"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you come to Montemirto, you shall see also your protegee, of whom you ask for news. It has just missed being disastrous. Poor Dionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to her wits, poor little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it has required all my influence, and all the awfulness of your Excellency's name, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent her expulsion by the Sisters of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the desert was staked 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 had never heard the name, or pronounced it haltingly, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... and another larger bird, probably attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... accustomed to the dusky gas-light that they read all your characteristics afar off,) they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a sullen boom, Riven by the hands of the angry North; And, like the Angel of Wrath sent forth, The whirlwind stalks with the breath of doom, Crushing, like dust 'neath its heavy tread, The last frail spar o'er the seaman's head; But nought can reach the things that lie— The lovely things that sleeping lie, Deep in the bosom of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and saw the smile of satisfaction that played upon his usually stern features. It augured hope—more than hope; and, as the wrecked mariner clings to the disjointed spar, his mind fastened upon that smile as the forerunner of a blissful reunion ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Lucilius spar'd neither the Small nor the Great, and often from the Nobles and the Patricians he stoop'd to the ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... 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 the spar or timber, then over itself; over and around the spar, ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 'How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the machine over, and you should have seen it. From top to bottom it was one mass of holes. One bullet passed through my combination and hit a can of tobacco. Another cut a main spar on one of my wings, and another hit my stabilizer, tearing it half in two. One other hit my gas tank and put a hole clear through it. Luckily my gas was low and it did not explode, but, believe me, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... visitors stepped forward and said, 'Mr. Hardy, I hope you won't go, there has been a mistake; we did not know of this. I am sure many of us are very sorry for what has occurred; stay and look on, we will all of us spar.' I looked at him, and then at my host, to see whether the latter joined in the apology. Not he, he was doing the dignified sulky, and most of the rest seemed to me to be with him. 'Will any of you spar with me?' ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of London, went ashore yesterday night on the southern reefs, and is now a total wreck. All hands saved except John Anderson, master, who was killed by a falling spar." ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... in sailed the "Southern Cross" with not a spar carried away or sail lost, perfectly sound, and in a fit state to be off again at once. She left England on the same day that we did, and arrived just a fortnight after us, and this is attributable to her having kept in low latitudes, not going ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feet from the ground the air-craft buckled up and fell to the ground. A large piece of the lower left wing, composing the whole of the front spar between the fuselage and the first upright, was picked up at least 100 yards from the spot where the air-craft ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an' troubles have come, an' mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An' mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an' mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an' shoo's flown far, far away aat o' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... mast and ropes and other fittings cost, including the sail?-I don't know what quantity of ropes they would require, but with the yawls which are used in fishing in the Firth of Forth, it generally costs about 1, 10s. to fit them with mast and oars, and the necessary spar, without the sail. The sail, I ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 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 ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... feeling like a man wrecked in mid-ocean. A spar came floating towards him. It was all he could lay hold of from the foundering ship, in which he had sailed, and sung, and laughed, and slept. He had thought to save his life by it, but another man was clinging to it, and he had to drop ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... wind blowing, but several times as the fiery ashes had been drifted upon the road, our horses had no choice but to step into them. On that eminence I picked up specimens of Geodes which abound there, being lumps resembling fruits outside, but when broken found to be a crust of bright spar, and hollow in the centre; some of these were remarkably large. The hills were fragrant with wild herbs, and ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the sorrows of the last abyss: I walked the cold black pools without a star; I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar; I heard the execrable serpent hiss; I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss; I woke alone with midnight near and far, And everlasting hunger, keen to mar; But I arose, and my reward is this: I am ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... 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
... get help. Though it seemed almost sure death to trust one's self to the surf, a sailor, with a life-preserver, jumped overboard, and, notwithstanding a current drifting him to leeward, was seen to reach the shore. A second, with the aid of a spar, followed in safety; and Sumner, encouraged by their success, sprang over also; but, either struck by some piece of the wreck, or unable to combat with the waves, he sank. Another hour or more passed by; but though persons were busy gathering into carts whatever spoil was stranded, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... deep ravine, with huge piles of gray rock jutting out more and more, till they nearly meet at top. Looking upward, through this narrow aperture, you see, high, high above you, a vaulted roof of black rock, studded with brilliant spar, like constellations in the sky, seen at midnight, from the deep clefts of a mountain. This is called the Star Chamber. It makes one think of Schiller's grand description of William Tell sternly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... as a mack'rel gull on a spar-buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or only an ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to me, as about a dozen men dragged a great spar, evidently an extra top-mast, close under the bulwarks, to secure it tight out ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... 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 or ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... and far (Spectral sail and ghostly spar) Through the mist-banks a vessel glides Biding the ridge of the ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Captain Zeb of the lightkeeper. "That her off back of the spar buoy? Let me have a squint through that glass; my eyes ain't what they used to be, when I could see a whale spout two miles t'other side of the sky line and tell how many barrels of ile he'd try out, fust look. Takes practice to keep your eyesight so's you ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... people showed beyond mistake. Not only were the streets arched and bordered with festoons of colored incandescent lights, not only were the battleships in the harbor strung with fiery beads to the topmost spar, but every window in every house in the city bore its light. Fine houses had candelabra behind the glass, and the poorest mere tapers, but everywhere the same fire of ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... reason, that no young or pretty Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, 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 ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... shot from the man-of-war had come up to us, as we had still further increased our distance from her. She, however, now felt the advantage of the stronger breeze, and our pace became more equal. Still the breeze increased. The captain stood aft, his eye apparently watching earnestly every spar and rope aloft, to see how they stood the increasing strain. Away we now flew, the water hissing under our bows, and the spray leaping up on either side, and streaming over us in thick showers. The white canvas bulged, and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... age of fourteen, would vastly exceed mine, and such other idle stuff; which Mr. Thrale had very little care about, but which Hetty doubtless thought of great importance. Be this as it may, no angry words ever passed between him and me, except perhaps now and then a little spar or so when company was by, in ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and cross binding at G and H. (A better but rather more difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, M1. A small hole is pierced ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form of the crystals, and the final product of carbonization is a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... which Dusty replied: "Ah, yes, sir. I should say so. That's the idea, sir. Those was the days!" Then the dinner came along, and we started on it. I prefer to be attended by Jumbo. Dusty's service of steak-pudding is rather in the nature of a spar. Jumbo, on the other hand, places your plate before you with the air ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... scorning the control of the elements, and keeping straight on to her destination in storm and calm alike. But in some respects the weak is strong. The ship is equal to most of the chances of a sea-experience. If the spar break, it can be replaced. If the storm rend the sails to ribbons, there are skilful hands which can find or make new ones. But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced at once to a sailing ship, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... immense column of water was thrown up and flooded her deck and engine room, and Ensign Howard fell, mortally wounded. The little floating object was responsible for all this. It was a Confederate submersible boat, only fifty feet long and nine feet in diameter, carrying a fifteen-foot spar-torpedo. She had been named David and the Confederate authorities hoped to do away by means of her with the Goliaths of the Federal navy. Manned only by five men, under the command of Lieutenant W. T. Glassel, driven by a small engine and propeller, she had ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... had found no one to conquer), the victorious party 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 a loud bang, burst ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... or wood, or even bones; but sometimes the beds and paths were on the same level, and then there were the same edgings that we now use, as Thrift, Box, Ivy, flints, &c. The paths were made of gravel, sand, spar, &c., and sometimes with coloured earths: but against this Lord Bacon made a vigorous protest: "As to the making of knots or figures with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... years old an oak might measure more at six feet, at eight, or ten feet from the ground; after five hundred years, that is, of steady growth. But if even such a monarch were taken, and by some enormous mechanic power drawn out, and its substance elongated into a tapering spar, it would not be massive enough to form this single beam. Where it starts from the stem of the vessel it is already placed as high above the level of the quay as it is from the sward to the first branch of an oak. At its root it starts high overhead, high enough for a trapeze ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... was in no sense either a brother or a special friend. They had never done anything else but spar, howerver good-naturedly; and Lorraine, in consequence, twitted him once or twice about looking ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... consolingly, "an' I 'low dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er 'count uv er ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... them: but, after all ... And yet, Who kens what green sod's to be broken for him? Queer, that I'll lie, like any innocent Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait. Sore-punished, I'm not yet knocked out: life's had My head in chancery; but I'll soon be free To spar another round or so with him, Before he sends me spinning to the ropes. And life would not ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... fagot-stick; Spar-gad a twisted stick picked at both ends to spar (Ger. sperren) or fasten ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... the sailor, "have a care; you should keep a brighter look-out. You've run me down, and might have carried away a spar ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... 