"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Von Humboldt says "It would seem as if this picture had its origin in the poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent condition of the ocean in which luminous points appear to rise from the breaking waves and, spreading themselves over the surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of stars." ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... sense if not the words of the command, strode forward—a tall, lithe figure of a man, well-knit and hard of face. Under the torchlight the dilated pupils of his pinkish eyes seemed to shine as phosphorescent ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... their feet, reflecting therein their sharply reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over which we seemed to hang. The stars also were reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mycelia on dead wood, and to precede a more rapid decay. I have often tried, but always in vain, to coax these mycelia into developing some fungus, by placing them in damp rooms, etc. When camping in the mountains, I frequently caused the natives to bring phosphorescent wood into my tent, for the pleasure of watching its soft undulating light, which appears to pale and glow with every motion of the atmosphere; but except in this difference of intensity, it presents no change in appearance night after night. Alcohol, heat, and dryness soon dissipate ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the impossibility of seeing far into the surrounding wall of foliage, all oppress the soul, and strange alarms attack the most hardy. Then at night, when there is no moon and the darkness is thick, a phosphorescent light, due to decaying wood, shines fearsomely all about on the ground, so that it seems, as Louis said, "like picking one's way over the mouth of hell." "We ourselves," writes Mrs. Stevenson, "have become infected with the native fear ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the genial-hearted. Even those who have no little games of their own are wont to look on sympathetically, or, better still, to turn away the understanding eye. The long, lazy, somnolent days and the magic nights, star-spangled above and lit with phosphorescent seas below, lend themselves to the dangerous kind of flirtation that says little and looks much, and if there is any place in the world where Cupid is rampant and "Psyche may meet unblamed her Eros," it is on the deck of a liner in ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... of all, however, was the prevalence of phosphorescent minerals which absorbed the sunlight by day, and glimmered feebly in the dusk. Professor Gazen seems to think that the presence of snow and clouds, together with these phosphorescent bodies, may help to account for the mysterious luminosity on ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... heavens aflame. As from a fresh-created baleful sun, blue and livid and golden-colored lightnings were shivered from it on all sides; dull, however, in comparison to the central ball, which, bursting instantaneously, bathed the sky, earth, and air in one insufferable glare of phosphorescent light. The deadly blue flame lit up everything with a livid ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the feeble flickering light from the island as he strode across the fore-deck. He stopped, stared at the looming black line of land beneath the tropical stars. Again light flashed from a point of rock far above the dim white line of phosphorescent surf, spelling out the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... way, men!" I exclaimed, as my foot touched the thwart; the bowman shoved the boat's head off, the oars dropped into the phosphorescent water with a luminous splash, and we pulled down the harbour in the direction indicated by Mr Annesley. We pulled steadily on until all the hawser in the boat had been paid out, when we let go the kedge, and hailing the frigate to "heave ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... was uttered inwardly. She saw Seraphitus standing erect, lightly swathed in an opal-tinted mist that disappeared at a little distance from the body, which seemed almost phosphorescent. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... appeared to me as pale phosphorescent figures of ill-defined outline, lost in their own halos, as it were. I could not ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would be sure to come booming right down upon us, and our only difficulty would be to avoid being run down by her. But later on, when the darkness had once more closed down upon us, shutting out everything but the towering, swooping, phosphorescent crests of the threatening seas, I caught her softly, silently, and secretly crying; and the sight of her distress aroused a sudden furious anger in me that caused me to again and still more savagely ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the "Fairy's Ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which circled ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was not very good, but they could see a sort of phosphorescent glow on the water, where some object was struggling for ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... a portion of the divine light. In my opinion the idea is a less abstract one, and shows that, as among many other nations, so with the Egyptians the soul was supposed to appear as a kind of pale flame, or as emitting a glow analogous to the phosphorescent halo which is seen by night about a piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish. This primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and khu the glorious one, one of the manes, may have become one of those flattering names by which it was thought necessary to propitiate the dead; it ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... In the winter it surrounds them with a smoother mail of ice, and the detached piles stand white and gleaming, like the out-door palace of a Russian queen. How softly and eagerly this coming tide swirls round them! All day the fishes haunt their shadows; all night the phosphorescent water glimmers by them, and washes with long, refluent waves along their sides, decking their blackness with a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ground, o'er which shimmers a phosphorescent light; at each side an aurora borealis rises, mountain like; above all, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the snow had ceased to fall, great clouds of it yet filled the vault of the sky, and behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint, phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the light had a vague SHADOWY resemblance—if one may use the word of a shape of LIGHT—to the form of a man. There were the body and out-stretched limbs of one who had cast himself ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... silent-footed servants with coffee, cigarettes, and the maraschino for which this coast is famous. Those were never-to-be-forgotten evenings, for the gently heaving breast of the Adriatic glowed with a phosphorescent luminousness, the air was heavy with the fragrance of orange, almond, and oleander, the sky was like purple velvet, and the stars ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship was scudding ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes of the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... watched the sun drop behind the encircling rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent flashes of darting fish. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... body in every place; and when he had told his last ghost story, and fairly flourished himself out of doors at the close of a long winter's evening, you might see the hard face of the good man of the house still phosphorescent with his departing radiance, and hear him exclaim, in a paroxysm of admiration, that "Jemeses talk re'ely did beat all; that he was sartainly most ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with excitement, peered out through the night; nothing but darkness. Below, lined along the rails, she caught dull outlines of the white caps of the seamen, all as eager to defeat the battleships as their officers. She saw the phosphorescent gleam from a shattered wave. But she heard nothing, not even the swish ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... enlightenings of my spirit That let me know thy thought was toward me; Those moments fore-enjoyed from future years, Telling what converse I should hold with God. I thank thee for the sorrow and the care, Through which they gleamed, bright phosphorescent sparks Crushed from the troubled waters, borne on which Through mist and dark my soul draws nigh to thee. Five years ago, I prayed in agony That thou wouldst speak to me. Thou wouldst not then, With that close speech I craved ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... suitable adopted parent. It was especially coopered to my form by an expert clothing contractor, and it will not fit anyone else. No; it will wander on and on, the starchy bulge of its bosom dimly phosphorescent in the gloaming, its white pearl buttons glimmering spectrally; and after a while the hotel will get the reputation of being haunted by the ghost of a flour barrel, and will have a bad name and lose custom. I hope so anyway. It looks to be my ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... body of the sun bursts open. A bluish, phosphorescent flame hisses forth. Upon this flame stands erect in fluttering chiton a woman, fair and golden haired, swan's wings at her shoulders, a harp held ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... such a height. If the sea had been solidified by the cold, and converted into an immense icefield, its aspect could not have been much different. They knew that the phenomenon was produced by myriads of luminous particles of phosphorescent corpuscles; but it was surprising to come across such an opalescent mass beyond the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... like a luminous cloud, surrounding the person for two or three feet on each side of his body, being more dense near the body and gradually becoming less dense as it extends away from the body. It has a phosphorescent appearance, with a peculiar tremulous motion manifesting through its substance. The clairvoyant sees the human aura as composed of all the colors of the spectrum, the combination shifting with the changing mental and emotional states of the person. But, in a general way, it may be ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... tried to make him understand; but the maniac had again fallen to playing with the jewels. I shook him; he did not stir, only sat there jabbering and singing. And now wave after wave came splashing over us, soaking us through, and hissing in phosphorescent ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The night was dark, greatly impeding our labor. Still, though not a star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... pardon for doing so. There is no doubt that Concord would have hung with several added pounds of weight upon our imaginations if it had not been for him. Over his tender-heartedness, as I saw him in the old days, played delicious eccentricities, phosphorescent, fitful, touch-me-not antics of feeling. I was glad to meet the long glance of his gray, dazzling eyes, lowered gracefully at last. The gaze seemed to pass through me to the wall, and beyond even that barrier ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... had no picture whatever of the Twins. And that reminded me, in turn, of what a difference there is between your first child and the tots who come later. Little Dinkie, being a novelty, was followed by a phosphorescent wake of diaries and snap-shots and weigh-scales and growth-records, with his birthdays duly reckoned, not by the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... deplorable sloppiness. The headwaiter conducted him between tables of half-crocked customers—burly black-uniformed Space Guardsmen, army and air officers, richly clad industrialists and union bosses, civilian leaders, their wives and mistresses. The waiters were all Martian slaves, he noticed, their phosphorescent owl-eyes smoldering in the ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... colours of the scallops (Pecten) and some other bivalve shells are perhaps an indication of their hardness and consequent inedibility, as in the case of the hard beetles; and it is not improbable that some of the phosphorescent fishes and other marine organisms may, like the glow-worm, hold out their lamp as a warning to enemies.[115] In Queensland there is an exceedingly poisonous spider, whose bite will kill a dog, and cause ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... small and thin—very thin. His complexion showed yellow and black, much more than ours did; he seemed marked for life by an earthen colour; his deeply sunk eyes were the only feature which was burning with vitality, they had a phosphorescent glow. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... possessed of this property, after being exposed to the sun's rays, appear luminous in the dark. The shells of fish, the bones of land animals, marble, limestone, and a variety of combinations of earths, are more or less powerfully phosphorescent. ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... deck. The ship lay far over. The waves came leaping upon her in successive surges. All around the sea was glistening with phosphorescent lustre, and when at times the lightning flashed forth it lighted up the scene, and showed the ocean stirred up to fiercest commotion. It seemed as though cataracts of water were rushing over the doomed ship, which now lay helpless, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... no monotony, but every day seemed full of interest. All the wonders of the great deep were about them—strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night. Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... ere I leave the caon on my way to Carlin. Farther on, the gorge widens, and thick underbrush intervenes between the road and the river. From out the brush I see peering two little round phosphorescent balls, like two miniature moons, turned in my direction. I wonder what kind of an animal it is, as I trundle along through the darkness, revolver in hand, ready to defend myself, should it make an attack. I think it is a mountain-lion, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... exhaust coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel kept on its dead shove of the Marie's keel into the sand. Hogjaw had shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water circling about the bow when Crump raised ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the vessel dived into the sea as if it were never going to rise again. The night was dark, shreds of cloud raced across a steel-grey sky, while a greenish patch showed the position of the moon. At the horizon glistened an uncertain light, but the sea was a black abyss, out of which the phosphorescent waves appeared suddenly, rolled swiftly nearer and broke over the ship as if poured ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... within. The river was like a stream of golden fire, each ripple with a kind of phosphorescent gleam as the foam slipped away. For the oars were beating it up in every direction. The air was tensely clear. There was Lake St. Clair spread out in the distance, touching a sky of golden blue, if such colors fuse. And the opposite shore with its wealth ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of life, and with fair complexion and comely features—was so emaciated, that you might have counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow, you beheld in the candle-light the figure of death under the thin covering of the bones. She realized, in short, the description which doctors give of the appearance of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... shadows of earth were dissipated and destroyed, beneath the clear, pure light of heaven that he invoked and made apparent! Why passed the syllables now coldly and ineffectually across the heart they could not penetrate? Why glittered they before the eye with phosphorescent lustre, void of all heat and might? I could not tell. The charm was gone. It was misery to know it. The minister having concluded, "Brother Buster was requested to engage in prayer." That worthy rose instanter. First, he coughed, then he made a face—an awful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... turned from the turnpike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools, and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... captain give a wild cry from the poop and felt the engines stop and reverse beneath him. He cast one glance over the rail and like every man on board was struck motionless and silent. In the phosphorescent gleams of the waves churned up by the incredible muscular power of the killers, the old whale—sixty feet in length at least, and weighing hundreds of tons—was rushing at a maddened spurt of fifteen or even twenty miles an hour straight for the vessel's side, where a blind instinct made her ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as sea-leopards, crab-eater and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... cypress, the almond tree, the Guelder rose and other trees and shrubs. It seems fairly indifferent to the nature of the support. A more remarkable feature distinguishes it from all the other European mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow combustion, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... as the night set in, fishermen's lights were seen moving along the beach in all directions, and gliding about in canoes, while the sea was filled with myriads of phosphorescent animalcula. After watching this scene for two or three hours in the calm and still night, a storm that had been gathering reached us; but it lasted only for a short time, and cleared off after a shower, which gave the air a freshness that was delightful after the sultry heat we ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... helped vastly to make the living mass inside the Stockade a human Dead Sea—or rather a Dying Sea—a putrefying, stinking lake, resolving itself into phosphorescent corruption, like those rotting southern seas, whose seething filth burns in hideous reds, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... by small, phosphorescent creatures scattered about the sea gardens and which Merla informed them were hyalaea, or sea glowworms. But their light was dim when compared to that of the electric jellyfish, which they found placed in clusters upon the ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... drifted sometimes when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground, the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen into this natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had been overpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides. And the odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was indescribably foul ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... spider-web-like substance fell in Montgomery, in strands and in occasional masses several inches long and several inches broad. According to the writer, it was not spiders' web, but something like asbestos; also that it was phosphorescent. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... forward in the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark. The next few moments were of vital importance ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... mountains, sleeps tranquilly in the stillness of the elements, as if it had not joined the chorus of the tempest on the night before. As first rays of dawn appear in the eastern sky and awaken the phosphorescent myriads in the water, long, grey shadows appear in the dim distance, almost on the border of the horizon. They are shadows of fishermen's boats at work drawing ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to astounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, this worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose Rops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... with a horrible dew That mirrored the red moon's crescent, And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue, Dim, wavering, phosphorescent. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... from Japan. Not a passenger except myself on deck, but I cannot sleep. Vandy would be with me, I know, poor fellow, were he able to crawl, but the storm has settled him for the present. How strange that none feel sufficient interest to stay awake and watch with me! They would be amply repaid. The phosphorescent sea shows forth its wonders now—not alone in the myriads of small stars of light, which please you in the Atlantic, but at every turn of the foam dashed from the bow and sides of the ship masses of glittering phosphorescence as large as my travelling cap. What creatures these must be ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... of a dark night, while we listened to the dismal tune of the seas breaking over them with an eternal roar, how intensely lonesome they were! no sign of any living thing in sight, except, perhaps, the phosphorescent streaks of a hungry shark, which told of bad company in our wake, and made the gloom of the ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was wheeling ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the dark ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... great ship was ploughing its zigzag course through the black waters, dodging submarines. There was not a star in the sky. There was not a light on the boat. Absolutely the only lights that one saw was when he leaned over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening, when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a beautiful sight there and on ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... they undoubtedly must be. He had seen the orbs of a cat shine in this phosphorescent way in the darkness. There could be no doubt but that he was being surveyed by one of those savage beasts whose whining he and Andy had heard around ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... changes at the front, the present writer, by that time off the hill and in the plain below, saw the heavens gloriously alive with the pageantry of conflict. The vault was pitted with woolly tufts of shrapnel and beautiful dead-whitesmoke-wreaths from the phosphorescent bombs. These spread their sinuous toils high and low and seemed to fill the skies. On both sides the aerial combatants were going home to roost, exchanging challenges by the way. And all the time, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... calm, ere they steered through the narrow channel—or what we may call a broken part of the ring—which led to the calm lagoon inside. Nigel Roy leaned over the bow, watching with profound attention the numerous phosphorescent fish and eel-like creatures which darted hither and thither like streaks of silver from beneath their advancing keel. He had enough of the naturalist in him to arouse in his mind keen interest in the habits and action of the animal life around ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... reigned. To-day, thanks to expeditions undertaken for the purpose of exploring the abysses of the ocean, we know that life manifests itself abundantly over the bottom, and that at a depth of five and six thousand meters light is distributed by innumerable phosphorescent animals. Different nations have endeavored to rival each other in the effort to effect these important discoveries, and several scientific missions have been sent to different points of the globe by the English and American governments. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... above his head till it was but a faint point of yellow light, and then a hand, firm and broad, was laid for an instant on Serviss's shoulder. Stars of phosphorescent fire floated about. A small hand fluttered in a caress about the face of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... with its reflector and a blue spark in the focus, made an admirable instrument for throwing the invisible rays on the beast, and that he was all ready, except that his plates, which he had resensitized—with some phosphorescent substance that I forget the name of, now—must have time to dry. And then, he needed some light to work by when ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the tropics. Soon the darkness enveloped us, a palpable veil. A noise like the march of a mighty host was heard, which proved to be the approach of a tropical flood, heralded by drops as large as marbles. It churned the still waters into a phosphorescent foam which rendered the darkness only more oppressive. The rain came down as it can come only in the Bight of Benin. The avalanche cooled us, reducing the temperature ten or fifteen degrees, giving us new life, and relieving our fevered blood. I told Mr. Block ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... in us. But it shows no trace of the creative faculty either in unity of purpose or style, the proper characteristics of literature. If it have the charm of wanting artifice, it has not the higher charm of art. We are in the realm of chaos and chance, nebular, with phosphorescent gleams here and there, star stuff, but uncondensed in stars. The Nibelungen is not without far-reaching hints and forebodings of something finer than we find in it, but they are a glamour from the vague darkness which encircles it, like the whisper of the sea upon an unknown shore at night, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... elements, there was the wild grandeur of the scene, the great masses of black cloud scurrying athwart the sky, with little patches of starlit blue winking in and out between, the roar and swoop of the wind, and the menacing hiss of the phosphorescent foam-caps as they came rushing down upon the boat in endless succession, all combining together to form a picture the like of which, as viewed from a wildly leaping, half-swamped, spray-smothered open boat, it is given to comparatively few ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... boy furnished a striking contrast. He was pale and puny; his eyes gleamed with a phosphorescent brilliancy; and his hair was of a faded flaxen tint. One little circumstance attracted both detectives' attention. If the mother was attired in an old, thin, faded calico dress, the child was warmly clad in ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... charmingly,—as Mr. Bernard could not help saying to himself,—but, to be sure, he had just been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and betrays itself by the light which escapes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... ditch of Clamart opens. From it arises a miasm, a phosphorescent glow. It shines and flickers in two separate tarts; it takes shape, the head rejoins the body, it is a phantom; the phantom gazes into the darkness with wild, baleful eyes, rises, grows bigger and blue, hovers for an instant and then speeds away to the zenith ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... whisper shot through the Tampico like a draft of cold air. Virginia was quivering with excitement. She could see the leading boat as it passed not three hundred yards away, and the next, both spouting flames from their funnels, throwing up water, which fell in silvery, phosphorescent spray—racketing, clawing the restless sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their decks, First ploughed the flag-ship El Toro, next El Teuera, and last the "battleship" El Manuel, sitting almost on her stern, plugging along doggedly ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... So close were the banks of wet, black earth, that they heard the crabs scuttling down them, and Porringer made a jab with his pole at a great sheepshead lying perdu alongside. The water broke before them into spangles, glittering phosphorescent ripples. A school of small fish, disturbed by the oars, rushed past them, leaping from the water with silver flashes. A turtle plunged sullenly. From the grass above came the sleepy cry of marsh hens, and once a great white heron rose ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... They do real decorative surgery, as it is called. They'll engage to give you a new skin as soft and pink as a baby's. Or they will straighten a nose, or turn an ear. They have light treatment for complexions—the ruby ray, the violet ray, the phosphorescent ray. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... or two have done so within a recent period. What will be the effect? That depends on circumstances. There is good reason to suppose we passed through the tail of a comet in 1861, and the only [Page 134] observable effect was a peculiar phosphorescent mist. If the comet were composed of small meteoric masses a brilliant shower would be the result. But if we fairly encountered a nucleus of any considerable mass and solidity, the result would be far more serious. The mass of Donati's comet has been estimated by M. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... found further existence in London impossible. Public opinion is too strong for me. . . . There are many other reasons I could give for being pleased to come: such as that I have some time for writing the novel; that I can make up stories I don't intend to write . . . that there are phosphorescent colours on the sea and a box of cigarettes on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... taking a firm hold on one arm of the skeleton, I loosened it from the body with a quick jerk. The movement loosened the head as well, and it rolled out through the opening right to my very feet. I took up the skull to lay it in the coffin again—and then I saw a greenish phosphorescent glimmer in its empty eye sockets, a glimmer which came and went. Mad terror shook me at the sight. I looked up at the houses in the distance, then back again to the skull; the empty sockets shone more brightly than before. I felt that I must ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... section—the Ciliograde acalephae, as they are called—is the Girdle of Venus, which resembles a ribbon in form, and is sometimes five or six feet in length, covered with cilia, and brilliantly phosphorescent. This must be one of the most beautiful of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... monster disturbed in his rest plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, twisted legs; ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... haze had almost the consistency of a cloud when Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the massive foundations of a shadowy island ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... The goddess was further supposed to have a great affection for gold, which was called the "flame of the sea," and was used to illuminate her halls. This belief originated with the sailors, and sprang from the striking phosphorescent gleam of the waves. To win Ran's good graces, the Northmen were careful to hide some gold about them whenever any special danger threatened them ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the wind increased in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull fire suspended in the air, and blown toward us, till, with a noise like thunder, as it dashed against the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... tall grass, whose culms stirred by the night breeze, and silvered by the moonbeams, sway to and fro, like the soft tremulous wavelets of a tropic sea; myriads of fire-flies prinkling among the spikes, and emitting a gleam, as phosphorescent medusae, make the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... that all of them could chant was the football tune, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," and we were whooping it up over pa's illuminated remains when the Indians came out to put Pa on the fire, and when they saw the phosphorescent glow all over him, and, his face looking as though he was at peace with all the world, and us whites on our knees, making motions and singing that hot dirge, they all turned pale, and were scared, and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... the deck of the Beagle this evening we remarked large luminous spots in the water. They appeared to be about 12 inches in circumference, were very numerous, and perfectly stationary. The light they emitted was phosphorescent, but far brighter than I had ever before witnessed; it was so vivid as to be distinctly visible for nearly ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... was almost like a great sheet of paper. Down she was forced, until the high-flying spray from the waves actually wet the lower part of the car, and Ned, looking through one of the glass windows, saw, in the darkness, the phosphorescent gleam of the water so ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... the vital and distinguished artistry of his work. The author, it will be remembered, was employed in a firm of ginger-beer bottlers before he took to literature, and Mr. WELLS, who contributes a Preface, dwells happily on the stimulating and phosphorescent quality which his literary work owes to his employment, and contrasts it favourably with the flatness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... which I desire to explain, if only to place a warning light upon the reef. This beautiful woman, so slender, so fragile, this milk-white creature, so yielding, so submissive, so gentle, her brow so endearing, the hair that crowns it so fair and fine, this tender woman, whose brilliancy is phosphorescent and fugitive, has, in truth, an iron nature. No horse, no matter how fiery he may be, can conquer her vigorous wrist, or strive against that hand so soft in appearance, but never tired. She has the foot of a doe, a thin, muscular little foot, indescribably graceful in outline. She is ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... of the Phosphori. Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are little more than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable by refracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in a marvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun. These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to the streaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heat upon our earth, and this continuous tide is ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards—no, Lord no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... gazing into the wonderful rock gardens under the Autelets when the tide was out;—watching the phosphorescent seaweeds flame in the darker pools; seeking out the haunts where the sea anemones lay in thousands, waving their long pale arms hungrily for food and closing them hopefully on anything that offered, even on one's fingers, which they presently ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... his torch unlighted, and moved along; there was a little illumination from the phosphorescent markers at some of the corners, and from the stars. He could just make his way without marking himself with ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... sank into my heart like a great spiritual plummet They dropped down to depths not often stirred. And from those depths came up some shining sands of truth, worth keeping among treasures; having a phosphorescent light in them, which can shine in dark places, and, making them light as ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... islands silhouetted at sunset!... Look! That moon!... I always imagine it so clearly when I hear Hawaiian singers on the Victrola—and a Hawaiian beach, with fireflies in the jungle behind and a phosphorescent sea in front and native girls ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped —two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had—turned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from noon. Some may ascribe this to the greater height of the atmosphere in the evenings having been rarefied by the sun during the day; but as its density must at the same time be diminished, its power of refraction would continue the same. I should rather suppose that it may be owing to the phosphorescent quality (as it is called) of almost all bodies; that is, when they have been exposed to the sun they continue to emit light for a considerable time afterwards. This is generally believed to arise either from such bodies giving out the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... horrible with the frost and the phosphorescent light of the moon; the birds sat tucked in their nest, pressing close together to keep themselves warm. Yet still the frost penetrated their feathers, got into their skin and made their feet, bills, and backs feel cold. The errant light of the moon was also disquieting; ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... fishes, nevertheless, having well-developed organs of vision, have been taken from such depths (over a mile) as to preclude the possibility of a single ray of daylight.[7] These fishes, however, are phosphorescent, and thus furnish their own light. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the vast depths of the ocean, in certain localities, lie bathed in a continuous phosphorescent glow, so that creatures living there neither lose ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... sea-water in sunlight. The different members of this marine flotsam frequently rise and fall periodically: some of them sinking by day to escape the light, others rising only by day; others, again, appearing on the surface in spring, keeping deep down in winter. Perhaps the majority of them are phosphorescent, sometimes shining by their own light, sometimes borrowing a glory from innumerable phosphorescent bacteria with which they are infested. Nearly every class of the animal kingdom contributes members to this strange population. The young forms of many fish, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Rubies were there like great drops of the blood that the chest and its treasure had wrung from the hearts of men; sapphires, mirroring the blue of the tropic sky; emeralds, green as the island verdure; pearls, white as the milk of the cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... still made no move, but in the clear moonlight I could see its body expand and contract in breathing; its yellow eyes seeming to radiate a phosphorescent light. I felt no fear, nor any inclination to retreat, yet I was now facing a beast that few men had ever succeeded in seeing. Thus we stood looking at each other, scarcely moving an eyelid, while the great silent monster looked at us. I slid ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... questioned the honour of the republic or the chastity of his wife. And yet it must be plain to any dispassionate observer that this ardour, in the course of a century and a half, has lost a large part of its old burning reality and descended to the estate of a mere phosphorescent superstition. The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... lovely phosphorescent effects, and as we neared Scotland, millions of pink and brown jelly-fish filled the water. At Thurso we hailed a boat to send telegrams ashore—such a collection!—to let our various friends know ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... bank. By the water's edge he swiftly stripped himself to his moccasins and taking out the wax vestas, damped each precious one and carefully rubbed lines over his face and body, endeavouring to get the most distinctive phosphorescent effect around the eyes. Leaving his clothes he crawled ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... gaze at something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a vast, misty swine-face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame, of a greenish hue. It is the Thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems to drip with a continual, phosphorescent slaver. The eyes are staring straight into the room, with an inscrutable expression. Thus, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the Captain slipped in, closing it tight behind him. It was pitch black and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to it. When they had, he could make out the shadowed forms of the OD, the first class quartermaster at the wheel, and the radarman hunched over the repeater, the scope a phosphorescent ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson |
