"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Black Eagle," standing on the poop, holding by the remnant of a spar, issued his last orders in this fearful extremity with courageous coolness. The smaller boats had been carried away by the waves; it was in vain to think of launching the long-boat; the only chance of escape in case the ship should not be ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... midshipmen and pilot on one side, and the seamen upon the other, were stowed like herrings upon "a platform laid across water-casks, whose surface they completely covered when they slept, and at so small a distance below the spar deck that their heads would reach it when seated." To these inconveniences were added the want of any room for exercise on deck, the attacks of innumerable vermin which their predecessors, the slaves, had left behind them, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... right," said Dan, catching to this saving spar of truth, in his doubt and uncertainty. "We—we wouldn't be anything else if we were killed ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... men, I should think, at least. It was a surprise." A spar had been fitted as a rudder, and the raft had now gained nearer the shore than it ever had done before. The men were in high spirits at the prospect, and every man was sitting on his own store of dollars, which, in their eyes, increased in value, in proportion ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... forgive me," said the Queen, "how soon these cock-chickens begin to spar!—with children and boys, at least, I may be a queen.—I will have you friends.—Some one send me Henry Seyton hither." As she spoke the last words aloud, the youth whom she had named entered the apartment. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... speak of this site with peculiar veneration. Between the village of Kashkarantz and the Varzuga rises Mt. Korable, remarkable for its many caverns, studded with crystals of translucent quartz and amethyst, the former, together with fluor and heavy spar, being met with, too, in the eastern parts of the mountain. The Kola Peninsula was carefully explored by ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... impression of power as a steamship, mistress of her own movements, scorning the control of the elements, and keeping straight on to her destination in storm and calm alike. But in some respects the weak is strong. The ship is equal to most of the chances of a sea-experience. If the spar break, it can be replaced. If the storm rend the sails to ribbons, there are skilful hands which can find or make new ones. But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her armor proving a sufficient defence against the broadsides, even when delivered at close range. The eight-inch shells of the Hartford buried themselves about half their diameter in our armor, and crumbled into fragments. All of our casualties occurred on the spar deck; our gallant commander being mortally wounded there; and many of the mechanics, who were quartered on board the tenders alongside of us, were killed or wounded. The McRae and the Manassas were in the stream in time to take an active part ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... excited tones as they made their way forward. If the object sticking above the gully's edge proved actually to be a mast it was in all probability a spar of the ship they sought. The thought put new life into every one and they hurried forward over the hard snow at ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Lawrenceburg to bring Harvey home. Instead of taking the cars as instructed, Paul induced his charge to go with him to the river. The little boy was very timid and refused to embark on a steering oar that Paul found near the shore. A steering oar consists of a plank securely pinned into a spar about thirty feet long and used on stern and bow of a raft to guide it. Paul at last half forcibly seated him on a block of wood on the steering oar and procuring a pole they started on their voyage. All went well until they had passed under the old Aqueduct Bridge. Then a crowd of Pittsburgh boys ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... 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
... follow, were it to the world's end. I believed he would, too, for he had threatened to be the last man in Maida's world; the Countess was now the last woman in his, and he would hold on to her and her money as a drowning man grasps at a substantial spar. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... superficial as compared with the intensity of our fears when we are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... his companion's arm and pointed with his right hand to a spar-like object projecting a few feet, close to the waves, at less than a cable's ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Henrick, your valiant sonne, With Bellizarius and my selfe come laden With spoiles to lay them at your feet. What lives the sword spar'd serve to grace your Triumph, Till from your lips they have the doome ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... dashed against its sides increased in loudness. The ship heeled over to the gale till her yard-arms seemed almost to touch the floating mountain. Still she stood up bravely to her canvas, closely hugging the wind. Had a rope been rotten, had a spar given way, our fate might have been sealed. In one instant after striking, the ship and everything in her might have been dashed ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... view from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its erstwhile surface of ebony into a tremble of turquoise and gold, outlining every spar and sail and rope in the ship with thin, golden wires, and causing every bit of glass and polished metal-work to blaze and scintillate with golden fire. The watch appeared, yawning and stretching as they emerged from their hiding places, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... barely showed beneath, and in her rigging, heavily covered with ice, were five men. All around was the sea, tossed into giant waves, curling and breaking about the stranded vessel. He noted the life-like shading of the green and white billows; the ice that covered every shroud and rope and spar; and peering out of a cabin door was a woman holding a babe in her arms. In a way it was a ghastly picture, and one that held his attention ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... on board the Swash with great rapidity, and the brig made a bold push at the Stepping-Stones. Spike was a capital pilot. He insisted if he could once gain sight of the spar that was moored on those rocks for a buoy, he should run with great confidence. The two lights were of great assistance, of course; but the revenue vessel could see these lights as well as the brig, and she, doubtless, had an excellent ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... notwithstanding it high state the water remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, and is formed much like the Virginia nitingale; ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... happened except the towing torpedo of the boat in front of us in the line fouled a submerged spar, or a bit of wreckage, and exploded right under our bow. 'If we had been a few yards closer we would never have been ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... explained by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form of the crystals, and the final product ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... place in Christian hymnology, notably such a lyric as "Jesus, Savior, pilot me over life's tempestuous sea," with that sweet verse "as a mother stills her child Thou canst hush the ocean wild." Another hymn was "Wrecked and struggling in mid ocean, clinging to a broken spar." ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... his Bed two Months, but Misson seeing him in a fair way of Recovery, took what Hands could be spar'd from the Bijoux, leaving her sufficient for Defence, and went out, having mounted ten of the Portuguese Guns, for he had hitherto carried but thirty, though he had Ports for forty. He stretched over to Madagascar, and coasted ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... sharply at the lad while he was telling his story. "You've got an honest face, my little man. I'll trust you. Bring aboard your baggage. People spar their way on the river every day in the year; you needn't be ashamed of it. Accidents will happen, you know." And the busy clerk ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... of white spar, with arrow head "above heart." Nicely carved, with ears and with small pieces of turquoise inserted for eyes; designated by Mr. Cushing as Prey God of the Hunt. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... animal; a magpie, and another larger bird, probably attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the storm was over; not a spar of the ship was left in sight. The sun rose red and glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour down new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained closed. The little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead and stroked back his wet hair. He was like the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent, afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived. With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... spar to think. The train bound southward rattled behind him; he was sitting on the very bank of the track, so close that the engineer blew his whistle; but Jamie did not hear. So this was the end. He might as well have saved her ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... not yet 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 to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... another with nothing 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 too well were the hulls of ships which had ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... could strike some kind o' cover an' hed a minute to spar', we'd be able ter stan' ther varmints off," came ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 'How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... angry hands Were lifted up against some known friends face; Then coming to the body of the army He shews the sacred Senate, and forbids them To wast their force upon the Common Souldier, Whom willingly, if e're he did know pity, He would have spar'd. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was the least of the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was in ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... saint was preserved there for centuries. After the church fell into decay's early in the seventeenth century, the bell remained in the churchyard. The narrow-pointed spar of granite on which it rested still stands there. The bell, unfortunately, was wantonly removed, by Protestant strangers about thirty years ago, to the great indignation of the inhabitants of the glen, Protestant as well as Catholic; it has never ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated in an almost imperceptible ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... let go your hand,' said that officer, 'for if I do your spar will fly back, and you will be thrown upon the deck ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... 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, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of "Time!" the principals would rise from their seconds' knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... bell buoys, gas buoys, and automatic sounding buoys, shall be placed to mark special positions either on the coast or in the approaches to harbours. (7) Buoys showing only a mast above water shall be called spar-buoys (fig. 5).[2] (8) Starboard-hand buoys shall always be painted in one colour only. (9) Port-hand buoys shall be painted of another characteristic colour, either single or parti-colour. (10) Spherical buoys (fig. 3) at the ends of middle grounds shall always be distinguished by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... on by Messrs. William and Robert Tindall, the former of whom resided in London; he was one of the half-dozen great shipbuilders and owners who founded "Lloyd's." Splendid East Indiamen, of some 1000 tons burden, were then built at Scarborough; and scarcely a timber was moulded, a plank bent, a spar lined off, or launching ship-ways laid, without my being present to witness them. And thus, in course of time, I was able to make for myself the neatest ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old established family in the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... flying on board the frigate several minutes, and yet no symptoms of any preparation for an answer could be discovered. At length the halyards moved, and then three fair, handsome flags rose to the end of le Feu-Follet's jigger yard, a spar that was always kept aloft in moderate weather. What the signal meant Raoul did not know, for though he was provided with signals by means of which to communicate with the vessels of war of his own nation, the Directory had not ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months still, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... established between God and the Apostle. We do not know to which of the two groups of the shipwrecked Paul belonged; whether he could swim or whether he had to hold on to some bit of floating wreckage or other, and so got 'safe to land.' But whichever way it was, it was neither his swimming nor the spar to which, perhaps, he clung, that landed him safe on shore. It was the God to whom he belonged. Faith is the true lifebelt that keeps us from being drowned in any stormy sea. And if you and I feel that we are His, and live accordingly, we shall be calm amid all change, serene ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... to know I ought to feel 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
... going so close to the shore; the majority of the shot, flying high, struck her rigging instead of her hull. Still she was struck 240 times, and became almost a wreck,—her hull showing gaping wounds, her main-yard cut in two places, every spar more or less damaged, two shot-holes in the head of the mainmast, and her rigging hanging in shreds; the ship also having twice caught fire,—once when a shell fell in her maintop and set fire to the mainsail, and ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the flag-staff was shot down, and the flag fell.[20] It had been previously hanging by one halliard, the other having been cut by a piece of shell. The exultation of the enemy, however, was short-lived. Peter Hart found a spar in the fort, which answered very well as a temporary flag-staff. He nailed the flag to this, and raised it triumphantly by nailing and tying the pole firmly to a pile of gun-carriages on the parapet. This was gallantly done, without undue haste, under Seymour's supervision, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in Chicago. With every 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
... work there was also, and in one corner lay the dried-up body of a great wolf hound, coiled as in sleep where it had been chained. Another had been tied by the passage doorway, where I had stepped on it; and below a spar that stood across a corner lay a tumbled heap of feathers ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... who had remained in a state of stupor since the loss of his daughter, was borne to the ship's side, and hurriedly fastened to a spar; and then all the crew boldly sprung into the water, and pushing the fragments of boards and spars from the burning brig, as soon as they attained a safe distance, commenced the construction of their raft in the water. This was an exceedingly difficult undertaking; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... what makes the might of words,— 55 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the line of dead things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the imminent danger threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling—no time for nice shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her brother's safety. As Donaldson's eyes met hers, she felt ashamed that she had hesitated even long enough for these thoughts ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... light in the swinging lamp flickered fitfully when the ship plunged into the troughs of the seas, and rose again with a violent surge, as each wave passed under her, while every plank and spar on board seemed to groan under the strain. Darkness now added to the terrors of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Greeks, if by the ships I hear Their 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 ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination to subdue difficulties, which were not worth the subduing, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... wide, and are steered by a paddle at either end. The sail is lateen, with a boom upon one mast; the prow and stern curve to a high point, and the depth being considerably greater than the width, the proa would, if unsupported, capsize instantly, but a hollow log or heavy-pointed spar rests on the water, parallel with the windward side, and, being secured in place, acts as an outrigger and removes the danger of overturning. The same name is applied to the boats used by the Malays, and which are propelled by both oars ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... following the example of the Pinola and Itasca, had their lower masts removed and moored to the shore. Of the four that kept them in three had their masts wounded in the fight, proving the advantage of this precaution. Thus prepared, and stripped of every spare spar, rope, and boat, in the lightest fighting trim, the ships stood ready ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... be they summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er the ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Is not the Derbyshire spar produced by the crystallisation of earths, in the way you have just explained? I have been in some of the subterraneous caverns where it is found, which are similar ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... was this that 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 Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... elevation of about seven thousand feet, I observed on a bare slope some snow-white projecting columns. These were petrified trees, eleven being silicified, and from thirty to forty converted into coarsely-crystallized white calcareous spar. They were abruptly broken off, the upright stumps projecting a few feet above the ground. The trunks measured from three to five feet each in circumference. They stood a little way apart from each other, but the whole formed one group. Mr. Robert ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... on the lookout for the Hargreaves party, and came forward and had a talk with them before they started across the open spot. He had quite recovered from Nelly's attack upon his dignity as a man and a naval officer, and the pair as usual had a wordy spar. Dick was, however, rather serious at the prospect of the danger ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... and I 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, ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... 