"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... For a time that seemed endless there was silence, save for a shout now and then, and a thud that might be caused by the work of replacing or repairing an injured spar. Suddenly the hatch above was lifted, raised, and when our eyes became accustomed to the light we saw men swarming down the ladder into the hold. A French seaman among them relit the lamp, and we recognized the faces of some of our comrades on ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... it, sir? I didn't know but it might turn out to be galley-news. Pray what is the rumpus all about, Admiral Bluewater? for, I never could get that story fidded properly, so as to set up the rigging, and have the spar well stayed in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an' troubles have come, an' mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An' mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an' mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an' shoo's flown far, far away ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... structure should be considered together. Thus we see that given an unchangeable crystal with cleavage planes evident, it is possible easily to reproduce the same form over and over again by splitting, whereas by simply breaking, the form of the crystal would be lost; just as a rhomb of Iceland spar might be sawn or broken across the middle and its form lost, although this would really be more apparent than real, since it would be an alteration in the mass and not in the shape of each individual crystal. ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... rather more difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... ere the shovel of one of the men struck upon something hard, and the man, dropping upon his knees, went to work to scrape the sand away with his hands, presently laying bare to view what was apparently part of a spar of some kind, not old or worm-eaten, but seemingly almost new. Having located this, they started to clear the sand away from the whole length of the piece of timber, and, while doing so, found that there were two other poles or spars laid alongside it. After an hour's hard work the three spars ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... himself. Costly stuffs were on the floor, and mail and helms and more weapons. Gold 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 that had been ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... fearful task. One moment the great seas lifted him high into the air, and the next down he came again till the massive spar crashed on to the deck of the San Antonio with such a shock that he nearly flew from it like a stone from a sling. Yet he hung on, and, biding his chance, seized a broken stay-rope that dangled from the end of the bowsprit like a lash from a whip, and began to slide down ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... how grew your quarrell? Ste. This ancient Ruffian Sir, whose life I haue spar'd at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... guns had roared, yet (though she was now so close that I made out her very rope and spar) she made no sign. In a little our guns fell silent also, wherefore, looking about, I beheld Don Miguel standing beside the tiller yet with his impassive gaze ever bent upon the foe; and, as I watched, I read his deadly purpose, and a great fear for ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... have been explored for several miles, but I only passed in a few hundred yards. The stalactites here are very beautiful, assuming the structure of satin spar. A very clear stream of water issues out. West of the Gasconade, on Clifty Creek, is a remarkable Natural Bridge which I have elsewhere described in Geological Survey of Missouri, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... was raining smartly by the time the tavern was reached, nearly a mile down the bank. Our advent caused a rare scurrying to and fro, for two commercial "drummers," who were to depart by the early morning boat, occupied the "reg'lar spar' room," the landlady informed us, and a bit of a cubby-hole off the back stairs had to be arranged for us. Guests are rarities, at the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... placed on it, and on the wall above, quaint and stiff, but lovely-featured, delicately tinted pictures of Our Lady in the centre, and of St. Anne and St. Cecilia on either side, with skies behind of most ethereal blue, and robes tenderly trimmed with gold. A little shrine of purple spar, with a crystal front, contained a fragment of sacred bone; a silver shell help holy water, perpetuated from some ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which I have referred was this:—We had sighted a little full-rigged ship very close under our board in a haze; she sailed near as well as we did—I should be nearer truth if I said, near as ill; and we cleared the bow-chaser to see if we could bring a spar or two about their ears. The swell was exceedingly great; the motion of the ship beyond description; it was little wonder if our gunners should fire thrice and be still quite broad of what they aimed at. But in the meanwhile the chase had cleared a stern ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... where a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this noble fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... in the deepest part, and at six miles further another large one which might almost be termed a lake, being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the surface ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... he hasn't time, especially now, with competition so keen in the fish business, and Church's fish pails only of the ordinary size. There is never any ill-feeling after a little spar, and each proceeds, in the most amicable way, to steal some other pelican's fish. A spar at this club, by-the-bye, is a joyous and hilarious sight. Two big birds with stumpy legs and top-heavy beaks, solemnly prancing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... captain had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry words that ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... the raging hell of men fighting for their 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
... Fluorescence is a property which some transparent bodies have of producing, either on their surface or within their substance, light different in color from that of its origin. This happens, for example, when green crystals of fluor spar afford blue reflections of light. Glass may be rendered fluorescent, as is seen in the Geisler and Crookes tubes. Edison conceived the project of using this phenomenon to get back the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... dread, As the ship urged by the tempest to the fatal rock-shore sped. She has parted in the middle! Oh, the half of her goes down! God have mercy! Is His heaven far to seek for those who drown? So when next the white shocked faces looked with terror on the sea, Only one last clinging figure on a spar was seen to be. Nearer the trembling watchers came the wreck tossed by the wave, And the man still clung and floated, though no power on earth could save. "Could we send him a short message! Here's a trumpet, shout away!" 'Twas the preacher's hand ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... 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 to describe the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... than tomb-like interment. As you approach, (and they are so accustomed to the dusky gas-light that they read all your characteristics afar off,) they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Missisque and her cargo were safe, and not a single one of the precious lives of her crew had been sacrificed; but the skipper was as dissatisfied as the skipper of a lake sloop could be; more so, probably, than if the vessel had gone to the bottom, and left him clinging for life to a lone spar on the angry waters, for men are often more reasonable under ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... 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
... and I felt I'd die between them: but, after all ... And yet, Who kens what green sod's to be broken for him? Queer, that I'll lie, like any innocent Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait. Sore-punished, I'm not yet knocked out: life's had My head in chancery; but I'll soon be free To spar another round or so with him, Before he sends me spinning to the ropes. And life would not ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... fire, that in sixteen minutes the mizzenmast of the Guerriere went by the board, and her mainyard in the slings, and the hull, rigging, and sails were completely torn to pieces. The fire was kept up for fifteen minutes longer, when the main and foremast went, taking with them every spar except the bowsprit, and leaving the Guerriere a complete wreck. On seeing this Hull ordered the firing to cease, having brought his enemy in thirty minutes after he was fairly alongside to such a condition, that a few more broadsides ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... 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 fire; I heated some brandy and poured it ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... which he had weathered, gave him a consoling sense of British superiority. "These gentlemen," said he, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale: we have buffeted them for one-and-twenty months, and not carried away a spar." He, however, who had so often braved these gales, was now, though not mastered by them, vexatiously thwarted and impeded; and on February 27th he was compelled to anchor in Pula Bay in the Gulf of Cagliari. From the 21st of January the ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... an Ant fall into a brook. The Ant struggled in vain to reach the bank, and in pity, the Dove dropped a blade of straw close beside it. Clinging to the straw like a shipwrecked sailor to a broken spar, the ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... me see a thousand flashes av lightning in one second. I was so stunned that I had only instinct—I belave ye call it that—to throw my ar-rum around the murthering object and hold like death. Ye know, judge, how drownin' men will hold to straws. That straw, yer Honor, was the spar of a vessel movin' through the water. It was, I found out afterward, one of the pieces which had wedged the ship on the Marine Railway, where she had been gettin' repaired, and she comin' off hurriedly about dusk, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... down the hill supported by my brother on one side and our friend on the other, and returned to the latter's home for tea, after which our host showed us some remarkable spar stones—dog-tooth spar we were told was their name—found in the lead mines, whose white crystals glistened in the light, and I could see by the covetous look in my brother's eyes that he was thinking of the rockeries at home. His look was also seen by our worthy host, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Titanic strength and power, adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and you should have seen it. From top to bottom it was one mass of holes. One bullet passed through my combination and hit a can of tobacco. Another cut a main spar on one of my wings, and another hit my stabilizer, tearing it half in two. One other hit my gas tank and put a hole clear through it. Luckily my gas was low and it did not explode, but, believe me, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... warrior scenting conflict from afar And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray; Her foaming path to triumph none may stay For in the East, there shines her morning star; She feels her strength in every shining spar As one who grasps his sword and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... 