"Raft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from time to time I swept the horizon with my marine glasses; but there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the far sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild duck took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low above the ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at intervals, its white ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the raft's edge, swinging her stockinged legs in the green swells that swept steadily shoreward, modestly admitted that Selwyn was "sweet," particularly in a canoe on a moonlight night—in spite of her weighty mother heavily afloat ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... said to me, "We are going to war with you. We shall take Alsace and Lorraine." That night I could see from my window, looking out on the Neckar, the students clad in their club costumes floating down the river on an illuminated raft singing the famous song in honor of Bluecher, who "taught the Welches the way of the Germans." And at the university itself the lectures of Treitschke, attended by excited crowds, were heated harangues ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... no effective resistance. The obstructions had been opened to remove accumulated raft, and could not be closed; and the fleet moved slowly up to seize the rich prize that lay ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... through the windows in a kind of impassivity, as much as he could see of the method by which the racing-boat was attached by long, rigid rods to the steady floating raft that had risen from beneath. (He was even interested to observe that these rigid rods were of telescopic design, and were elongated from their own interiors. One of them pushed forward once to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Odyssey the students would discuss in class, or present written reports upon, the composition of the poem as a whole, and the relation to the main plot of different episodes such as the quest of Telemachus, his visit to Pylos and Lacedaemon, the scene in Calypso's cave, the building of the raft, the arrival of Odysseus among the Phaeacians, his account of his own adventures, his return to Ithaca, the slaying of the wooers, etc.; also the characters of the poem, their individual experiences and behavior in various circumstances, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... said the Poet. "Thirty-nine, eh? I knew there was a raft of them, but I had no idea there ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing the bow by a few feet. Dan leaned out and caught it with his boat-hook, bringing the line aboard. Then he and his fireman tailed on to the end of it, bringing in the attached ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... their power, so that a passage by water seemed equally impracticable. But Drake, whose penetration immediately discovered all the circumstances and inconveniencies of every scheme, soon determined upon the only means of success which their condition afforded them; and ordering his men to make a raft out of the trees that were then floating on the river, offered himself to put off to sea upon it, and cheerfully asked who would accompany him. John Owen, John Smith, and two Frenchmen, who were willing to share his fortune, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... making at a raft, With little hope in such a rolling sea, A sort of thing at which one would have laughed,[112] If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaffed, And have a kind of wild and horrid glee, Half epileptical, and half hysterical:— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and sailed next evening, armed with eighteen twelve-pounders, and fully equipped for service. Two schooners, the Maria, and the Carleton; the Loyal Convert, gondola; the Thunder, a kind of flat-bottomed raft, carrying twelve heavy guns and two howitzers; and twenty-four boats, armed each with a field piece, or carriage-gun, formed, with the Inflexible, a force equal to the service, where but a few days before, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... my methods to the men I'm dealing with," was my answer. "These fellows are trying to push me off the life raft. I fight with every weapon I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll blackmail them, just as you've ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... deepest water, there was a rude pier of logs built out, for the convenience of landing the parties. This loose structure suggested to me the means of reaching the main shore; and, without waiting for breakfast, I "piped" away my boatmen, and proceeded to build a raft. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... according to Dr. Sal Muller, it prefers those that live on a vegetable diet. The Rev. Mr. Mason, in his writings about Burmah, says "they will occasionally attack man when alone;" he instances a bear upsetting two men on a raft, and he goes on to add that "last year a Karen of my acquaintance in Tonghoo was attacked by one, overcome, and left by the bear for dead." In this case there was no attempt to devour, and it may have been, as I have often observed with the Indian ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the day after midsummer, about one o'clock. A multitude of soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad river which, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in its midst a moored raft of bonded timber. On this as a floor stands a gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side, facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorway richly festooned. The cumbersome erection acquires from the current a rhythmical movement, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Olivia when the ship struck on the bar, and resolved to take a desperate chance and come ashore on a life-raft. He did, and Larry and Bailey rescued him. Then followed his shaving off of his moustache in the fisherman's hut to make a good disguise, and Larry's subsequent chase after him. Once Larry had been close on ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... of these men springs naturally from the first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very special sense. The man with the talent to ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... hanged!" exclaimed Fred. "Lose it, for your wife's sake. Besides, you'll make reputation instead of lose it: you'll be as famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I've bet you a hundred that you can't stay off your liquor for a year, and that, you're not the man to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... me no special category," replied the other. "All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... asked his host, the ferryman, to get him across the river. The ferryman got him across the river on his bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... the reef, he gave a look round for the last time. His eyes again interrogated the sea away up to the horizon. Would some raft appear on the surface of the waves, some fragment of ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... reluctantly, remembering the unbroken bill in her "upper drawer." "I do' know's I have a right to send them back. I didn't tell her how many, but—mercy on us!—who'd dream of such a raft! If there's one, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... pleasant. The Island of Trn, as has been shown, is a grisly scrap of desert: it has no sweet water; and its three birds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men. It is far from the mainland; the storm, which lasted through two days, was too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have taken measures ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... to make the floating bulk Mask death upon its slippery deck, Itself in turn a shattered hulk, A ghastly raft, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... made of tree-trunks 70 Floats near, and upon it The pope's heavy daughter Is wielding her beetle, She looks like a hay-stack, Unsound and dishevelled, Her skirts gathered round her. Upon the raft, near her, A duck and some ducklings ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... case I have left a bit of a will addressed to you, and recommending to your kindness my mother, and the boy and the girl—in short, the whole raft." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its stem and a sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven by a young man ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of our rafts, watching the installation of a new ray machine. A storm was raging, but the great raft, a thousand feet long, and five hundred wide, was as steady as a rock. We were 700 miles out; the great push of '92, that drove us back to within 150 miles of our coast and almost ended the war, was still ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... raft, lazily, with hardly a flip of the wing. And I could not help wondering, in spite of the distress I was in, where it had spent last night—how it, or any other living thing, had weathered such a smashing storm. It made me realize the great big difference between ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... patiently and ponderously upon a wooden sea-chest, alone on the platform, but stacked about by such a miscellany of luggage as gave him no slight resemblance to Crusoe on his raft. Besides parcels, boxes, carpet-bags, canvas-bags, tarpaulin-bags, it included a pile of furniture swathed in straw, a parrot-cage covered with baize, and a stone jar calculated to hold ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... reliance was placed in the Goldsack rockets; but, in consequence of the treacherous handling of the Spanish soldiers who had filled them, they proved worse than useless, doing nearly as much injury to the men who fired them as to the enemy. Only one gunboat was sunk by the shells from a raft commanded by Major Miller, who also did some damage to the forts and shipping. On the night of the 4th, Lord Cochrane amused himself, while a fireship was being prepared, by causing a burning tar-barrel ...
— 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
... armistice was arranged with Frederick William, by the terms of which he temporarily kept his strong places in Silesia and Pomerania; but his propositions for an alliance were incontinently rejected. Next day there was another meeting on the same raft, but this was tripartite, for the King of Prussia was present. Napoleon was blunt and imperious, reproaching Frederick William with the duplicity of his policy, vindictively (the descriptive word he ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... stream to civilization, following in a general way the course of the mighty stream. With their horses, and without large boats, they could not utilize the current, unless perhaps after descending a long distance they were able to construct a large raft. ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... sun rose and warmed the air, the boys strength and spirits revived, and in a few hours they were so refreshed that they determined to set about their raft. The wind had now entirely dropped, the waves were still very high, but they came in long, smooth, regular swells, over which they rose and ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... as we went. All at once I heard the hands begin to run over the top of the boat in great confusion, and pull with all their might. And the first thing I know'd after this we went broadside full tilt against the head of an island, where a large raft of drift timber had lodged. The nature of such a place would be, as everybody knows, to suck the boats down and turn them right under this raft; and the uppermost boat would, of course, be suck'd ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... green mound or toft which lay at the mouth thereof: but the waters were thronged with fowl, as mallard and teal and coots, and of these they took what they would. Whiles also they waded the shallows of the flood, and whiles poled a raft about it, and so had pleasure of the waters as before they had had of the snow. But when at last the very spring was come, and the grass began to grow after the showers had washed the plain of the waterborne mud, and the snowdrop had thrust up and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the absence of the chief in whose house it was held. It had been used sufficiently long, however, to show that it was appreciated by both parents and children, and thus encouraged, Mr. Duncan determined to