to the last. A man of ours, stepping for one moment through a port to the outside of the turtle's shell, was cut in two. As the water rose and rose, the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... precious lives of her crew had been sacrificed; but the skipper was as dissatisfied as the skipper of a lake sloop could be; more so, probably, than if the vessel had gone to the bottom, and left him clinging for life to a lone spar on the angry waters, for men are often more reasonable under great ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... seems to be spar varnish. This keeps out moisture. It has two disadvantages, however; it cracks after much bending, and it is too shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... condition. The solid bulwarks were rent and shattered, as indeed was her whole hull; near the waterline were nailed sheets of lead, plainly in order to keep the water from entering the shot-holes; she had only one mast; and that was splintered in more than one place; a spar had been rigged up on to the stump of the bowsprit. The high poop such as distinguished the Spanish vessels was in the same deplorable condition; as well as the figure-head, which represented a beardless man with ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... he ran us a rare race with the main-royal yard, we getting the mizzen spar below but a second or two in advance of ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 at home. His look was also seen by our worthy host, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have an ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde |
