"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked inquiringly ahead now, he observed a huge American cougar, larger than that of the night before, issuing from among the branches. With his phosphorescent eyes fixed upon the terrified lad, he was stealing slowly along the log, giving utterance to a deep guttural growl, separating his lips as he did so, so as to show his long, white, needle-like teeth, intended for the rending ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... the boughs. There come shrill cries of many voices from behind, and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then on their sledges I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos, longing for their homes; and each flies past me, shrieking in the still cold air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the pageant turns the windings of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... are as full of light as the sky. "The light of the day takes refuge in their bosoms," as the Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hillside. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind one of the plant ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... which never varied, even if my indiscretion had been confined to raspberries at five cents a pound, or currants at a cent less. She would wring her hands, long and fleshless as fan handles, and, her great green eyes phosphorescent with distress above her hollow cheeks and projecting ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... any improvement in the malady that affects your child?" asked the Jew, pouring a part of the contents of one vial into another, and holding it up against the light, exhibiting a phosphorescent action in the vial. ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... set in the luminous west, leaving behind a long track of orange and purple light; the growing moon flung its yellow rays across the troubled waters, melting into the million phosphorescent gleams that sparkled and quivered along the surface like living jets of fire. Frank had never before seen so lovely a sunset, or one so utterly lonely and sad. He stretched himself on the deck, with his two hands clasped under his head, in lieu of a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... stockingless; the elastic-slit congress gaiter, lost in the shuffle, lay out of the radius of Ambrose's long leg. Miss Aphrodite picked it up and, stooping, slipped it over his mighty toes, noticing as she did so the thick coating of phosphorescent paint that still ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... very singular thing: the Glow-worm's eggs are luminous even when still contained in the mother's womb. If I happen by accident to crush a female big with germs that have reached maturity, a shiny streak runs along my fingers, as though I had broken some vessel filled with a phosphorescent fluid. The lens shows me that I am wrong. The luminosity comes from the cluster of eggs forced out of the ovary. Besides, as laying-time approaches, the phosphorescence of the eggs is already made manifest through ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... at once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ancient trading schooner, Virginia, caught the feeble flickering light from the island as he strode across the fore-deck. He stopped, stared at the looming black line of land beneath the tropical stars. Again light flashed from a point of rock far above the dim white line of phosphorescent surf, spelling out the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... eye could see stretched a level plain of ashy white, faintly phosphorescent, a sea of velvet fog that lay like motionless water, or rather like a floor of alabaster, so dense did it appear, so seemingly capable of sustaining weight. If it were possible, I think that sea of dead white ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... The thing was motionless. It was in a patch of shadow, but, as though gleaming with moonlight, it seemed to shine. Its glow was silvery, with a greenish cast almost phosphorescent. Was it standing on the path? I could not tell. It was too far away; too much in shadow. But I plainly saw that it had the shape of a man. Wraith, or substance? That also, was ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... Biarritz, when the sky had the dull glare of intense heat and the sea was of a sinister, inky black, and was swelling and rolling enormous phosphorescent waves onto the beach at Port-Vieux, Lilie, who was listless and strange, and was making holes in the sand with the heels of her boots, suddenly exclaimed in one of those longings for confidence which women sometimes ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was, properly speaking, but a strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and fro with the motion of the ship. Through the open slide-door we had a glimpse of the grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent foam flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the horizon rising and falling as the vessel rolled to the wind. In the centre the companion ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. Below, on the first landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and lasses danced, not more than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all over head was black with the flying scud. The English second mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his h's misplaced, storming at the men: ''An'somely the weather mainbrace—'an'somely, I tell ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... reflecting therein their sharply reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over which we hung:—- the stars also were reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... the dark hull lurched up high above the tug's stern, and sometimes sank in a hollow. The rollers had angry white tops, and a belt of filmy vapor that looked luminous closed the view ahead. Lister knew the vapor was phosphorescent spray, flung up by the turmoil on the bar, through which they must go. If the tug struck and stopped, the white seas would beat her down into the sand. In the meantime, she was using full steam, because, since ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled background ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... so surprised that he took one hurriedly, after a very perceptible start. The eyes of Martin Ricardo gleamed phosphorescent in the half-light of the room screened from the heat ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... dead body lay in the cellar?—nay more, that, although it lay still and dead enough all day, it would come half alive at nightfall, and, turning the whole house into a sepulchre by its presence, go creeping about like a cat all over it in the dark—perhaps with phosphorescent eyes? So it was not surprising that the painter abandoned his studio early, and that the three found themselves together in the gorgeous room formerly described, as soon as ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the sea and leaving a great, broad phosphorescent light where it disappeared, which broadened and radiated toward the east until ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed the source of the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body and innumerable legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated past. Its body swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling giving out a phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening to a faint red color. Then came a group of others; then a second living lamp; later another and another: they were evenly distributed, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... to see commonplace facts grow phosphorescent in the heat of true feeling. How little we may come to know Romance by the cloak she wears and how humble must be he who would surprise ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... was wallowing majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten out this ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... but venture to find, even in our own extreme ignorance, with Mr. Stanfield's boats; they never look weather-beaten. There is something peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to drive Giorgione to despair. I have never seen any effort at this by Stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness especially the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... beat in a continuous roar against its base, which is honeycombed by the action of the water, and when the boat glided into its shadow it loomed up vast and wonderful. Seaward were the harbor lights, the phosphorescent glisten of the waves, the dim forms of other islands; all about in the bay row-boats darted in and out of the moonlight, voices were heard calling from boat to boat, songs floated over the water, and the huge Portland steamer came plunging in out of the night, a blazing, trembling monster. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... some great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of the children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, others were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger long enough to examine into the nature of their employment. Not one young voice was heard—not one young face turned to gaze on us. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... oars and sent the boat swiftly through the water. Of course Fernando's back was toward Morgianna, and he could not see her, save when he twisted his head "quite off," which he did frequently; but he could hear her silvery voice humming snatches of a song, or her dimpled hand playing in the phosphorescent water which sparkled like flashes of fire in their wake. The old men kept up a continual talk, for which Fernando was exceedingly grateful. Finally the promontory was gained, and in a quiet little cove Fernando beached his boat and, springing out, took the small, white hand of Morgianna ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... scrambles of rats from all the dark corners. In the furthest and darkest corners roosted those black birds who by night flew down into the church through the shafts in the vaulting, and the eyes of the owls glowed with phosphorescent brilliancy, while the bats flew sleepily about sweeping the faces of the lads with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tide of an autumn evening when the lights have been lit, and every cottage looks like a lantern; and the blue haze hangs over the village, and the children's voices come floating over the water as if through a mist; then, on nights like that, the sea is all phosphorescent, and the boat leaves a line of silvery light in its wake; and one seems to have all the world ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... on deck. The tropical night had fallen. There was no moon, and a velvety blackness stretched about the ship on every side, broken here and there by a faint phosphorescent gleam as a ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... revolving beacon of a lighthouse. Here the muffled throb of the propeller, and the rushing hiss of water as the prow of the great steamer sheared through the placid surface, furrowing up on either side a long line of phosphorescent wave. Such a contrast he who stood alone in the darkness, leaning over ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... whaling quay. It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful—the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his fellows. We were unlucky indeed, in the matter of sharks; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... charmingly,—as Mr. Bernard could not help saying to himself,—but, to be sure, he had just been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his recoil, he ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... into crystalline brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the dark green ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop preparatory to breaking, until with a roar it fell over the bulwarks, a mass of soft glowing ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... seaman went out into North Bay to bathe from a boat, in the full sun of a mid-summer day, and he was out almost as soon as he was in. One of the most beautiful sights of this winter was to see the seals, outlined in phosphorescent light, swimming and hunting in the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... "wall-saltpetre" and "lime-saltpetre"; from its disintegrating action on mortar, it is sometimes referred to as "saltpetre rot." The anhydrous nitrate, obtained by heating the crystallized salt, is very phosphorescent, and constitutes "Baldwin's phosphorus." A basic nitrate, Ca(NO3)2.Ca(OH)2.3H2O, is obtained by dissolving calcium hydroxide in a solution ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... shore, they realized fully what torrid heat means. This long stretch of southern travel is perhaps the most wearisome part of the long journey, yet there were sometimes scenes and sights of the dark hours that almost compensated. One night, there was a phosphorescent and electrical display that could never be forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into a soft glow, like an astral ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Smithers were leaning together over the bulwarks and watching the phosphorescent foam go flashing past. Mr. Tombey was nervous and ill at ease; Miss Smithers very much at ease, and reflecting that her companion's moustachios would very well become a ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... about Celtic literature. On the whole, the two were far too much alike to do each other any good. Exquisite even as M. Renan's mere style is, it is exquisite by reason of sweetness, with a certain not quite white and slightly phosphorescent light, not by strength or by practical and masculine force. Now it was the latter qualities that Mr Arnold wanted; sweetness and light he ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... no move, but in the clear moonlight I could see its body expand and contract in breathing; its yellow eyes seeming to radiate a phosphorescent light. I felt no fear, nor any inclination to retreat, yet I was now facing a beast that few men had ever succeeded in seeing. Thus we stood looking at each other, scarcely moving an eyelid, while the great silent monster looked at us. I slid my right hand down ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... thick foggy night and a loppy sea, as under those circumstances the pilchards do not perceive the net in their way. At times, however, when the water is phosphorescent, the creatures which form the luminous appearance cover the meshes so that the whole ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... began to break short and high—a dangerous sea for a small, overweighted ship. It had been arranged that both ships should swing lanterns fore and aft to keep each other in sight at night. On the night of September 9 a phosphorescent light was seen to gleam above the mainmast of the Squirrel,—certain sign to the superstitious sailors of dire disaster; but when the Hinde slackened speed, and the great waves threw the vessels ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish, phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a single, long slim horn growing from ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... whisper of passing waves against our lap-streak, and the low, murmuring conversation of the men. I had my face toward the shore. As I looked over the glimmering expanse, I suddenly heard the whispered name of our first mate. As suddenly, by the phosphorescent light that surrounded it, I saw the long trailing hair and gleaming shoulders of a woman floating beside us. Legrande, you are positively drinking nothing. Lightbody, you are shirking the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... monotony, but every day seemed full of interest. All the wonders of the great deep were about them—strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night. Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... another tenement we found a widow[7] weeping and working by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how terrible the emaciation of the body, which was little ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... was said, anyhow," observed the Captain. "I well remember what nonsense there was in the papers about the 'phosphorescent ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... crystalline vat in which he lay, he could see a broad, low room, in which he could barely have stood erect. He saw instruments and equipment whose weird shapes suggested alienness, and knowledge beyond the era he had known! The walls were lavender and phosphorescent. Fossil bone-fragments were mounted in shallow cases. Dinosaur bones, some of them seemed, from their size. But there was a complete skeleton of a dog, too, and the skeleton of a man, and a second man-skeleton that was not quite human. Its neck-vertebrae were very thick and solid, its ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... minutes the canoe went flying over the water, and I continued to haul in line fathom by fathom, until I caught sight of, deep down in the water right ahead, a great phosphorescent boil and bubble. Then the pace began to slacken, as the gallant fighter began to turn from side to side, shaking his head and making futile breaks from port to starboard. Bidding me come amidships with the line, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... in sunlight. The different members of this marine flotsam frequently rise and fall periodically: some of them sinking by day to escape the light, others rising only by day; others, again, appearing on the surface in spring, keeping deep down in winter. Perhaps the majority of them are phosphorescent, sometimes shining by their own light, sometimes borrowing a glory from innumerable phosphorescent bacteria with which they are infested. Nearly every class of the animal kingdom contributes members to this strange population. The young forms of many fish, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... its infinite narrowness. We shiver and can see nothing more. With difficulty I can make out, along our trampled platform, a dark flock, the buzz of voices, the smell of tobacco. Here and there a match flame or the red point of a cigarette makes some face phosphorescent. And we wait, unoccupied, and weary of waiting, until we sit down, close-pressed against each other, in ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... now self-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of the flesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... to the joy of battle with the elements, there was the wild grandeur of the scene, the great masses of black cloud scurrying athwart the sky, with little patches of starlit blue winking in and out between, the roar and swoop of the wind, and the menacing hiss of the phosphorescent foam-caps as they came rushing down upon the boat in endless succession, all combining together to form a picture the like of which, as viewed from a wildly leaping, half-swamped, spray-smothered open boat, it is given to comparatively few men to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... a purplish-red color, with huge, tricornigerous heads and with staring, green, phosphorescent eyes. Two of the six limbs were always legs, two always arms; the intermediate two, due to a mid-section jointing of the six-foot-long, almost cylindrical body, could be used at will as either legs or arms. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the wind increased in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull fire suspended in the air, and blown toward us, till, with a noise like thunder, as it dashed against the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... further supposed to have a great affection for gold, which was called the "flame of the sea," and was used to illuminate her halls. This belief originated with the sailors, and sprang from the striking phosphorescent gleam of the waves. To win Ran's good graces, the Northmen were careful to hide some gold about them whenever any special danger threatened ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... fine, and the gentle breeze setting in from the ocean was so cool and grateful, after the excessive heat of the day, that we continued for some time loitering along the shore. The sea was highly phosphorescent; that is, during the earlier part of the evening, and before the mist or haze before spoken of cleared up. The tiny wavelets, as they rippled upon the beach in rapid succession, sparkled with phosphoric fire, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship was scudding before ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... gazing into the wonderful rock gardens under the Autelets when the tide was out;—watching the phosphorescent seaweeds flame in the darker pools; seeking out the haunts where the sea anemones lay in thousands, waving their long pale arms hungrily for food and closing them hopefully on anything that offered, even on one's fingers, which ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Pigmented or colored fishes, nevertheless, having well-developed organs of vision, have been taken from such depths (over a mile) as to preclude the possibility of a single ray of daylight.[7] These fishes, however, are phosphorescent, and thus furnish their own light. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the vast depths of the ocean, in certain localities, lie bathed in a continuous phosphorescent glow, so that creatures living there neither lose their color nor their eyes, sufficient light ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... I recognized him easily. Eight feet tall, with long, jointed arms for pile work, red-lidded phosphorescent eye-cells, casters on his feet so that he moved as if rollerskating. Automatically I classified him: Final Sorter, Morrison 5A type. The very best. Cost three thousand credits ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... can—the peculiar aspect of everything that I saw under this microscope. I seemed to be inside an immense cave. One side, near at hand, I could now make out quite clearly. The walls were extraordinarily rough and indented, with a peculiar phosphorescent light on the projections and blackness in the hollows. I say phosphorescent light, for that is the nearest word I can find to describe it—a curious radiation, quite different from the reflected light ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... fitful gusts, whistling and singing in mournful cadence among the blocks and rigging; there was the agitated and furrowed face of the ocean, which had been lashed to fury by successive storms, and lighted up in every direction by innumerable brilliant phosphorescent particles, in which, it is well known, the waters of the Gulf Stream abound; there were the rolling echoes of the thunder, and the zig zag, chain lightning, which every few seconds enveloped the heavens and the ocean in a frightful livid garment; and, as if to cap the climax, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he had seen there—vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose chimney-pots were in the clouds; palaces of sculptured stone, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground, the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen into this natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had been overpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides. And the odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... the Challenger expedition. He wrote: "A giant Pyrosoma was caught by us in the deep-sea trawl. It was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness. It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay on deck, and my name came out in a few seconds in letters of fire." The author owes ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... watched the sun drop behind the encircling rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... vessel bore into the moist, warm air of the Gulf Stream was full of moonshine, of smooth, phosphorescent billows. Herbeck had gone below. The girl leaned over the rail, alone and lonely. And Carmichael, seeing her, could no longer still the desire in his heart. He ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... corners of the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... return,—for these old Bon-customs are dying rapidly. But in another moment it occurred to me that I could very well venture to swim out to the lights. They were moving slowly. I dropped my robe on the beach, and plunged in. The sea was calm, and beautifully phosphorescent. Every stroke kindled a stream of yellow fire. I swam fast, and overtook the last of the lantern-fleet much sooner than I had hoped. I felt that it would be unkind to interfere with the little embarcations, or to divert them from their silent course: so ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... them in alcohol with the precautions that we shall point out, and to prepare a note which indicates the latitude of the place where they are taken, if they live solitary or in society, if they are phosphorescent, if they inhabit a certain depth or the surface of the sea. The colors of gelatinous animals not keeping well in liquor, it is very important ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... ploughing its zigzag course through the black waters, dodging submarines. There was not a star in the sky. There was not a light on the boat. Absolutely the only lights that one saw was when he leaned over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening, when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a beautiful sight there and on the ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... cypress, the almond tree, the Guelder rose and other trees and shrubs. It seems fairly indifferent to the nature of the support. A more remarkable feature distinguishes it from all the other European mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow combustion, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... always bow before facts, no matter how unflattering, and I consider one of Cuvier's ideas worthy of just exactly eight degrees more of reverence than any phosphorescent sparkle which I might choose to hold up for public acceptance and guidance. Without doubt, the most thoroughly ludicrous scene I ever witnessed was furnished by a 'woman's rights' meeting,' which I looked ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... beyond expression with the terrific grandeur of the scene. The sky above was black as midnight and the storm could make it, overhanging us like a large pall, and rendered awfully visible by the brilliancy of the waters beneath. I had heard of that phosphorescent appearance in the sea, but never could have imagined its grandeur, nor can I essay to describe it. Even in perfect stillness the illuminated element would have looked magnificent; what, then must it have been in a state of excessive, tumultuous agitation, the waves swelling up to a ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... it is credulous. No one would deride these superstitions who has watched, as I have, the various phases of the sea—its motions, its intonations—its mists, its foam, its vapors—its sunlit splendors—its phosphorescent marvels—its moonlit and starlit mysteries; but would feel, with something of the awe of the ancients, that the sea is the place of magic, and that only a film separates between the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thing had meaning, and horrified him. Everywhere and from everything he feared disaster. Nothing was familiar to him. The eternal fear made him into a little darting ghost himself, and gave his consumptive eyes a phosphorescent glow. If he was sent out late at night, perhaps to get milk or kerosene, he would pray in feverish fervor to dear God. He would come back breathless and ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... because phosphorus possesses a very curious property, which might attract little girls. Wherever it is rubbed, in the dark, on a door, or on a wall, it leaves a luminous trail of a very peculiar appearance, which has been called phosphorescent, from the name of the substance which produces it. And in this way one can write on walls in letters of fire, to the terror of cowards. Now, come; if you will promise to be very wise, and only to make the experiment when your mamma is present, I will teach you how to make phosphorescent lights ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... amongst plants and animals which have not acquired any special association or significance. We find that some organisms produce as a result of their chemical life material which oxidises and gives out light and so these organisms are "phosphorescent" without any consequence, good or bad, to themselves. And then we come upon others (as, for instance, the glow-worms and fire-flies) which have made use of this "accidental" quality, and produce phosphorescent light in special ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to have such an interval, during some part of which you may sleep in peace. As for the night, you may use it for eating ices, or strolling on the Marina, or pulling out on the phosphorescent waters of the bay; but unless you be very fresh, you will hardly think of using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... immersion in the water, we dared not climb aboard. Will it be believed that all night long we were compelled to remain in the sea, clinging to the canoe, half drowned, and tossed about like the insignificant atoms we were in the midst of the stupendous waves, which were literally ablaze with phosphorescent light? Often as those terrible hours crawled by, I would have let go my hold and given up altogether were it not for Yamba's cheery and encouraging voice, which I heard above the terrific roar of the storm, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... exhilarating, and one cannot help feeling in it like a gilded cork adrift in a jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne punch. In the sense of luxurious ease with which it envelops the bather, it is unrivaled on earth. The only approximation to it is in the phosphorescent waters of the Mosquito ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... became a blaze of phosphorescence. Every ripple from the oars ran away in many-colored flames—red, green, blue, and orange. Kai Bok-su, sitting amazed at the glory to which the Pe-po-hoan boatmen had become accustomed, was silent with awe. He had seen the phosphorescent lights often before, but never anything like this. He put his hand down into the molten sea and scooped up handfuls of what seemed drops of liquid fire. And as his fingers dipped into the water they shone like rods of red-hot iron. ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... me good night, and went below, while a comrade took his place at the helm; but, feeling no desire to enter into conversation with him, I walked aft, and, leaning over the stern, looked down into the phosphorescent waves that gargled around the ladder, and streamed out like a flame of blue light in the vessel's wake. My thoughts were very sad, and I could scarce refrain from tears as I contrasted my present wretched position ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... his own tobacco and made his own cigars. These were famous even in Havana, and Gray and I enjoyed them that evening. A number of grass-woven hammocks were swung under a roof in front of the house. It was delightful lying there watching the phosphorescent waves rippling or breaking on the beach under the light of a full moon and listening to the chatter or the songs of the black fellows who swarmed around while smoking cigars worth the smoking. The negro children, shrill-voiced and loud, were very ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... had lovely phosphorescent effects, and as we neared Scotland, millions of pink and brown jelly-fish filled the water. At Thurso we hailed a boat to send telegrams ashore—such a collection!—to let our various friends know we had returned in safety from Ultima Thule. That night as we passed Aberdeen we entered calm water, ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... marks on a melon. What a beautiful iridescent light plays over them! They enable it to move over the water, while with its long tentacles it fishes for its food. At night those cilia shine with a phosphorescent light, and have a very beautiful appearance. Stop! oh, don't go away without looking more particularly at this submarine forest. The woods of America in autumn do not present more gorgeous colours. That beautiful pink weed is the Delesseria sanguinea. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... short, and stooped; but her eyes were wonderfully bright. Nay, when she looked from the dark corner, phosphorescent jets seemed to ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime, intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud of being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost as creditable ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... or when the head of a match glows as you rub it on your wet hand in the dark, we call the light phosphorescence. The name "phosphorus" means light-bearing, and anything like the element phosphorus, that glows without actively burning, is said to be phosphorescent. Match heads have phosphorus in them. Phosphorescence is almost always caused by chemical change. The energy released is a dim light, not heat or electricity. Sometimes millions of microscopic sea animals make the sea water in warm regions phosphorescent. They, like fireflies, glowworms, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... ghastly scene—along the double row of miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch—over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and sleeping-sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish grave-lights—over bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the Roentgen rays there were many facts which suggested that phosphorescence had something to do with the production of these rays It then occurred to several French physicists that X-rays might be produced if phosphorescent substances were exposed to sunlight. Becquerel began to experiment with a view to testing this supposition. He placed uranium on a photographic plate which had first been wrapped in black paper ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... bring her in," whispered Paul; and without another word he stripped off his clothes, and, with knife in his mouth, slipped noiselessly into the water, and struck boldly out towards the boat. O'Grady and Reuben anxiously watched him, or rather the phosphorescent wake he left in the water. Even that after a time disappeared. Could the brave boy have sunk? The hearts of both his friends trembled. Every instant they expected to be pounced upon by gendarmes; but though they listened earnestly as may be supposed, no sounds came from the ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... nets automatically closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as sea-leopards, crab-eater ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... numerous batches of spider-web-like substance fell in Montgomery, in strands and in occasional masses several inches long and several inches broad. According to the writer, it was not spiders' web, but something like asbestos; also that it was phosphorescent. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... their journey. It was a clear, cold morning, and as the twilight slowly brightened into sunshine, the whole landscape glistened radiantly with a heavy hoar-frost that for the moment gleamed and shimmered as if the face of the country had been rubbed with some phosphorescent substance, or as if the riders were ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... attributed the permanent idiocy of Lord Canterville's uncle, the Hon. Thomas Horton. The sound of approaching footsteps, however, made him hesitate in his fell purpose, so he contented himself with becoming faintly phosphorescent, and vanished with a deep churchyard groan, just as the twins had come up ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... frightened gaze at something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a vast, misty swine-face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame, of a greenish hue. It is the Thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems to drip with a continual, phosphorescent slaver. The eyes are staring straight into the room, with an inscrutable expression. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... right down upon us, and our only difficulty would be to avoid being run down by her. But later on, when the darkness had once more closed down upon us, shutting out everything but the towering, swooping, phosphorescent crests of the threatening seas, I caught her softly, silently, and secretly crying; and the sight of her distress aroused a sudden furious anger in me that caused me to again and still more savagely execrate the blind lookout ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... of measles developed on board, suspected to be German,—another case of German "frightfulness." In the evening the water was calm and warm and the night very dark. I went on deck to see the wonderful phosphorescent display. The ship seemed to be floating in a sea of gold, or ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... every particle in nature throws off a gaseous emanation, partaking of its particular shape. These gaseous particles are not discernible with the material eye, excepting when by chance they coalesce, and then a phosphorescent light ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... from them. The tide was low. So close were the banks of wet, black earth, that they heard the crabs scuttling down them, and Porringer made a jab with his pole at a great sheepshead lying perdu alongside. The water broke before them into spangles, glittering phosphorescent ripples. A school of small fish, disturbed by the oars, rushed past them, leaping from the water with silver flashes. A turtle plunged sullenly. From the grass above came the sleepy cry of marsh hens, and once a great white heron rose like a ghost across their path. It flapped ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... in a luminous paint, the body of which is a phosphorescent compound, or is composed in part of such a compound, and the vehicle of which is such as is used as the vehicle in ordinary paint compounds, viz., one which becomes dry by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... of October, the necessary provisions having been shipped, anchor was weighed, and the start made for the Cape. During the cruise, La Billardiere discovered that the phosphorescent appearance of the sea is caused by minute globular animalculi, floating in the waves. The voyage to the Cape, where the vessels arrived upon the 18th of January, 1792, was barren of incident, if we ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... back to this second trip of seven hundred miles, of cold, rainy nights, when, urged by Muir to make one more point, the natives passed the last favorable camping place and we blindly groped for hours in pitchy darkness, trying to find a friendly beach. The intensely phosphorescent water flashed about us, the only relief to the inky blackness of the night. Occasionally a salmon or a big halibut, disturbed by our canoe, went streaming like a meteor through the water, throwing off coruscations of light. As we neared the shore, the waves breaking upon the rocks furnished ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... hull of a man-of-war, and affix the torpedoes, so that failure should be impossible. This boat in shape was not unlike a turtle. A system of valves, air-pumps, and ballast enabled the operator to ascend or descend in the water at will. A screw-propeller afforded means of propulsion, and phosphorescent gauges and compasses enabled him ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and fair above, Midnight, fierce and dark beneath,— All on high the smile of love, All below the frown of death: Waves that whirl in angry spite With a phosphorescent light Gleaming ghastly on the night,— Like the pallid sneer of Doom, So malicious, cold, and white, Luring to this watery tomb, Where in fury and in fright Winds and waves together fight Hideously amid the gloom,— As our cutter gladly sends, Dipping deep her sheeted boom Madly to the boiling ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... band of the youth of Spain, strapping boys with bushy locks, crisp and black almost to blueness, and gay young girls with flexible forms and dark Arab eyes that shine with a phosphorescent light in the shadows. They troop on with clacking castinets. The challenge of the mozos rings out on ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... course of another steamship farther away to the south. A hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off summit of some inland mountain; and as evening came down over the still tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through phosphorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in distance till there lay around only the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... excitement, peered out through the night; nothing but darkness. Below, lined along the rails, she caught dull outlines of the white caps of the seamen, all as eager to defeat the battleships as their officers. She saw the phosphorescent gleam from a shattered wave. But she heard nothing, not even ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry |
