"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast: He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the complaint of the burgher. "The times are getting heavy for men of metal, as may be seen by the manner in which yon cruiser wears out her ground-tackle, instead of trying the open sea. May I spring every spar I carry, but I would have the boat out and give her an airing, before to-morrow, if the Queen would condescend to put your humble servant in charge of the craft! The man lies there, at his anchors, as if he ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... note, Who had on many a stream afloat Vast rafts of red pine timber, when White pine was little thought of; then Oak, elm, cedar and red pine And staves, together did combine, With now and then a mast or spar, To make up what would go at par, At Stadacona—old Quebec— Where brave Montgomery got a check In a most bootless, foolish strife, Which cost him his undaunted life— Where Arnold got a broken thigh, Ere at West ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... near a fisherman, who like them was gazing seawards, when the child went skimming past along the shore. Mrs. Netherby asked the fisherman about her, and learned the secret of the sea's motherhood. She had been washed ashore from the wreck of a vessel; and was found on the beach, tied to a spar. All besides had perished. From the fragment they judged it to have been a Dutch vessel. Some one had said in her hearing—'Poor child! the sea is her mother;' and her imagination had cherished the idea. A fisherman, who had no family, had taken her to ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an troubles have come, an mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an shoo's flown far, far away ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Brown, chipper as a mack'rel gull on a spar-buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or only an 'also ran,' ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hull of their ship forged itself clear of the maze of masts, yards, sails, and rigging, in which it had been so long enveloped. This was no sooner done, than she let fall a sail from her sprit-sail-yard, one bent for the occasion, and a top-gallant-sail was set to a light spar that had been rigged against the stump of the main-mast; the stick that rose ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... down into it, perhaps she might hide from the savages. It was her one possible chance of escape. The girl moved along the edge of the precipice trying to find a way down that was not sheer. An arrowweed thicket had struggled up from a jutting spar of rock. Below this was a ridge where her foot might find a support. Beyond was a rock wall that disappeared into empty space. But 'Mona could not choose. She must take this ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... in sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering morsels of sand and pebbles, and with those tiny, brilliant, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ferocious hail the halyards had been let go by the run, and all our crew had bolted aloft. A few bronzed bandits posted abreast of each mast kept them there by the menace of bell-mouthed blunderbusses pointed upwards. Lumsden and Mercer had been each tied flat down to a spare spar. They presented an appearance too ridiculous to awaken genuine compassion. Major Cowper was made to sit on a hen-coop, and a bearded pirate, with a red handkerchief tied round his head and a cutlass in his hand, stood ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the captain shouted. "Quick, men! and lash a spare spar to the yard. They are busy cutting away their topmast, but we shall be off again before they are ready to move. They have lost nearly half a mile; we shall soon be out of range. Be sharp with ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... and lost in the rosy vagaries of a vivid imagination, I unhappily for the moment forgot the objects for which I was stationed on deck. I seated myself involuntarily on a spar, which was lashed alongside the long boat, and in a few minutes, without any intention or expectation of being otherwise than vigilant in the extreme, WAS TRANSPORTED TO THE ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... had remained in a state of stupor since the loss of his daughter, was borne to the ship's side, and hurriedly fastened to a spar; and then all the crew boldly sprung into the water, and pushing the fragments of boards and spars from the burning brig, as soon as they attained a safe distance, commenced the construction of their raft in the water. This was an exceedingly difficult undertaking; but they were working ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was like a hare before the hounds, so quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set sails—not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. It was like having one's own country, and his cabin aboard was like his own castle—the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, and the compass above the fastened bed, the row of books, the Aberdeen terrier, Duine Uasal, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... saw only the ship. "Oh, great Lord!" he loathingly drawled, "is it Damned Fools' Day again?" Her web of cordage began to grow dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out from her berth and started down the wide, swift river, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 'How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... low, heavily beamed ceiling and walls of birch, stained to a rich sienna, glistening in fresh spar varnish; the fire licking up the throat of the wide chimney-piece built of rough boulders from the bed of Big Shanty; the floor laid with rare rugs; the easy chairs and shaded lights—all gave to this living room a charm that ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... life is strong in every heart, and when he found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly and grasped a spar. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the Congo alive. There was no one, from the butcher to the captain, including the passengers, who had not shielded Fanny from the cold, and later from the sun, fed her, bathed her, forced medicine down her throat, and raced her up and down the spar deck. Consequently we all knew Fanny, and it was a great shock when from the custom-house I saw her running around the blazing parade ground, her eyes filled with fear and "lost dog" written all over her, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... irradiating the long polar night of his bachelorhood. But even on the polar night the sun rises—a little way; and the time came when he married—as one might expect to find the flame of a volcano hidden away in a mountain of Iceland spar. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar. And bound ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, 5 Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 10 They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... against one of the corresponding and equally bad class of British gun-brigs. The Adams after several changes of form finally became a flush-decked corvette. The Essex had originally mounted twenty-six long 12's on her main-deck, and sixteen 24-pound carronades on her spar-deck; but official wisdom changed this, giving her 46 guns, twenty-four 32-pound carronades, and two long 12's on the main-deck, and sixteen 32-pound carronades with four long 12's on the spar-deck. When Captain Porter had command of her he was deeply sensible of the disadvantages of an ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... before a word was spoken. Then one of the visitors stepped forward and said, 'Mr. Hardy, I hope you won't go, there has been a mistake; we did not know of this. I am sure many of us are very sorry for what has occurred; stay and look on, we will all of us spar.' I looked at him, and then at my host, to see whether the latter joined in the apology. Not he, he was doing the dignified sulky, and most of the rest seemed to me to be with him. 'Will any of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... side, and the seamen upon the other, were stowed like herrings upon "a platform laid across water-casks, whose surface they completely covered when they slept, and at so small a distance below the spar deck that their heads would reach it when seated." To these inconveniences were added the want of any room for exercise on deck, the attacks of innumerable vermin which their predecessors, the slaves, had left behind them, and (as the salted meat put on ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... property which some transparent bodies have of producing, either on their surface or within their substance, light different in color from that of its origin. This happens, for example, when green crystals of fluor spar afford blue reflections of light. Glass may be rendered fluorescent, as is seen in the Geisler and Crookes tubes. Edison conceived the project of using this phenomenon to get back the invisible rays ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... don't knock away a spar we will hold on," Captain Reuben said. "If they do, we will turn and fight them. But the wind is dropping a little, and I think that, if anything, we are gaining ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... which water pours from above, in innumerable little streams, like a perpetual shower of rain! The never-abating action of the water has worn the rock into many fantastic shapes; and, crusting round the moss and fibres of the roots of trees, has given to it almost the appearance of a spar cavern. In several places the water has worn little reservoirs for itself, which are always full. It is cool, clear, and pleasant to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... wound had been dressed, she dispatched a messenger to Baiae to inform Nero of what had occurred. The vessel in which she had embarked had been wrecked at sea, she said, and she had narrowly escaped destruction. She had received a severe hurt, by some falling spar, but had at length safely reached her home at Antium. She begged, however, that her son would not come to see her, as what she needed most was repose. She had sent the messenger, she said, to inform him of what had occurred only that he ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... and Lancashire, in churns or caverns formed in the upper beds of the mountain or carboniferous limestone. The leaner ores contain a great deal of calcareous matter in the shape of common limestone or spar, which reduces the percentage in the ore as low as between 15 and 25 per cent., and it seldom exceeds 25, except when mixed with fragments of what is called brush ore, which, when in quantity, raises ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, and is formed much like the Virginia nitingale; it is thick and ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... perfect vegetable structures, opening fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, where rime has fallen, there sparkle these ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... from storm-tossed oceans, Where vessels bravely battle with fierce gale,— Mere playthings of our stormy, restless power, We rend them quickly, shuddering mast and sail; And with their, stalwart, gallant crews we hurl them Amid the hungry waves that for them wait, Nor leave one floating spar nor fragile taffrail To tell unto ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... P.M. the end of the flag-staff was shot down, and the flag fell.[20] It had been previously hanging by one halliard, the other having been cut by a piece of shell. The exultation of the enemy, however, was short-lived. Peter Hart found a spar in the fort, which answered very well as a temporary flag-staff. He nailed the flag to this, and raised it triumphantly by nailing and tying the pole firmly to a pile of gun-carriages on the parapet. This was gallantly done, without undue ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... in the direction indicated showed the boys an object like a spar buoy apparently standing upright in the water. The next moment a swell rolled over something beneath the ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... The little windows had gay curtains fluttering in the breeze, and the room within looked clean and cheery; the rough walls were adorned with the spoils of the fresh-water seas, shells, green stones, agates, spar, and curiously shaped pebbles; occasionally there was a stuffed water-bird, or a bright-colored print, and always a violin. Black-eyed children played in the water which bordered their narrow beach-gardens; and slender women, with shining black ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... into the country of the sea-people. In that land there grew neither grass nor flowers, bushes nor trees, but the ground was covered with bright-coloured shells and pebbles. There were hills of marble, and rocks of spar. Over all was a cold blue sky with no sun, but a light clear and silvery as that of the harvest moon. The fisherman could see no smoking chimneys, but there were caves in the rocks of spar, and halls in the marble hills, where lived the sea-people—with whom, as old ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... a shot aimed high by the lugger struck the cutter's topmast. The spar held on for a minute, but a stronger puff of wind filling the sail, with a loud crash it gave way, and down came the gaff-topsail and square-topsail. The mainsail and squaresail still, however, stood. The lugger now came ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... and launched her into blue water, under the name of the Beginning. To his great pride and delight, Captain Blokes appointed the Doctor of Physic to command her. She was well built for sailing, so she was had round to a small Cove in the Southernmost part of Lobos. A small Spar out of the Marquis made a Mainmast for her, and one of our Mizen Topsails was altered to make her a Mainsail. March 21st, All being ready, and the Beginning christened by Captain Blokes emptying a Bowl of hot Punch ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... homeless and seems to be in love with him. When too late, he knows that his affections are another's, and sees his wife fascinated by a handsome French adventurer. In an attempt to elope, the wife and her lover are wrecked, and clinging to a spar, are overtaken by the "terrible South Breaker—plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooping and rocking in." Dan in later life, marries Georgia, his first love.—Harriet Prescott Spofford, The South ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... infantry, artillery and cavalry, were encamped around him, and any violent movement on his part would have been sure to result in an ignominious disaster. The doughty old farmer, who was not less than six feet three in his stockinged feet, held on to him as a drowning man clings to a floating spar. It was not possible to get away without resorting to violence; and if he offered any resistance to what, just then, looked like manifest destiny, the rebel soldier would become an ally of the farmer, and the women could call in the ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... John Wilkes said, "and was as smart a sailor as any on board till he had his foot smashed by being jammed by a spare spar that got adrift in a gale, so that the doctors had to cut off the leg under the knee, and leave him to stump about on a timber toe for the rest of his life. I tell you what, Master Cyril: we might make the thing ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... different nature from that exhibited in organic forms. The diamond shines for a time in the dark after it has been exposed to the sun; so do pieces of quartz when rubbed together, and powdered fluor-spar when heated shines with considerable brilliancy. Various artificial compounds, such as sulphide of calcium (Canton's phosphorus, as it is called from the discoverer), sulphate of barium (Bologna stone, or Bologna phosphorus), sulphide of strontium, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... invited to search for minerals, copper, lead, iron, manganese, and other valuable products of a similar character. From Sutherland he brought specimens of the finest clay, and reported a fine vein of heavy spar and "every symptom of coal." But in Caithness lay the loadstone which had brought Raspe to Scotland. This was no other than Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, a benevolent gentleman of an ingenious and inquiring disposition, who was anxious to exploit the supposed mineral wealth of his ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... court occupy an immeasurable place in the life and thought of the people; and even within the domain of government, to employ the figure of Lowell, if the crown is no longer the motive power of the ship of state, it is the spar on which the sail is bent, and as such it is not only a useful but an essential part of the vessel.[78] The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere has that system been reduced to satisfactory operation without the presence ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... talked in excited tones as they made their way forward. If the object sticking above the gully's edge proved actually to be a mast it was in all probability a spar of the ship they sought. The thought put new life into every one and they hurried forward over the hard ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... over his nose. Ramshaw and Cottle were engaged in deadly strife on the floor, each under the fond delusion that the other was a Classic; while the twin brothers, armed with the better pair of boxing-gloves, were having a friendly spar ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... reigning star propitious shine, And kindly mix his gentle rays with thine; E'en I, by far the meanest of your age, Shall not repent my passion for the stage. Thus did the will almighty disallow, No human force could pluck the golden bough, Which left the tree with ease at Jove's command, And spar'd the labour of the weakest hand. Auspicious fate! that gives me leave to write To you, the muses' glory and delight; Who know to read, nor false encomiums raise, And mortify an author with your praise: Praise wounds a noble mind, when 'tis not due, But ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... place where the stakes were fixed in the sand. Perfectly resigned had the martyrs been to their doom—but in the agonies o' that horrible death, there had been some struggles o' the mortal body, and the weight o' the waters had borne down the stakes, so that, just as if they had been lashed to a spar to enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith the bodies came floatin' to the surface, and his hand grasped, without knowing it, his ain Hannah's gowden hair—sairly defiled, ye may weel think, wi' the sand—baith their faces changed frae what they ance ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... agency. The Oldest Inhabitant remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun that didn't make any report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast, and hulk, like a ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the outside to an important position with a house he generally gets a breathing-space while the old men spar around taking his measure and seeing if he sizes up to his job. They give him the benefit of the doubt, and if he shows up strong and shifty on his feet they're apt to let him alone. But there isn't any doubt in your case; everybody's got you sized up, or ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... His speculations as to the ether, his suggestive views of the structure of crystalline bodies, and his explanation of opacity, slight as they are, will possibly surprise the reader by their seeming modernness. And none can read his investigation of the phenomena found in Iceland spar without marvelling ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... another top-mast very dangerous; and that, therefore, he must rig something lighter in its place. He also informed me, that he had lost his main-top-gallant-yard, and that he neither had another, nor a spar to make one, on board. The Resolution's sprit-sail top-sail yard which I sent him, supplied this want. The next day, he got up a jury top-mast, on which he set a mizen-top-sail, and this enabled him to keep way with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... consists of two Nicol prisms of Iceland spar and balsam, arranged in such a way that under ordinary conditions the light coming from the spark is stopped by polarization and prevented from reaching the camera. Between these two prisms, however, is a solution of chemicals which will depolarize the light ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... cause of the double refraction of light. We can produce this phenomenon at pleasure, by employing any one of the many substances which are known to refract light in that peculiar manner. But if, taking one of those substances, as Iceland spar, for example, we wish to determine on which of the properties of Iceland spar this remarkable phenomenon depends, we can make no use, for that purpose, of the Method of Difference; for we can not find another substance precisely resembling ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... said he, "just wait till I've had my chow, I'll attend to you proper; now off with you—now!" And he tossed Master Marmaduke off his wrist up into the air. The parrot lit on a spar overhead, just under a sail, and peered down at the company without the ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... most o' the time. I didn't know it then, but 'twas true all the same. Think now o' layin' the Screamer broadside on that stone pile at Shark Ledge, unloadin' them stone with nothin' but a couple o' spar buoys to keep 'er off. Wonder I didn't leave 'er bones there. Would if I hadn't knowed every stick o' timber in 'er and jest ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream, and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches of yellow weed—having much the look of mustard-plasters—amidst which a bit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off a new pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, brought up from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; and that, thick ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... in the sunlit cordage Behold the climbing tar, With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide, Climbing a shadow-spar! Up the glassy stream with issuing steam The cutter crawls again, All winged with cloud and buzzing loud, Like a bee upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... 'nothing particular happened.' Perhaps some of us would have regarded it differently. 'Passed a spar, but not near enough to see what it was.' They saw some whales blow; there were flying-fish skimming the seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... making booms and getting water. A.M. Got on board a spar for sprit-sail yard: carpenter making ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be in such a hurry always? You will never come to my age if you carry on so. You ought to tow a spar astern. Thank God, they don't know who he is, and I'll take good care not to let them know. If this is what comes of quick promotion, I am glad that I got on slowly. Well, he may do as he likes for me. He always ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ceased. For a time that seemed endless there was silence, save for a shout now and then, and a thud that might be caused by the work of replacing or repairing an injured spar. Suddenly the hatch above was lifted, raised, and when our eyes became accustomed to the light we saw men swarming down the ladder into the hold. A French seaman among them relit the lamp, and we recognized the faces of some of our comrades on the Dolphin. Among the first I saw ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the ocean steaming up the river, with their powerful armament and each representing millions of dollars in its construction, along the shores of the second largest city in the world, and with flags and banners flying proudly from every mast and spar—not only the victory of our arms but the growth of the nation, from the sparse settlements in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers to a population of 80,000,000 souls, and from the thirteen little struggling provinces, at the outbreak of the Revolution, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... India's ravag'd land; His evil angel leads him to my strand. Through the torn hulk the dashing waves shall roar, The shatter'd wrecks shall blacken all my shore. Themselves escaped, despoil'd by savage hands, Shall, naked, wander o'er the burning sands, Spar'd by the waves far deeper woes to bear, Woes, e'en by me, acknowledg'd with a tear. Their infant race, the promis'd heirs of joy, Shall now, no more, a hundred hands employ; By cruel want, beneath ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... is only forty miles from Hong-Kong. The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks, which are enclosed with strong steel bars. Before the ship starts the iron gates of communication are shut and padlocked, so that all Chinese passengers are literally enclosed in a steel cage, shut ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the shoe man. "I had called on him many times. He was such a thoroughbred gentleman and treated me so courteously that I could never press matters upon him. There are merchants, you know, of this kind. I'd really rather have a man spar me with bare 'knucks' than with eight-ounce pillows. This gives you a better chance to land a knock-out blow. But there is a way of getting at every merchant in the world. The thing to do is ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination to subdue difficulties, which ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... laid me prostrate on the plat- form, and as my head came in collision with the corner of a spar, for a time I ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... race to a higher plane and has a bit of the God in him, though the hero may have feet of clay and body of beast. Such were the old Vikings of the North, who spent their lives in elemental warfare, and rode out to meet death in tempest, lashed to the spar of their craft. And such, too, were the New World Vikings of the Pacific, who coasted the seas of two continents in cockle-shell ships,—planks lashed with deer thongs, calked with moss,—rapacious in their ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... dead stop, struck with awe at the grand sight that met our view. The walls and roof of the cave were lit up, as it were, with star-like gems, while some hung down like glass drops from the roof, and some rose up from the ground at its sides like blocks of spar. I broke off a piece and put it on ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... the principals would rise from their seconds' knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... gale off the coast of Biscay, and rode it out without the loss of a spar or a yard; indeed, without the slightest accident or rent of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 500 Years to as little Purpose as most of the good Ministers ever did; for we do not read there was one Man converted by him, or at least not one of them left, for that at the Deluge there was either none of them alive, or none spar'd but Noah and his three Sons, and their Wives; and even they are ('tis evident) recorded, not so much to be sav'd for their own Goodness, but because they were his Sons; Nay, without Breach of Charity we may conclude, that at least one went to the Devil even of those ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... extremely appalling in the position of this ruined millionaire, who was contending desperately against his creditors for the vain appearance of splendor, with the despairing energy of a ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance of thirty servants? His agony, when he thought of his precarious ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... once again, the course was set for a port in which to dispose of their cargo. The argus-eyed lookout stationed far up in the foremast scanned every point of the far-reaching horizon, signalling to his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... day's work was over, Rand strolled over to the shack where the Indians lived and found his erstwhile friend sitting on a stone, engaged in slowly carving with a sharp knife the soft wood of a sycamore spar that had been carefully cleared of its branches and smoothed to comparative symmetry. The worker had begun at the butt end of the pole and had worked his way carefully upward. The carvings were weird, goggle eyed, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... departure from Cochin in India, but not aboue 26 at her arriual in Dartmouth, being lightened in her voyage by diuers meanes some 5 foote. She caried in height 7 seuerall stories, one maine Orlop, three close decks, one fore-castle, and a spar-decke of two floores a piece. The length of the keele was 100 foote, of the maine-mast 121 foot, and the circuite about at the partners 10 foote 7 inches, the maine-yard was 106 foote long. By which perfect commensuration of the parts appeareth the hugenesse of the whole, farre beyond the mould ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... Colourless, her long black hair, Like seaweed in a tempest tossed Tangling astray, to Joan's care She yielded like a creature lost: Yielded, drooping toward the ground, As doth a shape one half-hour drowned, And heaved from sea with mast and spar, All dark of its immortal star. And on that tender heart, inured To flatter basest grief, and fight Despair upon the brink of night, She suffered herself to sink, assured Of refuge; and her ear inclined ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quite, quite sure she didn't mind, and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... forth on our little traversee, our landmark an odd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The paveurs of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouth of a sole. Going glibly, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... car'd To keep them just and pure, Perchance their pitying God had spar'd, The pains they now endure. What if to fault of ours those pains be due, To ill example shown, or lack ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and spick and span with green and white paint, the ubiquitous Calcutta crows perched in serried ranks on their yards. To my mind a full-rigged ship is the most beautiful object man has ever devised, and when the dusk was falling, with every spar and rope outlined in black against the vivid crimson of the short-lived Indian sunset, the long line of shipping made a glorious picture. Nineteen years later every sailing-ship had disappeared from the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... 1112. Spar bridges.—This name is applied to bridges built of round timbers lashed together. Intermediate points of support are provided by inclined frames acting as struts to transmit weight from the middle of the bridge to the banks. The single-lock ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... what makes the might of words,— 55 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... came ashore. A stray spar or two, a hen-coop, two or three empty barrels, a child's light straw hat, and a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... which could enable him to guess how far she listened to or comprehended the conversation so unfit for her ear. When he rose to go, and stooped to kiss her, she looked wistfully in his face, and held up a small sparkling bit of spar, the most precious of all her hoards, gleaned from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the log-book, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to stop her progress," exclaimed Captain O'Brien. "A gold doubloon to the man who first knocks away a spar; and if I succeed myself, I'll keep it in ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... color of a buoy is an index of its character. Thus, one with black and red stripes indicates danger; one with black and white vertical stripes is a channel-marker. Temporary channels are frequently marked by pieces of spar floating upright. In some cases it is customary to set untrimmed tree-tops on the port, and trimmed sticks ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... sea. In the trough of it the boat was becalmed, but as she rose on the crest of the waves even the little sail set was as much as she could stand up under, and she had to be nursed carefully; for if she had fallen off, one breaker would have swamped us, or any accident to sail or spar would have been fatal: but like a gull on the waters, our brave little craft rose ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... this Ile in rime: And to my part did all the Muses win, With high-pitch Paeans to applaud him in: When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue, And all stood silent, yet for him I sung; And when before by danger I was dar'd, I kick'd her from me, nor a iot I spar'd. Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne, Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne; 30 He next my God on whom I built my trust, Had left me troden lower then the dust: But let this passe; in the extreamest ill, Apollo's brood must ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... evidently saw his danger, but was quite calm, although his end seemed near, as only about two hundred yards now intervened between the vessel and the rocky shore. He proceeded to lash a spar across the two water barrels, which he emptied and bunged up, and then stood ready to jump overboard with them, when the vessel struck. I also was on the alert with my coil of rope, following the vessel ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... wish you had come back to Widow Rippet's, for ye would hae spar't me a hard ride. Scarcely had ye ta'en the road when my Lord mindit that he had neglekit to gie you the sign, by the which ye were to make yoursel and message kent to his friends, and I was sent after ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... obliges him, to the Papers themselves, only I wish the Absolver had made Newgate the last Scene of that part of his Immorality, and by an humble acknowledgment to his Patron that redeemed him, (I hope the word will bear in this place) have spar'd his Office of Absolution in another Scene, and consequently given no occasion to believe that his disobedient humour, and turbulent nature, still proceeds daily, to cultivate his Party with the same Principles as ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... flings her out into the sea of human lives, perchance to alight upon some tiny green islet or, likelier yet, to buffet about among black waters, or encounter winds and storms, upheld only by a half-wrecked raft or floated by a scarce-supporting spar. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... painted it red. When the bird was released he greatly alarmed his companions, and as long as we could see them, they shunned his society. At least eighty miles from land we had a dozen sparrows around us at once. A small hawk seized one of these birds and seated himself on a spar for the purpose of breakfasting. A fowling piece brought him to the deck, where we examined and pronounced him of the genus Falco, species NISUS, or in plain English, a sparrow hawk. During the day we saw three varieties of small birds, one ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, about one o'clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy, and attaching myself to the fortunes of an Englishwoman, who worked ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
