"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visible against the starry sky, masts, spars, and cordage. A faint gleam came through the glass below the compass-box. The wheel and the heaps of coiled rope beyond rose and fell with the motion of the vessel, now against the stars, now black against the phosphorescent foam that trailed along the sea like shining lace. But the human figures, he next saw, were now doing nothing, not even pacing the deck; they were no longer of unusual size either. Quietly leaning over the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... me at the Bleecker Street station of the subway at eleven thirty. I'm off to the university. I have some very important experiments with phosphorescent salts that I ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... A pale rectangle of light showed before him, and he dived through it. He was in a corridor, dim-lit by phosphorescent fungi that cloaked the damp walls. He halted, at fault. The long hall stretched away to either side, cluttered with grimed bones, slimy with mold. By the age-blistered name cards on closed doors he knew himself to be on a residential level. But which way should he turn? Whence had come that ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... ages are absolutely colorless. Pigmented or colored fishes, nevertheless, having well-developed organs of vision, have been taken from such depths (over a mile) as to preclude the possibility of a single ray of daylight.[7] These fishes, however, are phosphorescent, and thus furnish their own light. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the vast depths of the ocean, in certain localities, lie bathed in a continuous phosphorescent glow, so that creatures living there neither lose their color nor their eyes, sufficient ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... lighted tenements. The Castle head vanished, and the sounds of the drum and bugle of the tattoo came down muffled, as if through layers of wool. The lights of the bull's-eyes were ruddy discs that cast no rays. Then these were smeared out to phosphorescent glows, like the "spunkies" that everybody in Scotland knew came out to dance in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... pale phosphorescent mist had just appeared on the port bow, which spread and spread till it blotted out sea and sky, and all was one dim, impenetrable pall. From the far distance came a strange, ghostly whisper, while the sea-birds, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... realized fully what torrid heat means. This long stretch of southern travel is perhaps the most wearisome part of the long journey, yet there were sometimes scenes and sights of the dark hours that almost compensated. One night, there was a phosphorescent and electrical display that could never be forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into a soft glow, like ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... dark after they had been exposed to light. But it was not until Brandt, in the year 1669, discovered phosphorus that a substance luminous in the dark, without having been previously exposed to light, had been observed. I should like, in passing, to show you how beautifully these phosphorescent powders shine after having been exposed to a powerful light. See how magnificently brilliant they are! These, or something like them, were known before the ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... death-bed, and its people were but waiting with grim impatience for their king to die. What France might do in the future was unknown; yet it was unthinkable that aught could be worse than this glorious reign of Louis, the Grand Monarque, this crumbling clod, this resolving excrescence, this phosphorescent, disintegrating fungus of a diseased life ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and the phosphorescent animals were making the sea glitter like molten metal, when we reached the Isle of Pines, and steamed slowly up the river, among the mangroves that fringe the banks, to the village of Nueva Gerona, the port of the island. It consisted of two rows of houses thatched with palm-leaves, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... trawl. It was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness. It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay on deck, and my name came out in a few ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... the crests of the waves formed by the port and starboard bows. Its strength was not uniform. Having flashed brilliantly for a time, it would in part subside, and afterwards regain its vigour. Several large phosphorescent masses of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Gambril, he was fairly choked. He coughed pitifully, the broken cough of a sick man; and I beheld him as one sees a fish in an aquarium by the light of an electric bulb, an elusive, phosphorescent shape. Only he did not glide away. But something else happened. Both binnaclelamps went out. I suppose the water forced itself into them, though I wouldn't have thought that possible, for they ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... was dark, shreds of cloud raced across a steel-grey sky, while a greenish patch showed the position of the moon. At the horizon glistened an uncertain light, but the sea was a black abyss, out of which the phosphorescent waves appeared suddenly, rolled swiftly nearer and broke over the ship as if ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... it was a fungus growth known in the country as "foxfire," which gives out a phosphorescent glow in the darkness; but after watching and studying it for a long time, he was convinced it was ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... within. The river was like a stream of golden fire, each ripple with a kind of phosphorescent gleam as the foam slipped away. For the oars were beating it up in every direction. The air was tensely clear. There was Lake St. Clair spread out in the distance, touching a sky of golden blue, if such colors fuse. And the opposite shore with its ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are little more than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable by refracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in a marvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun. These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to the streaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heat upon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great spherical chamber ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... The thing was motionless. It was in a patch of shadow, but, as though gleaming with moonlight, it seemed to shine. Its glow was silvery, with a greenish cast almost phosphorescent. Was it standing on the path? I could not tell. It was too far away; too much in shadow. But I plainly saw that it had the shape of a man. Wraith, or substance? That also, was not ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... magnificence of their sea-green tresses between whose ringlets might be seen their heaving bosoms. White seagulls, cooing like the doves of Aphrodite, fluttered around their nude sea-queen, serenely contemplating them from her movable throne, crowned with pearls and phosphorescent stars drawn from the depths of her dominion. White as the cloud, white as the sail, white as the foam, entirely, dazzlingly white was her fair majesty except where a rosy blush tinted the petal-like skin of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... now the reason for that. The walls on all sides, made of half-digested cellulose, had rotted just enough through long years to be faintly phosphorescent. And that simple natural fact was probably going to mean all the difference between life and death: it gave the two men at least the advantage of sight over the eyeless savage creatures among whom, helped by the termite-smell ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... dark ere I leave the caon on my way to Carlin. Farther on, the gorge widens, and thick underbrush intervenes between the road and the river. From out the brush I see peering two little round phosphorescent balls, like two miniature moons, turned in my direction. I wonder what kind of an animal it is, as I trundle along through the darkness, revolver in hand, ready to defend myself, should it make an attack. I think it is a mountain-lion, as they seem to be plentiful in this part of Nevada, Late ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... type which modern religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily looked ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Chromidrosis, or colored sweat, is an interesting anomaly exemplified in numerous reports. Black sweat has been mentioned by Bartholinus, who remarked that the secretion resembled ink; in other cases Galeazzi and Zacutus Lusitanus said the perspiration resembled sooty water. Phosphorescent sweat has been recorded. Paullini and the Ephemerides mention perspiration which was of a leek-green color, and Borellus has observed deep green perspiration. Marcard mentions green perspiration of the feet, possibly due to stains from colored foot-gear. The Ephemerides and Paullini speak ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... midnight, and Barry remained on deck with him. A red sun had dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up at his setting. Now the Barang leaned slightly to full canvas and snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient brigantine were bathed in soft radiance, ruled across and along with ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... began slowly to stroke her abundant hair, then her breast and body. Wherever her fingers passed the mystic light was born, until in that darkened room—for the dusk was gathering—she shimmered from head to foot like the water of a phosphorescent sea, a being glorious yet fearful to behold. Then she waved her hand, and, save for the gentle radiance on her brow, became ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... through a series of frightful dreams. At one time I was whirling through empty space with the phantoms of the dead, friends and enemies together. At another, the one beloved face which I shall never see again, rose at my bedside, hideously phosphorescent in the black darkness, and glared and grinned at me. A slight return of the old pain, at the usual time in the early morning, was welcome as a change. It dispelled the visions—and it was bearable ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools, and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and from the far distance broke ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... reflector and a blue spark in the focus, made an admirable instrument for throwing the invisible rays on the beast, and that he was all ready, except that his plates, which he had resensitized—with some phosphorescent substance that I forget the name of, now—must have time to dry. And then, he needed some light to work by when the time ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... perfectly calm; the sea was undulating slightly, and not a breath of wind stirring. I sat up and looked around. Nothing visible but misty atmosphere and leaden-colored water; the phosphorescent sparkle had quite gone out of it. I listened, and with the low dull roar of the surf on Rye Beach on one side came the break of the waves on the Shoals, but so faint that it was doubtful whether it were really audible, when another most unmistakable sound assured me Landlord ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the drama was, and what my lines might be, I could only guess. The story of Colonel D'Ortez, too, furnished me much food for reflection these long starlit nights, when I sat in my favorite seat in the very prow of the vessel. There would I sit night after night, watching the phosphorescent waves rippling against the vessel, gleaming fitful in the gloom; there observe the steadfast stars, and seem alone with ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescent that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows and wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... air from the swiftly spinning discs blew back his hair. He could see nothing through the tumult that roared down through the centre of the Ring, like a Niagara of hot steam shot through with a pale yellow phosphorescent light. The floor quivered under his feet, and ominous creaking and snapping sounds reverberated through the outer shell, as the steel girders of the landing stage were gradually relieved of its weight. Just as it seemed to him that everything was going to pieces, suddenly there ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... stirring. The slow beat of the water on the shingle came to the ear over the light lap against the boat. The mere stretched miles away. It seemed to be as still as a white feather on the face of the dead, and to be alive with light. Where the swift but silent current was cut asunder by a rock, the phosphorescent gleams sent up sheets of brightness. The boat, which rolled slowly, half-afloat and half-ashore, was bordered by a fringe of silver. When at one moment a gentle breeze lifted the water into ripples, countless stars floated, down a white waterway from yonder argent moon. Not a house on the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... recovered his equanimity to some extent, and, taking out the matches, struck one, but the moisture of his fingers prevented it from igniting, and he had to try two more before he could get anything but soft phosphorescent streaks on the box; and as the damp matches were thrown down, Grip sniffed at them and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... clapping it on my head, I ran back to camp, shouting that I had found one, and that he had attempted to seize me by the hair. The savages, who had been lying down, sprang to their feet, and uttered yells of terror at sight of my blazing head. 'There he is now!' I shouted, pointing back to the phosphorescent face. 'Shoot him quick, or he will ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... chief returned on deck, they found the ship was making good progress through the smooth sea, the natives in the boats singing a melodious chorus as, all in perfect unison, they plunged their broad-bladed paddles in the water, and the tow line surged and shook off thousands of phosphorescent drops at every united stroke. The night was dark, but not quite starless, and presently Frewen, who was talking to Foster, remarked that some heavy rain would fall in a ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... dangerous silence; the voices of the young people were growing fainter in the distance. Mrs. Brimmer's eyes, in the shadow of her fan, were becoming faintly phosphorescent. Don Ramon's melancholy face, which had grown graver in the last few moments, approached nearer ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... five minutes the appearance, was most magnificent. Streaks of blue and crimson red light appeared in several parts. At ten minutes to eight, long lines began to form on the east, then west, and varying to north-west, very bright, silvery and phosphorescent. Before nine, the rays shot up from the horizon north-east, and finally north—the southern hemisphere, at the same time, losing its brilliance. This light continued in full activity of effulgence to ten, and, after ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... prow goes pushing through the phosphorescent waters, porpoises of solid silver, puffing desperately, tumble about the bows, or dive down underneath the rushing hull. The surging waves are billows of white fire. In the electric moonlight the blue mountains, more mysterious than ever, stand out in bold relief. What restless tribes ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... times sharks followed us, attracted by the morning's output of garbage; and at intervals flying fish sallied out in sprays of silver. Once or twice we passed through schools of skate, which, when they came under our lee, had a curiously dazzling and phosphorescent appearance. One of the civil engineers aboard called them phosphorescent skate, but I had my doubts, for I noticed that bits of paper cast overboard would assume the same opalescent tints when three or four feet down ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Whig world. The platform was high, but it was level. Moreover the upstart nowadays pushes himself by wealth: but the Whigs could choose their upstarts. In that world Macaulay found Rogers, with his phosphorescent and corpse-like brilliancy; there he found Sydney Smith, bursting with crackers of common sense, an admirable old heathen; there he found Tom Moore, the romantic of the Regency, a shortened shadow of Lord Byron. That he reached this platform and remained on it is, I say, typical ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... had just been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and betrays ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to phosphorescent paint. Once any sound gets between two parallel reflectors or walls, it bounds from one to the other and never stops for a long time. Hence it is persistent, and when you walk between the walls you hear the sounds made by those who walked there before you. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... when he laughed. Have you not happened, yourself, to notice the same peculiarity in certain people?... It is a sign either of an evil disposition or of deep and constant grief. From behind his half-lowered eyelashes they shone with a kind of phosphorescent gleam—if I may so express myself—which was not the reflection of a fervid soul or of a playful fancy, but a glitter like to that of smooth steel, blinding but cold. His glance—brief, but piercing and heavy—left the unpleasant impression of an indiscreet ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... of Protozoa, and it is safe to say that one of the great steps in evolution was the establishment of three great types of Protozoa: (a) Some were very active, the Infusorians, like the slipper animalcule, the night-light (Noctiluca), which makes the seas phosphorescent at night, and the deadly Trypanosome, which causes Sleeping Sickness. (b) Others were very sluggish, the parasitic Sporozoa, like the malaria organism which the mosquito introduces into man's body. (c) Others were neither very active nor very ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the deliberate, noiseless tread of an Indian, looking steadily upward at the eyes which assumed a curious, phosphorescent glare, that scintillated with a greenish light, as the relative position of the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... branch of natural history is expounded in most agreeable style by this delightful book. Mr. Holder furnishes a great mass of information concerning fire-flies, luminous beetles and other insects, the phosphorescent animals and animalculae of the sea, and even of plants and flowers that give light. He has revealed a world of new wonders to those who are inquisitive about certain mysteries of great interest, concerning which no other naturalist has ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there in the moonlight steered ominous black triangles, circling us, leading us, sheering across bow and flashing wake, all phosphorescent with lambent sea-fire—the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... beneath the touch. His flesh crept, and the shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. "Back!" he hissed, thrusting A-ya off to arm's length and bracing his spear point before him to receive the expected attack. A pair of faintly phosphorescent eyes, small, but so wide apart as to show that their owner's head must have been enormous, flashed round upon them. There was a hoarse squeal of alarm, and a heavy body went floundering off into the water. They could hear it ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to see commonplace facts grow phosphorescent in the heat of true feeling. How little we may come to know Romance by the cloak she wears and how humble must be he who would ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the vessel bore into the moist, warm air of the Gulf Stream was full of moonshine, of smooth, phosphorescent billows. Herbeck had gone below. The girl leaned over the rail, alone and lonely. And Carmichael, seeing her, could no longer still the desire in his heart. He ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... of Challenger's canoe. I will tell, too, of the great nocturnal white thing—to this day we do not know whether it was beast or reptile—which lived in a vile swamp to the east of the lake, and flitted about with a faint phosphorescent glimmer in the darkness. The Indians were so terrified at it that they would not go near the place, and, though we twice made expeditions and saw it each time, we could not make our way through the deep marsh in which it lived. I can ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blubber, and five heads were bobbing astern at the ends of as many hawsers. The sea all round presented a wonderful sight. There must have been thousands of sharks gathered to the feast, and their incessant incursions through the phosphorescent water wove a dazzling network of brilliant tracks which made the eyes ache to look upon. A short halt was called for breakfast, which was greatly needed, and, thanks to the cook, was a thoroughly good one. He—blessings on him!—had ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... down through the park, and on and on by ways the attorney did not know, until at last they arrived at a little dell. The night was pitchy dark, and nothing could Ezekiel see but the ghostly figure gliding along ahead of him, all lit by a weird phosphorescent light. In the dell was a small granite cairn, and here the ghost stopped and looked around ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of mind is one of fascinated horror. (The Hamilton Wright Mabie complex! The "white list" of novels!) William Dean Howells, despite a certain jauntiness and even kittenishness of manner, was spiritually of that company. For all his phosphorescent heresies, he was what the up-lifters call a right-thinker at heart, and soaked in the national tradition. He was easiest intrigued, not by force and originality, but by a sickly, Ladies' Home Journal ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... companion of Steerage No. 4 and 5. This was, properly speaking, but a strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and fro with the motion of the ship. Through the open slide-door we had a glimpse of the grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent foam flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the horizon rising and falling as the vessel rolled to the wind. In the centre the companion ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. Below, on the first landing, and lighted by another lamp, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... side; no singing among the men, no chaff, no laughter, all quiet aboard, for the fishermen believe that the fish can hear; all quiet around, where the deep black of the watery pavement is brightened by the reflection of stars. Then out of the white phosphorescent patches come minute points of silver and countless faint popping sounds, The herrings are at play about the nets. You see them in numbers exceeding imagination, shoals on shoals. "Pull up now, there's a heavy strike," cries the skipper, and the nets ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... affinities, and there the speculative AEneas pursues shadows more fleeting than the Stygian ghosts, and the grasp of the metaphysician closes on shapes whose embrace is vacancy. The bark that ploughs within this mystic expanse, sheds from its cleaving keel but coruscations of phosphorescent sparkles, which glimmer and quench in a gloom that Egyptian seers never penetrated, and modern guessers cannot conjecture through. There is, indeed, 'oak and triple brass' upon his breast who steeps his ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... haemorrhagic spots on all organs and under the skin, fatty degeneration of liver, kidneys, and heart, blood-stained urine, phosphorescent ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... diffused light, vague and limitless, over which floated masses of luminous haze. The insurrectionary force might well have thought they were following some gigantic causeway, making their rounds along some military road built on the shore of a phosphorescent sea, and circling ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the fitful phosphorescent light of the water, some dark object seemed to float up alongside; and Jonathan gave vent to a scream of horror, that rang through the silence ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... whaling quay. It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful—the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his fellows. We were unlucky indeed, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... undertaken for the purpose of exploring the abysses of the ocean, we know that life manifests itself abundantly over the bottom, and that at a depth of five and six thousand meters light is distributed by innumerable phosphorescent animals. Different nations have endeavored to rival each other in the effort to effect these important discoveries, and several scientific missions have been sent to different points of the globe by the English and American governments. The French likewise have entered with enthusiasm ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... toad-like head and eyes, swam into the light beam and bumped blindly against the glass ball. For an instant it goggled crazily at us. The Professor took its picture. It blundered away. As it reached the darkness beyond the beam it, too, showed phosphorescent. A belt of blue-white spots like the portholes of a liner extended down its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... time to dwell. One is that the highest beauty is goodness, and unless the art of a nation learns that, its art will become filthy and a minister of sin. They talk about 'Art for Art's sake.' Would that all these poets and painters who are trying to find beauty in corruption—and there is a phosphorescent glimmer in rotting wood, and a prismatic colouring on the scum of a stagnant pond—would that all those men who are seeking to find beauty apart from goodness, and so are turning a divine instinct into a servant of evil, would learn that the true gracefulness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... apparently employed in work as at some great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of the children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, others were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger long enough to examine into the nature of their employment. Not one young voice was heard—not one young face turned to gaze on us. They ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were dissipated and destroyed, beneath the clear, pure light of heaven that he invoked and made apparent! Why passed the syllables now coldly and ineffectually across the heart they could not penetrate? Why glittered they before the eye with phosphorescent lustre, void of all heat and might? I could not tell. The charm was gone. It was misery to know it. The minister having concluded, "Brother Buster was requested to engage in prayer." That worthy rose instanter. First, he coughed, then he made a face—an awful face—then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the mouth of the submerged passage, and I was at first afraid that I should scarcely be repaid the exertion I had made and the risk run. Suddenly, however, the chief leaped into the water, and began swimming about, when the phosphorescent light produced by his movements was more beautiful and brilliant than anything of the sort I had ever seen. Wherever he went he was followed by a stream of liquid fire. When both the natives were in the water, the light was sensibly increased, so that I obtained some notion ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... forward, with a frightened gaze at something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a vast, misty swine-face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame, of a greenish hue. It is the Thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems to drip with a continual, phosphorescent slaver. The eyes are staring straight into the room, with an inscrutable expression. Thus, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the vital and distinguished artistry of his work. The author, it will be remembered, was employed in a firm of ginger-beer bottlers before he took to literature, and Mr. WELLS, who contributes a Preface, dwells happily on the stimulating and phosphorescent quality which his literary work owes to his employment, and contrasts it favourably with the flatness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... The phosphorescent sea, covered with its tens of millions of animalcula, each one a miniature light-house, changed in color from inky blackness to silver sheen. Will the ocean take to itself this frail foothold? — we ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... of the sun bursts open. A bluish, phosphorescent flame hisses forth. Upon this flame stands erect in fluttering chiton a woman, fair and golden haired, swan's wings at her shoulders, a harp held ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... sugars of Alexandria, sweet almonds, and sharp-toothed ginger. We pardon his puns, indeed we believe them to be inevitable, the flash of the percussion cap, the sparks of electricity, St. Elmo's stars, phosphorescent gleams, playing over the restless ocean of his fruitful imagination. And we are persuaded that if the venerable Democritus (who was uncanonized only because the Holy See was still wavering, an anomalous body, in Weissnichtwo, and who existed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the speaker, turned to take a second look at him. There was very little light; for the night had grown darker as it wore on, and the few stars that had glimmered faintly had hid their diminished heads behind the piles of inky clouds. Still, there was a sort of faint phosphorescent light whitening the gloom, and by it Sir Norman's keen bright eyes discovered that he wore a long dark cloak and slouched hat. He discovered something else, too—that he had seen that hat and cloak, and the man inside of them on London Bridge, not an hour before. It ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the dike it came—tall, thin, pale, ghostly, and—yes, I could have sworn it, though night does play odd tricks with the human eyesight—faintly phosphorescent. At least, it seemed to glow ever so dimly, like one that moves in ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... luminous transparency on which the slender shafts of the columns, the elegant curves of the girders, and the geometrical tracery of the roofs were minutely outlined. Florent feasted his eyes on this mighty diagram washed in with Indian ink on phosphorescent vellum, and his mind reverted to his old fancy of a colossal machine with wheels and levers and beams espied in the crimson glow of the fires blazing beneath its boilers. At each consecutive hour of the day the changing play of the light—from the bluish haze of early morning ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Arafura Sea, where for days she sailed in water milky white and green and purple. It was my good fortune to enter the sea on the last quarter of the moon, the advantage being that in the dark nights I witnessed the phosphorescent light effect at night in its greatest splendor. The sea, where the sloop disturbed it, seemed all ablaze, so that by its light I could see the smallest articles on deck, and her wake ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... on the silent ocean: An anchored barque swayed slowly on the swell. And here and there a phosphorescent glimmer Showed where the trailing seaweed ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... steadfastly on the polished face of a large black Disc placed conspicuously on a pedestal in the exact centre of the pavement. Strange letters shone from time to time on this ebony tablet, . . letters that seemed to be written in quicksilver; they glittered for a second, then ran off like phosphorescent drops of water, and again reappeared, but the same signs were never repeated twice over. All were different, . . all were rapid in their coming and going as flashes of lightning. Lysia, approaching the Disc, turned it slightly; ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... are the changes at the front, the present writer, by that time off the hill and in the plain below, saw the heavens gloriously alive with the pageantry of conflict. The vault was pitted with woolly tufts of shrapnel and beautiful dead-whitesmoke-wreaths from the phosphorescent bombs. These spread their sinuous toils high and low and seemed to fill the skies. On both sides the aerial combatants were going home to roost, exchanging challenges by the way. And all the time, hidden in a hundred woods and brakes, the Archies sang in chorus. These evening voluntaries, including ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... were just a-light within the villa, where the thick foliage of tree and vine brought a premature gloaming. Outside fell upon the sward the last rays of the setting sun. In the depths of the shadowy leaves the glow-worms displayed their phosphorescent beauty; the lampyrid beetles plied between gloom and obscurity, impatient for the mirror of night to flaunt therein their illumined finery. In the distance was heard the lusty song of the blowsy yokels, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... occasioned serious cases of illness, acting as a violent emetic, and of course should be avoided. Its phosphorescence has often been observed. Another and much smaller plant, widely distributed in this country as well as Europe, and belonging to another genus, is also phosphorescent. It is Panus stipticus, a small white plant with a short lateral stem, growing on branches, stumps, trunks, etc. When freshly developed the phosphorescence is marked, but when the plants become old they often fail to ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... to imprison us in its infinite narrowness. We shiver and can see nothing more. With difficulty I can make out, along our trampled platform, a dark flock, the buzz of voices, the smell of tobacco. Here and there a match flame or the red point of a cigarette makes some face phosphorescent. And we wait, unoccupied, and weary of waiting, until we sit down, close-pressed against each other, in the dark and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... help feeling in it like a gilded cork adrift in a jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne punch. In the sense of luxurious ease with which it envelops the bather, it is unrivaled on earth. The only approximation to it is in the phosphorescent waters of the Mosquito ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... (Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face) ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... although he had an only half-emptied tumbler in front of him. Presently he stumbled out on to the deck. It was a dark night, and a strong head wind was blowing. He groped his way to the railing and leaned over, with his head half buried in his hands. Below, the black tossing sea was churned into phosphorescent spray, as the steamer drove ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... striking contrast. He was pale and puny; his eyes gleamed with a phosphorescent brilliancy; and his hair was of a faded flaxen tint. One little circumstance attracted both detectives' attention. If the mother was attired in an old, thin, faded calico dress, the child was warmly clad in stout ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... with a scream by an angry hand; and when the night closes in, the night of a south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless than the shade of Hades. The south-westerly mood of the great West Wind is a lightless mood, without sun, moon, or stars, with no gleam of light but the phosphorescent flashes of the great sheets of foam that, boiling up on each side of the ship, fling bluish gleams upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she runs, chased by enormous seas, distracted in ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... one of those old Pharaohs who are celebrated in the ballads sung by blind men at the street corners. She remembered also her thin, wretched mother, wandering like a hungry cat about the house, which she filled with the tones of her sharp voice, and the glitter of her phosphorescent eyes. They said in the neighbourhood that she was a witch, and changed into an owl at night, and flew to see her lovers. It was a lie. Thais knew well, having often watched her, that her mother practised no magic arts, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... grasping the sense if not the words of the command, strode forward—a tall, lithe figure of a man, well-knit and hard of face. Under the torchlight the dilated pupils of his pinkish eyes seemed to shine as phosphorescent as a cat's. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... with her tale of moon and cloud, Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed, Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent; They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent! Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth, The legends of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seemed to predict a gale. The barometer announced a speedy change, the mercury rising and falling capriciously; the sea also, in the south-east, raised long surges which indicated a tempest. The sun had set the evening before in a red mist, in the midst of the phosphorescent scintillations of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... into a wet lump, squatting motionless in the bows under the mast; his lidless eyes were phosphorescent, like the eyes of living codfish. After a while I felt that either fright or disgust was going to strangle me where I sat, but it was only the arms of the pretty nurse clasped around me in ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... night was dark, greatly impeding our labor. Still, though not a star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop preparatory to breaking, until with a roar it fell over ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he had seen there—vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose chimney-pots ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... days when the sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... with the light of ladies' eyes; and how many people have been smitten by the lightning of an eye, whether in love or anger, it was difficult to allow that all this subtlest and keenest fire is illusive, not even phosphorescent, and that any other jelly in the same socket would serve as well as the brightest eye. Nevertheless, he must be right; of course he must, and I am rather ashamed ever to have thought otherwise. Where should the light ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... condition, in which the sweat is phosphorescent. It has been observed in the later stages of phthisis, in miliaria, and in those who have eaten of ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 15th-a night so dark that from the ship's deck one could not see the water—schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the water alive with phosphorescent splendors: "Like glorified serpents thirty to fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost come suddenly flashing along out of the solid gloom and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... distance beneath the surface the girl rose and looked about her. Up the river a few yards she caught the phosphorescent gleam of water upon the prahu's paddles as they brought her to a sudden stop in obedience to Ninaka's command. Then she saw the dark mass of the war-craft drifting down ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tinkled again and our ship bounded forward, leaving a long trail of phosphorescent ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... which shimmers a phosphorescent light; at each side an aurora borealis rises, mountain like; above all, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... us on the road. The trees that watched us brooded dark and still, Streaked by the frost with phosphorescent gray. Chill followed sharply on a gorgeous day Of winds, blown leaves, red bonfires. Faintly showed The mist-ringed ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... forward in the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark. The next few moments were of vital importance to ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... night set in, fishermen's lights were seen moving along the beach in all directions, and gliding about in canoes, while the sea was filled with myriads of phosphorescent animalcula. After watching this scene for two or three hours in the calm and still night, a storm that had been gathering reached us; but it lasted only for a short time, and cleared off after a shower, which gave the air a freshness that was delightful after the sultry ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... were taken with large nets automatically closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... harbor of Fredericksted, the town, and the black, red-shirted boatmen pushing about the harbor; westward, the setting sun; and presently, everywhere, the swift fall of the tropical night, with lights beginning to twinkle in the town and the boats in the roadstead to leave long wakes of phosphorescent light. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... at least twenty times. If Porou did not laugh, his solemn silence was quite as amusing as the most uproarious hilarity. It was already seven o'clock in the evening when I wrote the final line of this delightful story. During the last hour the room had only been lighted by Porou's phosphorescent eyes. And yet I had written with as much ease in the darkness as by the light of a good lamp. My story finished, I proceeded to dress. I put on my evening clothes and my white tie, and, taking leave of Porou, I hurried downstairs into the street. I had hardly gone twenty steps when I felt some ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... tables of half-crocked customers—burly black-uniformed Space Guardsmen, army and air officers, richly clad industrialists and union bosses, civilian leaders, their wives and mistresses. The waiters were all Martian slaves, he noticed, their phosphorescent owl-eyes smoldering in the dim ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... the rest had to be rowed. The sun set in crimson, and the crescent moon arose behind the blue hills of Mull, over the dark tower of Duart. The scene was shortly a festival of lights with stars in the sky and the water brilliantly phosphorescent, so that the oar seemed to drip with fire. Lastly, when we entered the smooth bright bay of Oban, a crescent of lights shone around it, reflected in columns ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of Song," as Miss Broadwood had called it, was the outcome of Flavia's more exalted strategies. A woman who made less a point of sympathizing with their delicate organisms, might have sought to plunge these phosphorescent pieces into the tepid bath of domestic life; but Flavia's discernment was deeper. This must be a refuge where the shrinking soul, the sensitive brain, should be unconstrained; where the caprice of fancy should outweigh ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... had almost the consistency of a cloud when Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the massive foundations of a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... feeble flickering light from the island as he strode across the fore-deck. He stopped, stared at the looming black line of land beneath the tropical stars. Again light flashed from a point of rock far above the dim white line of phosphorescent surf, spelling ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the Aphrodite-worship. The flesh, the senses, are now self-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of the flesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... every day seemed full of interest. All the wonders of the great deep were about them—strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night. Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... in the luminous west, leaving behind a long track of orange and purple light; the growing moon flung its yellow rays across the troubled waters, melting into the million phosphorescent gleams that sparkled and quivered along the surface like living jets of fire. Frank had never before seen so lovely a sunset, or one so utterly lonely and sad. He stretched himself on the deck, with his two hands clasped ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... monster disturbed in his rest plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, twisted legs; a ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... darkness enveloped us, a palpable veil. A noise like the march of a mighty host was heard, which proved to be the approach of a tropical flood, heralded by drops as large as marbles. It churned the still waters into a phosphorescent foam which rendered the darkness only more oppressive. The rain came down as it can come only in the Bight of Benin. The avalanche cooled us, reducing the temperature ten or fifteen degrees, giving us new life, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Ciliograde acalephae, as they are called—is the Girdle of Venus, which resembles a ribbon in form, and is sometimes five or six feet in length, covered with cilia, and brilliantly phosphorescent. This must be one of the most beautiful of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... that it could certainly take good aim by directing the tube or siphon on the upper side of its body. From the difficulty which these animals have in carrying their heads, they cannot crawl with ease when placed on the ground. I observed that one which I kept in the cabin was slightly phosphorescent in the dark. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the white bubbles from your prop. They'll be phosphorescent." Rick pointed to the crab boat's wake. Thousands of tiny bay creatures, most of them almost invisible bits of jelly, flashed blue white as the prop disturbed them, so that the wake twinkled as though studded ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... deliver a phosphorescent diatribe on the racial traits of the Bavarian people as comprehended ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... and would snatch the pen out of my hand, no doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as aesthetic a cat as Hoffmann's Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, these ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... his torch unlighted, and moved along; there was a little illumination from the phosphorescent markers at some of the corners, and from the stars. He could just make his way without marking himself with ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... clearing and Nathaniel knew that it was St. James that lay at his feet. The lights of a few fishing boats were twinkling in the harbor, but for the most part the town was dark. Here and there a window shone like a spot of phosphorescent yellow in the dismal gloom and the great beacon still burned steadily over the ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of cruising sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his teeth, glided noiselessly a strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner yacht from which rose the wild cries of beauty in distress, swarmed aboard with a muttered ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... duet was kept up for half an hour. Whenever one bird ceased his solemn boo-boo-boo-boo-boo, I found myself with stilled breath straining my sense to catch the answering notes, fearing to stir lest I should lose them. A phosphorescent gleam swept by close to my face, making me start at its sudden appearance, then passed away, trailing a line of faint light over the dusky weeds. The passing firefly served to remind me that I was not smoking, and the thought then occurred to me that a cigar might possibly have the effect of relieving ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... scrambles of rats from all the dark corners. In the furthest and darkest corners roosted those black birds who by night flew down into the church through the shafts in the vaulting, and the eyes of the owls glowed with phosphorescent brilliancy, while the bats flew sleepily about sweeping the faces of ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed of a leisure which he had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... a purplish-red color, with huge, tricornigerous heads and with staring, green, phosphorescent eyes. Two of the six limbs were always legs, two always arms; the intermediate two, due to a mid-section jointing of the six-foot-long, almost cylindrical body, could be used at will as either legs or arms. Now, out of range, as they supposed, they halted and gathered about one who ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... botanist, to recognize the torrid zone by the mere aspect of its vegetation. Without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celestial charts of Flamsteed and De La Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent Clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon. The heavens and the earth,—everything in the equinoctial regions, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... torpedoes, so that failure should be impossible. This boat in shape was not unlike a turtle. A system of valves, air-pumps, and ballast enabled the operator to ascend or descend in the water at will. A screw-propeller afforded means of propulsion, and phosphorescent gauges and compasses enabled him ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... enormous dynamos, cathode tubes a hundred feet long, masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus as he had never encountered. The air was bluish, electric. From the black substance came a phosphorescent radiance. The triumphant drone of motors and a terrific crackle of electricity were everywhere. Off to his right purple-blue flames the size of Sequoia trees flickered around a group of what looked like condensers ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... terror inspired by this tent was a part of its fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals, had aroused an excitement ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... space and in time. Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells sent through the darkness, hung over her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul away. And so they sat there in the deepening shadow, whispering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... his rifle in his hand, ready to sell his life as dearly as he could; but the Arabs did not issue from their cover, and they sped on at a sharp trot unmolested, Strachan keeping a correct course by a compass he had, with an ingenious phosphorescent contrivance, by which he could distinguish the north point. When an hour had elapsed they all began to breathe more freely, for it is uncanny work expecting to be attacked every minute in the dark. But ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... a primrose stalk and as transparent as green glass. Before touching the horizon it dissolved into violet powder. The colour was being blotted out of everything; one after another the flowers went out like lights; only the white cherry seemed phosphorescent in the gathering darkness. A thick white mist was relentlessly invading everything, climbing higher and higher, enveloping her in its cold, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... impecunious writers which its use was said to bring about, and when fully equipped consisted simply of a writing-table with all the appliances and conveniences thereof treated with phosphorus in such a manner that in the blackest of darkness they could all be seen readily. The ink even was phosphorescent. The paper was luminous in the dark. The penholders, pens, pen-wipers, mucilage-bottle, everything, in fact, that an author really needs for the production of literature, save ideas, were so prepared that they could not fail to be ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... ochreous yellow, waiting for evening and the confederate junk. The tropic twilight comes on swift red-golden wings that fan the vivid stars to brightness, and the rising tide breaks the surface into wrinkles of phosphorescent fire. High over head is the wide, unbroken canopy of the Pacific sky, and the gush of a larger moon than ours fills all the sphere with splendor as the huge ship stirs lazily in its Narcissus poise over its own reflection. There is a reddish glow in the western horizon over Hong-Kong, a fainter glimmer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... oars, we pulled in towards the shore. We knew that the enemy mustered strong in the neighbourhood. Thus it was necessary to be cautious. Not a word was spoken. The phosphorescent light sparkled from the blades of our oars, appearing brighter from the darkness which prevailed, but that could not be seen at any distance. The time for our expedition had been well selected. We had pitchy darkness to favour our ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Japanese fleet were disappearing far astern. After all, Vladivostock might be reached. But just after eight o'clock the throb of engines, the hurtling beat of propellers, came sounding through the night from all sides. On the sea black, low objects were rushing along with foaming phosphorescent wakes trailing behind them. Bugles ran out the alarm; crews rushed to quarters; searchlights blazed out, and the small quick-firers that were still serviceable mingled their sharp ringing reports with the crackle of machine-gun fire. The ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... earthly hands. The stars winked at us like so many huge eyes in the black sky, on one side of which shone the Southern Cross. At last we distinguished the lighthouse on the distant horizon. It was nothing but a tiny fiery point diving in the phosphorescent waves. The tired travellers greeted it ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... rigging alone being seen against the sky above the dark shadows of the trees. The splash of our oars was the only sound which broke the dead silence which reigned in this sequestered spot; while the only light, except from the glittering stars above us, was from the phosphorescent flashes as the blades entered the water, and the golden drops again fell into their parent element. On looking on that gloomy surface, it seemed as improbable that anything so bright should come from it as that sparks of real ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... shadows was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers. They made them appear like men drunk with wine. This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the result of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... creature mounted its eyes began to play the part of two small lamps; they positively emitted rays of light. By their rays I began to perceive faint outlines of its body. It seemed larger than I had supposed. Either the body itself was slightly phosphorescent, or it was of a peculiar yellow hue. It gleamed in the darkness. What it was there was still nothing to positively show, but the impression grew upon me that it was some member of the spider family, some monstrous ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to have such an interval, during some part of which you may sleep in peace. As for the night, you may use it for eating ices, or strolling on the Marina, or pulling out on the phosphorescent waters of the bay; but unless you be very fresh, you will hardly think of using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... spouted in fountains of fire; and vast forms, emitting a glare from their flanks, and ever and anon raising their heads above water, and shaking off the sparkles, showed where an immense shoal of Cachalots had risen from below to sport in these phosphorescent billows. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... we lay gazing into the wonderful rock gardens under the Autelets when the tide was out;—watching the phosphorescent seaweeds flame in the darker pools; seeking out the haunts where the sea anemones lay in thousands, waving their long pale arms hungrily for food and closing them hopefully on anything that offered, even on one's fingers, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham |
