"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was landed on the island, seemingly to protect the French planters from the English, but in reality to seize the place for the French crown. Another garrison encamped upon the coast of the larger island. The English were now in a position like that of the spar in the tale.[8] They could no longer follow the business of cattle hunting; they could no longer find an anchorage and a ready market at Tortuga. They were forced, therefore, to find some other rendezvous, where they could refit after a cruise upon the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... narrowed from Meusnier's ellipse to a shape more resembling a rather fat cigar. The length was 144 feet, and the greatest diameter only 40 feet, while the capacity was 88,000 cubic feet. A net which covered the envelope of the balloon supported a spar, 66 feet in length, at the end of which a triangular sail was placed vertically to act as rudder. The car, slung 20 feet below the spar, carried the engine and propeller. Engine and boiler together weighed 350 lbs., and drove the 11 foot propeller ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... 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 sentinels, if ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... the Dryad met in billow and in spar; The forest fought at Salamis, the grove at Trafalgar. Old Tubalcain had sweated amain to forge the brand and ball; But failed to frame the mighty ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... sheepish and beat, but somehow I feel cocky instead, I laugh and say, 'Well, I am bound to break something down'—and suddenly see. 'Oho, there's the place; get weight on there, and the belt won't slip.' With much labour, on go the belts again. 'Now then, a spar thro' there and six men's weight on; mind you're not carried away.' 'Ay, ay, sir.' But evidently no one believes in the plan. 'Hurrah, round she goes—stick to your spar. All right, shut off steam.' And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fearful sound. English boats were plying busily about, picking up those who had leapt overboard in time. Some were dragged in through the lower portholes of the English ships, and about seventy were saved altogether. For one moment a boat's crew had a sight of a helpless figure bound to a spar, and guided by a little childish swimmer, who must have gone overboard with his precious freight just before the explosion. They rowed after the brave little fellow, earnestly desiring to save him; but in darkness, in smoke, in lurid uncertain light, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 stories ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... bellowed, "studden sails set an' drawing, tho' obleeged to haul my wind, d'ye see, on account o' this here spar o' mine a-running foul o' the furrers." Having said the which, he advanced again with a heave to port and a lurch to starboard very like a ship in a heavy sea; this peculiarity of gait was explained as he hove into full ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... from the ground the air-craft buckled up and fell to the ground. A large piece of the lower left wing, composing the whole of the front spar between the fuselage and the first upright, was picked up at least 100 yards from the spot where the ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive—at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an island to be a Robinson Crusoe. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the peaks blossomed with starry and crystalline flowers, lilac and white and blue; they faded away, pearl, opal and pink in shimmering evanescence; then gleams of rose and amethyst traveled slowly from spar to spar, lightened and departed; there was silence before my eyes; the world once more was all a pale and wintry green. I thought of them no more, but of the mighty and unseen tides going by me with billowy motion. "Oh, Fountain I seek, thy waters are all about ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... The crew of the Adur came ashore and dined with us, and, as usual, I read Divine Service. On the following morning I went aboard the schooner and examined the log-book and charts. We painted the Red and Black Beacons, and Mr. Adams having trimmed up a spar, we erected a flagstaff thirty-four feet high. I occupied myself the next day with preparing a report to be sent to the Colonial Secretary. My brother went off to the boat and brought ashore the things we required. We were busy on the ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... 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
... shrieked out to the pitiless winds, the detail of crimes which had deformed their soul unseen. There were others who had seemed full of love to the beings who cherished them, and now stole the rope or the spar from their straining hands, that they might save themselves therewith whilst they left these to perish; but still, whatever shape the frenzy of that perishing crew might take, whether their cries were of remorse, or prayer, or impotent ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... their brethren 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
... at the doctor, and saw the smile of satisfaction that played upon his usually stern features. It augured hope—more than hope; and, as the wrecked mariner clings to the disjointed spar, his mind fastened upon that smile as the forerunner of a blissful reunion with ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ses Alf; "but there was four of them saved, so why not five? Mightn't 'e have floated away on a spar or something and been picked up? Can't you dream it three nights running, and tell 'er that you feel certain ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... her blue-spar eyes the same kind of softness that he noticed in people's voices this afternoon, a softness which somehow reminded him of a funeral, Fifi's ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... change in the order of the rest, was more than the Printers importunity, and that, of my own avocations (and perhaps also considerabler solicitations) would permit. But though some few preambles of the particular Experiments might have (perchance) been spar'd, or shorten'd, if I had had all my Papers under my View at once; Yet in the most of those Introductory passages, the Reader will (I hope) find hints, or Advertisements, as well as Transitions. If I sometimes seem to insist long upon the circumstances of a Tryall, I hope I shall be easily ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... had a more adroit counsel. Like a good lawyer, Douglas seemed to feel himself in duty bound to spar for every technical advantage, and to construe the law, wherever possible, in favor of his client. At the same time he did not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Even the Archdeacon has begun to tell the world how he 'took an interest' in me from the first and gave me my title. I met him again the other day at a rich woman's house, where we had only one little spar, and yesterday he wrote urging me to 'organize my great effort,' and have a public dinner in honour of its inauguration. I did not think God's work could be well done by people dining in herds and drinking ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... that was particularly new. The captain dismissed the men good-humouredly to the care of cook and steward: it was only the steerage passenger who required to be put under the doctor's care. It seemed that he had been hurt by the falling of a spar, and severely scorched in trying to save a child who was in imminent danger; and, though he had at first been the most cheery and hopeful of the party, his strength had soon failed, and he had lain half or ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er 'count uv ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... began at once to unpack and arrange her belongings. She felt a little choky as she took out and looked at the photographs and the various little parting gifts that had been given her, particularly when she came across a piece of spar that Tony, without saying a word to any one, must have wrapped up and tucked in amongst her things as a pleasant surprise for her. It was a very pretty bit that he had himself found, and was immensely proud of. Kitty's eyes filled as she held the little cold stone ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... himself, and writes and prints, like a Tom Brown or Swift, a most bantering and drolling Letter, under the sneering Title of a Letter of Thanks to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, for his late Letter, &c. whom, one would think, he should not only have spar'd, but have applauded for his profound Gravity, and carrying on the Cause of Religion in a very remarkable manner, with the most consummate Solemnity. But so strong was the Temptation, so naturally productive of ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... wreck come past Bitterly mock'd of the roaring tide, From wave to wave in derision cast With scorn and jeers at poor human pride; And still the Petrel with lightning sweep Circles their way through the raging deep, Settling in awe on some shatter'd spar, And tracking its course ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint-Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... he could kill a rattler that way? He missed shot. Then, to git his boot, he had to pull off t' other, and tackle the snake with that. Lost that tew. Then he was in a perdickerment; snake got both boots; curled up on tew 'em, ready to strike, and seemin' to say, 'If you've any more boots to spar', bring 'em on.' Surveyor chap hadn't no more boots, to his sorrow; and, arter layin' siege to the critter till sundown, hopin' he'd depart in peace and leave him his property, he guv it up as a bad job, and footed it to the camp ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... for June 14th, 1844, as having returned home (to Portsmouth) on Thursday, June 7th, 'after six years and upwards in commission,' most of it surveying the Falkland Islands; 'has lost only two men during this long service, and those from natural causes;' 'never lost a spar, and has ploughed the ocean for upwards of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... size, and arches of Titanic strength and power, adorned the 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. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and the crew busy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... out of sight when a topmast on the Rosan broke off short in a sudden squall. Bijonah Tanner immediately laid her to and set all hands to work stepping his spare spar, as he would not think of returning to a shipyard. Nat Burns, when he noticed the accident, laid to in turn and announced his intention of standing by the Rosan until she was ready ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... gaind, he kept with small ado. On the other side Caeesar Borgia (commonly termed Duke Valentine) got his state by his Fathers fortune, and with the same lost it; however that for his own part no pains was spar'd, nor any thing omitted, which by a discreet and valorus man ought to have been done, to fasten his roots in those Estates, which others armes or fortune had bestowed on him; for (as it was formerly said) he that lays not the foundations first, yet might be able by means of his extraordinary ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... woman were found tied to one another and tied to a spar. They seemed to have been killed by blows received from the rocks or from ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... ends. The upper surface of ice having this structure sometimes looks like greenish velvet; a vertical section of it, which frequently occurs at the margin of floes, resembles, while it remains compact, the most beautiful satin-spar, and asbestos when falling to pieces. At this early part of the season, this kind of ice afforded pretty firm footing; but, as the summer advanced, the needles became more loose and moveable, rendering it extremely fatiguing to walk over them, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sea was now strong, and deep, and swift of pace, rushing madly in; and he was cumbered with that weight of osier and of weed, which yet he never yielded, because it had been her trust. With each yard that the tide bore him forward, by so much it bore us backward. There was but the length of a spar between us, and yet ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... dich treulich warnen, O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen, Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh', Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh. Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren, Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren. Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen. Dass stete Lieb' und Treu' ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... daddles high upraised, and nob held back, [1] In awful prescience of the impending thwack, Both kiddies stood—and with prelusive spar, [2] And light manoeuvring, kindled up the war! The One, in bloom of youth—a light-weight blade— The Other, vast, gigantic, as if made, Express, by Nature, for the hammering trade; [3] But aged, slow, with stiff ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... and by the king's orders was courteously received by the Spanish authorities in the Netherlands. In the midst of the tempest now rapidly destroying all rational hopes, Philip still clung to Mayenne as to a spar in the shipwreck. For the king ever possessed the virtue, if it be one, of continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible, when he had been defeated in every quarter, and when his calculations had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rigging was a broken spar, and to this Darry lashed himself, in the faint hope that if it were swept ashore he might ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... every bit the Father. And who forsooth should not beleeve it, if it be a son. Every one is in an admiration. O me, what a pretty sweet Infant! Nurse, you have drest it up most curiously! And truly there's no cost spar'd for the having ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... asked Captain Zeb of the lightkeeper. "That her off back of the spar buoy? Let me have a squint through that glass; my eyes ain't what they used to be, when I could see a whale spout two miles t'other side of the sky line and tell how many barrels of ile he'd try out, fust look. Takes ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... picking up on the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be told that I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land or sea. I answer that I write of what I saw, and that is not altered by a miscalled spar or a misunderstood manouvre. But now I am aboard a craft I handle for myself, and must make shift to handle a second ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... life. The accident to which I have referred was this:—We had sighted a little full-rigged ship very close under our board in a haze; she sailed near as well as we did—I should be nearer truth if I said, near as ill; and we cleared the bow-chaser to see if we could bring a spar or two about their ears. The swell was exceedingly great; the motion of the ship beyond description; it was little wonder if our gunners should fire thrice and be still quite broad of what they aimed at. But in the meanwhile the chase had cleared a stern ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, there were enow besides. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... her go with the helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... that which immediately followed was not a fight; it was not even a spar. The ratel never moved, although he was moved—astoundingly. The gnu bull did the moving, and produced the most amazing bit of violent activity one could dream of. It was quite indescribable. A buck-jumping ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... continually augmented by those who, having run off to snatch their Christmas dinner, were returning to the spoil. Some lined the edge of the breakers, waiting the moment to rush in for a cask or spar that the tide brought within reach; others (among whom she seemed to descry Young Zeb) were clambering out with grapnels along the western rocks; a third large group was gathered in the very centre of the beach, and ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wave-rim faint and far (Spectral sail and ghostly spar) Through the mist-banks a vessel glides Biding the ridge of ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... intend erecting this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... of to-day. To-day Hera and Pallas and the floating grace Of laughter-loving Aphrodite meet In manyfolded Ida to receive This meed of beauty, she to whom my hand Award the palm. Within the green hillside, Under yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Is an ingoing grotto, strown with spar And ivymatted at the mouth, wherein Thou unbeholden may'st behold, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... is not far And I bend my head and list, For I think I see a slender spar Gleam through the golden mist; And I fancy I hear the sound Of wind in a silken sail, And an odor rare from Eastern ground, Floats ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... that it is possible that the lad might catch fever, or be killed in an affray with natives, that must, of course, be faced; but as a sailor he runs the risk of shipwreck, or of being washed overboard, or killed by a falling spar. Everything considered, I think the idea of his going with you is a good one. I don't suppose that many guardians would be of the same opinion, but I have been so many years knocking about in one part of the world or another, that I don't look at things in the same light as men who have never ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... lad, took the Old Man's sight. Fine 'aul this time if we 'ave luck. Swiggle me stiff, it'll set us up ashore for bleeding toffs! ... ye'll 'ear about it later.... Ay, that's the royal, lad—topmost spar—be shakin' that rag out afore long.... Ay, mate, and a proper fine mate she is, bless 'er bleeding little 'eart! Grew up at sea—proper shark for navigation—Old Man never 'ad 'er 'ead for figures.... See—them's the 'alyards, lad! ... Ay, prime ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the old man, falling back upon his dignity, "hit e'en about takes all my spar' time fer ter keep up wid you en Brer Rabbit, let 'lone keepin' up wid Brer Fox. Ole Brer Rabbit tuck'n tuck keer hisse'f, en now let Brer ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... a certain repose—it was at least a spar to which to cling. With Kate's help she got over to the laboratory and put the finishing touches on things there. The President detailed two of Fulham's most devoted disciples to make a ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... 