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 ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and elegant, exists at Derby, which excites the attention and loosens the purse-strings of most strangers. It is the spar-manufactory of Mr. Hall, and in it, he converts the petrified sports of nature, in the Derbyshire hills, into the luxuries of civil life. Those in London, who desire to see the products of these works, may behold them at Mawe's, in the Strand; but all, who visit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... be useless; but, from subsequent experience, they proved to be far from deserving such contempt, for during the voyage we made two pole-top gallant-masts of it; which, although very full of knots, were as tough as any spar I ever saw; and carried a press of sail longer than would be trusted on many masts. These trees are very abundant on the Cumberland and Northumberland Islands, but do not attain any large size; being seldom higher than fifty or sixty feet, or of a greater ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... mare mast chart damp warp share cask lard hand warm spare mask arm land ward snare past yard sand warn game scar lake waft fray lame spar dale raft play name star gale chaff gray fame garb cape aft stay tame ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... down there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... divining rod appeared suddenly to have returned, for his eyes were gladdened with the sight of a large mass of apparent gold; the delusion, however, soon vanished, for, on examination, it was found to be nothing more than common spar. According to his report, the metal is never met with in low fertile and wooded spots, but always in naked and barren hills, embedded in a reddish earth. At one place, after a labour of twenty days, he succeeded in extracting twelve pounds, and, at length, he asserts that he ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... insert here, but leave the Reader, whose curiosity obliges him, to the Papers themselves, only I wish the Absolver had made Newgate the last Scene of that part of his Immorality, and by an humble acknowledgment to his Patron that redeemed him, (I hope the word will bear in this place) have spar'd his Office of Absolution in another Scene, and consequently given no occasion to believe that his disobedient humour, and turbulent nature, still proceeds daily, to cultivate his Party with the same Principles as far as ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... outstretched hands in his, and passing one of them through his arm walked with her apart from the children, who were examining at the news-man's booth the moccasins and the birchbark bric-a-brac of the Irish aborigines, and the cups and vases of Niagara spar imported ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 is apparent, and far beyond the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... 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, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... breaking loose in that manner! It's suicide. He could be arrested for the attempt in this State. Is that strong enough for you? You surely know how I feel now, don't you? Come on, Betty dear! Let's not spar in that foolish way any longer. Remember all I said yesterday. It goes double today—really, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... 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 it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... boats had disappeared, and during the night, which turned out gusty and threatening, kept making short tacks, while lanterns were hung at the mast-heads, and a huge torch, or rather a small bonfire, of tarred materials was slung at the end of a spar and thrust out over the stern of the ship. But for many hours there was no sign of the boats, and the crew of the Dolphin began to entertain the most gloomy forebodings ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... place—of men And manners treating with a flying pen; Not he who climbs, for prospects, Snowdon's height, And chides the clouds that intercept the sight; No curious shell, rare plant, or brilliant spar, Enticed our traveller from his house so far; But all the reason by himself assign'd For so much rambling, was a restless mind; As on, from place to place, without intent, Without reflection, Robin Dingley went. Not thus by nature:- never man was found Less prone to wander from his parish ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... was 46 feet and ten inches. She drew in water 31 foot at her departure from Cochin in India, but not aboue 26 at her arriual in Dartmouth, being lightened in her voyage by diuers meanes some 5 foote. She caried in height 7 seuerall stories, one maine Orlop, three close decks, one fore-castle, and a spar-decke of two floores a piece. The length of the keele was 100 foote, of the maine-mast 121 foot, and the circuite about at the partners 10 foote 7 inches, the maine-yard was 106 foote long. By which perfect commensuration of the parts appeareth ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake Thy thirst in the waters of art, That are drawn from the streams Of love and ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... Hope, dazed and dumb, followed the others. They found the little room, where they had passed so many homelike hours, sadly demoralized. One of the great windows was shivered to splinters, and through it projected a heavy spar, now safely wedged from further harm, and as they gazed out through the other great panes, it was upon a scene of intense desolation. The deck was quite empty, all the crew being busy below, but it was one mass of broken timbers, fallen ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the lagoon)—years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. He was a chief, of wild and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering his piglike ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... much pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth "setting to with," he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, "Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to attempt a 'delusion' on so short an acquaintance. I deny the charge distinctly. I believe that ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... post myself, for the old man would trust nobody but me, and indeed would have preferred taking it himself; but in winter he was always lame from the effects of a bruise he had received from a falling spar in the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear. However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get his injured foot against anything firm he found ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... dis niggah!" chuckled Toby the Bad, maliciously. "Nuff more ob his kind, in all conscience! Reckon we kin spar' much ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... past ten next morning, and looked around. We hadn't budged a peg! At first I could not understand it; then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. She was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just whereabouts ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ovoid vase, remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase, which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... crisp stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see how those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are abused by my fellow-vertebrates,—perhaps by myself. How they spar for wind, instead of hitting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... little boat glides amid the vertical rocks—walls of crystal spar—shutting in the river, touching as it seems the blue heavens, peak, parapet, ramparts taking multiform hues under the shifting clouds, now of rich amber, now dazzlingly white, now deep purple or roseate. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Right up the spar went. It would have been a heavy job for three young men of their size in civil life, but midshipmen are constantly undergoing the best ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... every care. He is young, rich, without family, and is going to marry me. Like you, I am just on forty; my hair is turning grey, my youth vanishing. I shall soon be cast adrift on the sea, a wreck. This boy is the providential spar to which I am going to cling that I may reach land in safety." "You mean, then," said the widow, "that you will soon be beyond the reach of want?" "Yes," answered the friend, "I needn't worry any more about ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... lives amongst broken oars, and tangled rigging and floating bottom-boards; one voice less, two less, a smashing sea and then no voices at all, no boat, no men, no anything but the howling wind and the driving spray, and he himself, Logotheti, gripping a spar, one of those long booms the fishermen carry for running, half-drowned again and again, but gripping still, and drifting with the storm past the awful death of sharp black rocks and pounding seas, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... gray and brown tints, there was a dash of scarlet,—the cardinal grosbeak, whose presence was sufficient to enliven any scene. In the leafless trees, as a ray of sunshine fell upon him, he was visible a long way off, glowing like a crimson spar,—the only bit of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... raking below water line; raking curved stem; large open head; long round (nearly log-shaped) bottom; tumble in top side; short run; very large and high square stern; quarter galleries; high forecastle, square on forward end, with open rails on each side; open bulwarks to main [spar] and quarter-decks; a succession of three quarter-decks or poops, the after one being nearly 9 feet above main [spar] deck; two boats stowed on deck; ship-rigged, with pole masts [i.e. masts in one piece]; without jibs; square sprit sail (or water sail under bowsprit); two square sails ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... height; and these stems rising two hundred feet, without a single offshoot or branch upon them, gave the trees the appearance of being still taller than they actually were—just as a thin clean spar, set upright, looks much taller than a hill or a house ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... really know what to say to you. I am in a town which, for aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of the incidents of so isolated an ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... yet done with Sir John Hawkins. We shall hear of him again. He became the manager of Elizabeth's dockyards. He it was who turned out the ships that fought Philip's fleet in the Channel in such condition that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost. He served himself in the squadron which he had equipped. He was one of the small group of admirals who met that Sunday afternoon in the cabin ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... that "there are in the mineral world certain crystals, certain forms, for instance of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within them. In their case the potential has never become actual, the light is, in fact, held back by a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... one spar of the Merrimac sticking out of the water. We hugged the shore just outside of the breakers for a mile, and then turned towards the Texas, when the batteries saw us and opened fire. It was then broad daylight. The first shot fired dropped ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... 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, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... abaft, under a reefed fore-topsail and a storm jib, everything else having been taken in the night before. The studding-sail boom of the foreyard, which had been carelessly left out, had been broken off short in the earing, from the pressure of the wind on the bare spar. The roaring of the wind through the rigging was such as only one who has ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... gleaming scimitars flashed in the sun, the shrill, guttural, savage war-cry of the Moslems rent the air, and the captain fell, the first victim to their blood-thirsty fury, with a deep cut across the face and forehead; in a moment, however, a heavy spar sang through the air down on the head of the Moslem leader and laid him low. The helmsman, the brother of the fallen pilot, had wielded it with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... beach below like a swarm of small black insects, and 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 from the midst of these ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as smooth as glass. But it had to be done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the debris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that it was all right and I should be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... 