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 described ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... from the mainmast told that it might fall at any moment. Passengers and crew redoubled their shouts to Poseidon and to Zeus of AEgina. A fat passenger staggered from his cabin, a huge money-bag bound to his belt,—as if gold were the safest spar to cling to in that boiling deep. Others, less frantic, gave commissions one to another, in case ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... you 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 everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 'that's as fine sperits as ever I dhrunk, for sperits like id; might I make bould to ax who does your worship dale wid?'—'Kinahan, in Dublin,' says he.—'An' a good warrant he is,' says I: so we wint on, dhrinkin' and chattin', till at last, 'Dan,' says he, 'I'd like to spar a round wid ye.' 'Oh,' says I, 'Majesty, I'd be afeard ov hurtin' ye, without the gloves.'—'Arrah, do you think it's a brat ov a boy ye're spakin' to?' says he; 'do ye're worst, Dan, and divil may care!' An' so wid that we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... 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 ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 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 merely ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... picture. Here is a second sky—faintly blue, with a 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
... are in the mineral world certain crystals, certain forms, for instance of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within them. In their case the potential has never become actual, the light is, in fact, held back by a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... instinct of life is strong in every heart, and when he found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly and grasped a spar. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... of Rio Sailed out into the blue, And nine and ninety monkeys Were all her jovial crew. From bo'sun to the cabin boy, From quarter to caboose, There weren't a stitch of calico To breech 'em - tight or loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... 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 him waist-deep ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Cumberland was complete. And albeit the vessel had been rammed and was sinking, her men ascended to the spar deck and fought till the waters engulfed them. The last shot was fired from a gun half submerged in ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... at length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... 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 hold me with ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... pains Shall be well spar'd, and your deep eloquence Be worthily applauded amongst thouse ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... 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 ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... faster and yet faster. Fortunately, the mast was a strong spar, or otherwise it would have broken off like a carrot; as, even with the half-hoisted jib, it bent like a whip, thus yielding to the motion of the little craft as she rose from the trough of the sea and leaped from one wave crest to another. The boat appeared ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... at dat, marster, an' dey gwine git hu't, mun, ef dey fool long o' me; but den dat ain't wat I come fur dis time. I come fur ter hab er talk wid yer, sar, ef yer kin spar de ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... ship, at the distance of only ten yards. The action continued, within pistol-shot, till half past three in the afternoon; when Le Genereux, with a light breeze, passed the Leander's bows, and brought itself on the starboard side, where the guns had been all nearly disabled by the wreck of the spar, which had fallen on that side. This necessarily producing a cessation of the Leander's fire, the enemy hailed, to know if the ship had surrendered. Being now a complete wreck; the decks covered with killed and wounded; and Captain Thompson himself ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... pull different ways, conflict, have no measures with, misunderstand one another; live like cat and dog; differ; dissent &c 489; have a bone to pick, have a crow to pluck with. fall out, quarrel, dispute; litigate; controvert &c (deny) 536; squabble, wrangle, jangle, brangle^, bicker, nag; spar &c (contend) 720; have words &c n.. with; fall foul of. split; break with, break squares with, part company with; declare war, try conclusions; join issue, put in issue; pick a quarrel, fasten a quarrel on; sow dissension, stir up dissension &c n.; embroil, entangle, disunite, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Mellaire's 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 ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... commenced to spar. As a matter of fact she had asked Doc Taylor, and been informed that his late patient responded to the name of Roland McGuire. But there was a hang-dog look in the doctor's eyes which had not escaped Miss Pickett, and intuitively she knew that the worthy medico had lied. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 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
... with thankful eyes across the blue expanse where a line of white marked ghostly breakers on a distant shore; where hills were reflected in the shimmering blue. But the sun was still above their tops, so he must spar for time— ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... hour the sun would be down. It was now or never. We could bring nothing to bear except the gun on 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 were looking, down came the gaff of her ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... 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 ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... his danger, but was quite calm, although his end seemed near, as only about two hundred yards now intervened between the vessel and the rocky shore. He proceeded to lash a spar across the two water barrels, which he emptied and bunged up, and then stood ready to jump overboard with them, when the vessel struck. I also was on the alert with my coil of rope, following the vessel as she drifted slowly along the shore, till she neared a spur of cliff, which runs out near the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... shadows. I move among men once more with no certainty that I am not absolutely alone. Even the passion I have felt becomes unreal as if enacted in the dim past. And that is the torture of it,—the torture of a man in a wide sea who beholds the one spar that was to rescue him drifting beyond his reach, beyond his vision. Ah, sweet Jessica, if only I could understand your grief so that in sympathy I might forget my own! But it all seems to me so unnecessary—that we should ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... 