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 and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Ironsides at anchor lay, (sl.) In the harbor of Mahon [Footnote 1]; A dead calm rested on the bay,— The waves to sleep had gone,— When little Jack,[Footnote 2] the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar,—and then upon The ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... of most inorganic bodies is one of a totally 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, etc., after being illuminated by the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... 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, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... company at football play; rare sport it was; but Tom spoiled it all, for meeting the ball he took it such a kick that away it flew none could tell whither. They were angry with Tom as you may fancy, but got nothing by that as Tom took hold of a big spar, and laid about with a will, so that though the whole country-side was up in arms against him, he cleared his ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... they 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 upon ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... our guns had roared, yet (though she was now so close that I made out her very rope and spar) she made no sign. In a little our guns fell silent also, wherefore, looking about, I beheld Don Miguel standing beside the tiller yet with his impassive gaze ever bent upon the foe; and, as I watched, I read his deadly purpose, and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... school-time. Your hands can guard your face pretty tidy, I grant you, but the chances is as you would not get out of such a row as that would be without being marked. I knows of a place over the other side of the water, not far from the New Cut, where they meet. Bill Lowe, him as comes here to spar twice a week, yer know, he goes there; he takes up with them Chartist notions, which I don't hold with no ways. I don't see nothing in them seven pints as would do anything for the ring; and that being so, let it alone, says I. However, Master Norris, since you have a fancy that ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... short time which will cut the line. The poorest ferrules are nickel-plated. The best ones are either German silver or brass. To care for a rod properly, we must keep the windings varnished to prevent them from becoming unwound. Spar varnish is the best for this purpose but shellac will answer. In taking a rod apart, never twist it. Give a sharp pull, and if it refuses to budge, it can sometimes be loosened by slightly heating the ferrule ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... but can be made efficient in four or six weeks, capable of carrying the armament or battery of a first-class frigate—say four ten-inch guns and twelve eight-inch guns. These alterations would consist of a removal of the deck-houses, spar or upper deck, forward and abaft the paddle-wheel boxes, fitting the after and forward bulwarks in sections, cutting port-holes, fitting hammock cloths or nettings, putting in extra beams and knees, and stanchions, moving the windlass below, building ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... might think it. You ask up and down among we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for it, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... stepped forward and said, 'Mr. Hardy, I hope you won't go, there has been a mistake; we did not know of this. I am sure many of us are very sorry for what has occurred; stay and look on, we will all of us spar.' I looked at him, and then at my host, to see whether the latter joined in the apology. Not he, he was doing the dignified sulky, and most of the rest seemed to me to be with him. 'Will any of you spar with me?' I said, tauntingly, tossing off the champagne. 'Certainly, the new speaker ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 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 thinks ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... were on the spar deck a second later, straining their eyes into the black vagueness of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... boys to ride, and they shot rabbits in the Chase. Also, they appeared at dinner, a tremendous function, and were encouraged by some of the younger guests to spar (verbally, of course) with the duke's Etonian sons. Fluff looked so much stronger and happier that his parents, delighted with their experiment, were inclined to cry up the Hill, much to the exasperation of the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... dar's more dan five or six hundred; Aunt Jemimer can gib her spar time de next six weeks pickin' 'em out; she'll enj'y it, but dat shot ob mine scared off de mad dog, and yer oughter be tankful to me, ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... light of the comet is, nevertheless, borrowed from the sun, for it has one property belonging to it that only reflected light can manifest. It is capable of being polarized by prisms of double-refracting spar. Polarization of this character is only possible when the light that is operated upon has already been reflected from ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... lordly steamboatman scorns that sort of presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire the least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert for an opportunity to do him a service to that end. It came at last. The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way—or mostly skipping out of it—till the mate suddenly roared a general order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said: 'Tell me where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you it waits, all ye lying spirits, When, stiff, the tongue to the palate sticks. Your tongue would poison all honest merits, Defiling honor by artful tricks;— But, at my bar, There is no demurrer: The tomb I spar, And I gag the slurrer,— Who next thereafter, when speech is past, To Him shall answer, who ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... I therefore determined to make that very slight deviation from my course, and see what would happen. I could not hope to divert the brig from her chase of so valuable a prize as the ship, but it was just possible that I might, by opening fire on the pursuer, be lucky enough to bring down a spar or otherwise damage her sufficiently to afford the Indiaman a chance to escape. I therefore ordered the helm to be shifted, and gave instructions for the crew to go to quarters, to double-shot the broadside batteries and to open fire on ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... cross-bars, were of various kinds. Sometimes they appear to have consisted of a mere slight circular bar, probably of metal, which passed through the pole; sometimes of a thicker spar, through which the pole itself passed. In this latter case the extremities were occasionally adorned with heads of animals. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 1.] The most common kind of yoke exhibits a double curve, so as to resemble ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... course at length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... occasion he ran us a rare race with the main-royal yard, we getting the mizzen spar below but a second or two in ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... reeded, with channels between each projection, and terminating in a long, tapering cone. This tower is made of glazed tiles, of the most brilliant sea-blue color, and sparkles in the sun like a vast pillar of icy spar in some Polar grotto. It is a most striking and fantastic object, surrounded by a cluster of minarets and several cypress-trees, amid which it seems placed as the central ornament and crown of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... first ineffectual attempt of the French to leave Toulon ended in numerous accidents. "These gentlemen are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale, which we have buffeted for twenty-one months, and not carried away a spar." Nelson himself, though reckless to desperation when an adequate object was at stake, in the moments of repose husbanded his means, and looked to the efficiency of his instruments, with the diligence of a miser. With his own hand he noted the weather indications, including ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... now in a part where the tunnel widened out to thirty or forty feet, though the roof was not more than a foot above our heads, and remarkable for the streaks of a creamy spar which banded ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... tremendous hurricane swept over the deep: it passed, but not a spar remained to the dismantled bark. The tapering masts, the long graceful yards were gone, the cordage having snapped at every point where its support was needed—snapped by the fury of the tempest, as if wantonly cut by a sharp knife. The boats—the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... but lovely-featured, delicately tinted pictures of Our Lady in the centre, and of St. Anne and St. Cecilia on either side, with skies behind of most ethereal blue, and robes tenderly trimmed with gold. A little shrine of purple spar, with a crystal front, contained a fragment of sacred bone; a silver shell help holy water, perpetuated from some blessed ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the house of Mr. Watson. There was no time to think of the past, or even of the future; the present absorbed all the energies of the young seaman. With the assistance of Bob Thomas, Levi conveyed Bessie along the fallen spar, and lowered her into the life-boat. Mrs. Vincent and her two children were assisted into the boat in the same manner. Mat Mogmore and two men—all that were left of the crew—were then permitted to enter the boat, which pulled back to ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... utterly parted with all working ability. I was young, and up to within a few months life had stretched brightly before me, with the prospect of a brilliant career. And now what was I? A wretched invalid—a burden to myself and to others—a broken spar flung with other fragments of ship wrecked lives on the great ocean of Time, there to be whirled away and forgotten. But a rescue was approaching; a rescue sudden and marvellous, of which, in my wildest fancies, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... saying, lad, no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... or four voyages and was wrecked on every occasion. "He had bewailed himself through the night as the persecuted Jonah who carried misfortune wherever he went. He launched himself upon a broken spar with his captain; but, having lost his hold in the breakers, was ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... time, to the astonishment of every one, news was received of Eugene; who, it appeared, was still living. When almost drowned, he had fortunately seized upon a spar which had been washed from the ship's deck. Finding himself nearly exhausted, he had fastened himself to it, and floated for a day and night, until all sense had left him. On recovering, he had found himself on board a vessel bound to India, but so ill as not to move without assistance. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... 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 of the whole ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... is it, sir? I didn't know but it might turn out to be galley-news. Pray what is the rumpus all about, Admiral Bluewater? for, I never could get that story fidded properly, so as to set up the rigging, and have the spar ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... has made us out already. Get a blue-light ready, Adair. The frigate will see it by this time, and be on the look out for her. Rogers, see to the gun forward. You may be able to send a shot into the felucca and knock away a spar, perhaps." ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... now fairly clear of the shore. The wind freshened. "The Curlew" dashed forward, rising and falling with the swells. The whole east was reddening. The dark spar of the bow-sprit rose and fell through it. It seemed a good omen to be going toward the light. Ere the sun met us on the sea, we were twelve ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... lowered over the side and cast loose. In a few minutes the six-pounders on the spar deck began to bark. "Getting the range, I guess," said "Hod," who had sneaked over from the powder division to get a look at ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with a white sail and black spar, making an endless voyage across the lake of indigo. The black crosses in the sky were birds. The black lines on the left were bulrushes. And among these bulrushes a certain gloomy little object was either a Hebrew ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... on the ocean sinks calmly down, I climb the vessel's prow, Where the foam-wreath glows with its phosphor light, Like a crown on a sea-nymph's brow. Above, through the lattice of rope and spar, The stars in their beauty burn; And the spirit longs to ride their beams, And back ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... diminish their buoyancy. Each canoe should also carry a small repair kit attached to one of the thwarts, containing cement, a piece of canvas same as cover of canoe, copper tacks, rivets, and some galvanized nails; a good hatchet and a hammer; a small can of canoe paint, spar varnish, and copper paint for worn places would be a protection against termites and torrential downpours. In concluding the subject of canoes I can state that the traveller in South America will find no difficulty in disposing of his craft at ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... that moment as one could be under the most agreeable circumstances. He knew that the decisive moment had come, and he did not allow it to glide from his hands. He seized the lanyard to the torpedo and the line of the spar, and crowding the spar until he brought the torpedo under the over-hang of the Albemarle, he detached it by one effort, and the next second he pulled the lanyard of the torpedo, and exploded it under the vessel on her port side, just below the port-hole of the two-hundred-pounder Brooke's rifle, ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him Who once beside our deepest ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... enterprise in this sedative and idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of the process it is as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had conjectured they were marquesite. He tested them and ascertained they were el madre del oro. Where that is, the presence of gold below was supposed to be indicated. He remarked also the outside of many mines of white spar, from which he drew as ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded the vessel. There was no creaking of spar or block. Hot tar stood in her seams in the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... more. What follows is for no wife's eyes. O Camma, Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy; Rome never yet hath spar'd conspirator. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... down the stream she dwelt, 'twould seem, Yet stream nor breeze could bar Her little boat, that to a nook, Dark with the pine-tree's spar, Each evening Ronald saw shoot up As constant as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... The mainmast, an enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... to spar at each other in as knowing and English a way as we knew how—keeping a very respectful distance indeed, and trying to bear ourselves as scientifically as we could, with a keen ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... thinking it is English, sends one thoughtless and headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of Doughty's burning and spacious expanse; only to get bewildered, and the shins broken, and a great fatigue at first, in a strange land of fierce sun, hunger, glittering spar, ancient plutonic rock, and very Adam himself. But once you are acclimatized, and know the language—it takes time—there is no more London after dark, till, a wanderer returned from a forgotten land, you emerge from the interior of Arabia on the Red ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... murmurs; yet 'twere surely worst of all Long to remain, and bootless to return. Bear up, my friends, remain awhile, and see If Calchas truly prophesy, or no. For this ye all have seen, and can yourselves Bear witness, all who yet are spar'd by fate, Not long ago, when ships of Greece were met At Aulis, charg'd with evil freight for Troy, And we, around a fountain, to the Gods Our altars rear'd, with faultless hecatombs, Near a fair plane-tree, where bright water flow'd, Behold a wonder! by ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... take 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, and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... at the distance of only ten yards. The action continued, within pistol-shot, till half past three in the afternoon; when Le Genereux, with a light breeze, passed the Leander's bows, and brought itself on the starboard side, where the guns had been all nearly disabled by the wreck of the spar, which had fallen on that side. This necessarily producing a cessation of the Leander's fire, the enemy hailed, to know if the ship had surrendered. Being now a complete wreck; the decks covered with killed and wounded; and Captain Thompson himself badly wounded, without the most distant ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... few facilities for cooking aboard submarine torpedo-boats, and that is why Lieutenant Ross ran his little submarine up alongside the flag-ship at noon, and made fast to the boat-boom—the horizontal spar extending from warships, to which the boats ride when in the water. And, as familiarity breeds contempt, after the first, tentative, trial, he had been content to let her hang by one of the small, fixed painters depending ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... supplying each company or companies by a written contract, drawn up between him and the paymaster before 'sponsible witnesses; but ilka ane bringing what pleased him, either tripe, trotters, steaks, cow's-cheek, pluck, hough, spar-rib, jigget, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... not, as you know, that long experience which alone can give a seaman thorough knowledge of all his perils even before they are apparent. I felt no apprehensions, therefore; and when I saw how Mr. Kelson was overhauling every rope and sail and spar, and making everything snug alow and aloft, I only congratulated myself on having an officer who kept the men too busy to get into mischief, and lost no opportunity for putting and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... godsend to her, and everybody else. She still talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy—and appeasement—which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hot shot set fire that evening to the "Charon" frigate, making a sight of marvellous grandeur, for the ship became one mass of fire from the water's edge to her spintle-heads, all her ports belching flame and each spar and every rope ablaze at the same moment. The morning of the 11th found fifty-two pieces of artillery mounted and hurling a storm of projectiles into the British lines; and that evening, a second parallel was opened, bringing the guns ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... hill, we came in sight of a view—of which Exmoor and its kindred district in North Devon affords many—a deep gorge, at whose precipitous base a trout-stream rolled along, gurgling and plashing, and winding round huge masses of white spar. The far bank sometimes extended out into natural meadows, where red cattle and wild ponies grazed, and sometimes rose precipitously. At one point, where both banks were equally steep and lofty, the far side was covered by a plantation with a cover of under-wood; ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... scuppers. His business was to wash clothes, not to cross a broad deck and climb a high rail to look at passing craft; but, as he washed away, he looked furtively aloft, with eyes that sparkled, at the man on the mainroyalyard. Johnson was standing erect on the small spar, holding on with his left hand to the royal-pole,—certainly the most conspicuous detail of the whole ship to the eyes of those on board the cruiser,—and with his right hand he was waving his cap to the right and left, and ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... of killed and wounded was very evenly distributed throughout the fleet. Only the rear ship lost an important spar,—the main topmast. It was upon her, as already mentioned, and upon the two leading ships, the Exeter and Isis, that fell the heaviest fire, proportionately, of the French. From the position of the seven van ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... transaction, he passed out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal talk, and often there was a suspicion that he talked for the same reason that prizefighters spar for time. "Here, Robbins, get off this telegram, and remember that if the rolling stone gathers no moss, it at least ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... found unconscious, drifting in the ocean, clinging to a spar, and were brought here by a sailing vessel. You had a fracture of the skull and you were half drowned. It is supposed that you were one of the passengers of the Abyssinia, which took fire and went down two days after leaving Cape Town, but as several passengers and officers whose bodies ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... 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
... critical moment a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I seized upon it as the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... all that and the rest of it—to walk to the tops of your shoes in pine chips in the spar yards, to measure the lengths of booms and gaffs for yourself if you weren't sure who were going to spread the big mainsails, to go up in the sail-lofts and see the sailmakers, bench after bench of them, making their needles and the long ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... must have been the darkness before creation. It had closed behind me. I knew I was invisible to the man at the helm. Neither could I see anything. He was alone, I was alone, every man was alone where he stood. And every form was gone, too, spar, sail, fittings, rails; everything was blotted out in the dreadful smoothness of that ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Portuguese colony, 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 ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... all my weight upon it, diverting it a little, and thereby perhaps saving the ship herself, but not enough. As it flashed by a branch caught upon the trailing tapestry, hurling me to the deck, and tearing away with it all that finery. Then the great spar, tossing half its dripping length into the air, went plunging downstream with shreds of silk and flowers trailing from it, and white water ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... graceful lines and huge spars, all clean 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 Hooghly, and in their ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Mrs. Talcott's old straw hat moving among the borders; and, in the midst of the emptiness, the sight was strength and hope. The whole world seemed to narrow to Mrs. Talcott. She was secure and real. She was a spar to be clung to. The nightmare would reveal itself as illusion if she kept near Mrs. Talcott. She ran down ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the head of the passes, after much difficulty in getting the heavy ships over the bar, Farragut ordered the ships to strip like athletes for battle. Down came mast and spar till nothing was left standing but lower masts,—and even those were taken out of some of the gunboats,—and soon everything best out of reach of shot was landed, leaving clear decks, and no top hamper to be cut ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... rock crystal, calc spar, topaz, emerald, and other stones which adorn mineral collections are sufficient evidence of these properties. But it is very certain that natural crystals, although they possess a beauty of form which is all their own, are not by a long way so brilliant as the faceted stones which are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... lights of his mind, 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
... a political banner, but as an ornament, and the only banner available for the purpose. It was left flying when the cricketers went home, but in the morning it lay prone and dishonoured. The forty-foot spar had been sawn through, and in falling had smashed the palings. Let a chorus of musical Gladstonians march through Ireland bearing the Union Jack and singing "God save the Queen," let them do it, with or without police protection, and I will gladly watch their progress, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... refers thus to the defences: "I received order from General Carleton to put the extensive fortifications of Quebec in a state of repair at a time when there was not a single article of material in store with which to perform such an undertaking....My first object was to secure stout spar timber for palisading a great extent of open ground between the gates called Palace and Hope, and again from half-bastion of Cape Diamond along the brow of the cliff towards Castle St. Lewis. I began at Palace Gate, palisading with loopholes for musketry, and made a projection in the form ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat and lived. I put her before the fire; I ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... 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
... large one which might almost be termed a lake, being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the surface ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... a great variety of shipping owned among the young people, and they appear to have a considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. There is a full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail, that sometimes makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the pond, it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it has the effect of a picture. All its motions,—its tossing ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up in the gasket on the fore-topsail yard, and dropped off, as though he had fallen, though he clung to the rope, and was brought up with a jerk ten or twelve feet below the spar. Some of his gang, believing he had really fallen, screamed, and the attention of the whole crew was drawn off from their duty. When the fore-topmast staysail and jib were to be set, somebody had fouled the down-hauls, so that they could not be hoisted. There was ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... 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
... hope," he added, "and wait. If the 'Viking' had been wrecked between Iceland and Newfoundland the numerous vessels that follow the same route to reach Europe would certainly have seen some trace of the disaster. But no, not a single floating plank or spar did they meet on the whole of this route, which is so much frequented at the conclusion of the fishing season. Still, we must take measures to secure information of a more positive nature. If we receive no further news of the 'Viking' during the coming week, nor any letter from Ole, I shall return ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... cent ob money de whole yeah, an' den, yer know, dar wouldn't be nary 'count agin us when de year wuz ober. So Sally, she 'llowed dat she'd wuk fer de bread an' meat an' take keer ob de chillen, wid de few days' help I might spar' outen de crap. De boss man, he war boun' by de writin's ter feed de mule. Dat's ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the seas, Which curl and fly before the breeze, The gallant vessel rides and reels, And every plunge her cable feels. The storm that tries the spar and mast Tries the main-anchor at the last: The storm above, below the rock, Chafe the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... grandeur.' Here, again, the coffin had to be lifted, and 'it was most striking to see the absolute silence with which the men moved the monstrous weight at a sign from the captain's hand.' The only sound was when a spar snapped in the hands of a 'giant of a fellow, who was lifting with it. There was a respectful delicacy in every motion of these men which combined beautifully with their immense, quiet, controlled strength, and impressed me very much. After a few ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... great earthquakes; continents raised from the sea; the Moon thrown from a volcano, has no atmosphere, and is frozen; the earth's diurnal motion retarded; it's axis more inclined; whirls with the moon round a new centre. 67. IV. Formation of lime-stone by aqueous solution; calcareous spar; white marble; antient statue of Hercules resting from his labours. Antinous. Apollo of Belvidere. Venus de Medici. Lady Elizabeth Foster, and Lady Melbourn by Mrs. Damer. 93. V. 1. Of morasses. Whence the production of Salt by elutriation. Salt-mines at Cracow, 115. 2. Production ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Hermanric and Antonina remained silent in their 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 hinges. Antonina changed colour, and shuddered ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Street, in a region of rigging and sail lofts, block and pump makers, ships' stores, spar yards, gilders, carvers and workers in metal. There was a strong smell of tar and new canvas and the flat odor that rose at low water. Sailors passed, yellow powerful Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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
... old me when 'e 'ad money, an' when 'e lost everything, didn't 'e look arter me still? An' now 'e 's your shuvver, don' 'e keep a roof over me poor old 'ead like a son—don't 'e give me the run o' jour garridge an' let me watch 'im spar wi' you an' your gentlemen friends? Ain't 'e the best an' truest-'earted man as ever drawed breath? Ah, a king o' men is Joe, in the ring an' out, sir—only never let 'im 'ear me say so—'e 'd be that proud, Lord! there'd be ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol |