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 by ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... forever doing me a service. Now, in order to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a few ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... minutes the sailors descended again, carrying with them a spar some twenty feet long. With immense difficulty this was lowered to the spot which the boys had reached. One of the sailors had brought down a lantern, and by its light a block was lashed to the end, and a long ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... mind, and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... no 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, I heard your father's voice shout, 'Hold on, Ben!' I gave one ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... was ushered in by another storm, more terrific even than the last. A heavy sea struck the vessel, sweeping overboard the captain and three seamen; and the poor doctor's leg was broken at the same time, by a loose spar. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... fortunately for the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... 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 in on the ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... yacht was so great that before the two dazed salts on board realized what had happened their master was far astern. They bustled to bring the Enchantress about and to come to his rescue in the dingy. Stunned by the blow of the—spar, he had gone down like a stone; so, in all probability, they would have been too late. When he came up the second time it was on the port bow of the Firefly, but completely out of reach. Giving the tiller to her friend, and stripping off ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... ever-waxing dumb-bell. The interest becomes semi-professional. A good gymnast enjoys going into a new and well-appointed establishment, precisely as a sailor enjoys a well-rigged ship; every rope and spar is scanned with intelligent interest; "we know the forest round us as seamen know the sea." The pupils talk gymnasium as some men talk horse. A particularly smooth and flexible horizontal pole, a desirable pair of parallel bars, a remarkably elastic spring-board,—these are matters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the completion of his gift, one of his thick curls of yellow-brown hair. He showed me the chain he had brought for Dora, and gave me one glance at a clear, pure, crystal cross, from spar found in New Zealand, near the gold-fields. Would he ever be able to give it? I answered the question in his eyes by telling him a certain Etruscan flower-pot had stood in a certain window at Arked House all the winter, and was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Here is a second sky—faintly blue, with a trailing saffron scarf of cloud; there, the inverted silhouettes of two fish-wives are conical shapes, their coifs and wet skirts startlingly distinct in tones; beyond, sails a fantastic fleet, with polychrome sails, each spar, masthead, and wrinkled sail as sharply outlined as if chiselled in relief. Presently these miniature pictures fade as the light fades. Blacker grows the mud, and there is less and less of it; the silhouetted shapes of the diggers ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... artillery and cavalry, were encamped around him, and any violent movement on his part would have been sure to result in an ignominious disaster. The doughty old farmer, who was not less than six feet three in his stockinged feet, held on to him as a drowning man clings to a floating spar. It was not possible to get away without resorting to violence; and if he offered any resistance to what, just then, looked like manifest destiny, the rebel soldier would become an ally of the farmer, and the women could call in ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... (quite enough); three or four pigeons (I'm sure); the cow (she has lain down and won't get up again, I'm afraid, so we must kill her); and there's the merino ram and sheep belonging to Mr. Seagrave - plenty of live stock. Now, what's the first things we must get on shore after we are all landed - a spar and topgallant sail for a tent, a coil or two of rope, a mattress or two for Madam and the children, two axes, hammer and nails, something to eat - yes, and something to cut it with. There, that will do for the present," said old Ready, getting up. "Now, I'll ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... the other, anxious to display his familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us—we was in a Destroyer, an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to death, too. As fine a ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... find; and, stripping off its branches, placed it on a wain, and dragged it to the village with the help of an immense team of oxen, numbering as many as forty yoke. Each ox had a garland of flowers fastened to the tip of its horns; and the tall spar itself was twined round with ropes of daffodils, blue-bells, cowslips, primroses, and other early flowers, while its summit was surmounted with a floral crown, and festooned with garlands, various-coloured ribands, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... who may not be distributed to other divisions for action are to compose a Division of Marines, to be under the immediate command of the Senior Officer of Marines on board. He will form his division on such part or parts of the spar or upper deck as ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... on the stump of the mast, threw their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards a projection of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an' troubles have come, an' mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An' mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an' mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an' shoo's flown far, far ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... thrown back on the rock. They were eager to get across, for they had no food and no water on the rock. Several attempts were made to heave a rope to the man on the island, but in vain, the distance was too great. At length a short piece of a spar was fastened to the end of the signal halyards. How eagerly it was watched, as it floated now in one direction, now in another; gradually it drew out the line; it was hoped that it might be drifted by some surge towards the man, who was eagerly on ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the naval yard, a spar of the New Zealand cowrie pine (dammara) large enough for ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... cards? And apart from this there was something extremely appalling in the position of this ruined millionaire, who was contending desperately against his creditors for the vain appearance of splendor, with the despairing energy of a ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Costigan had been killed by a falling spar and knocked overboard. The remainder of the crew and passengers that had been rescued from their precarious situation on the wreck had been on board the "Great Mogul" about a couple of weeks, when ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... was rather the worse for wear. They set off down the descending road, which wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the war ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... way. So next Saturday afternoon, the rudimentary remnant of the Jewish Sabbath, and the schoolboy's weekly carnival before Lent, he directed his walk to a certain fishing village, the nearest on the coast, about three miles off, and there succeeded in hiring a spare boat-spar with a block and tackle. The spar he ran out, through a notch of the battlement, near the sheds, and having stayed it well back, rove the rope through the block at the peak of it, and lowered it with a hook at the end. A moment of Davie's help ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... vein, they covered it up immediately with rubbish, and defaced the country with their pick-axes; so that, to look at, no one could have suspected there was any load to be found near. I also saw them secrete a lump of spar, in which they had reason to guess there were Cornish diamonds, as they call them, and they carefully hid the bits of kellus[Footnote: 2 Kellus is the miner's name for a substance like a white soft stone, which lies above the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... g. powdered CaF2, i.e. fluor spar or fluorite, into a shallow lead tray, e.g. 4x5 cm, and pour over it 4 or 5 cc. H2SO4. A piece of glass large enough to cover this should previously be warmed and covered on one side with a very thin coat of beeswax. To distribute itevenly, warm the other side ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... men the world over; it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker more than ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... of Millan; and that which with much pains he had 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 ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... make his meaning clear when talking of things maritime. He particularly instances a passage in Vol. II., page 17. Here it is: "It is proper I should state here, for the information for those to whom sea-terms are unintelligible, that a studding-sail-boom is a long smooth spar that reeves through irons, fixed upon the yard to which it belongs." How land-lubbers would be able to understand the marine technicalities Mr. RUSSELL introduces into his stories without explanations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... month or so. Says Mel, "Yes, I make clothes. You find the notion unpleasant; guess how disagreeable it is to me." The old squire laughed, and was glad to have him at Croftlands as often as he chose to come. Old Mel and I used to spar sometimes; but he's gone, and I should like to shake his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... covered the vessel, in which were twenty-six persons, and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour. Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in so fortunate a manner that the next day we ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... death-like silence prevailed during the awful crisis; but happily they passed off side by side. Instantly, however, the Cato struck on the reef, and was totally lost. All hands were preserved, except three boys; of these, one spent the night on a spar, bewailing his unhappy lot: four times he had embarked in different vessels, and each time had been wrecked; this was the last, for before morning he disappeared. The Bridgewater was yet safe: she was seen at dawn; but while awaiting her help, the captain, with a selfishness happily not common—without ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Under spar-enchased bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the Triton's palace walls. Pallid silver's wandering veins Stream, like frostwork, o'er the stains; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... still sense enough to reflect that it would be little use to expect that the harassed mate would listen to reason then. Clawing his way up the ratlines he laid his chest upon the main-topsail-yard and worked his way out to the lower end of the long inclined spar. Here, still faint and dizzy, he hung with the footrope jammed against his heel, as he felt for the gasket that held the canvas to the yard. Swinging through the blackness across a space of tumbling foam he felt a horrible unsteadiness. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... mounting with the mounting water, slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst of light, struck the eye ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon the Cumberland was complete. And albeit the vessel had been rammed and was sinking, her men ascended to the spar deck and fought till the waters engulfed them. The last shot was fired from a gun ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... 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
... 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 ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 pretty pink of their frocks to a sombre brick hue. I was thankful when the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... gone they slew some of the oxen and ate their fill. The storm died, and, Ulysses returning, they again set sail; but at once came a terrific hurricane, upset the ship, and drowned all of the guilty ones. Ulysses had not eaten the flesh of the oxen; and he alone was saved, clinging to a spar, and was tossed on the island of the nymph Calypso. After a long sojourn he escaped from here on a raft. But his old enemy Neptune again raised a storm, which broke his raft; and, naked and almost dead, he was thrown upon another shore, from which at last the pitying people sent him home. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... be given away suddenly possessed enormous values in the minds of their lucky owners. Some of the mines were developed extensively, and shipments began which have continued at intervals, but only a few of them furnished the best quality. The spar is shipped to the mills in New Jersey, where it is used for glazing crockery. Rare specimens of beryl are often found by ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various |
