"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pervade us. This duplicity in life seems to me at times ineradicable, at times like the confusing of something essentially simple, like the duplication when one looks through a doubly refracting medium. You think in this latter mood that you have only to turn the crystal of Iceland spar about in order to have the whole thing plain. But you never get it plain. I have been doing my halting utmost to get down sincerely and simply my vision of life and duty. I have permitted myself no defensive restraints; I have shamelessly written my starkest, and it is plain to me that a ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... swept over Patsy. She came back to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post—for all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel more deserted—more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind, ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... 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 and choking ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... very barn-yard, Where muster daily the prime cocks o' the game, Ruffle their pinions, crow till they are hoarse, And spar about a barleycorn. Here too chickens, The callow, unfledged brood of forward folly, Learn first to rear the crest, and aim the spur, And tune their note like full-plumed Chanticleer. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... world mantled in white simarre Arachne-spun with argent woof; her wede Starred with strange crystals wrought from frozen spar, Sprent with pearl frost-flowers; girt with diamond brede, Rubied with berries red as drops of blood, Befringed with gelid, many-irised gems; Broidered with lace weft of an elfin brood— Hoar filagree to ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... critical moment a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I seized upon it as the last hope ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... presently she was bearing on us, and was ere long so close aboard that we could see her every spar and rope, and her folk all gathered to the windward, knights, sergeants, archers, and mariners, to gaze at us and mock us; and huge and devilish laughter arose from amongst them as she ploughed the water so close beside us, that one might well-nigh have cast a morsel of bread aboard ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... want bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know—eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the forecastle. Fortunately it continued smooth, and we were no longer troubled with smoke. Shot after shot went hissing through the air after her; a number tore through the sails or rigging, but not a spar was touched nor an important rope cut. We could see some of her crew aloft reeving and stopping braces and ready to repair any damage done, working as coolly under fire as old man-of-war's men. But while we ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... trailing saffron scarf of cloud; there, the inverted silhouettes of two fish-wives are conical shapes, their coifs and wet skirts startlingly distinct in tones; beyond, sails a fantastic fleet, with polychrome sails, each spar, masthead, and wrinkled sail as sharply outlined as if chiselled in relief. Presently these miniature pictures fade as the light fades. Blacker grows the mud, and there is less and less of it; the silhouetted shapes ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... a vessel's keel and explode the torpedo when she reached the proper position. General Beauregard, however, had positively forbidden that she should be used as a submarine any longer on account of her disastrous behavior, and on this occasion she was provided with a long spar sticking out from her nose, on the end of which was one hundred pounds of powder in a copper cylinder provided with four extremely sensitive tubes of lead containing a highly explosive mixture, which would ignite upon contact with a ship's ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... had an opportunity of examining. It rested on three wheels, the two hind ones by far larger than that in front, which merely served to sustain the equilibrium of the body and to steer. The material was the silver-like metal of which most Martial vessels and furniture are formed, every spar, pole, and cross-piece being a hollow cylinder; a construction which, with the extreme lightness of the metal itself, made the carriage far lighter than any I had seen on Earth. The body consisted of a seat with sides, back, and footboard, wide enough to accommodate ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... we don't think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hurried off in search of fresh enemies. They soon came to the door of a large building; it was bolted and barred. "The pirates are inside here, my lads, there can be no doubt of it," shouted Mr Thorn. They soon found a spar, a brig's topmast. The heel made a capital battering-ram, and with a cheery "Yeo, ho, ho!" the seamen gave many a heavy blow against the oaken door. It cracked and cracked and groaned, and at length, with ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... spar-aluminite outer skin of the ship grew bright with the red neon glare. Another ship, from China, dropped slowly to its stage near by, and the unloaders swarmed about the pneumatic tubes to receive the mail. The teleradio was shouting news of a failure ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... side when the steamer was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. With the first terrible lurch we were both thrown headlong into the water. I did my utmost to save her, but it was not to be. A floating spar struck her, and she ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Brewster that certain natural specimens of Iceland spar are traversed by thin twin strata. A convergent beam, reflected at a nearly grazing incidence from the twin planes, depicts upon the screen an arc of light, which is interrupted by a dark spot corresponding to the plane of symmetry. [Shown.] A similar experiment may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... water; notwithstanding it high state the water remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Indian 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 boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a piece of tarred ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... glasses and saw that it was constructing a nest, so allowing a reasonable time to elapse (nine days or so) I went and took the nest. It was placed on the outer end of a bough, about 40 feet up a high pine, and I had to take the nest by means of a spar lashed at right angles to the tree, the outer extremity of which was supported by a rope fastened to the top of the pine. The nest was a very solid, deep cup, of grass, fibres, and lichens externally, and lined with hair and feathers. It contained four white ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... 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 Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Wealth—what would have been wealth to him—lay within his reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive—at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 'em;—and then it'll all clear up as quiet and calm as a Simsbury Sunday; and you wouldn't know it could be squally, if 'twan't for the sail that you hadn't had a chance to furl was drove to ribbons, and here an' there a stout spar snapped like a cornstalk, or the bulwarks stove by a heavy sea. There's queer things to be heerd, too, in them parts: cries to wind'ard like a drowndin' man, and you can't never find him; noises right under the keel; bells ringin' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the Swash with great rapidity, and the brig made a bold push at the Stepping-Stones. Spike was a capital pilot. He insisted if he could once gain sight of the spar that was moored on those rocks for a buoy, he should run with great confidence. The two lights were of great assistance, of course; but the revenue vessel could see these lights as well as the brig, and ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... shoe man. "I had called on him many times. He was such a thoroughbred gentleman and treated me so courteously that I could never press matters upon him. There are merchants, you know, of this kind. I'd really rather have a man spar me with bare 'knucks' than with eight-ounce pillows. This gives you a better chance to land a knock-out blow. But there is a way of getting at every merchant in the world. The thing to do is ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... increased by new arrivals from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be cool and tranquil ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... vengeance; for the first idea that struck the captain was, "the utter impossibility of finding anything in this way, in all Leaphigh, befitting a lord high admiral of his length of keel; for, as to going in an ordinary monikin queue, why, he should look like a three-decked ship, with a brig's spar stepped for a lower mast!" Dr. Reasono, however, had kindly removed the embarrassment, by conducting him to the cabinet of natural history, where three suitable appendages had been found, viz., two ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in her blue-spar eyes the same kind of softness that he noticed in people's voices this afternoon, a softness which somehow reminded him of a funeral, Fifi's ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... two men on board a ship who can do that, for there is never any 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
... he was no 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
... by, instinctively caught hold of it—just as he had grasped the jib-boom of the Serapis—and, at the same moment, hearing the call to take possession, in the valiant excitement of the occasion, he leaped upon the spar, and made a rush for the stranger's deck, thinking, of course, that he would be immediately followed by the regular boarders. But the sails of the strange ship suddenly filled; she began to glide through the sea; her spanker-boom, not having at all entangled itself, offering no ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... me," he answered. "I'm all rawhide and whalebone, and it isn't in you to hurt me. Confound you, I'll get you at something or other yet. Want to spar with ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... the window, but could not speak. "Why, it was your husband himself," continued the generous seaman. "He and three others saved themselves on a spar, when the Blessing turned bottom upwards. The brig will beat into the bay by daylight, with this wind, and you'll see him here to-morrow. There's the comfort I bring you, ...
— The Wives of The Dead - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... blinds covering the sight of the little craft, but capable of being shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach in any ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... 354 is a "birdsmouth joint," a simple joint which can be readily made by the handsaw, used when a spar fits on the wall plate. A nail is shown securing ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... and though the flood of light that dyed the water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... boulders lie piled to the east in a heap, where the waves that try to take the rock in flank leap amongst them, and roll them over higher and higher, to come rumbling down as if they were tiny pebbles instead of rounded masses of granite and spar-veined stone a quarter, half, and a ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... know, that long experience which alone can give a seaman thorough knowledge of all his perils even before they are apparent. I felt no apprehensions, therefore; and when I saw how Mr. Kelson was overhauling every rope and sail and spar, and making everything snug alow and aloft, I only congratulated myself on having an officer who kept the men too busy to get into mischief, and lost no opportunity for putting and keeping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in this enlightened age breaking loose in that manner! It's suicide. He could be arrested for the attempt in this State. Is that strong enough for you? You surely know how I feel now, don't you? Come on, Betty dear! Let's not spar in that foolish way any longer. Remember all I said yesterday. It goes double today—really, I see ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... the scuppers flushed, the inventory prepared, and so, once again, the course was set for a port in which to dispose of their cargo. The argus-eyed lookout stationed far up in the foremast scanned every point of the far-reaching horizon, signalling to his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... now fairly 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 ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... For a time that seemed endless there was silence, save for a shout now and then, and a thud that might be caused by the work of replacing or repairing an injured spar. Suddenly the hatch above was lifted, raised, and when our eyes became accustomed to the light we saw men swarming down the ladder into the hold. A French seaman among them relit the lamp, and we recognized the faces of some of our comrades on the Dolphin. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... suddenly upon a tangle of wreckage piled high among the rocks. It would serve as fuel, and he began to drag large pieces to his shelter. Three trips he made, and was just lifting the end of a broken spar, when right at his feet, and half-buried in the sand, he saw a white object. The night was fast approaching and he was in a hurry, but some impulse made him stoop, and there in the gathering gloom ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... took the letter to the post myself, for the old man would trust nobody but me, and indeed would have preferred taking it himself; but in winter he was always lame from the effects of a bruise he had received from a falling spar ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... him canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... a purpose in doing this. I had no intention of going to sleep. By taking note of a certain star which had appeared just to the right of a cross-spar, and by noticing its change of position, I was enabled to guess with some exactitude ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... not understand, I know, How one like me can love you so. It was a strange, strange thing. Love came So like a swift, devouring flame And burned my frail, fair-weather boat And left me on the waves afloat, With nothing but a broken spar. The distant shores seem very far; I cannot reach them, so I sink. God will forgive my sins, I think, Because I die for love, like One The good Book ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... gripped his companion's arm and pointed with his right hand to a spar-like object projecting a few feet, close to the waves, at less than a cable's length on the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... fall into a brook. The Ant struggled in vain to reach the bank, and in pity, the Dove dropped a blade of straw close beside it. Clinging to the straw like a shipwrecked sailor to a broken spar, the Ant floated safely ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... you'll have to pull right round this raffle, and come up on t'other side afore you'll be able to take me off. You can't get alongside of me from where you are; there's too much yard-arm and splintered spar stickin' out in that direction. And I daren't jump overboard and swim to you, for I've been blockaded all day by sharks— see, there's one of them now, close alongside ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... never had any right there. They 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 a dire humiliation; it was the vantage-ground from which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Under spar-enchased bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the Triton's palace walls. Pallid silver's wandering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... round under his bows. 'Officer,' said he, 'you and I should know one another, methinks.' 'Success attend your honour,' said I; 'do you remember your master-gunner when you captured the Spanish galleon, who carried away a spar or two in the action?' 'What, Tom Tackier said he: 'Heaven help thee, lad! I'd give the bounty of a good boat's crew if I could put you into sailing-trim and commission again; but here, officer, is something to drink to old acquaintance with, and if you can find your way on board the Peranga ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... nothing in it that was particularly new. The captain dismissed the men good-humouredly to the care of cook and steward: it was only the steerage passenger who required to be put under the doctor's care. It seemed that he had been hurt by the falling of a spar, and severely scorched in trying to save a child who was in imminent danger; and, though he had at first been the most cheery and hopeful of the party, his strength had soon failed, and he had lain half or wholly unconscious for the greater part of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... chamber, but the night was too fine for bed. He did not feel sleepy, and he went along the road he had come by; the church was an opaque mass, the spire alone showing in the violet twilight, like some supernatural spar on a ship far out at sea. He attempted to conjure to his tired brain the features, the expression, of the girl. They would not reappear; ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... face shall be called pillar buoys (fig. 4), 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 buoys ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Whose bark was lost where now the dolphins play; Save them that by the fabled shore, Down the pale stream are washed away, Far to the reef of bones are borne; And never revisits them the light, Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more; Nor heed they now the lone bird's flight Round the lone spar where mid-sea ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground. Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!"—sure as fate Up the English ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... more dan five or six hundred; Aunt Jemimer can gib her spar time de next six weeks pickin' 'em out; she'll enj'y it, but dat shot ob mine scared off de mad dog, and yer oughter be tankful to me, uncle, ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... spoken, and after them came silence—such a silence as could be felt. Once the hands that gripped Crowther's seemed about to slacken, and then in a moment they tightened again as the hands of a drowning man clinging to a spar. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... 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 with gold bands. ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many cuts d'take to sharpen a spar," ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... into it, perhaps she might hide from the savages. It was her one possible chance of escape. The girl moved along the edge of the precipice trying to find a way down that was not sheer. An arrowweed thicket had struggled up from a jutting spar of rock. Below this was a ridge where her foot might find a support. Beyond was a rock wall that disappeared into empty space. But 'Mona could not choose. She must take this ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... glides amid the vertical rocks—walls of crystal spar—shutting in the river, touching as it seems the blue heavens, peak, parapet, ramparts taking multiform hues under the shifting clouds, now of rich amber, now dazzlingly white, now deep purple or roseate. And ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... frail spar, Bella bravely took up arms against her sea of troubles, and rode out the storm. When her lover came to know his fate, she hid her heart, and answered "no," finding a bitter satisfaction in the end, for Harry was right, and, when the fortune was denied ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... gate that was such a cumbrous affair—reminding you of Gaza—you might easily lift from its hinges. The lofty dove-cote, which seemed to rise like a monument of art before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box upon a tall spar of hemlock. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... simplicity and grandeur.' Here, again, the coffin had to be lifted, and 'it was most striking to see the absolute silence with which the men moved the monstrous weight at a sign from the captain's hand.' The only sound was when a spar snapped in the hands of a 'giant of a fellow, who was lifting with it. There was a respectful delicacy in every motion of these men which combined beautifully with their immense, quiet, controlled strength, and impressed me very much. After a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the point of sailing on the Great Lakes, it was requisite to dress the yacht in her proper array, with her high tapering masts; the cords of her rigging stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture; and so equipped, as to give her the appearance of a majestic, white winged sea-bird resting ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... captain sing out, but the rest held on and gained the foretop. Seventeen of us got over the mizzentop, and with our knives fell to hacking away at such running gear as we could come at to serve as lashings. None of us touched the mainmast, for we all knew, now the ship had broken her back, that that spar was doomed, and the reason why the captain had called to the men to come aft was because he was afraid that when the mainmast went it would drag the foremast, that rocked in its step with every move, with it. I was next the captain ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... dich treulich warnen, O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen, Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh', Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh. Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren, Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren. Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen. Dass stete Lieb' und Treu' aufwachs' ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that I haf been puttin' in the Germania Spar Bank for such a trouble. I had more as that, but we haf had bad luck. My uncle he will ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... invalid. On the contrary, England ought rather to promote, in the interests of peace and order, the maintenance of the territorial divisions then made. At the same time, England, amid the storm, ought not to persist in clinging to a wreck if a safe spar is within her reach. He recognised that Austria could hardly restore her sway in Italy, and was not in a position to confront the cost of a protracted war, in which France was certain to take sides against her. He, therefore, thought it ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... and with twenty of her crew killed and thirty wounded. Sterrett, having no orders to make captures, threw all the guns and ammunition of the Tripoli overboard, cut away her remaining masts, and left her with only one spar and a single sail to drift back to Tripoli, as a hint to the Bashaw ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... point at which the boats had disappeared, and during the night, which turned out gusty and threatening, kept making short tacks, while lanterns were hung at the mast-heads, and a huge torch, or rather a small bonfire, of tarred materials was slung at the end of a spar and thrust out over the stern of the ship. But for many hours there was no sign of the boats, and the crew of the Dolphin began to entertain the most gloomy forebodings ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... upon him and his companion bodily. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. This was a thing he had once been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... rather more difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, M1. A small hole is pierced in the front side of the elevator ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... hero had never had a more adroit counsel. Like a good lawyer, Douglas seemed to feel himself in duty bound to spar for every technical advantage, and to construe the law, wherever possible, in favor of his client. At the same time he did not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... our vision to the gloom; when, both of these ends being attained, we advanced a few paces into the cave, and a sight of the most indescribable sublimity burst upon us. The appearance was that of a huge Gothic cathedral, having its roof supported upon pillars of spar, moulded into the most regular shapes, and fluted and carved after the most exact models of architecture. The roof itself was indeed too lofty to be discerned, nor could the eye penetrate to anything like an extremity, all beyond a certain extent being wrapped in the most ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... h[a]nt ir 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 alten ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... atomic weight 137.37 [O16]), one of the metallic chemical elements included in the group of the alkaline earths. It takes its name from the Greek [Greek: barus] (heavy) on account of its presence in barytes or heavy spar which was first investigated in 1602 by V. Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently called Bolognian phosphorus. In 1774 K. W. Scheele, in examining ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... spirit of prophecy. Sicily (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' ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... have obtained a certain regularity of structure, the form is often hexagonal, or six-sided, resembling particular kinds of spar, and the emerald. Patrin, during his travels in the deserts of Oriental Tartary, discovered when breaking the Asiatic emerald, if fresh taken from the matrix, not only the same alternate concave and convex fractures which sometimes characterize the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... 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 of your ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and, at last drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar! But Hercules, the instant he set eyes on this strange figure, was convinced that it could be no other than the Old One, who was to direct ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white. Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... walk down to the Navy Yard early on a summer's morning, and sitting down upon an anchor or spar, would enter into conversation with the surprised and delighted shipwrights. He asked many questions of these artisans, who would take the utmost ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... ... 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
... sir? I didn't know but it might turn out to be galley-news. Pray what is the rumpus all about, Admiral Bluewater? for, I never could get that story fidded properly, so as to set up the rigging, and have the spar ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... their wars with the English Archimedes of Syracuse who at that time was living at the court of Ecliderides, King of the Cirodastri. And in maritime warfare he ordered that the ships should have tall masts, and that on their tops there should be a spar fixed [Footnote 6: Compare No. 1115.] of 40 feet long and one third of a foot thick. At one end of this was a small grappling iron and at the other a counterpoise; and there was also attached 12 feet of chain; and, at the end of this chain, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... sprang into view, outlined in electricity from stem to stern, every spar and funnel and contour of hull and ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... his fine hair cropped to the roots; his delicate features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months still, however, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... water-cask—was the heaviest of all. He struggled with it and once nearly went down, so tired was he, but he got it ashore, and the basket of biscuits, too, and some other things. The boat, floating more lightly, he now pulled to the strand; then he took out the spar and the sail. This done, he gazed around; the place was deserted by man, though of birds and crabs and other crawling objects there were a-plenty. Mr. Heatherbloom stood with knitted brow; it was a time for contemplation, visual and mental. For the latter he ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... which still remained as when I had left it at the 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 ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... a wavering glance, dark and full of fearsome distrust. The child ran back, surprised to her knee. But the two, standing before each other in sunlight with clasped hands, had heard nothing, had seen nothing and no one. Three feet away from them in the shade a seaman sat on a spar, very busy splicing a strop, and dipping his fingers into a tar-pot, as if ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... in the southern part of the country were called Spar-tans, and they were noted for their simple habits and their brav-er-y. The name of their land was La-co'ni-a, and so ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of some ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 sound of her guns was like a lessening thunder. One by one ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... subjects the 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 latter ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 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
... with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, muffling the sea, day after day fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... about one o'clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy, and attaching myself to the fortunes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... yacht was so great that before the two dazed salts on board realized what had happened their master was far astern. They bustled to bring the Enchantress about and to come to his rescue in the dingy. Stunned by the blow of the—spar, he had gone down like a stone; so, in all probability, they would have been too late. When he came up the second time it was on the port bow of the Firefly, but completely out of reach. Giving the tiller to her friend, and stripping off superfluous apparel, Mabel jumped overboard in time to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... in excited tones as they made their way forward. If the object sticking above the gully's edge proved actually to be a mast it was in all probability a spar of the ship they sought. The thought put new life into every one and they hurried forward over the hard snow at ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... left Of a poor Boor, by day-light, by night no body, You might have spar'd your Drum, and Guns, and Pikes too For I am none that will stand out Sir, I. You may take me in with a walking Stick, Even when you please, and ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... grew your quarrell? Ste. This ancient Ruffian Sir, whose life I haue spar'd at sute of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... maximus hres Corpore, progressus cm pubertatis ad annos Esset, res gessit multas iuueniliter audax, Asciscens comites quo spar sibi iunxerat tas, Nil tamen iniust commisit, nil tamen vnquam Extra virtutis normam, sapientibus qu Ac ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... Spar' ta—a town in the southern part of the Peloponnesus, on the Eurotas. It was the chief city of Lacedaemon and the home of Menelaos and Helen. It had no walls, but its acropolis was covered with temples. Ancient Sparta was noted for the bravery of its people. At present Sparta ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... the plain, we came about midday to the seaboard, and there we spied, lying in a sheltered bay, a long galley with three masts, each dressed with a single cross-spar for carrying a leg-of-mutton sail, and on the shore a couple of ship's boats with a company of men waiting to transport our goods and us aboard. And here our hearts quaked a bit at the thought of trusting ourselves in the hands of these same murderous-looking pirates. Nevertheless, when ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... sailor, "have a care; you should keep a brighter look-out. You've run me down, and might have carried away a spar or two." ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... the 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
... only 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 ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... that is how my blood shows itself!' I stood beside the corpse, and stared in suspense. Would not those dead eyes move, would not those stiff lips quiver? No! all was still; the very seaweed seemed lifeless where the breakers had flung it; even the gulls had flown; not a broken spar anywhere, not a fragment of wood, nor a bit of rigging. On all sides emptiness ... only he and I, and in the distance the sounding sea. I looked back; the same emptiness there: a ridge of lifeless downs on the horizon ... that was all! ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 call ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... all these drawings are finished the pieces of glass must be immersed one by one in a square leaden box or receiver, where they are to be submitted to the action of Hydroflouric Acid Gas, made by acting on Powdered Flour-Spar by Concentrated Sulphuric Acid. When the glasses are sufficiently corroded, they are to be taken out, and the wax is to be removed by first dipping them in warm and then in hot water, or by washing with turpentine or benzine. Various colors may be applied ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... the least stop, when their angry hands Were lifted up against 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
... broken rope; and then we began, as we rose and fell on the sea, to look about and muster how many we were. The crew, including the captain, was seven hands, but we were sure there were eight men sitting on the mast. It was too dark to see faces; but you could see the dark figures clinging to the spar. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... story had gone aloft to take in sail, when it was discovered that the vessel was among breakers; and when she struck he was dashed from the rigging. He could give no account of what further happened, beyond remembering that he was clinging at one time to a spar, and saw his ship backing (as he ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three .. minutes or ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... play'd my fillie sic a shavie, She's a' bedevil'd with the spavie. My fur ahin's[11] a wordy beast, As e'er in tug or tow was trac'd. The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, A d—n'd red wud Kilburnie blastie! Forbye a cowt o' cowt's the wale, As ever ran afore a tail. If he be spar'd to be a beast, He'll draw me fifteen pun' at least.— Wheel carriages I ha'e but few, Three carts, an' twa are feckly new; Ae auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, Ae leg an' baith the trams are broken; I made a poker o' the spin'le, An' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 'nothing particular happened.' Perhaps some of us would have regarded it differently. 'Passed a spar, but not near enough to see what it was.' They saw some whales blow; there were flying-fish skimming the seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... and were seen drifting away broadside on to the wind and tide, whilst others made sail, as the only alternative to escape from what they evidently considered certain destruction. At daylight on the morning of the 12th, not a spar of the boom was anywhere visible, and, with the exception of the Foudroyant and Cassard, the whole of the enemy's vessels were helplessly aground. The flag-ship, L'Ocean, a three-decker, drawing ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... daylight we mustered at quarters, and found that 16 officers and men were killed, and 120 wounded; the three lower masts badly wounded, every spar wounded, except the spanker-boom; the shrouds cut in all parts, leaving the masts unsupported, which would have fallen had there been the least motion; the running gear entirely cut to pieces; the boats all shot through; the bulwarks riddled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... are made of duck, and, except for spar-deck guns where they are exposed to the weather, should not be painted, but they, as well as the staves, should be kept clean by scrubbing. A becket should be attached to the end to haul them ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... timber, and deluging her decks with clouds of spray which, from there being a head sea, leapt up from her weather bow as high as the foretopsail. "I want to get into Arrecifos Lagoon as quickly as I can, even if we do lose a light spar or two. I'm no navigator, as you know, but I know the Solomons as well as any man, for I've been trading and nigger-catching there for six years at a stretch—a long time ago; and out here, where we are, we're safe; there's a clear run of six hundred miles, free of any danger. So the old skipper ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... undress, and helped him to bed, in the kindest manner possible, and then sat down by the bedside and chuckled very much; while Mr Feeder, B.A., leaning over the bottom of the bedstead, set all the little bristles on his head bolt upright with his bony hands, and then made believe to spar at Paul with great science, on account of his being all right again, which was so uncommonly facetious, and kind too in Mr Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether it was best to laugh or cry at him, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in tow, doctor," he said, with the men still rowing and the sail flapping; then a little spar was set up from the stern, and a triangular sail hoisted from the bows ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... practice you can tie this knot almost instantly and by merely throwing a couple of turns around a post, two half-hitches may be formed instantly. This knot will hold forever without loosening, and even on a smooth, round stick or spar it will stand an enormous strain without slipping. A more secure knot for this same purpose is the "Clove Hitch" (Fig. 36), sometimes known as the "Builders' Hitch." To make this, pass the end of rope around ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... the sod the stubble of the corn-field. Nothing signaled her destruction except the exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot for a few hours, and then went on ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... fearful task. One moment the great seas lifted him high into the air, and the next down he came again till the massive spar crashed on to the deck of the San Antonio with such a shock that he nearly flew from it like a stone from a sling. Yet he hung on, and, biding his chance, seized a broken stay-rope that dangled from the end of the bowsprit like a lash from a whip, and began to slide ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination to subdue difficulties, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... been having a little spar, Mrs. Cullingworth," said I. "Your husband was complaining that he never got ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... in the deck, or in the rails of the poop and forecastle. They were of small size, and revolved in strong iron pivot rings, so that the man firing them might turn them in any direction he wished. They were of especial service in sweeping the waist, the open spar-deck, between the breaks of poop and forecastle, when boarders were on board. They threw "base and bar-shot to murder near at hand"; but their usual ball was of stone, and for this reason they were called petrieroes, and petrieroes-a-braga. The harquebus-a-croc, a weapon almost exactly ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... have been explored for several miles, but I only passed in a few hundred yards. The stalactites here are very beautiful, assuming the structure of satin spar. A very clear stream of water issues out. West of the Gasconade, on Clifty Creek, is a remarkable Natural Bridge which I have elsewhere described in Geological Survey of Missouri, 1855-71, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, 5 Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 10 They must solace themselves ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... of baryta, found native and known under the name of heavy-spar, or prepared artificially by adding sulphuric acid, or a soluble sulphate, to a solution of a barytic salt. In the first mode, if the white be not well purified from free acid, it is apt to act injuriously on some pigments. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... or on the wind, she 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 terrier, Duine Uasal, who ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but badly on ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... illustration of the same principle. The heat required to generate the spark is intense; and the mechanical action, being moderate, must, to produce fire, be in the highest degree concentrated. This concentration is secured by the collision of hard substances. Calc-spar will not supply the place of flint, nor lead the place of steel, in the production of fire by collision. With the softer substances, the total heat produced may be greater than with the hard ones, but, to produce the spark, the heat ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... 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 that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... that day; but a greater was in store. In the afternoon, Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the ship, being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of the watch, and reported a large spar ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade |
