"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... close was the 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 through ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... be so, and you my noble Prince, With other Princes that may best be spar'd, Shall waite vpon your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... succeeded in bringing the surf-boat so near to the ship on the windward side as to hail the crew, and he directed them to let down a line from the end of the main yard, to leeward. The main yard is a spar which lies horizontally at the head of the main mast, and as the vessel was careened over to leeward, the end of the yard on that side would of course be depressed, and a line from it would hang down over the water, entirely clear of the vessel. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Street, in a region of rigging and sail lofts, block and pump makers, ships' stores, spar yards, gilders, carvers and workers in metal. There was a strong smell of tar and new canvas and the flat odor that rose at low water. Sailors passed, yellow powerful Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern latitudes, in red or checked shirts, blue dungarees ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... casks which had been brought by the large raft had been picked up, as well as a good many others. Those which would not float of themselves were now placed on the small raft, and the mate, taking a long spar in his hand, set out to lead the way. Four of the men took charge of the raft, while others dragged after them casks of beef and water and two of beer. Owen was thankful that no spirits had been picked up. He knew too well what would ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... drifting at a distance. At sea, everything that 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
... his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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
... 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 ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... was a Baltimore pilot-boat-built schooner, of about 70 tons burden, laden with flour, and bound for Bermuda. But three days before, in a sudden squall, they had carried away both masts short by the board, and the only spar which they had been able to rig, was a spare topmast which they had jammed into one of the pumps—fortunately she was as tight as a bottle—and stayed it the best way they could. The captain offered ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... use polarized light, polarized not in the horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourth dimension—an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossal pressures, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in the direction of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave, though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerable ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... 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 the course we ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... not have chosen a more romantic situation. The garden lies extended beneath, gay with flowers, and glittering with compartments of spar, which, though in no great purity of taste, has an enchanted effect for the first time. Two large marble basins, with jet-d'eaux seventy feet in height, divide the parterres; from the extremity of which rises a rude cliff, shaded with firs and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake Thy thirst in the waters of art, That are drawn from the streams Of love ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... of Iceland spar with a hammer, all the pieces will have shapes of a certain kind, but that does not imply that the Iceland spar was constructed for the purpose of breaking up in this way when struck. The atomic theory implies that of all possible compounds of A and B only those will ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, 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: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... jest what I had in my mind to ax you. Fact is ther' is a spar' room upsta'rs, as comfortable a room as the best of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 advisable that English diplomacy ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Ned Davis being among the first drawing out their knives from their pockets as they did so. In a few seconds the ropes were severed, and the mast and spar fell overboard, with the still loudly flapping sail. At the same moment the crew throwing themselves out on the fore-topsail yard, that sail was quickly reefed. "You must take another reef in it, Mr Matson," said the commander, "closely reef it, or that mast ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... forever doing me a service. Now, in order to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lofty bow above the seas, Which curl and fly before the breeze, The gallant vessel rides and reels, And every plunge her cable feels. The storm that tries the spar and mast Tries the main-anchor at the last: The storm above, below the rock, Chafe the thick cable ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, I heard your father's voice shout, 'Hold on, Ben!' I gave one more struggle, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... from the outside to an important position with a house he generally gets a breathing-space while the old men spar around taking his measure and seeing if he sizes up to his job. They give him the benefit of the doubt, and if he shows up strong and shifty on his feet they're apt to let him alone. But there isn't any doubt in your case; everybody's got you sized up, or thinks he has, and those who've ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... proportion of the Chinese were unable to swim, and those of them who possessed no spar or piece of plank to cling to either strove to save themselves by clutching at the nearest swimmer, or fought to tear their more fortunate companions from their supports and seize them for themselves. There were many exhibitions of mad brutality, selfishness, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... saddled. He gives the public ten minutes; if the bronco is absent at the end of ten minutes Silver Phil allows he'll introdooce about a pound of lead into where that village father does his cogitating. The bronco appears with six minutes to spar'. As it arrives, the vivacious Silver Phil jumps off the roof of the stoop—the same bein' low—an' is in the saddle an' out o' sight while as practised a hand as Huggins is pourin' out a drink. Where the trail bends 'round a mesa Silver ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... this haunted spot, where, with the ebbing tide, twenty-three wrecks, one after the other, thrust forth a rugged rib or a jagged spar to remind the passer-by ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... as she knows," ses Alf; "but there was four of them saved, so why not five? Mightn't 'e have floated away on a spar or something and been picked up? Can't you dream it three nights running, and tell 'er that you feel certain sure ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... bears, young or middle-aged, consists in boxing, catch-as-catch-can wrestling, and chasing each other to and fro. Cubs begin to spar as soon as they are old enough to stand erect on their hind feet. They take their distance as naturally as prize-fighters, and they strike, parry and dodge just as men do. They handle their front feet with far more dexterity and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... 