commence to build a school-house. The wood had arrived in a raft, and a number of Indians were engaged to assist in the building; but scarcely had they begun to carry the wood up the hill, when one of the Indians dropped dead. The news ran through the camp, and great alarm spread on all sides. Mr. Duncan ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... the boat club, as means of instruction and discipline, as well as of amusement, were suggested by an accidental occurrence. The "Bunkers of Rippleton," a set of idle and dissolute boys, had constructed a rude raft, upon which they paddled about on the lake, and appeared to enjoy themselves very much. Captain Sedley, who had forbidden his son to venture upon the lake on the raft, or even in a boat, without permission, overheard Charles Hardy, the intimate friend of Frank, remark ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Hole of Calcutta or in a broken tunnel shaft do men ever begin to find themselves practically short of that life-sustaining gas, and then they know the want of it far sooner and far more sharply than they know the want of food on a shipwreck raft, or the want of water in the thirsty desert. Yet antiquity never even heard of oxygen. A prime necessary of life passed unnoticed for ages in human history, only because there was abundance of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shoes are hell on corns While tramping through the sands, And driving jackass by the tail,— Damn the overland! I would as leaf be on a raft at sea And there at once be lost. John, let's leave the poor old mule, We'll never ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... later slowly rowing down the stream appeared a solitary figure, Odysseus, seated upon a raft to which were fixed sails ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Ohio and Mississippi she went—on a raft—with a little band of those who were seeking the French settlements, where the language, religion, and simplicity of life recalled Acadia. They found it on the banks of the Teche, and they reached the house of the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... their construction. The floor, paved with blue pebbles; the fireplace, a huge hearth-flag merely, on which lay a heap of glowing turf, an iron pot depending from a crook above. The smoke, curling lazily through a raft of fish drying a few feet above the flame, and acquiring the requisite flavour, with considerable difficulty reached a hole in the roof, where the adverse and refractory wind not unfrequently disputed its passage, and drove it down again, to assist ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... that such an impulse would, so far as I could judge, be quite in character, but no further argument was needed. I had created a sensation. My feeble straw had suddenly taken the form of a practicable seaworthy raft, big enough to accommodate all the family—with the one exception of Frank, who, as it were, grasped the edge of this life-saving apparatus of mine, and tested it suspiciously. His preliminary and perfectly futile opening to the effect that the moon had already set, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the sides of the mountains, which render it impossible to walk along its banks. To reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse to a slight skiff, that can easily pass through the current and the most shallow parts. My guide and my lieutenant soon contrived to make a small raft of bamboos; when it was finished we embarked, Alila and myself, our guide refusing to accompany us. After much trouble and fatigue, casting ourselves often into the water to draw our raft along, we at length got clear of the first range of mountains, and perceived, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... Next day the cyclone had passed, but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... cabin on Last Island might be holding together still. Dan and Neb are knocking a raft together, and if they can make it float they'll go over there and get the little lad off. And if they don't Padre" (the rough old voice trembled),—"if they don't, wal, you are sky pilot enough to know that the little chap has reached a ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... As the twilight deepened, the whole storm was below the horizon, only sending up angry flashes as it thundered on to parts unknown. With clasped hands and despairing eyes, Edith gazed after it, as the wrecked floating on a raft might watch a ship sail away, and leave them to perish on the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... do not plan to lower the divers from the steamer or from a raft. Instead they will step directly out on the sea floor from a door in the submarine which opens out of an air chamber. In this the diver can be closed and the air pressure increased until it is high enough to keep out the water. All that he has to do ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... raft, carrying long tubes like the pipes of an organ, and filled with explosives. They were used by the French to send among the vessels of the British fleet to disorganise and destroy them. The little light which the General saw was the burning fuse. The raft ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... restrictions, and so many more, on which our parents used to rely, have failed us, broken in our hands by the vigorous destroying of the young generation, and, therefore we have clutched with frantic fingers at this new fair-looking life raft, in pursuit of the one aim to protect our children. Myself, I have done this. It is with uttermost sadness I have to acknowledge now that I do not believe we can help the young very far or deeply by all our teaching. Not only do they want their own experience, not ours, but it is right for ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... and Marie saw herself drifting on to her doom. Half a mile below was the fall, and at the side of the fall, went ever and ever around with tremendous violence, the rending fans of the water-mill. Marie knew full well that any drift boat, or log, or raft, carried down the river at freshet-flow, was always swept into the toils of the inexorable wheels. Yet, if she were reckless and without heed a few minutes before, I am told that now she was calm. As she is present, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... projections, are in the bound MSS.: 'Correction of Compass in Iron Ships—"Rainbow,"' at the Greenwich Observatory. The angular disturbances were found on July 26th and 30th, requiring some further work on a raft, so that they were finally worked out on Aug. 11th. I struggled hard with the numbers, but should not have succeeded if it had not occurred to me to examine the horizontal magnetic intensities. This was done on Aug. 14th, and ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... four of us made a raft, and paddled and pushed it down to the office. Nary a wire was there in working order. You see, Galveston is on a very flat island scarcely one mile wide, and the only approach at this time was a low railroad bridge, three miles long. Our wires were strung along the side of that, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... a prophet to be honored on two counts. They did make the trek to the river the next day, and there was a wealth of raft material marking the high-water level of the spring flood. The migrations McNeil had reported were still in progress, and the three men hid twice to watch the passing of small family clans. Once a respectably sized tribe, including wounded ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... heard the most wonderful strain coming from that direction. The river was about three or four hundred yards away across the road, in front of them, and upon a raft slowly passing by were a couple of habitans singing. What strain was this, so weird, so solemn, so earnest, yet so pathetic, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... water, when I heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and massive—like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a raft—which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it was ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... precipice to precipice. No nightmare dreamed by man, no wild invention of the romancer, can ever equal the living horror of that place, and the weird crying of those voices of the night, as we clung like shipwrecked mariners to a raft, and tossed on the black, unfathomed wilderness of air. Fortunately the temperature was not a low one; indeed, the wind was warm, or we should have perished. So we clung and listened, and while we were stretched ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... found one, he would have been unable to manage her. He knew that should he attempt to make his way overland he would, to a certainty, be re-taken. Finding a piece of wreck, with some broken oars, and other drift-wood, and a coil of rope, he contrived to put together a raft, on which seating himself, he shoved off, expecting to be picked up by some passing vessel. Instead of this, he was—fortunately for himself— discovered by the active coastguardmen, and brought back to prison. Had he succeeded in getting ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... paid less attention than the rest to their fishing, and allowed their floats to drift close inshore. The tall, reddish reeds rustled softly around them, in front of them the motionless water gleamed softly, and their conversation was soft also. Liza stood on a small raft; Lavretzky sat on the inclined trunk of a willow; Liza wore a white gown, girt about the waist with a broad ribbon, also white in hue; her straw hat was hanging from one hand, with the other, she supported, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... water clear and deep, flowing in a gentle current. For the accommodation of emigrants, three men were there, operating a ferry. Whence they came I do not remember, if they told us. We saw no signs of a habitation in which they might have lived. The ferrying was done with what was really a raft of logs, rather than a boat. It was sustained against the current by means of a tackle attached to a block, rove on a large rope that was drawn taut, from bank to bank, and was propelled by a windlass on each ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... leg directly, and in a little while we got to the shore on a hastily constructed raft. After seeing the foreman safely cared for, and giving Mr. Devlin's manager the facts of the occurrence, more than sated with my morning's experience, I climbed the mountain side, and took refuge from the heat in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction between Fact, which suffocates the Muse, and Truth, which is the very breath of her nostrils. Study and self-culture did much for him, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... captain; "an' it was a lucky thing for Sam Bates, to who they was consigned, that there wasn't a raft of youngsters roun' that freight-house as there is most times of the day. There's a Sunday-school clam-bake comin' off up to the Pint to-day, an' I reckon most of the Millville boys was gettin' ready ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... seated himself tiredly on the wet sand and was digging his stockinged heels into it, sneered at Mr. Crusoe. "He'd have made a trip on his raft," he said, "and fetched ashore a bundle of kindling. If it hadn't been for that wreck to draw on Robinson Crusoe would have starved to death in ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... strength of his own will from among the hideous things that hang suspended and drifting in the primeval sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His is a combative nature, and the great blow he has sustained this day in the wreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left him quivering to the centre of his being with resentment ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... like others, had bad luck sometimes. Now and then he lost his way in the woods, and on one or two occasions the raft on which he was taking his skins across the river upset and the results of his winter's labor ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... month, who arrived at the moment the first boatload from the camp reached the opposite bank of the Murray. By means of casks we floated the drays over the three rivers and, after two experiments with a raft, both partial failures, and while a third raft was in progress, of a more solid and better construction, we discovered that a canoe, of very large dimensions and paddled by the native boy Tommy, would prove the most expeditious ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... appointed signal by lighting three fires, which, however, were not seen nor taken notice of by those under the command of Cornelis, because they were busy in butchering their companions, of whom they had murdered between thirty and forty; but some few, however, got off upon a raft of planks tied together, and went to the island where Mr. Weybhays was, in order to acquaint him with the dreadful accident that had happened. Mr. Weybhays having with him forty- five men, they all resolved to stand upon their guard, and to defend themselves to the last man, in case ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... afternoon with the help of a seabreeze I ran into 7 fathom and anchored; then carried a small anchor ashore and warped in till I came into 3 fathom and a half. Where having fastened her I made a raft to carry the men's chests and bedding ashore; and before 8 at night most of them were ashore. In the morning I ordered the sails to be unbent, to make tents; and then myself and officers went ashore. I had sent ashore a puncheon and a 36 gallon cask of water with one bag ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... cheap variety actress. When the money of his first find had been dissipated she refused to live with him, and tried to extort high alimony by claiming their two-year-old son. The penniless prospector knew that he was no equal for law courts and sheriffs and lawyers; so he made him a raft, got a local trader to outfit him, and plunged with his baby boy into the wilderness, where no sheriff could track him. I asked him why he did not use pack-horses. He said dogs could have tracked them, but 'the water didn't leave no smell.' In ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... rupees, out of his own purse. He told me that one morning, in the rains, he came to the bank of this river, on his way to Lucknow from Jeytpoor, a town which we passed yesterday, and found it so swollen that he was obliged to purchase some large earthen jars, and form a raft upon them to take over himself and followers. While preparing his raft, which took a whole day, he heard that from five to ten persons were drowned, in attempting to cross this little river, every year, and that people were often detained upon the bank for four or five days together. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... naturally graceful. Her hazel eyes were always dancing mischievously. She liked boys' games better than girls'. In her second week she induced several of the more daring girls to go with her to the pond below town and there engage in a raft-race with the boys. And when John Dumont, seeing that the girls' raft was about to win, thrust the one he was piloting into it and upset it, she was the only girl who did not scream at the shock of the sudden tumble into the water ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... neighborhood, including many hay-ropes and clothes-lines, had been collected; the oil-casks had been conveyed over the lake in the ferry-boat, and secured within a "boom" composed of four long timbers, lashed together at the ends, forming a square, which was moored close to the Goblins; and a raft had been built, upon which the operations were to ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... Hovey went on: "Lads, I've bad news, bad and good news together. The boats are gone—though who the devil destroyed them we don't know—and now the wireless is destroyed. The boats are a big loss, for now we'll have to rig up some sort of a raft to make shore when we beach the Heron. The busting of the wireless almost balances that loss. Now we're sure they can't slip out any quick wireless call that would bring a dozen ships after us. Bad news and good news together; and here's some more ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... truth was out. First, a Yankee uniform; second, an Englishman; third, a whole raft, a "hull lot," of New Hampshire Yankees; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... newspaper item had said that we had gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the stockade flowed to the east, and we reasoned that if we followed its course we would be led to the Flint, down which we could float on a log or raft to the Appalachicola. This was the favorite scheme of the party with which I sided. Another party believed the most feasible plan was to go northward, and endeavor to gain the mountains, and thence ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... days we were at the Isle of Ogygia, where we landed. Before delivering the letter, I opened and read it; here are the contents: ODYSSEUS TO CALYPSO, GREETING. Know that in the faraway days when I built my raft and sailed away from you, I suffered shipwreck; I was hard put to it, but Leucothea brought me safe to the land of the Phaeacians; they gave me passage home, and there I found a great company suing for my wife's hand and living riotously upon our goods. All them I slew, and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... controlled horizontal steering, while rise and fall was controlled by horizontal planes arranged in box form. Accident attended the first trial of this second airship, which took place over the Bodensee on November 30th, 1905, 'It had been intended to tow the raft, to which it was anchored, further from the shore against the wind. But the water was too low to allow the use of the raft. The balloon was therefore mounted on pontoons, pulled out into the lake, and taken in tow ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... sailors dying of thirst upon a raft, Poor castaways upon a lonely sea, Dream of green fields and pleasant water-courses, And then wake up with red thirst in their throats, And die more miserably because sleep Has cheated them: so ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... great part of European Russia. Evidently he had been in his youth what is colloquially termed "a roving blade," and had by no means confined himself to the trade which he had learned during his four years of apprenticeship. Once he had helped to navigate a raft from Vetluga to Astrakhan, a distance of about two thousand miles. At another time he had been at Archangel and Onega, on the shores of the White Sea. St. Petersburg and Moscow were both well known to him, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... from hearing a boy talking when I was down in the market yesterday morning. You know who he is, Johnny Spreen, the fellow who always ships out a raft of dried ginseng roots every year, and in the Spring sends a bunch of muskrat ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Havens by the West Point Shore. Off with lazy vagabonds, social ghosts that shiver, Give to worthy road-men the great green way, And we'll hear a song again up the Hudson river, Ringing from a drifting raft, ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... to Vcita their Lord. And those of the brigandine sought not to land, but put themselues to sea, and returned to the Island of Cuba. Vcita commaunded to bind Iohn Ortiz hand and foote vpon foure stakes aloft vpon a raft, and to make a fire vnder him, that there he might bee burned: But a daughter of his desired him that he would not put him to death, alleaging, that one only Christian could do him neither hurt nor good, telling him, that it was more for his honor to keepe him as a captiue. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... simplicity of manners. The kings and nobles did not consider it derogatory to their dignity to acquire skill in the manual arts. Ulysses is represented as building his own bed-chamber and constructing his own raft, and he boasts of being an excellent mower and ploughman. Like Esau, who made savoury meat for his father Isaac, the Heroic chiefs prepared their own meals and prided themselves on their skill in cookery. Kings and private persons ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... where it enters the grand canon; there they left the river, and climbing over the Blue Mountains, entered the fertile valleys about the present city of Walla Walla. From this place the emigrants followed the Columbia River to The Dalles, whence they proceeded either by boat or raft until Fort Vancouver and the mouth of the Willamette were finally gained. Wagons were taken through on this route, and it was not dangerous, although accidents sometimes happened at the Cascades, where locks were built at ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... sick o' sittin' on shor', an' watchin' men drownin' like rats on a raft," said Joe, wiping the foam from his thick lips, and trotting up and down the sand, keeping his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... is answered, for see, the roof is bare! The current swept the slippery raft, the maiden is not there! An angel band descended, her lover led the way, And now she joins her loved and lost in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... thing of many wanderings, and loss, Like to Ulysses on his poplar raft, His treasure hid beneath the tunnelled moss Lest that a thief his labour steal with craft, Up the round hill, sheep-dotted, was his way, Zigzagging where some new ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... one in the afternoon, a great sight was to be seen in the middle of the Niemen. A raft had been placed midstream in plain view from both banks of the river. All the rich stuffs that could be found in the little town of Tilsitt had been taken to make a pavilion on a part of this raft for the reception of the Emperors of France ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... and knocked the wedges and battens off a hatch cover. Then I got a small piece of line. I passed it through a ring bolt and made fast. I figured that when the ship went down the cover would float free for a raft on which I could keep up. Before I was fully ready the compressed air blew the cover off with a 'boom'. It landed ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... wider while he looked at it! Menie knew that he was adrift on an ice raft, and he was terribly frightened. Nip and Tup cuddled close to ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many sandbars, and most of its cargo had to be jettisoned, lost in a time when rations had been reduced to a few ounces a day per man. January 9 the Colorado River was reached, and the command and its impedimenta were ferried over on the same raft contrivance that had proven ineffective ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... of a raft coming down the lake, manned with a rugged set of half-breeds, who had a cask of whiskey on board, and were very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Toward Sarraguce, while close behind them fall The upraised swords, and strew the ground with dead. No issue, no escape, by road or pass! In front deep Ebro rolls its mighty waves: No boat, no barge, no raft. They call for help On Tervagant, then plunge into the flood. Vain was their trust: some, weighted with their arms, Sink in a moment; others are swept down, And those most favored swallow monstrous draughts. All drown most cruelly. The French cry out: "For your own woe wished ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... came—the orchards would be heavy with apples; there would be murmurs, and sweet scents; the old castle would stand out clear, high over the woods and the chalky-white river. There would be singing far away, and the churning of a distant steamer's screw; and perhaps on the water a log raft still drifting down in the blue light. There would be German voices talking. And suddenly tears oozed up in her eyes, and crept down through the powder on her cheeks. She raised her veil and dabbed at her face with a little, not-too-clean handkerchief, screwed up in her yellow-gloved hand. ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... helplessly contending with the tumbling waves, almost within reach of them, but without their being able to afford them the slightest assistance. After a minute or two, and when one more would have been their last, a long oar or sweep, belonging to the wretched raft, came floating by. They instantly seized it, and held on till they were carried down more than a mile, loudly calling for help as they went along; but what aid could we render them? No craft, none, at least, which were on the banks of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... their floats to swim back right up to the bank. The high reddish reeds rustled quietly around, the still water shone quietly before them, and quietly too they talked together. Lisa was standing on a small raft; Lavretsky sat on the inclined trunk of a willow; Lisa wore a white gown, tied round the waist with a broad ribbon, also white; her straw hat was hanging on one hand, and in the other with some effort she held up the crooked rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile, at her hair drawn ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... have encouraged any creature in the world to have applied himself as I had done. "Seignior," says the Spaniard, "had we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should never have got half those things out of the ship, as you did: nay," says he, "we should never have found means to have got a raft to carry them, or to have got the raft on shore without boat or sail: and how much less should we have done if any of us had been alone!" Well, I desired him to abate his compliments, and go on with the history of their coming on shore, where they landed. He told ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... near the banks of this river suggested other thoughts. At once a design entered into my mind. "We can build a raft," thought I, "launch it upon this noble river, and float down to the Amazon, and thence to the mouth of the great stream itself. There is a Portuguese settlement there—the town of Grand Para. There we shall be safe from ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... see many such. Logs and all kinds of drift lodge against the upper part of a stable island or peninsula, and the accumulated mass grows into a great raft matted together by roots and vines. The whole thing, driven by winds or currents, sometimes swings free from its anchorage and drifts away. Then it is called ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... named Christina, living in the neighbourhood in pagan times, who was thrown into the adjoining lake by her persecutors, with a large flat stone attached to her body. Instead of sinking her, the stone formed a raft which floated her in a standing attitude safely to the opposite shore, where she landed—leaving the prints of her feet upon the stone as an incontestable proof of the reality of the miracle. The altar with which the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the mere edge of the water, he plunged in, and is seen mid-stream, astride upon an inflated skin, quietly pursuing his avocation. [PLATE CXXVI., Fig. 1.] Occasionally he improved his position by amounting upon a raft, and, seated at the stern, with his back to the rower, threw out his line and drew the fish from the water. Now and then the fisherman was provided with a plaited basket, made of rushes or flags, which was fastened round his neck with a string, and hung at his back, ready to receive ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... crocodiles like dark meat very much. Usually one offers especial reward to volunteers, and shoots into the water to frighten the beasts. The volunteer dashes rapidly across the shallows, makes a swift plunge, and clambers out on the floating body as onto a raft. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... proceeding down the river, we met the flat, as it is called, a huge sort of clumsy boat, more like a raft than any other species of craft, coming up from St. Simon's with its usual swarthy freight of Mr. ——'s dependants from that place. I made Jack turn our canoe, because the universal outcries and exclamations very distinctly intimated that I should ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... try to steer a raft of lashed hen-coops from here to Bonis Airs and back, under a barkentine rig," snapped the Cap'n. "I know the kind o' critters they be. We ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates were less successful than he, for one, being ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in which they have to sleep, and breed, and die; but they cling to it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself to avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave. If at any ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the "blue-devil" frights that had seized all my men. I felt greatly alarmed about the prospects of the expedition, scarcely knowing what I should do. I resolved at last, if everything else failed, to make up a raft at the southern end of the N'yanza, and try to go up to the Nile in that way. My cough daily grew worse. I could not lie or sleep on either side. Still my mind was so excited and anxious that, after ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... "just after we had passed a place called Murdering town, ... we fell in with a party of French Indians, who had lain in wait for us. One of them fired at Mr. Gist or me, not fifteen steps off, but fortunately missed." The next day they came to a river. "There was no way of getting over but on a raft, ... but before we were half over we were jammed in the ice.... I put out my setting pole to try and stop the raft that the ice might pass by, when the rapidity of the stream threw it with such force ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... pertinacity whether such gales were likely to occur again when Mr. Roy was in the Bay of Biscay, and, if his ship were wrecked, what he would be supposed to do. They were quite sure that he would conduct himself with great heroism, perhaps escape on a single plank, or a raft made by his own hands, and they consulted Miss Williams, who of course was peripatetic cyclopedia of all scholastic information, as to which port in France of Spain he was likely to be drifted to, supposing ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a Musket in her hand, Raft from a dying Souldiour newlie slaine, And ayming where th' vnconquered Knight did stand, Dischargd it through his bodie, and in twaine Deuids the euer holie nuptiall band, Which twixt his soule, and worlds part shold remaine, Had not his hart, stronger then Fortunes will, Held life perforce ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... sands of Anastasia Island, followed the strand between the thickets and the sea, reached the inlet at midnight, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself on the bank. Day broke, and he could plainly see the French on the farther side. They had made a raft, which lay in the water ready for crossing. Menendez and his men showed themselves, when, forthwith, the French displayed their banners, sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick and starving ranks in array of battle. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Alexander elsewhere. The czar, however, was loyal to his allies until, on the 14th of June, his army was almost annihilated at Friedland. This loss compelled him to enter into negotiations. On June 25, 1807, the two emperors met on a raft at Tilsit. Napoleon was prepared to do almost anything that would induce Alexander to cease interfering in Europe. An offensive-defensive alliance was concluded, whereby Napoleon agreed not to oppose ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... they were tired of bears, and fancied that a whale might rouse them. He turned the table upside down and placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to them that they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they must be careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset them. He draped a sheet over the towel-horse to represent an iceberg, and rolled himself up in a mackintosh and flopped about the floor on his stomach, butting his head occasionally ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here we are like people clinging to something—like people awakening—upon a raft." ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of popular literature, a wide suffrage, a mild penal code, he yet endorsed the saying of an old American author, "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft that will never sink, but then your feet ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island we can float his luncheon to him ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and it was evident she could not long remain in that position without going speedily to pieces. Many of the crew had already been washed away; others were clinging to different parts of the wreck. Some, including the officers, were endeavouring, not far from the captain, to form a raft, on which they hoped to reach the shore. It appeared, however, very doubtful whether ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... about a mile farther down the River, has picked out another crossing-place, in the interim, and founded some new adequate plank or raft bridge there; which, by diligence all night, will be crossable to-morrow. So that, except for amusing the enemy, the cannonading may cease at Weissenfels. A certain Duc de Crillon, in command at this Weissenfels Bridge-burning and cannonade, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... improvement in water transportation is the giant raft, Fig. 30. When such a raft is made up, logs of uniform length are placed together, the width of the raft being from sixty to one hundred feet and its length, one thousand feet or more. It may contain a million board feet of timber. The different sections are placed end to end, and long ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... is handy, wigeons often raft up offshore until late afternoon when they move to marshes and ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... tropical, and with the exception of there being no sal, it resembles that of the dry hills of the Sikkim Terai. The Bor-panee is forty yards broad, and turbid; its bed, which is of basalt, is 2,454 feet above the sea: it is crossed by a raft pulled to and fro ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... cooked a sumptuous dinner. Beth baked up some things to keep them supplied a couple of days longer. After dinner I asked her to go for a row. She insisted on taking Diogenes along, and the others all followed us on a raft. So I decided to cut the water sports short, and Beth and I started for a walk in the woods. Three or more were constantly right on our trail. I begged and bribed, but to no avail. They were sticktights all right, and," he added morosely, "she seemed covertly ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... through?" I asked, as he passed me the biscuits and the cup with liquor in it, and as he sat up in the raft I saw that the man had ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Barnes," he hailed. "Ain't drowned out after the gale, be you? Judas priest! Our place is afloat. Dad says he cal'lates we'll have to build a raft to get to the henhouse on. Here; here's somethin' Mr. Kendrick sent to you. Wanted me to give it to you, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... since abandoned, it was necessary to build a raft of pine-logs wherewith to transport the baggage over the stream. They crossed in safety, and we can imagine that it was with no feelings of regret that they finally lost sight of the stream that had so persistently baffled them in all their ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... stood considering the problem, a couple of Indians appeared on the opposite bank with a small raft, and we struck a bargain with them to ferry our outfit. They set us across in short order, but our horses were forced to swim. They were very much alarmed and shivered with excitement (this being the first stream that called for swimming), but they ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the ship's side, and pulling them to me, I tied four of them together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went to work, and with a carpenter's saw I cut a spare topmast into three lengths, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... society, life was marked by a sort of patriarchal simplicity. Manual labor was not yet thought to be degrading. Ulysses constructs his own house and raft, and boasts of his skill in swinging the scythe and guiding the plow. Spinning and weaving were the chief occupations of the women ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... officer, when commanding the "Juno" on the Jamaica station, in 1791, exhibited a noble instance of intrepid humanity. The ship was lying in St. Anne's harbour, when a raft, with three persons upon it, was discovered at a great distance. The weather was exceedingly stormy; and the waves broke with such violence, as to leave little hope that the unfortunate men upon it could long survive. Captain Hood instantly ordered out one of his ship's boats to endeavour ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various |