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 of ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... 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 the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily career ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... extended along on the outer side of the quay, a very large, square net suspended in the air. It was hung by means of ropes at the four corners, which met in a point above, whence a larger rope went up to a pulley which was attached to the end of a spar that projected from the stern of a boat. The net was slowly descending into the water when Rollo first caught a view of it; so he ran across, and looked over ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... not as a political banner, but as an ornament, and the only banner available for the purpose. It was left flying when the cricketers went home, but in the morning it lay prone and dishonoured. The forty-foot spar had been sawn through, and in falling had smashed the palings. Let a chorus of musical Gladstonians march through Ireland bearing the Union Jack and singing "God save the Queen," let them do it, with or without police protection, and I will gladly watch their progress, record their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... came up one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream, and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches of yellow weed—having much the look of mustard-plasters—amidst which a bit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off a new pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, brought up from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; and that, thick though it was around us, this was nothing to the thickness of it in the part of the ocean ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... of a sailor. With a small "jack" he tilted first one end of the launch and then the other and passed slings under it. Then he rigged a block and tackle to the mizzen-mast, and heaved on it till he had dragged the launch along the deck on rollers, made by sawing a spare spar into lengths, and hoisted it up on the poop deck. Then, detaching his tackle from the mast, he swung the boom overside with his tackle attached to its outer end. The end of the tackle was once more made fast to the slings supporting the launch and Bill attached another ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... house with ye, an' hev it done to onct," said Jim, sententiously. "I hev about an hour to spar, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... notwithstanding it high state the water remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, and is ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... her departure from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... at the end of an ordinary boat's spar. Then came the special torpedo boat with its great speed, then the revolving cannon and rapid-fire gun to meet the torpedo boat. At present the possible rapidity of fire is much greater than can be utilized, on account of the smoke; hence the necessity of smokeless ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... break a piece 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 actually exist in which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know—eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our boy from the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... followed the fearful sound. English boats were plying 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, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my discovery was both affecting and suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat; and bursting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and span with green and white paint, the ubiquitous Calcutta crows perched in serried ranks on their yards. To my mind a full-rigged ship is the most beautiful object man has ever devised, and when the dusk was falling, with every spar and rope outlined in black against the vivid crimson of the short-lived Indian sunset, the long line of shipping made a glorious picture. Nineteen years later every sailing-ship had disappeared from the Hooghly, and ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been mercifully spared the fracture of this one ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... if upon the cold, green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish—let it not be he Whom ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... drifting in the ocean, clinging to a spar, and were brought here by a sailing vessel. You had a fracture of the skull and you were half drowned. It is supposed that you were one of the passengers of the Abyssinia, which took fire and went down ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... dump had lain right at their doorway where all of them could inspect its ore, but no one had noticed the heavy spar. They had called it white quartz and dismissed it from their minds, but he had come among them with different eyes. He had gone to a school of mines, where he had learned to identify minerals, and he had kept up with the mining magazines; and while these ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... off the coast of Biscay, and rode it out without the loss of a spar or a yard; indeed, without the slightest accident or rent ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... end. I believed he would, too, for he had threatened to be the last man in Maida's world; the Countess was now the last woman in his, and he would hold on to her and her money as a drowning man grasps at a substantial spar. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Day, even if he had to send it by post-chaise. I 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 in ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... released he greatly alarmed his companions, and as long as we could see them, they shunned his society. At least eighty miles from land we had a dozen sparrows around us at once. A small hawk seized one of these birds and seated himself on a spar for the purpose of breakfasting. A fowling piece brought him to the deck, where we examined and pronounced him of the genus Falco, species NISUS, or in plain English, a sparrow hawk. During the day we saw three varieties of small birds, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... sharp sea. In the trough of it the boat was becalmed, but as she rose on the crest of the waves even the little sail set was as much as she could stand up under, and she had to be nursed carefully; for if she had fallen off, one breaker would have swamped us, or any accident to sail or spar would have been fatal: but like a gull on the waters, our brave little craft ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Esteem of Morals, Humanity, Decorum and Sobriety of Manners; who with great Spirit, Genius, and Courage, to his lasting Honour, has publickly expos'd the Absurdities, Vices, and Follies, that stain and disgrace the Theatre; in which Censure he has not spar'd his own Performances: One who has express'd a warm Zeal on this Subject, and declar'd his generous Intention, if it were in his Power, to cleanse these polluted Places, and not to suffer a Comedy to be presented ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... nothing else that would. Had she been real, I felt sure that others aboard us would have been bound to have seen her long before I had—I got a bit muddled there, with trying to think it out; and then, abruptly, the reality of the other ship, came back to me—every rope and sail and spar, you know. And I remembered how she had lifted to the heave of the sea, and how the sails had flapped in the light breeze. And the string of flags! She had been signalling. At that last, I found it just as impossible to believe that she had ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... suddenly collapse, I knew what was coming, and shouting at the top of my voice, "Look out Heck! She'll jibe!" I instinctively threw myself into the bottom of the boat to escape the boom. With a quick, sudden rush, ending in a great crash, the long heavy spar swept across the boat from starboard to port, knocking Bowsher overboard and carrying away the mast. The sloop swung around into the trough of the sea, in a tangle of sails, sheets, halyards, and standing rigging; and the next great comber came plump ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... seamanship. What they called a severe gale would have been regarded by an Australian clipper or Western Ocean packet-ship in the writer's early days as a hard whole-sail breeze, perhaps with the kites taken in. It was rare that these dashing commanders ever carried away a spar, and it was not because they did not carry on, but because they knew every trick of the vessel, the wind, and the sea. It was a common saying in those days when vessels were being overpowered with canvas, "The old lady was talking to us now," ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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
... hardy pony, the solitary patrol starts upon his lonely way. He rides up the centre valleys, ever and anon mounting a grassy hill to look seaward, reaches the West-end bar, speculates upon perchance a broken spar, an empty bottle, or a cask of beef struggling in the land-wash—now fords the shallow lake, looking well for his land-range, to escape the hole where Baker was drowned; and coming on the breeding-ground of the countless birds, his pony's hoof with a reckless smash goes crunching through a ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... least, is always kept in readiness for action in the fore part of the ship. The sharpest and strongest of these deadly weapons is generally stopped or fastened to the fore-tack bumpkin, a spar some ten or twelve feet long, projecting from the bows of a ship on each side like the horns of a snail, to which the tack or lower corner of the foresail is drawn down when the ship is on a wind. This spar, which affords good footing, not being raised ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... give Honora a certain repose—it was at least a spar to which to cling. With Kate's help she got over to the laboratory and put the finishing touches on things there. The President detailed two of Fulham's most devoted disciples to make a record of their ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... across 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 ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Mrs. Unwin, in 1796, affected him deeply, and the clouds settled thicker and thicker upon his soul. In the year before his death, he published that painfully touching poem, The Castaway, which gives an epitome of his own sufferings in the similitude of a wretch clinging to a spar in a stormy night upon ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... states that a "piece of Spar, seven feet long, and weighing two hundred pounds, has been taken from the great Spar Cave near Dubuque." We were not previously aware that O'BALDWIN, the "Irish Giant," was serving out his term of imprisonment, in the Spar Cave, but the thing has a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... running in rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was in these ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have an ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... — N. pendency[obs3], 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[obs3], flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c. v.; beetling, jutting over, overhanging, projecting; dependent; suspended ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bitter cold. The weather-side of every rope, spar, and stay was coated with ice, while all the rigging was a harp, singing and shouting under the fierce hand of the wind. The schooner, hove to, lurched and floundered through the sea, rolling her scuppers under and perpetually flooding the deck with icy salt water. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... to the defences: "I received order from General Carleton to put the extensive fortifications of Quebec in a state of repair at a time when there was not a single article of material in store with which to perform such an undertaking....My first object was to secure stout spar timber for palisading a great extent of open ground between the gates called Palace and Hope, and again from half-bastion of Cape Diamond along the brow of the cliff towards Castle St. Lewis. I began at Palace Gate, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... down upon a stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 1420 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... typhoons don't have their chronometers pop up in Shanghai a year later, I'm tellin' ye. There ain't nobody ever saw this here Devil's Admiral, sure enough, that lived to tell it, but ships don't always go down in deep water and never a boat got off or a life-preserver or a spar or a ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... 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 miles out ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... 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. He needed nothing but an island ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