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 veins Stream, like frostwork, o'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... peace to all mortals brings, Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, Sole comforter of minds which are oppress'd— Lo! by thy charming rod, all breathing things Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd, And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest. Since I am thine, O come,—but with that face To inward light, which thou art wont to shew— With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe; Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace, Come as thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... or granite, similar to many such mountains within the land; and they are perpendicular around, except perhaps on one part. It is demonstrable that such basaltic rock as contains zeolite and calcareous spar, as most of our whin-stones do, could not have been the eruption of a volcano, consequently those rocks must have been masses protruded in a fluid state, under an immense cover of earth at the time of their production; and they could not have risen immediately out of the sea, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... although strangers to us, sympathizing in what they perceived to be our imminent danger, stepped the light spar which acted as mast, and shook out their scanty rag of canvas in a minute. Considine meanwhile went aft, and steadying her head with an oar, held the small craft up to the wind till she lay completely over, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and ship's company. I was much gratified with the conduct of Captain Hall and Lieutenant Greenleaf, and the marines belonging to his company, in the management of six long twenty-six pounders, on the spar-deck, which I placed under his direction. Captain Decatur speaks in the highest terms of the conduct of Lieutenant Thorn and Midshipman McDonough, of No. 4, as does Captain Somers of Midshipmen Ridgely and Miller, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... she 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 of your ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... was ready enough to spar with my sister; to-night I had not the spirit. To-night, moreover, she, whom as a rule I could treat with good-humoured indifference, had power to wound. The least weighty of people speaking the truth can not be wholly disregarded. I prepared to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... qui natu 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
... the "Black Eagle," standing on the poop, holding by the remnant of a spar, issued his last orders in this fearful extremity with courageous coolness. The smaller boats had been carried away by the waves; it was in vain to think of launching the long-boat; the only chance ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... whose curiosity obliges him, to the Papers themselves, only I wish the Absolver had made Newgate the last Scene of that part of his Immorality, and by an humble acknowledgment to his Patron that redeemed him, (I hope the word will bear in this place) have spar'd his Office of Absolution in another Scene, and consequently given no occasion to believe that his disobedient humour, and turbulent nature, still proceeds daily, to cultivate his Party with the same Principles as far as ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... once local and elegant, exists at Derby, which excites the attention and loosens the purse-strings of most strangers. It is the spar-manufactory of Mr. Hall, and in it, he converts the petrified sports of nature, in the Derbyshire hills, into the luxuries of civil life. Those in London, who desire to see the products of these works, may behold them at Mawe's, in the Strand; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... the noble fellow's face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! 15 See, safe through 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! 20 The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!"—sure as fate, Up ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... no trouble to him to keep his balance, and when up like that he would twist his legs about, open them wide, put them forwards and backwards, and end by insulting me with his feet, so it seemed to me, for he would spar at me with them and make believe ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... 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 sound of her guns was like a lessening ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... spar to think. The train bound southward rattled behind him; he was sitting on the very bank of the track, so close that the engineer blew his whistle; but Jamie did not hear. So this was the end. He might as well have saved ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 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 Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Hugh. All the better; for if those scoundrels come back, as is likely enough, there is no chance of their finding us, for I can hardly see you, though I am touching you. Now we must paddle about, and try to get hold of a spar ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... 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
... there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here is ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... was something extremely appalling in the position of this ruined millionaire, who was contending desperately against his creditors for the vain appearance of splendor, with the despairing energy of a ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance of thirty servants? His agony, when he thought of his precarious ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... with two masts, the mizzen being very slight. The mainmast bore one huge sail, triangular in form, its peak extending to a considerable height above the mast. The smaller gallivats were covered with a spar deck made of split bamboos, their armament consisting of pettararoes fixed on swivels in the gunwale. But the larger vessels had a fixed deck on which were mounted six or eight cannon, from two to four pounders; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... The 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 salted ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Beyond the spar-loft the sail-loft had been set aside and fashioned most elegantly for refreshment. An immense table crossed it, behind which servants stood, and behind the servants the wall had been lined with shelves covered with cakes, oranges, apples, early peaches, melons and nectarines, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... middle of the English Channel—would have any prospect of swimming to land. That, of course, would be impracticable. But there are often other chances of life being saved, besides that of getting to land. A boat may be reached, a spar, an empty hencoop or barrel; and there are many instances on record of lives having been saved by such slight means. Another vessel, too, may be in sight, may hasten to the scene of the disaster, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... what to say to you. I am in a town which, for aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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
... and Hope, 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
... flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of 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 flying off ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... 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 profound darkness; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Phase Law. We know that by phases are designated the homogeneous substances into which a system is divided; thus carbonate of lime, lime, and carbonic acid gas are the three phases of a system which comprises Iceland spar partially dissociated into lime and carbonic acid gas. The number of phases added to the number of independent components—that is to say, bodies whose mass is left arbitrary by the chemical formulas of the substances entering into the reaction—fixes the general form of the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... armor proving a 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
... that croaking?" was the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. "Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you I But I say, my lad, how's that spar of your'n? the mate says it's in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won't have the carving ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... 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
... friends with the master of the little fishing craft and his men; and as we sat watching them in the moonlight, and looking away at the schooner, which always stood out in the distance faint and misty, as if some thing of shadow instead of real, a spar was got out from where it was lashed below the thwarts, and run out over the bows, a bolt or two holding it in its place, while the stays were made fast to the masthead and the sides of the boat. Then a large red sail was drawn out of the locker forward, bent on, run up, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... it, stranger. We owe you an apology; but you had a narrow 'squeak' of it, and but for the gal, you'd have been dangling now from yonder spar." ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... natives, living on the beach, gathered around and watched curiously the landing of our saddles and saddle-bags from the boat; presently that pushed off, and our little company sat down upon an old spar, and watched the schooner as she hoisted sails and bore away for her proper port, while we waited for the appearance of a native person of some authority to whom a letter had been directed, requesting him to provide us with horses and a guide to the house of a friend with whom we intended ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... for miles. From the chimneys of old houses, long abandoned to the rats, rose the smokes of many fires and the rush and whine of passing automobiles told of races to distant grounds. All the old mines in the district, and of neighboring districts where the precious "heavy spar" occurred, were re-located—or jumped, as the case might be—and held to await future developments. The first thing was to stake. They could prospect the ground later. Tungsten now was king. Men who ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... blossom, the delight of bees, and a goodly shade at distance of eighteen, or twenty five foot. They are also very patient of pruning; but if it taper over much, some of the collateral boughs would be spar'd, or cut off, to check the sap, which is best to be done about Midsummer; and to make it grow upright, take off the prepondering branches with discretion, and so you may correct any other ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the end of the flag-staff was shot down, and the flag fell.[20] It had been previously hanging by one halliard, the other having been cut by a piece of shell. The exultation of the enemy, however, was short-lived. Peter Hart found a spar in the fort, which answered very well as a temporary flag-staff. He nailed the flag to this, and raised it triumphantly by nailing and tying the pole firmly to a pile of gun-carriages on the parapet. This ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... to spar with a private soldier led to remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I delivered myself in some such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... small engine and screw propeller. Its chief peculiarities were two long poles or spars, which lay along its sides, projecting beyond the bows. These were the outriggers. At the projecting end of each spar was fixed an iron case, bearing some resemblance in shape and size to an elongated kettle-drum. These were the torpedoes. I heard the lieutenant explain to my mother that if one of these torpedoes chanced to explode where it hung, it would ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... deathless destiny; and a fifth group of disbelievers deny immortality because their degraded experience does not prophesy it. Many a man might say, with Autolycus, "For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it." A mind holy and loving, communing with God and an ideal world, "lighted up as a spar grot" with pure feelings and divine truths, is mirrored full of incorporeal shapes of angels, and aware of their immaterial disentanglement and eternity. A brain surcharged with fires of hatred, drowsed with filthy drugs, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... 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
... he rudely bent the spare sail to the spar; then to the lower cloth of the sail he managed to fix two of the weighty rails, and then commenced to lug the yard past the vessel's foremast. It takes a long time to tell all this, but Joe was not long, though every movement was made at the risk of his life. He hacked away two lengths ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe. One arm was in a sling and his head was bandaged. Beside him squatted Mulligan Jacobs. They were a pair. Both were blue-eyed, and both were malevolent-eyed. And they were equally emaciated. It was easy to see that they had discovered early ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... busily about, picking up those who had leapt overboard in time. Some were dragged in through the lower portholes of the English ships, and about seventy were saved altogether. For one moment a boat's crew had a sight of a helpless figure bound to a spar, and guided by a little childish swimmer, who must have gone overboard with his precious freight just before the explosion. They rowed after the brave little fellow, earnestly desiring to save him; but in darkness, in smoke, in lurid uncertain light, amid hosts of drowning ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... required for any special purpose, a large pine is felled, and the tapered, pointed top is cut off to a convenient length, the great spar being rejected and left to decay upon the ground. I have never seen pit-saws used, but as a rule, should a beam or stout plank be required, a whole tree is adzed away to produce it, and great piles of chips are ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the lagoon)—years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. He was a chief, of wild and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... demanded at the 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
... especially an ovoid vase, remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase, which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the elegant shape of the Frontal ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... daddles 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 ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... strength, and, what was even worse, I seemed to have utterly parted with all working ability. I was young, and up to within a few months life had stretched brightly before me, with the prospect of a brilliant career. And now what was I? A wretched invalid—a burden to myself and to others—a broken spar flung with other fragments of ship wrecked lives on the great ocean of Time, there to be whirled away and forgotten. But a rescue was approaching; a rescue sudden and marvellous, of which, in my wildest ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... 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 their ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Emerson, "is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no adaptation or universal applicability in man; but each has his special talent; and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... stimulus from his intercourse with his brother and Ranney, and profiting by their hints and suggestions, he plunged more eagerly into law-books than ever. He constructed a light boat, with a pair of sculls, and rigged also with a spar and sail, with which to traverse the pond, with places to secure it on the opposite shores; and early passers along the State road, that overlooked the placid waters, often marked a solitary boatman pulling a little skiff towards the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... 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 ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... pendency^, dependency; suspension, hanging &c v.; pedicel, pedicle, peduncle; tail, train, flap, skirt, pigtail, pony tail, pendulum; hangnail peg, knob, button, hook, nail, stud, ring, staple, tenterhook; fastening &c 45; spar, horse. V. be pendent &c adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle^, flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c v.; beetling, jutting over, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... him even on the sea. He had scarcely lost sight of the land when a violent storm arose, and after several hours of beating about, the vessel was driven on to some rocks, on which it dashed itself to bits. The Prince was fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending distress, mingled with the sweetest ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... godsend to her, and everybody else. She still talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy—and appeasement—which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for the moment, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with his needle over the pieces and the tattered remnant of his only white garment; and a few days afterward the fishermen on the bay were surprised to see what, on nearer approach, proved to be a rude imitation of the national flag floating from a spar above the hut. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... out for a big spar which I saw floating amid a mass of tangled cordage and splinters a few yards in front ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... 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 ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... board is of especial interest on account of the beautiful crystals of calcareous spar, which are from 1/10 to 1/4 of an inch long, and are formed on the inner sides of the skull. The skull is 5-1/2 in. wide between the fangs and 6-3/5 in. wide at the forehead, whereas the skull of the skeleton is only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... spoils an exquisite picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... clerk looked sharply 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 ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... on the table, put the hat on it and answered, not sparringly, there was nothing to spar about, but with civil indifference: ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... critical moment a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I seized upon it as the last hope of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and subjected to acids, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... been, perhaps, the worst misused man in the crew—and this notwithstanding the fact he was by far the best sailor in the port watch. But Fitzgibbon hated "damned niggers," especially did he hate "these spar-colored half-breeds," as he was fond of calling this fellow. I do believe he chose the Nigger for his watch so he might pummel him to his heart's content. Beat him up he had, constantly, and without cause, and as a result Nigger had become ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... itself in passing through a doubly refracting crystal, it could not have been foreseen that, a century and a half later, the great philosopher Arago would, by his discovery of 'chromatic polarization', be led to discern, by means of a small fragment of Iceland spar, whether solar light emanates from a solid body or a gaseous covering, or p 53 whether comets transmit light directly or ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... dawn. He might have been looking for some one with whom he had made an appointment at Charing Cross. He then backed into the hatch and went below. The big mate appeared, yawned, stooped to examine a lashed spar, did not give the sunrise so much as a glance, did not allow the ocean to see that he was even aware of its existence, but ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... said to 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 ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Right up the spar went. It would have been a heavy job for three young men of their size in civil life, but midshipmen are constantly undergoing the best sort of ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... in the middle! Oh, the half of her goes down!" "God have mercy! Is his heaven far to seek for those who drown?" Lo! when next the white, shocked faces looked with terror on the sea, Only one last clinging figure on a spar was seen ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various |