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 ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... know: 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 ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... I willing to entrust the education of my little Lila. She was but six months old when we were wrecked off Barnegat, and, in attempting to save his wife, my brother was lost. With the child in my arms I clung to a spar, and finally swam ashore; and since then, regarding her as a sacred treasure committed to my guardianship, I have faithfully endeavored to supply her father's place. There is a singular magnetism about you, Edna Earl, which makes me wish to see your face always ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his experience, 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 itself is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver. When the gold ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. "Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you I But I say, my lad, how's that spar of your'n? the mate says it's in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won't ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... manufactured by mixing clay with heavy-spar that had been roasted and powdered fine,—called "k[e]tik," blood from a seal being added and sometimes the pin-feathers from a bird. Utensils thus made were less liable to fracture than those formed simply from clay. Occasionally a flat stone was hollowed out to about the depth of a ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... Hugh. All the better; for if those scoundrels come back, as is likely enough, there is no chance of their finding us, for I can hardly see you, though I am touching you. Now we must paddle about, and try to get hold of a spar or a ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... capable of being shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach in any ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... SPAR,' says the fellow, grinning: 'seven's the main, hey?' and being exceedingly proud of this reminiscence, I ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boat clear of all that water. Now, you four men," he went on, "I am going to ask you to help me in a very dangerous task. I am not going to leave this ship with my duty unfinished. I intend to torpedo her, at all hazards! Cut loose that spar at once, and we will place it along the boom in such a way that the torpedo touches this ship's side. I will then cut a short length of fuse, and attach it to the explosive, so that it will burn for about a minute. That will just give us time to get out of reach ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... with the spavie. My fur ahin's[11] a wordy beast, As e'er in tug or tow was trac'd. The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, A d—n'd red wud Kilburnie blastie! Forbye a cowt o' cowt's the wale, As ever ran afore a tail. If he be spar'd to be a beast, He'll draw me fifteen pun' at least.— Wheel carriages I ha'e but few, Three carts, an' twa are feckly new; Ae auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, Ae leg an' baith the trams are broken; I made a poker o' the spin'le, An' my auld ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint-Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, 5 Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 10 They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... 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
... The brook no longer murmured, the rustle of the leaves was without sound. A spar of sunshine, filtering through the ragged limbs of the trees, fell aslant her, and she stood in an aureola. As for my hero, a species of paralysis had stricken him motionless and dumb. It was all so unexpected, all ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... thicker upon his soul. In the year before his death, he published that painfully touching poem, The Castaway, which gives an epitome of his own sufferings in the similitude of a wretch clinging to a spar in a ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run—the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... despatch, I admired more the faces of Mike Halliday and Roger Wearne, grinning welcome to me over the bulwarks. They, too, called my attention to the repairs; to the new rudder, fitted with chains in case of accident to the helm, to the grain of the new mizzen-mast (a beautiful spar, and without a knot), to the teak hatch-coverings which had replaced those shattered by the explosion. They desired me to marvel at everything; but that they themselves after past perils should be here again and ready, for no more than seamen's pay, to run their heads into perils ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... deck, and lay concealed from those on the raft by the bulwarks in the fore part of the vessel. "Hold on for a moment," I cried out; "I will bring him down to you." I lifted the poor boy up in my arms. A falling block or spar, I conjectured, had struck his head and stunned him. Had I not discovered his absence, how dreadful would have been his fate left alone on board the brig. To my great joy he soon recovered. Jack Handspike ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... and saw that it was constructing a nest, so allowing a reasonable time to elapse (nine days or so) I went and took the nest. It was placed on the outer end of a bough, about 40 feet up a high pine, and I had to take the nest by means of a spar lashed at right angles to the tree, the outer extremity of which was supported by a rope fastened to the top of the pine. The nest was a very solid, deep cup, of grass, fibres, and lichens externally, and lined with hair and feathers. It contained four white ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Australian clipper or Western Ocean packet-ship in the writer's early days as a hard whole-sail breeze, perhaps with the kites taken in. It was rare that these dashing commanders ever carried away a spar, and it was not because they did not carry on, but because they knew every trick of the vessel, the wind, and the sea. It was a common saying in those days when vessels were being overpowered with canvas, "The old lady was talking to us now," i.e. the vessel was asking ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... had been a Bolingbroke set her thin lips together with the only consciousness of superiority to her husband that she had ever known—the secret consciousness that she was better born. Out of the wreck of her entire life, this was the floating spar to which she still clung with a sense of security, and her imagination, by long concentration upon the support that it offered, had exaggerated its importance out of all proportion to the other props among which it ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... their ships cut their cables and were seen drifting away broadside on to the wind and tide, whilst others made sail, as the only alternative to escape from what they evidently considered certain destruction. At daylight on the morning of the 12th, not a spar of the boom was anywhere visible, and, with the exception of the Foudroyant and Cassard, the whole of the enemy's vessels were helplessly aground. The flag-ship, L'Ocean, a three-decker, drawing the most water, lay outermost on the north-west edge of the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... up one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream, and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches of yellow weed—having much the look of mustard-plasters—amidst which a bit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off a new pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, brought up from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; and that, thick though ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... match for his heavier opponent if they came to hand grips, Hal stepped quickly back and threw himself into an attitude of defense. It was the lad's plan to stand off, if possible, and spar. ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... gilding everything from masthead to floating spar gathered in its forces, and for one moment seemed to rest upon Liberty's torch, throwing the statue into clear relief, and then dropped rapidly behind the river's night-cloud bank, and presently lights began to glimmer far and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... untouched memorials of the past. One is an extraordinary grotto, built by the Duke of Newcastle, and used by the Duke of York and his friends, according to local tradition, as a card-room, plentifully supplied with wine bottles. It is lined with a profusion of crystal spar and sea shells; it contains a deep bath, bashfully presided over by a statue of Venus, and the steps leading up to the door are paved with horses' teeth picked up on the battlefield of Waterloo. How the Duke of Newcastle accomplished this feat ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... exactly dark, but a kind of twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof. These were rough arches made of a transparent rock, incrusted with sheepsilver and rock spar, and other bright stones. But though it was rock, the air was quite warm, as it always is in Elfland. So he went through this passage till at last he came to two wide and high folding-doors which stood ajar. And when he opened them, there he saw a most wonderful ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either—nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as cheerily as you please—no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in the hold. I believe ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a sing-song in the evening. The sports were very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but what tableaux the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was almost a dead calm. Down went the boats of the Constitution, with long lines attached to them, and strong sweeps were used with desperate energy in towing her. A long cannon was placed at the stern on her spar-deck, and two others were pointed out ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 from Devonshire. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bamboo mast and spar were fitted to each sledge. Immediately in front of the mast came the "cooker-box," containing in respective compartments the primus and a bottle of spirit for lighting it, as well as spare prickers, openers and fillers ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... met their view, Past cares they all defied; The maid was spar'd, her virtue too, The ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... 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 ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... which is said to be a fine specimen of artistic beauty and elegant workmanship, bears the following device:—One side of the medal represents a group on a raft. One of the men is seated on a spar, waving a handkerchief, as a signal to a small boat seen in the distance; another is supporting a sailor who appears in a drowning state. There is also a female holding a child in her arms, the sea having a stormy appearance. The group forms a most interesting ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... with a sullen boom, Riven by the hands of the angry North; And, like the Angel of Wrath sent forth, The whirlwind stalks with the breath of doom, Crushing, like dust 'neath its heavy tread, The last frail spar o'er the seaman's head; But nought can reach the things that lie— The lovely things that sleeping lie, Deep in ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... 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.' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... escape; and cries and fierce imprecations Rang through the house of prayer; and high o'er the heads of the others Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the blacksmith, As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly he shouted,— "Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn them allegiance! Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our harvests!" More he fain would have said, but the merciless ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... term. The only scientific subjects on which I find notes are, a Paper on the forms of the Teeth of Wheels, communicated to the Philosophical Society on May 2nd; some notes about Musical Concords, and some examination of a strange piece of Iceland Spar. On Apr. 29th I was elected to the Northern Institution (of Inverness); the first compliment that I received from an ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... two days with his needle over the pieces and the tattered remnant of his only white garment; and a few days afterward the fishermen on the bay were surprised to see what, on nearer approach, proved to be a rude imitation of the national flag floating from a spar above ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on deck while we can, and take our chance," said Lancelot. "If the captain fights on until the ship sinks, we may get hold of a plank or spar. The Roundhead seamen will not let us drown, even though ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... don't be tossing head over tip at the tail of the tourist. If you've got the pumping engine inside of you, in plain English, if you've got the indomable character of the rael Manxman, do as I done—go foreign. Then watch your opportunity. What's Shake-spar saying?" Pete paused. "What's that he's saying, now?" Pete scratched his forehead. "Something about a flood, anyway." Pete stretched his hand out vigorously. "'Lay hould of it at the flood,' says he, 'that's the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... their thoughts, Hermanric and Antonina remained silent in their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail hinges. Antonina changed ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... particularly new. The captain dismissed the men good-humouredly to the care of cook and steward: it was only the steerage passenger who required to be put under the doctor's care. It seemed that he had been hurt by the falling of a spar, and severely scorched in trying to save a child who was in imminent danger; and, though he had at first been the most cheery and hopeful of the party, his strength had soon failed, and he ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... dear Lady Kicklebury! [To T., who has come forward.] They spar so every night they meet, Touchit. ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... upraised, and nob held back, [1] In awful prescience of the impending thwack, Both kiddies stood—and with prelusive spar, [2] And light manoeuvring, kindled up the war! The One, in bloom of youth—a light-weight blade— The Other, vast, gigantic, as if made, Express, by Nature, for the hammering trade; [3] But aged, slow, with stiff limbs, tottering much, And lungs, that lack'd the bellows-mender's ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... out on the starboard, that is the southward, rail of the spar-deck, and Michael, straining his eyes to the utmost, saw him take a round flat object from under his coat, and then look round stealthily to see if he was observed. As he did so Michael whipped a pistol out of his pocket, levelled it at the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... 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 are seen no more; they are following the carts ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to be Duke 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 by means of his extraordinary ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... branches, or a courser crippled in his sinews; her glory had, in a great degree, departed. The foremast alone remained, and of this even the head was gone, a circumstance of which Captain Truck complained more than of any other, as, to use his own expressions, "it destroyed the symmetry of the spar, which had proved itself to be a good stick." What, however, was of more real importance, it rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to get up a spare topmast forward. As both the main and mizzen-mast had gone quite near the deck, this was almost the only tolerably easy expedient ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to smash you!" calmly replied the imperturbable Duck, beginning to spar—"so come ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... spar, ranking with a lower-mast, projecting over the stem; beyond it extends the jib-boom, and beyond that again the flying jib-boom. To these spars are secured the stays of the fore-mast and of the spars above it; on these stays are set the fore and fore-topmast ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... concur in the act of explosion. These mines are charged with gun-cotton, the development of which owes so much to Sir Frederick Abel, while for purposes of attack the same material, not yet in practical use for shells, is taken as the charge for torpedoes, which are either affixed to a spar or are carried in the head of a submerged cigar-shaped body. By a compressed air or by a direct steam impulse arrangement these weapons are started on their course and are directed, and then the running is taken up by their own engines operating on screw propellers, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... streets we drive steadily on, till house lights glinting behind the blinds and hurrying figures of a 'night-shift' show that we are near the river and the docks. A turn along the waterside, the dim outlines of the ships and tracery of mast and spar looming large and fantastic in the darkness, and the driver, questioning, brings up at a dim-lit shed, bare of goods and cargo—the berth of a full-laden outward-bounder. My barque—the Florence, of Glasgow—lies in a ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... splendours that pervade us. This duplicity in life seems to me at times ineradicable, at times like the confusing of something essentially simple, like the duplication when one looks through a doubly refracting medium. You think in this latter mood that you have only to turn the crystal of Iceland spar about in order to have the whole thing plain. But you never get it plain. I have been doing my halting utmost to get down sincerely and simply my vision of life and duty. I have permitted myself no defensive restraints; I have shamelessly written ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... opening fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, where rime has fallen, there sparkle these fantastic flowers and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been 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 been able to supply ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... doing this. I had no intention of going to sleep. By taking note of a certain star which had appeared just to the right of a cross-spar, and by noticing its change of position, I was enabled to guess with some exactitude the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... caused a very agreeable excitement that day; but a greater was in store. In the afternoon, Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the ship, being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of the watch, and reported a large spar on the weather-bow. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... little—tending to be lusty, as the saying is—that is, in good condition. It's very strange that Mrs Oxbelly has an idea that she is not large. I cannot persuade her to it. That's the reason we always spar in bed. She says it is I, and I know that it is she, who takes the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hardened clay, in which are mixed great numbers of small stones, variously tinged, some with red, others with yellow. Small portions of calcareous spar lie scattered about the surface of the rocky ground; strata of which are deposited irregularly in fissures formed in the body of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... 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
... natu maximus hres Corpore, progressus cm pubertatis ad annos Esset, res gessit multas iuueniliter audax, Asciscens comites quo spar sibi iunxerat tas, Nil tamen iniust commisit, nil tamen vnquam Extra virtutis normam, sapientibus ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... supposed, to the shore, he ventured upon it, only to find out that he had laboured under a mistake. He was immediately projected into the sea, and carried with the tide into the cavern; but succeeding in clasping a jagged spar of elevated rock, he gained by its aid a place of temporary safety. It is impossible to tell how many were killed by being thrown against these rocks by the relentless waves, but ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... 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, there were enow besides. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of the Aboukir two sailors found themselves clinging to a spar which was not sufficiently buoyant to keep them both afloat. Harry, a Salvationist, grasped the situation and said to his mate: "Tom, for me to die will mean to go home to mother. I don't think it's quite the same for you, so you hold to the spar and I will ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... a danger to the host Great Eragon, far Lochlin's King, was not the man to know The blood mount hot at insult's stroke without an answering blow, His dragon keels were rolled to waves that shouted welcome loud To glittering helm and painted shield beneath each spar and shroud Oh! strong was Eragon in war, in battle victor oft, From many a rank, from many a mast his banner streamed aloft; With forty ships he set to sea, and scores of glancing oars Streaked white his wake on fiord and loch along the echoing shores. The Shetland Islands ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Marines 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 the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... supper was one of huge enjoyment and with intense interest I awaited Frank's first spar for an opening. It came presently, in a lull of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... rocks, but without success, for it snapped asunder before it reached them. However, by the light of a lanthorn, which a seaman handed through the skylight of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks, and on this spar he resolved ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... grace! See the noble fellow's face, As the big ship with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas 'Anchor!'—sure as fate Up the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... o'clock, the navigator had not shown his face. They could not sail without a captain. Wearily they went below and left a sentinel on watch. He was a young man who had eaten heavily and drunk to even more excess. For a time he paced the deck conscientiously. Then he sat down, leaned against a spar and smoked. After a while the pipe fell ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness of the whole is apparent, and far beyond the mould of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 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 ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... head with great difficulty and beheld his faithful follower lying like himself on the ground, firmly bound to a stout spar or pole. His own inability to move was at once explained, for he soon perceived that he was in the same ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... — N. pendency[obs3], dependency; suspension, hanging &c. v.; pedicel, pedicle, peduncle; tail, train, flap, skirt, pigtail, pony tail, pendulum; hangnail peg, knob, button, hook, nail, stud, ring, staple, tenterhook;; fastening &c. 45; spar, horse. V. be pendent &c. adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle[obs3], flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c. v.; beetling, jutting over, overhanging, projecting; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... they wonder (with detestation) at you in Europe, which permit such things. They say ye have put marriage out of office: for marriage is ordained a remedy for unlawful concupiscence; and natural concupiscence seemeth as a spar to marriage. But when men have at hand a remedy more agreeable to their corrupt will, marriage is almost expulsed. And therefore there are with you seen infinite men that marry not, but chose rather a libertine and impure single life, than to be yoked in marriage; and many that ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... the disaster. I was by her side when the steamer was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. With the first terrible lurch we were both thrown headlong into the water. I did my utmost to save her, but it was not to be. A floating spar struck her, and she went down ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Halyard Bend.—This bend is never seen in deep water ships, but is sometimes used on board yachts. It is commenced in a similar manner to a fisherman's bend, but three round turns are first taken around the spar, the end being backed around the standing part a and then led under all three turns as in Fig. 33, and then again backed over the last two round turns and under the first, ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... zenith down into the depths of the sea the arch of heaven seemed to open out in a sharp jagged line of vivid blue light, shutting again instantaneously, and the boy knelt gazing before him in wonder, for there, about a mile away, with every spar and yard and rope standing out black against the blue light, was the picture—the model, it seemed to him to be—of a tall-masted brig sitting motionless upon the water; ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... critical moment a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I seized upon it as the last hope ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson |
