"Tarpaulin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ($40, paper), woolen poncho ($9), rubber poncho ($4), blanket ($6), leggins, native spurs and stirrups, knife, fork, spoon, tea-pot, chocolate (tea, pure and cheap, should be purchased at Panama), candles, matches, soap, towels, and tarpaulin for wrapping up baggage. Convert your draft into paper, quantum sufficit for Guayaquil; ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... is drawn up through the cap. In the same manner as the top mast slides up through the cap of the lower mast, the topgallant-mast slides up through the cap of the top-masts. When made of iron the cap used to be called a crance.—To cap a mast-head is placing tarpaulin guards against weather. The term is applied to any covering such as lead put over iron bolts to prevent corrosion by sea-water, canvas covers over the ends of rigging, &c. &c. Also, pieces of oak laid on the upper blocks on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... country-side, stuck away in barns, covered with hay, hidden in woods. A hawk could not have discovered any of them without coming within reach of a gun. But that night he only wanted one of the machines, and it was handy and quite prepared under a tarpaulin between two ricks not a couple of miles away; he was going to Berlin with that and just one other man. Two men would be enough for ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... barn attending to the cattle. He had on a tarpaulin straw hat, and a farmer's frock of blue mixture that hung down below the tops of his cowhide boots. I looked sharply at the man, and found it was Mr. George Ripley. The "second horn" sounded; it aroused ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... a little one-horse jaunting car, consisting of a wooden seat on an axle-tree, and four poles which supported a tarpaulin to shelter us against the rain. These cars changed horses every four or five miles, and served to convey to Paris the masons from the Bourbonnais and from Auvergne, the weary pedestrians they met on the road, and soldiers lamed by their long ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... flat white face and two bright birdlike brown eyes which she never took off us. Conversation was impossible, as she had only one tooth, round which her speech whistled unintelligibly, and she hiccuped loudly once in every half-hour. We were most uncomfortable. The hood was up, and a piece of tarpaulin was stretched from it across to the coachman's seat, blocking out the view except for the little we could see ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Tripper said; "and get those hatchways up and cover the well, and lash the tarpaulin over it. It is bad enough here, it will be worse when we get into broken water near the wreck." Most of the bawleys are provided with hatches for closing the long narrow place known as the 'well,' but it is only under quite ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... board, and Adair observed that the men had got out their arms and were pulling her in towards the shore, while Jerry Bird, who acted as gunner, was standing on the forecastle, busy apparently in loading the gun mounted on it; the greater portion of which was, however, covered up with a piece of tarpaulin, so that the natives might not discover what was there. The rest of the crew not pulling had their muskets in their hands ready for use. All this ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the present occasion. It was a pair of white pants, made "sailor fashion," with a short red frock, and a patent-leather belt. These garments, owing to the coldness of the weather, were worn over their usual clothes. The hat was a tarpaulin, with the name of the club in gilt letters on the front, and upon the left breast of the frock was a ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... since we had spread our blankets, the persistent waters had soaked down and through. The thousand-foot roof had a sprung a leak. Three separate and distinct streams of water ran as from spigots. I lowered my torch. The canvas tarpaulin shone with wet, and in its exact centre glimmered a pool of water three inches deep and at least ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... bound the mouth of the sack was now cut. The officer laid the bag on its side, seized it by the bottom, and jerked forth the contents. A large package was disclosed, carefully wrapped up in impervious tarpaulin, also well tied. He was on the point of pulling open the folds at one end, when a light coloured thread of something, hanging on the outside, arrested his eye. He put his hand upon it; it felt stringy, and adhered to his fingers. 'Hold the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... and home port—information which, in his methodical German way, he desired to include in his official report to the Admiralty. And while he ratched slowly past, striving to find with his binoculars that which was not, Michael J. Murphy and his bully boys came aft with a rush, tore aside the tarpaulin that screened the stern gun and expeditiously opened fire. To Cappy Ricks' horror Murphy's first shot was a clean miss, and instantly the big sub started to submerge with a hoarse sucking sound that brought despair to Cappy Ricks' heart. She was halfway under before Murphy's gun was reloaded, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... easily extinguished. The second was during our first winter in the Antarctic, when there was a fire in the motor shed, which was formed by full petrol cases built up round the motors, and roofed with a tarpaulin. This threatened to be more serious, but was also put out without much difficulty. The third and fourth cases were during the winter which had just passed, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the last and then, alone, had stood at attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his credit for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she threw over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained jackets lying near—jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had tried hastily to help when the scythe of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... has been so wet and rough that it was impossible for the men to go for any more luggage. Happily, it is covered over with a tarpaulin from the Surrey, so we hope it will not get much damaged. That which was brought yesterday got rather wet, and we have had to unpack and dry pillows and other things. At present we are unpacking only what is absolutely ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... dirty, they had never seen the sea before, and the sight of a porpoise held them spellbound. They lived on the after-deck, mostly cooking their own food, the women and children sleeping beneath a large tarpaulin that the sailors stretched for them across the width of deck. At night they played their pipes and danced, singing, shouting, and waving their arms—always the same tune ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... 9th, after a refreshing rest and a warm breakfast, and after I had swept the deck of tacks, I got out what spare canvas there was on board, and began to sew the pieces together in the shape of a peak for my square-mainsail, the tarpaulin. The day to all appearances promised fine weather and light winds, but appearances in Tierra del Fuego do not always count. While I was wondering why no trees grew on the slope abreast of the anchorage, half minded to lay by the sail-making and land ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... on the porch, where Jean shouldered his roll of tarpaulin and blankets. His rifle, in its saddle sheath, leaned against the door. His father took it up and, half pulling it out, looked at it by the starlight. "Forty-four, eh? Wal, wal, there's shore no better, if a man can hold straight." At the moment a big gray dog trotted up to sniff at Jean. "An' ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... her bow the little craft fairly leaped through the tumbling waters. But Bill soon saw that if she was to handle in such a sea he would have to reduce speed or risk getting swamped. He therefore throttled down the engine and rigged a tarpaulin over the bow to keep out the wave crests, part of which came ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the long trail, the white of riven waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to east a little covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were scudding before the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and bearing down past a heavy-laden river barge. The latter, with tarpaulin battened snugly down over the cockpit and the seas dashing over her wash-board until she seemed under water half the time, was forging stodgily Londonwards, her bargee at the tiller ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... to tell the carpenter to stand by to cut away the topmast rigging. But the Laughing Mary, as the brig was called, was a buoyant ship and lightly sparred, and presently bringing the sea on the bow, through our seizing a small tarpaulin in the weather main shrouds, she erected her masts afresh, like some sentient creature pricking its ears for the affray, and with that showed herself game and made indifferently good ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... but the added windage of the Cactus was too much, and the entangled schooners slid away across the boiling white. Their men could be seen chopping and fighting to get them apart. The Roberta, cleared of her anchors, with a patch of tarpaulin set for'ard, was heading for the passage at the northwestern end of the lagoon. They saw her make it and drive out to sea. But the Misi and Cactus, unable to get clear of each other, went ashore on ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... beans, and potatoes. From the mess-box he brought bread and apricot pie. From a near-by spring he brought us a bright, new pail full of clear, sparkling water, but Mrs. Louderer insisted upon tea and in a short time he had it ready for us. The tarpaulin was spread on the ground for us to eat from, and soon we were showing an astonished cook just how much food two women and a child could get away with. I ate a good deal of ashes with my roast beef and we all ate more or less sand, but fastidiousness ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... enough, for had he not gone below in a mighty hurry and tricked himself out in his best toggery so soon as he understood there was no escape from the visit? Louie would have been glad enough to see him in his red shirt and tarpaulin! ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... and from under his belongings pulled out a second chest. Fitting a key to the lock, he lifted up the lid. Chris, perched on his shoulder, peered over to see the contents. They were disappointing—merely a gray powder carefully packed in a piece of tarpaulin. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Stewart were quite the best at looking after themselves, and carried more gear than all the rest of us put together. At Syderstone Common an inquisitive general ordered the tarpaulin to be taken off the General Service wagon, and the first things which caught his eye were Sharpie's tennis racket and golf clubs. At Gara munitions of war had to be left behind to find room on the truck for his patent washstand. By the time he got to Palestine Johnnie Smith really could not compete ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... and the tarpaulin which had done duty for a sail was rigged. Under the pressure of the light air the whale-boat made steering-way and a little more. The moon now made the night as light as day, and although it was slightly chilly in this latitude, we suffered little from the exposure, each settling himself ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... which suggested the final act in Dr. Livingstone's life. The girls were crying. The church lads stood alarmed and awed. Then they raised her in her camp-bed and marched with her the five miles to Ikpe. Next morning they lifted the bed into a canoe and placed her under a tarpaulin and paddled her down the Creek. They landed at Okopedi beach, where she lay in the roadway in the moonlight, scarcely breathing. The agent of a trading-house brought restoratives and sent for Dr. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... night ashore in China was a far cry from the China of my dreams ... the Cathay of Marco Polo, with its towers of porcelain.... I crept, to escape a cold drizzle, under the huge tarpaulin which covered a great stack of tinned goods—army supplies. A soldier on guard over the stack, an American soldier, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... mariner, tarpaulin, tar, salt, sea dog, Jacky, beachcomber; merman; midshipman, middy, skipper, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... been newly tarred, her bright work polished, and the water casks lashed in the waist had their hoops painted a bright yellow, not yet dry. New hemp hung in the belaying pins. The roof of the cabin, covered by a tarpaulin, gleamed with oil and yellow paint. She had been scrubbed and freshened until she had quite the ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... my future master talking with the captain of the vessel. Philip Bramble was a spare man, about five feet seven inches high, he had on his head a low-crowned tarpaulin hat, a short P-jacket (so called from the abbreviation of pilot's jacket) reached down to just above his knees. His features were regular, and, indeed, although weatherbeaten, they might be termed handsome. His nose was perfectly straight, his lips thin, his eyes gray ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... would have none of it, and reviled the song and the singer after the fashion of boys. In a moment he exclaimed: "Here—listen to me. Let's sing this," and his alto voice came out uncertainly and faintly: "Wrap Me up in My Tarpaulin Jacket." ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Turks unloading the shells, some of the drivers were talking about a strange sight they had seen down the road near Albert (pronounced Albare), when loading up at the ammunition dump. They told us that huge contraptions covered with tarpaulin were lying on the side of the road, with six-pounder guns protruding from their sides; in conversation the drivers referred to them as land boats, and some, as land dreadnaughts. Speculation ran rife as to their purpose. We were ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... countries, which, however, are barren of trees and scourged of every respectable shrub. That the showers may not find me unprepared, I pack with my hamaca an extra length of rope, to be stretched taut from foot-post to head-post, that a tarpaulin or canvas may be slung over it. When a treeless country is presented to me in prospect, I have two stout stakes prepared, and I do not move forward ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... not yet deep enough there to float the boat with any body in it. The servants handed him out the great cans they used at school-teas, full of hot coffee, and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat, covering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the door, in her waterproof, with a great fur-cloak—to throw over him, she said, when she took the oars, for she meant to have her share of the fun: it was so seldom there was any going ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... every moment to clutch the bulwark rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notes of the bosun's pipe. He saw the hands emerging from the forecastle, like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. He watched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatch opened, and a burst of smoke—black, villainous smoke—ascend to the sky, solid as a plume in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... after his visit to the factory, Lister sat one morning under a tarpaulin they had stretched across the hulk. The paint on the canvas smelt as if it burned, but the awning gave some shade and one could not front the sun on the open deck. The sea breeze had not sprung up and dazzling reflections played about the oily surface of the swell. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the cutter, and, holding up the lantern, looked down, to find an oldish man with sharp features, dark eyes, and grizzled beard, lying under a tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat. He was clothed only in a dressing gown and a blood-stained nightshirt, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... shortly, intending to ride for the point where the tarpaulin was being waved before it was too late. But as he wheeled Streak he realized that the havoc had been wrought, for the cattle nearest him were on their feet, snorting with fright—a sensation that had been communicated to them by ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to stop that foolishness. He snatched both pipes and threw them overboard. The thought of being seen from shore was almost incitement enough for murder. They refused to turn a hand to anything that night, but sat sulking below the sloping roof of reeds and tarpaulin that did duty for a deck, wedged ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... made their own camp that night aboard the boat. At each end was a short deck, and that in the rear offered space for their blanket beds. Rob undertook to sleep on top of the cargo under the edge of the great tarpaulin which covered all. They had their little Yukon stove, which accompanied them, and on the front deck, where a box of earth had been provided, they set this up and did their own cooking, ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... temporarily the more-or-less indefinite purpose which had brought him hither. He joined a cluster of watchful persons who hopefully had collected before the scrolled and ornamented wooden entrance of a tarpaulin structure larger than any of the rest. From beneath the red-and-gold portico of this edifice there issued a blocky man in a checkered suit, with a hard hat draped precariously over one ear and with a magnificent jewel ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the chief characteristics of Croesus, was quite in accord with the customs of modern pilgrimages. Conrad Lagrange, himself, skillfully fixed the pack in place—adjusting the saddle with careful hand; accurately dividing the weight, with the blankets on top, and, over all, the canvas tarpaulin folded the proper size and neatly tucked in around the ends; and finally securing the whole with the, to the uninitiated, intricate and complicated diamond hitch. The order of their march, also, would place Croesus first; which ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... seat of the Boer Government. By these remarkable State railways the short journey of thirty-two miles occupied three hours. We passed one very large Boer laager, or military camp, on the line, which looked imposing enough in the bright sunlight, with its shining array of white-tarpaulin-covered waggons; companies of mounted burghers, armed to the teeth, and sitting their ragged but well-bred ponies as if glued to the saddle, were to be seen galloping to and fro. Although the teeth of the enemy had been drawn for the present, the Boers ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... trucks should be searched at Komati Poort, and my anxiety as the train approached this neighbourhood was very great. To prolong it we were shunted on to a siding for eighteen hours either at Komati Poort or the station beyond it. Once indeed they began to search my truck, and I heard the tarpaulin rustle as they pulled at it, but luckily they did not search deep enough, so that, providentially protected, I reached Delagoa Bay at last, and crawled forth from my place of refuge and of punishment, weary, dirty, hungry, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... on a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on the tarpaulin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was breathing hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered with it. I had knowed the girl once in a friendly way, a pretty young creature, but now she was white and sorrowful ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... woman, named Tempy Ann Crawford, whom I always see, with my mind's eye, roasting coffee and stirring it with a pudding-stick, or rolling out doughnuts, which she called crullers, and holding up a fried image, said to be a little sailor boy with a tarpaulin hat on,—only his figure was injured so much by swelling in the lard kettle that his own mother wouldn't have known him; still he made very ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... once," said Karlssen, "And Bill, as was a seaman, died, So we lashed him in an old tarpaulin And tumbled him across the side; And the fun of it was that all his gear was Divided up among the crew Before that blushing human error Our ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... the chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were horribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps, and, side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow; many wore women's headgear, others had baskets on their heads; hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooed designs could be descried; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... procession in the provincial capital and had emerged into the open again last summer for a town-booming Rodeo twenty miles down the steel from Buckhorn. It looked like the dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Natural History, with every vestige of its tarpaulin top gone. But Whinnie has already sewed together a canvas covering for its weather-beaten old roof-ribs, and has put clean wheat-straw in its box-bottom, so that it makes a kingly place for my two kiddies to play. I even spotted Dinkie, enthroned ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... was a brigantine aloft, but alow she had much the same lines as the Laughing Lass." He whirled on his heel to roll to one of the covered yacht's cannon. "Looks like a harmless little toy to burn black powder, don't she?" he remarked. He stripped off the tarpaulin and the false brass muzzle to display as pretty a little Maxim as you would care to see. "Now you know all about ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Among the rest, they appointed a mock Court of Judicature, to try one another for Piracy, and he that was a Criminal one day, was made a Judge another. I shall never forget one of their Trials, which for the curiosity of it, I shall relate. The Judge got up into a tree, having a dirty tarpaulin over his shoulders for a robe, and a Thrum Cap upon his head, with a large pair of spectacles upon his nose, and a monkey bearing up his train, with abundance of Officers attending him, with crows and hand-spikes instead of wands and tip-staves in their ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... tight dress coat, silk cap, and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trowsers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well for a jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... proved to be a very roomy, commodious merchant, but somewhat blunt in the bows, and loaden extraordinary deep with salt, salted salmon, and fine white linen stockings for the Dutch. Upon my coming on board, the captain welcomed me—one Sang (out of Lesmahago, I believe), a very hearty, friendly tarpaulin of a man, but at the moment in rather of a bustle. There had no other of the passengers yet appeared, so that I was left to walk about upon the deck, viewing the prospect and wondering a good deal what these farewells should be which I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gall'd ropes with dauby marline bind, Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpaulin coats: To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind, And one below their ease ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... was raised to the surface and lashed to the side of the barge. Mr. Jarley very quickly tacked a tarpaulin over the hole in her bottom, and then she was pumped out. Further repairs were made and by night the Bright Eyes was riding safely to her own anchor and Mr. Jarley pried open the rusted lock ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... out. While the boy was holding to one end and I to the other, I went on and explained that I had that day bought out Mr. ——, and as I had no knowledge of the dry-goods business and couldn't tell a piece of calico from an Irish tarpaulin, that they must not blame me if I sold them silk for ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... to be an old pirate, about fifty years of age. He was tall, bony, and in aspect seemed scarcely human. The shaggy hair of his whiskers and beard covered nearly his whole face. He had on a sailor's round jacket and tarpaulin hat. The deep scar, apparently of a sword cut, deformed his forehead, and another similar scar was on the back of one of his hands. His companion was a young Indian, wild as the wolves, bareheaded, and with scanty ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... from Captain Stuart to spend the night on shore with his brother, and just as he was going off from the ship for the last time. Simmonds, who had obtained his acting commission in place of Mr. Pascoe, said, "Archer, I should advise you to take a tarpaulin and a couple of bottles of rum. They will be useful before morning, I can tell you, for we are going ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... been drizzling more or less all day, increased. Our supplies were taken from the wagons, a piece of tarpaulin found to protect them, and as the fire began to blaze and the water to heat, Mrs. Gardner and I found the way into the bags and boxes of flour, salt, milk, and meal, and got material for the first gallons of gruel. I had not thought to ever make gruel again ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... arrived ahead of the railway, sought accommodation in vain in the village, and had perforce to make the best of it in a contractor's railway wagon that stood on a siding of the unfinished line. They cuddled up under a tarpaulin sheet and settled down for the night, when someone gave the wagon a shove and starting down an incline on the unballasted track it proceeded merrily on its way to Ynyslas. Not so merry the affrighted and unwilling passengers, who, when day broke, discovered themselves marooned in a remote spot ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... landing of her stores—this admiral had declared brusquely that they did not want a parcel of women in the place. When at last Mary Seacole's stores were put ashore, she started business in a rough little hut, made of tarpaulin, on which was displayed the name of the firm—Seacole and Day. The soldiers, however, considered that as Mary Seacole's skin was dark, a better name for the firm was Day and Martin, and as such it ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Apparently it belonged to the structure of the cottage, but he could not, in the imperfect light, and the dazzling of the sun-spot at which he had been staring, make out what it was, or how it came to be up there—unsupported as far as he could see. He rose to examine it, lifted a bit of tarpaulin which hung before it, and found a rickety box, suspended by a rope from a great nail in the wall. It had two shelves in it ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and stepped to a rough litter covered by a tarpaulin. The latter, being turned back, displayed a travelling armoury of tools. As he lifted two axes out of their slots, Winchester came thrusting ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... were spent doing stretcher drill: having lectures on First Aid and Nursing from a R.A.M.C. Sergeant-Major, and, when it was very hot, enjoying a splash in the tarpaulin-lined swimming bath the soldiers had kindly made for us. Rides usually took place in the evenings, and when bedtime came the weary troopers were only too ready to turn in! Our beds were on the floor and of the "biscuit" variety, being three square paillasse arrangements looking like giant reproductions ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... fits, "Minnie! As long as I live I'll never forget that wretched boy's face! And the sand boxes! And the blankets over the windows! And the tarpaulin over the rafters! And Mr. Van Alstyne sitting on the lawnmower! I'd rather have had my minute in that ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... approached the ranch-house timidly, but he was beyond fear. He rode to the gate, tied his horse, and stepped to the doorway. The door was open. He entered and struck a match. In the dusk he saw that the room was empty save for a tarpaulin and a pair of rawhide kyacks such as the herders use. Examining the kyacks he found that they contained flour, beans, salt, sugar, and coffee. Evidently the herders had intended making the deserted ranch-house their headquarters. He wondered vaguely where the Mexicans were. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and methods of the drive. Soon he came upon a bateau pulled high on the river bank. There were boxes in the bateau, covered by a tarpaulin whose stripings of red signaled danger. He found a sack in the craft. He pried open one of the boxes and out of the sawdust in which they were packed he drew brown cylinders and tucked them carefully into the sack. The cylinders were sticks of dynamite. The ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... horse when much startled are highly expressive. One day my horse was much frightened at a drilling machine, covered by a tarpaulin, and lying on an open field. He raised his head so high, that his neck became almost perpendicular; and this he did from habit, for the machine lay on a slope below, and could not have been seen with more distinctness through the raising of the head; nor if any sound had proceeded from ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... should be husbanded with extreme care, and weighed from time to time. The flour is best carried in canvass bags, containing 100 pounds each, and should at the termination of each day's journey, be regularly piled up and covered with a tarpaulin. Tea, sugar and tobacco lose considerably in weight, so that it is necessary to estimate for somewhat more than the bare supply. With regard to the salt meat, the best mode of conveying it appears to be in small barrels of equal weight with the bags of flour. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... ninety-day men; the steamship Daylight—name of good omen! It was torrential rain, but the President and Secretary Seward came out to welcome them on the wharf. As he would give a reception then and there, four sailors held a tarpaulin over his head like a canopy, and he shook hands all around, including the firemen and stokers out of the coal-hole. Grasping their smutty hands, he declared that they were as brave as any one! —(By General ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... building. It was a strange sight—the moon seemingly singling out every sleeper for me. Another night we went together over to the Queen's Shades, near Billingsgate. On the top of a number of barrels, covered with tarpaulin, seventy-three fellows were sleeping. I had the whole lot out ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... out fell two of those straw cases which are used to protect wine-bottles. They seemed unusually bulky, so we tore them open. In one of them there was a roll, covered with a bit of tarpaulin. It contained a dozen yards of very beautiful Malines lace. The other case was full of silk neckerchiefs packed very tightly, eleven altogether; most of them of uncoloured silk, but one of green and another of blue—worth a lot of money in those days, and perhaps worth more to-day, now that ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... copper, but neither winds nor sun had been able to change the rich golden tint of his hair, which clustered in thick curls under his hat, which hat he managed to stick on the very back of his head; whether cocked hat, or tarpaulin, or sou'-wester, he wore it the same; it was a puzzle, though, to say how it kept there. But to see Tom as he was, was to catch him at work, with knife and marlin-spike, secured by rope-yarns round his neck, his hands showing intimate acquaintance with the tar bucket, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... beat down on the sand-hills in no gentle manner. The perspiration ran down the men's faces as they carried, and the flies were beginning to come. After lunch Job set up two impromptu wigwams, stringing a tarpaulin over each, and under these shelters the men rested till 4 P.M. By camping time the outfit had been moved up over the portage about a mile, and I had learned something more about what ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Captain Hollinger and secured his motion-picture camera, he found his chum waiting in the boat, where Dailey and Yorke, Borden and Birch were at the oars. Waving farewell to the ship, they moved away; Bob nudged Mart and pointed to a tarpaulin under ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... with hardtack to everybody. Then all but Steve and our party retired to the inner room, one of the women standing a loose door against the aperture. Steve curled up in an old quilt on one of the benches, while Hubbard, George and I spread a tarpaulin on the floor and rolled ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... A tarpaulin of heavy canvas 17 x 6 feet goes under you, and can be, if necessary, drawn up to cover your head. We never used a tent. Since you do not have to pack your outfit on your own back, you can, if you choose, include a small pillow. Your other personal ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... free. I demanded my son and they replied they didn't know what I was talking about. But a soldier that I recognized as having arrested my son the evening before pointed out a van that was passing, covered with a tarpaulin and surrounded by Cossacks. 'Your son is there,' he said; 'they are taking him to the graves.' Mad with despair, I ran after the van. It went to the outskirts of Golountrine cemetery. There I saw in the white snow a huge grave, wide, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the birds and selling them to Court Milliners. Your idea of trying them in harness in a Hansom seems to have something in it. Turn it over, by all means. Meantime, get a Shilling Handbook on the Management of the Ostrich. We think you will have to cover in your garden with a tarpaulin as you suggest. You cannot expect the fifty birds to stay for ever in your back drawing-room; and the fact that you mention, of their having already kicked down and eaten one folding-door, is significant. They ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... from the S.W. like a wall. The men were luckily very smart in taking in canvas, but at one time the captain thought he should have had to cut away the mizzenmast. We were reduced literally to bare poles, and lay-to under a piece of tarpaulin, six times doubled, and about two yards square, fastened up in the mizzen rigging. All day and night we lay thus, drifting to leeward at three knots an hour. In the twenty-four hours we had drifted sixty miles. Next day the wind moderated; but at 12 we found that we were eighty miles north ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... line itself there was often no better shelter than an old tarpaulin or sheet of corrugated iron stretched across the trench. At some 'posts' there was nothing better to sit on than the muddy 'fire-step' or at best half a duckboard or an old bomb box. Despite continuous efforts to keep one dry place to stand, the floor was several inches ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... in that lonely Pacific island, among that motley crowd of floating nondescripts, were specimens of the ancient coracle of our own islands, constructed in exactly the same way; that is, of wicker-work, covered with some waterproof substance, whether skin or tarpaulin. But the ingenious Kanaka, not content with his coracles, had gone one better, and copied them in dugouts of solid timber. The resultant vessel was a sort of cross between a butcher's ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the Genoese, while waiting for supper, rolled themselves up near the women, at the foot of the mast, in some tarpaulin which the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... wrought of fear; but at that moment the true hands of the fo'castle were battened down, and Dan, who had seen the thing coming, escaped only by his foresight. That night he had felt danger, and had wrapped himself up in a tarpaulin, and ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... a Chaf-feur or motor car driver. He wears spectacles to keep the dust out of his eyes, and a tarpaulin coat to keep the oil off his nice ...
— The Motor Car Dumpy Book - The Dumpy Books for Children #32 • T. W. H. Crosland
... him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin, such physical surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend with his infinite ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with her stem down-stream, and her after-part—her habitable quarters—covered by a black tarpaulin. A solitary man was at work shovelling coal out of her middle hold into a large metal bucket. As Tilda hobbled towards him he hoisted the full bucket on his shoulders, staggered across the towpath with it, and shot its contents into a manhole under the brick wall. Tilda ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... procession of villagers, and these villagers must have been collected out of the fields, for the procession was going in the direction of, and not away from, the village. The handcart was covered with a tarpaulin.... She knew what had happened; she knew infallibly. Skirting the boundary of the grounds, she reached the main entrance to Flank Hall thirty seconds before the handcart. The little dog, delighted in a new adventure, yapped ecstatically at her heels, and then bounded onwards to meet the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... by the guards at mid-day, and instead of receiving the dinner ration had been taken to a covered hand-cart. The guard told them to push it, and at the same time handed them shovels and picks. Under escort they dragged this mysterious load, which was carefully covered with a tarpaulin, for about three miles to a very lonely spot. At last they came to a deep hole. They were compelled to back the cart to the brink of the pit, and were then curtly ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... frenzied little yelp with our deeper note, will pull us out into the middle of the dock, then round, and slowly through the big gates, into the locks. The hatches are already on the after combings, and sailors are spreading the tarpaulin covers over them and battening down ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... cable length away, the captain of the Francis Spaight bestirred himself and ordered a tarpaulin to be thrown over O'Brien's corpse. A boat was lowered from the stranger's side and began to pull toward them. John Gorman laughed. He laughed softly at first, but he accompanied each stroke of the oars with spasmodically increasing glee. It ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... sailor's chest, the hard-earned wages of his daily toil; he, who in justice was the owner of as rich a domain as any in the land!" The attempts of this poor sailor to obtain his rights were then represented. "He learned the bitter truth, gentlemen, that a poor seaman, a foremast hand, with a tarpaulin hat and round-jacket, stood little chance of being heard, as the accuser of the rich and the powerful—the men who walked abroad in polished beavers, and aristocratic broad-cloths." Aristocracy having once been brought upon the scene, was made to figure ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... are gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so stiff of build that they look like so many sea-faring suicides, pendent from the low ceilings. These emporiums are here and there enlivened by festoons of many-coloured bandana handkerchief's; ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... rained in light and fitful shallows, which, as usual, were of no use, except indeed to cause a heavy dew which wet all our blankets and things, for we always camp without tent or tarpaulin whenever it does not actually rain. The solar beams of morning soon evaporated the dew. To the west-south-west the natives were hunting, and as usual burning the spinifex before them. They do not seem to care much for our company; for ever since we left the Glen of Palms, the cave-dwelling, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Kansas, and she dreaded this new terror more than the mad fury of the seas. But, if the men were fighting for their lives and her's, she must help, too. That was clear. She had a weapon, a loaded revolver, which she had picked up from beneath a boat's tarpaulin lying on the spar deck. She opened her door and peered out. She could not see any one, and the rattle of a hail-storm overhead effectually dulled any other noise. But several shots fired again in the fore part of the ship were audible above the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... with profound awe of this unknown, so versed in freebooting history. It was to him a wonderful instance of the revolutions of mighty empires, to find the venerable Ramm Rapelye thus ousted from the throne; a rugged tarpaulin dictating from his elbow chair, hectoring the patriarchs, and filling this tranquil little realm with brawl ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... lights were of course most carefully masked—a tarpaulin being thrown over the cabin skylight, and a seaman's jacket over the binnacle, the helmsman ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... will be glad to see a porcelain bathtub again," yawned Jennie, breaking in. "I don't really feel as though a sponge-down in an icy cold brook with a tarpaulin around one for a bath-house is altogether the height ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... approval as the small boat pulled away in the dark, for there was activity apparent on the destroyer not warranted by a mere rescue at sea. Gun-crews rushed to their stations; the tarpaulin covers were off of the guns, and their slender lengths gleamed where they covered the course ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Adolphe said eagerly; "I have an idea! The hatches are covered with tarpaulin. If you could hide in the forecastle during the night you might cut away all the top underneath the tarpaulin and prop it up, so that if anyone trod on it in the morning they would not notice what had been done. Then when they have pushed off you could knock ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... except her husband, and no other thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself. Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale's weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it steady. On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and cordage, snatching at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that should have held the sheet hiss ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the last trip was made and the goods piled on the beach and covered with a large tarpaulin, it was dark and all were utterly worn out by their labors. The girls had prepared an extra good supper, and of this they ate heartily and then sat around a little while, when they went ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... gargled our parched throats, and washed out our bloodshot eyes, in silence. The whole adventure, though still fresh and vivid in my mind, seemed unreal, like a dream. The choking air, the hissing steam, the ghastly object under the tarpaulin - what did it all mean? Who was she? I strove to reason it out, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... is sad work for women and children!" said the honest tar, drawing a large tarpaulin over the mother and child. Blinded and drenched by the pelting of the pitiless shower, Flora crouched down in the bottom of the boat, in patient endurance of what might befal. The wind blew piercingly cold; and the spray of the huge billows which burst continually ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... They were young men, rangy in build, lean and hard from life in the saddle, bronzed like Indians, still-faced, and keen-eyed. Two of them appeared to be tired out, and lagged at the camp-fire duties. When the meager meal was prepared they sat, cross-legged, before a ragged tarpaulin, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... image of the Virgin, painted in gaudy faded colours; and in one case I found a boy who had been kneeling before the statue, but was toppled sideways now, his knees still bent, and the cross of Christ in his hand. These stalwart blue woollen blouses and tarpaulin sou'-westers lay in every pose of death, every detail of feature and expression still perfectly preserved. The sloops were all the same, all, all: with sing-song creaks they rocked a little, nonchalantly: each, as it were, with a certain sub-consciousness of its own personality, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... They'd been underground—and in low gravity—long enough to be utterly unable to face the idea of open spaces. Even now there were some who had to be carried, but there were some tougher ones who were able to walk to the rocketship if Pop put a tarpaulin over their heads so they didn't have to see the sky. In any case Pop was essential, either ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and frying the bacon and the beat of the waves, but I did not like the smell of the tent. It was stuffy. I had been generously given that shelter for my own, while the male members of the party slept by a log (not like one, J—— confessed to me) under a tarpaulin—I mean "tarp"—with stars above them except when obscured by fog. My cot was short and low and I am not, so that I spent the night tucking in the blankets. The puppies enjoyed it all thoroughly. Though they must have been surprised by the sudden democratic intimacy ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... ground along the wide waste of sand. The two crews with their ceaseless tom-tom on the shore of the creek, were upward of half a mile away. Natalie was made comfortable in her tent; and Garth and Charley, collecting a pile of firewood, covered it with a tarpaulin, against the coming rain. Charley, who had slept during the afternoon, was to watch until two o'clock; and Garth, covering himself with a piece of sail-cloth, lay down at the door of ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... snow-houses; wattle and daub; palisades; straw or reed walls; bark; mats; Malay hitch; tarpaulin; whitewash; roofs, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... boat's crew in the rigging up of a thin tarpaulin, like a curtain along the shore side of the Arangi. This was a precaution against any bushwhacking bullet from the mangroves only a ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... cellar in the cottage into the drain, and as it was large enough for a man to kneel down in, he used to come in at low-water with his coble, and make fast the goods, properly secured from the wet and dirt in tarpaulin bags, to a rope, which led from the cellar to the sea through the drain. When the water had flowed sufficiently to cover the mouth of the drain, he then threw the bags overboard, and, securing the boat, went to the cottage, hauled up the articles, and secured them too; ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... traversed the position and fell over into one or other of the ravines. "Whizz-bangs" were more deadly, and shrapnel accounted for a number of casualties which, during the stay in the line, amounted to two killed and 11 wounded. One of these smaller shells tore away the tarpaulin which covered the Quartermaster's stores and was followed immediately by a heavy shell which landed right amongst them and scattered biscuits and tins of bully ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett |
