"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here whar I'se a-doin' de white folks' washin'," she said. "Jasper's done been powerful sick and I can't leave him by hisself none. I brung him out here in de shade so I could watch him and 'tend to him whilst I wuks. Jasper stepped on a old plank what had two rusty nails in it, and both of 'em went up in his foot a fur ways. I done driv dem nails plumb up to dey haids in de north side of a tree and put jimpson weed poultices on Jasper's foot, but it's still powerful ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... before he knew what was doing one of the planks, with a scissors-like opening and closing, was about his neck and clamped. Discovering his predicament, he set up a bull-roaring and dancing, till all had to back away to give him clear space for the flying ends of his plank. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down the plank: to be gathered in at the foot by an attendant and returned to its cage all ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... the knife. His neck fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, was shut down, by another plank above; exactly like the pillory. Immediately below him was a leathern bag. And into it ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... be done at once, Mr. Strong ran to the boathouse, which was close at hand, and soon reappeared, carrying a long plank. He was followed by a boy with a rope, and several boys brought ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... three hundred feet, breadth two hundred feet, thickness of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak plank and corkwood; carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders, quarter-deck and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and further, to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and by mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... shot past Lathers's ear. A quick blow, a plank knocked clear of its fastenings, and a flood of daylight broke ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... confused recollection of being swept along by an irresistible current, clinging the while to what he afterwards found to be a friendly plank, and after that ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... was scarcely large enough to contain the few articles of furniture absolutely required. Its walls were of unplaned plank occasionally failing to meet, and the only covering to the floor was a dingy strip of rag-carpet. The bed was a cot, shapeless, and propped up on one side by the iron leg of some veranda bench, while the open window looked out into the street. There was a bolt, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... which I had a large stone. The force of his fall threw both stone and wheelbarrow into the river. The man behind me, seeing what was happening, flung himself face down over his wheelbarrow, and in the dark, grabbed me as I was going over the plank into the river. He caught me by one of my arms and held me until help came and I was pulled out. I was hanging from his hands about fifty to seventy-five feet above ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... to the shore and in the little harbor of the Castello dell' Ovo passed over the plank that served as a bridge between the dock and a little schooner with a greenish hull. Ferragut, who had taken in its exterior with a single glance, ran his eye over its deck.... "Eighty tons." Then he examined the apparatus and the auxiliary machinery,—a petroleum motor which permitted it to make ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... national convention, which made "extension of slavery" the essential plank of the party platform, met at Chicago on the 26th of May, 1860. At this time William H. Seward was the most conspicuous Republican in national politics; Salmon P. Chase also had long been in the forefront of the political ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... flagrant during the office of Mauger later on. It appears that the Sacristan of St. Ouen fell most uncanonically in love with a lady who dwelt on the other side of the Robec. On his way to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped from the plank that crossed the rapid little stream, and he fell into the water. Whereon a sprightly devilkin seized hurriedly upon his soul and was on the point of bearing it away to Hell, when an angel (mindful doubtless ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... a little group of officers sat in a roomy dug-out. Major Kemp was there, with his head upon the plank table, fast asleep. Bobby Little, who had neither eaten nor slept since the previous dawn, was nibbling chocolate, and shaking as if with ague. He had gone through a good deal. Waddell sat opposite ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... also a considerable trade to Norway and to the Baltic, from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oaken plank, balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas, and sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which they generally have a consumption for in their own port, where they build a very great number of ships every year, besides refitting ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... the quay, on the point of starting. Passepartout had but few steps to go; and, rushing upon the plank, he crossed it, and fell unconscious on the deck, just as the Carnatic was moving off. Several sailors, who were evidently accustomed to this sort of scene, carried the poor Frenchman down into the second cabin, and Passepartout did not wake until they were one hundred and ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... heart. His determination did not prove the coldness of his charity, but merely the strength of his fears. He was himself an object more of compassion than of anger; and he acted like the man whose fear of death prompts him to push his companion from the plank which saved him from drowning, but which is unable to sustain both. Finding him invincible to my entreaties, I thought upon the expedient which he suggested of seeking the protection of her uncle. It was true that ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... of drift-wood Tossed on the watery main, Another plank encountered, Meets—touches—parts again; So tossed, and drifting ever, On life's unresting sea, Men meet, and greet, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of the Northern Light a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing out the day—a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty, his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the failure of Forest King had gone the last plank that saved him from ruin, perhaps the last chance that stood between him and dishonour. He had never looked on it as within the possibilities of hazard that the horse could be defeated, and the blow fell with crushing force; the fiercer because his indolence had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... gave her kisses to the workmen struck by the bullets from the soldiers of the Czar; "She aroused the admiration of the very soldiers who, weeping, killed her: "What killing! All the houses shuttered, the windows with heavy eyelids of plank in order not to see!— "And the Kremlin itself has closed its gates—that it may not see. "The youth of Moscow ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... decline to offer ourselves as recruits for the police or the military. It is impossible for us to go to Mesopotamia or to offer to police that country or to offer military assistance and to help the Government in that blood guiltiness. The last plank in the first stage is Swadeshi. Swadeshi is intended not so much to bring pressure upon the Government as to demonstrate the capacity for sacrifice on the part of the men and women of India. When one-fourth of India has its religion at stake and when the whole of India ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... and I don't hanker after forsaking my pine-knot fire, and feather bed, to cleave unto jail bars, and handcuffs. I see you are tired of Dyce's jokes, and you mean bizzness; and I don't intend to consume no more of your valuable solicitous time. Dyce, fetch me that plank bottom cher to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... imperfect, and indistinct. It is like the touch of lightning on an electric chain, link after link starts up till we see the illumined whole. We have said Nigel had never heard the particulars of the tradition; but he looked on that misshapen plank, and in an instant a tale of blood and terror weaved itself in his mind; in that room the deed, whatever it was, had been done, and from that plank the sanguine evidence of murder had been with difficulty erased. A cold shuddering passed over him, and he turned instinctively away, and strode ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... their journey lakewards, breaking into the inevitable dogtrot as the long, dark pier came in sight. At the land end, John stooped to pick up a few sun-dried minnows which lay on a plank, and a little farther on Silvey grabbed eagerly at ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... to walk the plank by a pirate, it is vain for me to offer, as a common-sense compromise, to walk along the plank for a reasonable distance. It is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate and I differ. There is an exquisite ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... dirty, wet. While he pulled on a shirt Nas Ta Bega made the rope fast to a snag of a log of driftwood embedded in the sand, and the boat swung to shore. It was perhaps thirty feet long by half as many wide, crudely built of rough-hewn boards. The steering-gear was a long pole with a plank nailed to the end. The craft was empty save for another pole and plank, Joe's coat, and a broken-handled shovel. There were water and sand on the flooring. Joe stepped ashore and he was gripped first by Shefford and then by the Indian. He was an unkempt and gaunt giant, yet how steadfast and ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... unattained good, he tries many false and specious trails, is endlessly baffled and deceived, and finally discovers, if he is fortunate enough to come to himself, that he is like a shipwrecked man on a single plank with sea everywhere about him and no haven in sight. In this strait the Light, which he has not noted before, breaks in on his darkness, and the way of Grace is presented to him in {110} Christ. He feels himself called to a strange ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... expression of "Hell afloat" applied to very uncomfortable ships in the service, but this metaphor ought to have been reserved for a small high-pressure steamboat in the summer months in America; the sun darting his fierce rays down upon the roof above you, which is only half-inch plank, and rendering it so hot that you quickly remove your hand if, by chance, you put it there; the deck beneath your feet so heated by the furnaces below that you cannot walk with slippers; you are panting and exhausted between these two fires, without a breath ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... lying for some time in readiness to receive him. In Annapolis the poet was received with distinguished honor: at his embarkation crowds thronged the quay, and a number of distinguished citizens were gathered at the gang-plank to bid him God-speed on his journey. Captain Hull received his guest with the honor due his station: then the Constitution spread her sails, and, gay with bunting and responding heartily to the salutes from the forts on shore, swept gallantly down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... none had gone that short distance down the trail to find out for themselves. What particularly struck him and Shorty was the helplessness of these people. Their cabins were littered and dirty. The dishes stood unwashed on the rough plank tables. There was no mutual aid. A cabin's troubles were its own troubles, and already they had ceased from the exertion of burying ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Hill occupied the northeastern or southwestern corner, which take up nearly one half of the learned article in Smith's Dictionary, on the Capitoline. "Thales supposed the earth to float on the water, like a plank of wood": [Greek: oi d hudatos keisthai touton gar archaiotaton pareilaephamen ton logon hon phasin eipein thalae ton Milaesion]. Aristot., De Coel., ii. 13: "Quoe sequitur Thaletis ineptq sententia est. Ait enim terrarum orbem aqua sustineri." Seneca, Nat. Quoest., iii. 13. This ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to shore as it had been possible to bring her—so close indeed that the two stepped aboard without use of a plank. The position of the moon in the sky was such that the shadow of the trees was cast several feet beyond the boat, which, as a consequence, was wrapped in obscurity. Peering here and there, the youths began a visual search for the evidence they did not wish to find. Alvin tried the covering, ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... other end was tied around the mother. Then she pulled with all her might, and her strength was so great that his fore-quarters were lifted up and his small legs dangled in the air. He was pulled forward quite a distance, when the hawser broke and his fore-legs fell on the plank. His hind legs now were sinking and we were terribly frightened. We felt as if we ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... a few yards from the huge gymnasium. I climbed up breathless at full speed, and reached the wide plank at the top; when there I unfastened the rope ladder, but, as I could not raise the wooden ladder, by which I had ascended, up to me, I unfastened the rings. The wooden ladder fell and broke, making a great noise. I then stood up wickedly triumphant on the plank, calling ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... asked Marie timidly of Father De Smet as he was about to draw in the plank. "The babies are both asleep and I have ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... sheep kept on board a steamer plying in California. It goes out on the gang-plank, when a flock is to be loaded, to show that the approach is safe, and to act as pilot to the flock, which readily follows it on to the boat. The sheep, when in a flock, are all alike timid, and it is difficult to find a leader among them, each being afraid to go first; ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... completed his work on the matchboarding, handing down each plank to Neddy when he had detached it. Then he cut out a pane of glass—it was all A.B.C. to him—put his hand in and raised the sash a little; then it was simple to push it up from below. But the sash ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... while the gale lasted, the captain and crew concluded that they were on the traces of a wreck, and a boat was lowered for the purpose of examining the objects in the water. A hen-coop, some broken spars, and fragments of shattered plank were the first evidences discovered of the terrible disaster that had happened. Some of the lighter articles of cabin furniture, wrenched and shattered, were found next. And, lastly, a memento of melancholy interest turned up, in the shape of a lifebuoy, with a corked bottle attached to it. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... time for a quarrel, if that is what you mean. When the three met, Emilia was walking across a plank on the unfinished second story. On seeing the Loach girls—this is Isabella's tale—Emilia lost her footing and fell thirty feet. She was killed almost instantaneously, and her face was much disfigured. This took place during the dinner hour when the workmen were absent. When they returned, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... house, en dat wuz raided on, en eve'y time he los' a house he los' one er his chilluns. Las' Brer Rabbit got mad, he did, en cusst, en den he went off, he did, en got some kyarpinters, en dey b'ilt 'im a plank house wid rock foundashuns. Atter dat he could have some peace en quietness. He could go out en pass de time er day 'wid his neighbors, en come back en set by de fier, en smoke his pipe, en read de newspapers same like enny man w'at got a fambly. ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... too soon, for in a few seconds the boys rushed in, and then began a discussion as to whether it would be safe to take a plank up from the floor to look beneath it ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... Sever was carried up the gang-plank of an army transport, on his way to the United States to recover from his wound. Benito was by his side. When the deck was reached, he took his master by the hand. Great tears were gathering in his eyes and tracing down his fine, dusky face as he ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... order, his foot was on the plank-sheer of the bulwarks, in the act of passing to the wharf again. On reaching the shore, he turned and looked intently at the revenue steamer, and his lips moved, as if he were secretly uttering maledictions on her. We say maledictions, as the expression of his fierce ill-favoured ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... "The thing must be done cleverly and look like an accident. The best plan would be to get at the canoes. They're hauled up side by side and you might perhaps set them on fire when he makes his caulking gum. Or you might knock loose a plank or two in the bottom. Anyhow, you'll have to hold him up long enough for me to ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... I made oration to the general gnat-bitten populace, from the gang-plank, to the effect that one William P. Joyce, trap, crap, and snap shooter was due to happen back casual most any time, and any lady or gent desirous of witnessing at first hand, a shutzenfest with live targets, could be gratified by infestin' in person or by proxy, the lands, tenements, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... not only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... been altogether sanitary. Nothing about it was tight enough to harbor a self-respecting germ. It was the rise of twenty feet square, built stoutly of hewn logs, with a sharply pitched board roof, a movable loft, a plank floor boasting inch-wide cracks, a door, two windows and a fireplace that took up a full half of one end. In front of the fireplace stretched a rough stone hearth, a yard in depth. Sundry and several cranes swung against the chimney-breast. When fully in commission they ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... particularly on the last two days, pointed out to Berthier how necessary it was to provide adequate ways out in the event of a retreat, his invariable reply had been "The Emperor has not ordered it." No materials were supplied, and so not a plank nor beam had been placed across a rivulet when, during the night of 18th-19th the Emperor ordered a retreat to Weissenfels and ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... looked at his impassive face with a strange, dull curiosity as she spoke of the future, as if wondering whether she had a future or had reached the end of her life—here, at this moment, in the little plank-walled office of the malgamite works. But her courage rose steadily. It is only afar off that Death is terrible. When we actually stand in his presence, we usually hold up our heads and face ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... it all out?" said Hetty, still holding fast by her doubt, which seemed the only plank that could save her from destruction in case this enchanting story should prove to ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... huge Periphas and all The Scyrian youth rush up, and flaming fire Hurl to the roof, and thunder at the wall. He in the forefront, tallest of the tall, Poleaxe in hand, unhinging at a stroke The brazen portals, made the doorway fall, And wide-mouthed as a window, through the oak, A panelled plank hewn out, a yawning ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... mirror, how, as a marvellously beautiful knight, he knelt before Gabrielle, who sank into his arms blushing as the morning. When he awoke from such dreams, he would seize eagerly the sword and scarf given him by his lady,—as a shipwrecked man seizes the plank which is to save him; and while the hot tears fell on them, he would murmur to himself, "There was, indeed, one hour in my sad life when I was worthy ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the left wing, near his door, was a small ladder leading to the second story roof, and a dozen feet from the edge of the roof stood an old oak tree, on the further side of a tall hedge. Kenneth managed to carry a plank to the roof, where, after several attempts, he succeeded in dropping one end into a crotch of the oak, thus connecting the edge of the roof with the tree by means of the narrow plank. After this, at first sight of the girls in his end of the garden, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions. One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the good fortune, with several of the merchants and mariners, to get a plank, and we were carried by the current to an island which lay before us: there we found fruit and spring water, which preserved our lives. We stayed all night near the place where the sea cast us ashore, without consulting what we should do, our misfortune had ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... dress, wondered why all the nice girls did not get married, and from time to time she plaintively questioned the passers-by if they had seen May. Violet's sharp face had grown sharper. She knew she could do something if she only got a chance. But would she get a chance? The Ladies Cullen, their plank-like shoulders bound in grey frise velvet and steel, were talking to her. Suddenly Lady Sarah bowed to Lord Kilcarney, and the bow said, 'Come hither!' Leaving Olive he approached. A moment after he was introduced to Violet. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of the Lord hath sent me down to keep you company down here. I never would 'a done it, captain, hard as you was on me, if only I had knowed how dark and cold and shivery it would be down here. I cut the plank out; I'll not lie; no lies is any good down here, with the fingers of the deep things pointing to me, and the black devil's wings coming over me—but a score of years agone it were, and never no one dreamed of it—oh, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... It would seem that Penance is not a second plank after shipwreck. Because on Isa. 3:9, "They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom," a gloss says: "The second plank after shipwreck is to hide one's sins." Now Penance does not hide sins, but reveals them. Therefore Penance ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... futility inspired an episode which was narrated throughout the army in that winter of '15, and led to curious conversations in dugouts and billets. Above a German front-line trench appeared a plank on which, in big ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Farrar a hand with the ropes, and it was O'Meara who caught the one I flung ashore and wound it around a pile. The people pressed around, peering at our party on the Maria, and I heard McCann exhorting them to make way. And just then, as he was about to cross the plank, they parted for some one from behind. A breathless messenger halted at the edge of the wharf. He held ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been intensely interesting, but the Obstacle Race proved an even greater excitement. Two thin planks of wood were placed across the bath, floating upon the water. The competitors started from the deep end, dived under the first plank, and then scrambled over the second. At the shallow end were a number of large round wash-tubs; each candidate had to seize upon one of these and seat herself in it, a most difficult feat of fine balancing, for unless she hit ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... to be afraid that my passenger's devotion to his friends would lead him to accompany them down the river. I went up into the cabin, and found him taking a "parting drink" with them. I told him the boat was just starting; he hastily shook hands with his companions, and accompanied me down to the plank. I crossed it, and had hardly touched the shore before I heard a splash behind me. I turned, and saw that Squire Fishley had toppled into the river. His last dram appeared to be the ounce that ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... and lady are obliged to cross a narrow walk, plank, or slippery place, the lady may go first, and the gentleman walk close behind her, to aid her if needful. If the place is short, then the gentleman should go first, and then offer his hand to assist the lady across. If a gentleman meet a lady ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Uncle Sam is young and strong. He longs to grapple with his contemporaries, to demonstrate his physical superiority. He has a cypress shingle on either shoulder and is trailing his star-spangled cutaway down the plank turnpike. While a few mugwumps, like Josef Phewlitzer and Apollyon Halicarnassus Below, and tearful Miss Nancys of the Anglo- maniacal school, are protesting that this country wants peace, Congress, that ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... directed to send all the Oak Plank which they may have in their Possession, to Mount Washington with the ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... about his clean hands, the dirty scoundrel!" cried Harry. "Why, if we were only afloat, we'd make him walk a plank!" ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Plate Glass, is made of thick board or plank, with the broad side of the board at right angles to the surface of the glass. A rabbet is made for the reception of the glass, and four strips of strap iron, overlapping both the glass, and the wood, and screwed to the wood, keep the glass in position. Strips of rubber are interposed between the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... ceremony which held its own to a late stage in Athenian history. The ship in which Theseus was said to pave made his voyage was preserved with the utmost care till at least the beginning of the third century B.C., her timbers being constantly 'so pieced and new-framed with strong plank that it afforded an example to the philosophers in their disputations concerning the identity of things that are changed by growth, some contending that it was the same, and others that it was not.' It ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... my vineyard in central North Carolina, and fronting on the Lumberton plank-road, there stood a small frame house, of the simplest construction. It was built of pine lumber, and contained but one room, to which one window gave light and one door admission. Its weatherbeaten ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... first memory of Lexington is of arriving, at midnight, in a December snowstorm, after a twelve hours' ride from Staunton in an old stage coach. This was before there was a turnpike or plank road, and the ups and downs we had that night made an impression on our bodies as well as ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... here the plank of poor La Salle his ship," said he, "we might nail the message of that other renegade above our door—'Nous sommes ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... that a family of squirrels had made a home beneath a piece of flooring within easy reach of where he lay, and upon forcing up the piece of rotten plank he found to his intense joy an almost endless supply of nuts, and close beside their burrow a running stream of clear, cool, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... a soft wedge or two in parts to keep it from shifting after being placed in position. In some instances more than two or even three or four pieces may be of advantage where the tendency to twist is irregular. The operator now gets a short plank of ordinary wood, of even surface, straight, and true as possible in each direction; lifting the violin table with the loops of wood attached and placing it on the plank, some of the loops will be raised up on one side while others are depressed at the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... "my wife is groaning, and I am bound to obey her. She had a dream last night she was in a flood, and had to cross a plank or summut. I quieted her till supper; but then landlord came round and warned all of us of a crack or summut up at dam. And so now I am taking this little lot up to my brother's. It's the foolishest job I ever done: but needs must when the devil drives, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... copper-coloured people as don't want 'em, and taking no notice of flesh-coloured Christians as do. If I'd my vay, Samivel, I'd just stick some o' these here lazy shepherds behind a heavy wheelbarrow, and run 'em up and down a fourteen-inch-wide plank all day. That 'ud shake the nonsense out of 'em, if ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and exhausting voyage, a plank started in the mate's boat, and it was with difficulty that they heeled it over in the water, at the risk of their lives, to get to the place and nail it up. One night the captain's boat was attacked by a species of fish known as a "killer" (Orca), and its bows were stove in. This also they ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the number of turns to be given to the screws of the log carriage for cutting plank or boards of ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Captain, clasping his head. Then, with a shout: "Garboard streak! garboard streak? Don't you know that the garboard streak is the last plank next the keel? You mean counter, not garboard streak. That regularly graveled me, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... is effectually done by two shafts, called respectively the downcast and the upcast shaft. A shaft is in reality a very deep well, and may be circular, rectangular or oval in form. In order to keep out water which may be struck in passing through the various strata, it is protected by plank or wood tubbing, or the shaft is bricked over, or sometimes even cast-iron segments are sunk. In many shafts which, owing to their great depth, pass through strata of every degree of looseness or viscosity, all three methods are utilised in turn. In Westphalia, ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six miles of stark-naked plank walk, rows on rows of bath closets, leagues of flimsy carpentry-work, in the way of cheap-John shops, tin-type booths, peep-shows, go-rounds, shooting-galleries, pop-beer and cigar shops, restaurants, barber shops, photograph galleries, summer theatres. Sometimes the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... turns, made the mile and a half in an incredibly short space of time. As she reached the top of the hill above the landing, she saw the boat coming in to the dock. Though panting and almost spent, again she ran at the top of her speed. Half- way down she heard the plank ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Fandor was preparing to go to sleep on the plank bed which decorated one end of the cell, when the little costermonger, roused from his torpid condition, began ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... clouds on Benlomond are sleeping— From Greenock, where Clyde to the Ocean is sweeping— From Largs, where the Scotch gave the Northmen a drilling— From Ardrossan, whose harbor cost many a shilling— From Old Cumnock, where beds are as hard as a plank, sir— From a chop and green pease, and a chicken in Sanquhar, This eve, please the Fates, at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... they could not heed it. The pious were pleading in behalf of those out of Christ, and many of these last were crying for mercy. One prayer commenced, "O Lord, throw us a rope, for we are out in the open sea, on a single plank, and wave after wave is dashing over us." So they continued till near midnight, when their ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... the plank which had saved the life of Mrs. Jeffreys, Robert Seymour looked about him and listened. Now and again he heard a faint, choking scream uttered by some drowning wretch, and a few hundred yards away caught sight of a black object which he thought might be a boat. If so, he reflected that ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... This while the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... goose. Wherever I feel water heaving under a plank, there I feel at home. I'll pick up some craft or other to take me off, never fear. I won't stay twenty-four hours in London, away from you on the one hand, and from somebody ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... with provisions and let them find their way wherever they liked, while we went off with the steamer. That was the surface plan—my own belief is that if it had come to it, the two Quicks would have been quite ready to make skipper and men walk the plank, or to have settled them in any other way—both Noah and Salter, for all their respectable appearance, were born out of their due time—they were admirably qualified to have been lieutenants to Paul Jones or any other eighteenth-century ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... in his shipwreck looked round for a saving plank, and tried to nurse himself in illusions. The Duke of Vicenza went to Marshals Ney and Macdonald, whom he found just stepping into a carriage to proceed to Paris. Both positively refused to return the act to Caulaincourt, saying, "We are sure of the concurrence of the Emperor ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shad no one will wish to have it served in any other manner, as no other method of preparing fish equals this. For planked shad, use an oak plank, at least two inches thick, three inches thick is better. Planks for this purpose may be bought at a department store or procured at a planing mill. Place plank in oven several days before using to season it. Always heat the plank in ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... the third house past the poplar. First there was a plank bridge across a grass-grown ditch; then a tiny patch of garden; then a humble whitewashed cottage with a small leaded casement window on each side of the front door. Unlike Hope Cottage, it did not look at all the residence of Miss Janet and Miss ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... countries had come to another agreement. By a secret alliance between Germany and Russia, Denmark was rendered helpless. Germany was hostile to American expansion in that quarter.[393] The Republican Party incorporated into its platform in 1896 a plank requiring the purchase of the Danish West Indies and in 1898 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge introduced in the Senate a bill to purchase the group for $5,000,000.[394] No steps were then taken, doubtless for the reason that we had just ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... plead in vain. So saying, he went. Meantime the Greeks endured The Trojan onset, firm, yet from the ships Repulsed them not, though fewer than themselves, 500 Nor could the host of Troy, breaking the ranks Of Greece, mix either with the camp or fleet; But as the line divides the plank aright, Stretch'd by some naval architect, whose hand Minerva hath accomplish'd in his art, 505 So stretch'd on them the cord of battle lay. Others at other ships the conflict waged, But Hector to the ship advanced direct Of glorious ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... but my uncle said, 'Oh! let him in by all means.—Well, friend, what do you want to say to me about my coffin?' 'Only, sir, that I'll saw up the oak tree that your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That would be wasteful,' answered my uncle; 'I never was more than six feet and an inch in my vamps, the best day ever I saw.' 'But your honor will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am sure, you blockhead! But I'll stretch, no ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... around the corner, I begin to sing the long meter doxology. My music sends it flying. I can't afford to be discouraged. You see, I'm pledged to help a lot of unfortunate friends. I haven't a cent of money and every time I let the teeniest little discouragement show its face, it would surely knock a plank out of the hospital I'm going to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of rank, boiling coffee in the air. Bacon was sizzling over the fire and a huge corn pone was baking on a plank before the coals. Mag did not propose to starve her guests, ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Nothing in the way of habitation is left. Everything has been beaten into pulp by hurricanes of shell-fire. First you come to a metropolis of horse-lines, which makes you think that a mammoth circus has arrived. Then you come to plank roads and little light railways, running out like veins across the mud. Far away there's a ridge and a row of charred trees, which stand out gloomily etched against the sky. The sky is grey and damp and sickly; fleecy balls of smoke burst against it—shrapnel. You wonder whether they've ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... but, all the same, two months wasted to a certain extent because I have not yet succeeded. And Heaven knows how I have ransacked this shop of yours! There is not a piece of furniture that I have left unsearched, not a plank in the floor that I have not inspected. All to no purpose. Yes, there was one thing, an incidental discovery. In a secret recess in your writing-table, Pancaldi, I turned up a little account-book in which you have set down your remorse, your uneasiness, your ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... raised porch of JOE CLARK'S Store and the street in front. Porch stretches almost completely across the stage, with a plank bench at either end. At the center of the porch three steps leading from street. Rear of porch, center, door to the store. On either side are single windows on which signs, at left, "POST OFFICE", and at right, "GENERAL STORE" ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite foundations and white granite window caps. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Trammell and his wife, Miss Martha, was our marster and mistess. Miss Ada, Miss Emma, and Miss Mary 'Liza was the young misses, and the young marsters was named George Washin'ton and William Daniel. Marse Robert and his fambly lived in a log and plank house with a rock chimbly. He was buildin' a fine rock house when the war came on, but ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... speaking cheerfully and comfortingly to his men. When it was so hot that the wood, green though it was, began to blaze, they drew it out and thrust it into the giant's eye. Round and round they whirled the fiery pike, as a man bores a hole in a plank, until the blood gushed out, and the eye frizzled and hissed, and the flames singed and burned the eyelids, and the eye was burned out. With a great and terrible cry the giant sprang to his feet, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... even the smallest luxuries. There is also a great deficiency of a circulating medium. I have seen a man bringing on his back a bag of charcoal, with which to buy some trifle, and another carrying a plank to exchange for a bottle of wine. Hence every tradesman must also be a merchant, and again sell the goods which he takes ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... farm, and they rowed up to a place where the cattle came down to drink, and a plank ran out on to a couple of posts, evidently for convenience in landing from a boat, or for ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... was run out into the field, right along the edge of the piles of pig iron. An inclined plank was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and dropped it on the end ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless of shore ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Atlantic Island, the subject of this history. This was so near Spain that, according to the common fame, Caliz used to be so close to the main land in the direction of the port of Santa Maria, that a plank would serve as a bridge to pass from the island to Spain. So that no one can doubt that the inhabitants of Spain, Jubal and his descendants, peopled that land, as well as the inhabitants of Africa which ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... the plank, Sir," I said, as my esteemed master lightly skipped across the gangway, marshalling a well-grown youth carrying a scythe; "we don't have many visitors here. One who looked in the other day slipped his foot, fell over, and we've never ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... the Spectator, "you said in your famous speech before the Society for the Prevention of the Protrusion of Nail Heads from Plank Sidewalks that Kings were blood-smeared oppressors and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... cone and its contents on to a plank, the ends of which were held by my servant and myself, we walked to the footlights with our heavy burden, and upset it. The Moor had disappeared—the cone was ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... house of Ensign John Sheldon, already mentioned. The Indians had had some difficulty in mastering it; for the door being of thick oak plank, studded with nails of wrought iron and well barred, they could not break it open. After a time, however, they hacked a hole in it, through which they fired and killed Mrs. Sheldon as she sat on the edge ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... vast continuous warehouse. The inner side was reserved for passenger vessels, and everywhere the largest ships could come up close, landing either passengers or cargo without even the intervention of a plank. The appearance of the ships is very unlike that of Terrestrial vessels. They have no masts or rigging, are constructed of the zorinta, which in Mars serves much more effectively all the uses of iron, and differ entirely in construction as they are intended for cargo or for travel. Mercantile ships ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... been introduced to strengthen ships by diagonal braces or by doubling or sheathing them with plank, and sometimes when they were in bad condition both bracing and doubling them. By this means 22 sail of the line, several frigates, and other smaller vessels had been made ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the regal crown. We'll smoke the woodchucks out and tan their hides And parchment make, on which, in words of gold, Shall be inscribed, so all the world may read: "Saturnine pleasure it to us doth give, To see them walk the plank from scuttled ship." Caesar: Ha Ha! but speak it not aloud, until 'tis done. Both: Whist! whist as mice! We'll oil the guillotine. Exeunt both while Caesar washes his hands with ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... monster was fairly on its side, when an ominous creak was heard; the plank broke, and before a new hold could be taken the turtle was but ten feet from the water. Active measures were evidently necessary, and Sandy, taking the board, ran in front of the animal and struck wildly at its head, yelling to us to lift. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... fascination. Ignorant as she was of such things, she knew that the value of these stones must be immense. At last she closed the casket, returned it to the bottom of the hole and replaced the earth, the plank and the wood-box. Where, when and how had the skipper come by that treasure? she wondered. She hobbled over to Pat Kavanagh's house and told Mary all ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... has received the greatest quantity of undeserved praise of all who ever lived. Oliver Evans, born in 1755 of a respectable family, was a miller at Faulkland, where his smaller inventions were first put in use. The plank just under the apex of the roof, which he used to retire to as his private study, was shown until 1867, when the old mill was burned. Up among the swallows, as he lay on the board—to which, as Beecher expresses it, he "brought the softness"—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... my mask, but evidently Aunt Kathryn must have had hers stuffed into one of the big pockets of her coat, as she often did. The Prince stood talking to her, and seeing that all was ready I crossed the gang-plank and walked ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Feversham's voice, just a little less calm than usual. "I think I can keep her head above water till help cometh. Jack Enville, fetch a rope or a plank—quick!" ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... brought-to, or rather stopped), we had penetrated about eight leagues into it, describing our path all the way with bits of the sheathing of the ship's bottom, and sometimes pieces of the cutwater, but none of the oak plank; and it was pleasant enough at times, when we stuck fast, to see Lord Petersham exercising his troops on the crusted surface of that fluid through which the ship had so recently sailed." It took nine ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... troops, ambulances and stretcher corps towards the front; more or less of army debris scattered about, and the nervous bustle everywhere apparent. We reached the famous Chancellorsville House shortly after midnight. This was an old-time hostelry, situated on what was called the Culpeper plank-road. It stood with two or three smaller houses in a cleared square space containing some twenty or thirty acres, in the midst of the densest forest of trees and undergrowth I ever saw. We had marched all day on plank and corduroy roads, through ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... so ran the teaching, blotted out the past and put one on a plane to make a new beginning; but, then, when he fell, there was this new sacrament, to which resort could be taken. It was the "second plank," wrote Jerome, "by which one could swim out of the sea of his sins." "No," exclaimed Luther, in the Large Catechism, "the ship of our baptism never goes down. If we fall out of the ship, there it is, ready for our ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... embarked for Cadiz in March 1775. We had a very good passage, without any material accident, until we arrived off the Bay of Cadiz; when one Sunday, just as we were going into the harbour, the ship struck against a rock and knocked off a garboard plank, which is the next to the keel. In an instant all hands were in the greatest confusion, and began with loud cries to call on God to have mercy on them. Although I could not swim, and saw no way of escaping death, I ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... crusty clerk named Wemmick, as secret as he and a deal queerer. Wemmick lived in a little wooden cottage that he called The Castle, and which had its top cut out like a fort. It had a ditch all around it with a plank drawbridge. When he got home from the office in the evening he pulled up the drawbridge and ran up a flag on a flagstaff planted there. And exactly at nine every night he fired off a brass cannon that he kept in a latticework ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... their passage in her. No doubt rested on the minds of the people of the settlement that the stranger vessel was a pirate, and that when his people had murdered the crew of the Thomas, with their captain, or had compelled them to walk the plank, as they usually do, that they sunk her after taking everything out of her which they wanted. "Walking the plank," is literally walking into the sea. A plank is placed across the side of the ship, so ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Herald." Greeley declined, but recommended two young printers, who formed partnership with Bennett, and the "Herald" was started on May 6, 1835, with a cash capital to pay expenses for ten days. Bennet hired a small cellar in Wall Street, furnished it with a chair and a desk composed of a plank supported by two barrels; and there, doing all the work except the printing, began the work of making a really great daily newspaper, a thing then unknown in America, as all its predecessors were party organs. Steadily the young man struggled towards his ideal, giving the news, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... bloody chaos. Even at best our politicians and party publications sing in unison, all struggling to the same end, victory at the polls and the elimination, as far as possible, of real issues. Their quadrennial platforms are ever coming nearer and nearer together—not omitting a plank expressing "profound sympathy" with the poor, persecuted people of some part of the Old World. A large majority of the Democracy are openly in favor of free trade and free silver, while the average "favorite son" is only in favor of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... weather boards, that is planks sawn diagonally so as to be of the thickness of about one inch at one edge, and about a quarter of an inch on the other. In the construction of such a house, the form, or skeleton, is erected first, and these boards are then affixed so as to overlap one another; each plank as it is put on being made to cover, with its thick side, the thin edge of the one preceding it: thus being alike impervious to wind and weather. The roof is shingled, or, in other words, covered with pieces of wood split into much the same shape as narrow slates, and put on in a similar ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... one whose home is the ocean, such are not the emotions which its expanse of broad waters calls forth. To such an one, each plank seems a friend; the vessel, a refuge from the world and its cares. Trusting himself to its guidance, deceit wounds him no more— hollow-hearted friendship proffers not its hand to sting—love exercises not its fatal sorcery—foes are afar—and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... was that the Indian mode of ship building differed fundamentally from the European. The timbers were fitted in after the planks had been put together; and the planks were put together, not with flat edges, but rabbited, the parts made to correspond with the greatest exactness. When a plank was set up, its edge was smeared with red lead, and the edge of the plank to come next was pressed down upon it, the inequalities in its surface being thus shown by the marks of the lead. These being smoothed away, if necessary several times, and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... try another way of return, over a small bridge, which in fact spanned the very water-course which ran through her glen; but being arrived at this bridge, to her surprise she found it broken down. It was only a single plank, and the wood had rotted and given way. The brook was too wide and deep in that place to permit her to cross it, and the consequence was, that she must needs go round more than a mile; and, what added to her embarrassment, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... owner of this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to his knifeless comrades. The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for identification. We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would answer for a board and purchased it from its possessor for part of a ration of meal, and so were fitted out with what served until our release to distract our attention from ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... defence there was almost always a central stronghold, raised on a great mound of earth; and this was the dwelling of the chief, provincial ruler, or king. Lesser mounds upheld the houses of lesser chiefs, and all alike seem to have been built of oak, with plank roofs. Safe storehouses of stone were often sunk underground, beneath the chief's dwelling. In the fort of Emain, as in the great fort of Tara in the Boyne Valley, there was a banqueting-hall for the warriors, and the bards thus describe one of these in the days of its glory: "The banquet-hall ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... four stout varlets, bearing between them a rude plank, on which was stretched a naked body, the limbs being not yet stiffened in death. I hardly credited my sight. Before they came abreast of us I inquired of the driver what it all meant. He only shrugged his shoulders, "A ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... in the wet night. A great fire of pine roots and old paling posts hissed in the fine rain, and around it crouched several urchins busy making oatmeal cakes in the embers. On one side a respectable lean-to had been constructed by nailing a plank to two fir-trees, running sloping poles thence to the ground, and thatching the whole with spruce branches and heather. On the other side two small dilapidated home-made tents were pitched. Dougal motioned his companion into the lean-to, where they had ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... to influence Lygia and her guardians in some way, but for that there was need of time. For him it was all-important to see her, to look at her for a few days even. As every fragment of a plank or an oar seems salvation to a drowning man, so to him it seemed that during those few days he might say something to bring him nearer to her, that he might think out something, that something favorable might happen. Hence he collected his thoughts ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... at last scarcely a timber or plank of the wreck was to be seen. What hope of escape had either of us? The foaming waters raged around, and we were half perished with cold and hunger. On looking about I found a small spar washed up on the rock, and, fastening our handkerchiefs ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston |
