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More "Raft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a seat in a quiet, secluded spot, and sat ourselves down. And there, a'ter sayin' as he'd got a secret that he must share with somebody if he was to get any good out of it, and that I was the only reely honest feller he knowed, Abe up and told me how, a'ter he'd built a bit of a raft out of some of the wreckage of the ship, so's he could go off fishin' in her, he one day happened to hit upon a big bed of pearl-oysters, thousan's—millions of 'em! He sorter guessed what they was when he first set eyes on 'em, as he looked down through the clear green water, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... of discovery. During four months he struggled daily against the rapid stream, till he at last reached, in spite of rafts and dangerous eddies, its source at the Rocky Mountains. On his return, a singular and terrible adventure befel him: he was dragging his canoe over a raft, exactly opposite to where now stands his plantation, when, happening to hurt his foot, he lost hold of his canoe. It was on the very edge of the raft, near a ruffled eddy: the frail bark was swamped in a moment, and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... waters of Ganga!' And at the command of their mother, the wicked Gautama and his brothers, those slaves of covetousness and folly, exclaiming, 'Indeed, why should we support this old man?—'tied the Muni to a raft and committing him to the mercy of the stream returned home without compunction. The blind old man drifting along the stream on that raft, passed through the territories of many kings. One day a king named Vali conversant ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... through the woods to the waterfront, and a raft of logs extended out into the river for hundreds of feet. Both sides of the raft were lined with busy fishermen—men and women, too. A little to the north of the base of the building a huge mound of earth smoked sullenly. ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... and we were rowing on the river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... 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 as well as a safe mode of shipment ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Saccarappa are getting their logs across the Great Pond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of many thousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor dragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty or thirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men say who are familiar with ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Sammie Littletail dug a tunnel from the burrow to the pond, and how the water came in. Of course. Well, Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy made a raft of cornstalks, and on this the whole rabbit family floated out of the burrow. Bully, the frog, who was a playmate of Sammie's, helped them. They had to go right out into the rain, and it was ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... scarcely move," narrated Lieutenant Gerdts, who commanded the stranded boat. "The other boat was nowhere in sight. Now it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a raft of spars and old pieces of wood that might keep us afloat. But soon the first boat came into sight again. The commander turned about and sent over his little canoe; in this and in our own canoe, in which two men could sit at each trip, we first transferred the sick. Now the Arabs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... meaning. Nobody liked a ship that was afraid of her element. They wanted an eagerness in her get-away. Or suppose she shot out too impetuously and listed on the ways, ripping the scaffolding to pieces like a whale thrashing a raft apart. Suppose she careened and stuck or rolled over in the mud. Such things had happened and might happen again. The Mamise had suffered so many mishaps that the other ship crews called her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of the wild animal is much more uniform than in the great raft of "domestic" mongrel specimens which make night hideous with their discordant yowls, although we sometimes see a high bred individual which, if his tail was cut off at half its length, might easily pass as an example of the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... gal," said the captain, "step aboard. You sing like a bird; it's only right you should fly like one." It was obvious that the worthy seaman was making clumsy efforts to be cheerful. "I'll see you in two days, or three at most; we've got a raft ready, you know, in case the fire beats us. But, bless you, I shouldn't be surprised if we have a fire-engine coming through the sky next; there's no knowing what these clever young sparks won't be ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the rudder being shot away, went down lengthwise of the channel. When the firing ceased, the little crew, exhausted, but not one of the eight missing, clustered, only heads out of water, around their raft. A launch drew near. In charge was the Spanish admiral, who took them aboard with admiring kindness, and despatched a boat to notify the American ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... until they reached the Alleghany River, which they undertook to cross on a raft. It was the month of May; the river had been swollen by rains, and when they reached the middle of the stream, the part of the raft on which Mr. Jameson sat became detached, the logs separated, and he sank to rise no more. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and the matter would be at an end! So he had resolved in that night of delirium, when he cried out, "Quick, quick! throw all away!" But this was not so easy. He wandered to the quays of the Catherine Canal, and lingered there for half an hour. Here a washing raft lay where he had thought of sinking his spoil, or there boats were moored, and everywhere people swarmed. Then, again, would the cases sink? Would they not rather float? No, this would not do. He would go to the Neva; there would be fewer ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a perfect trap," said Meta, trying to squeeze the muddy water from her own dress and Monica's. "I believe it's nothing but a kind of raft, made out of all the dead wood and rubbish that have accumulated in the lake. I expect seeds have blown on to it, and then trees and bushes have sprung up. Now I think of it, I don't believe it was in the same place last year, so ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... had 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 ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cried Lionel, as I clambered on to the box (which was fastened by a rope to the side of the yacht) and began to cut a hole in the middle. "You're going to make a raft." ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... The idea of making old Joannes a temporibus, the 'Wandering,' or as Schubart's countrymen denominate him the 'Eternal Jew,' into a novel hero, was a mighty favourite with him. In this antique cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream of time, he would survey the changes and wonders of two thousand years: the Roman and the Arab were to figure there; the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, the Eremite of the Thebaid and the Pope of Rome. Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... be for long. The inclination of the boat was not so great but that, with caution, we might move about. There were on board rope and an axe. With the latter I cut away the thwarts and the decking in the bow, and Diccon and I made a small raft. When it was finished, I lifted my wife in my arms and laid her upon it and lashed her to it with the rope. She smiled like a child, then closed her eyes. "I have gathered primroses until I am tired," she said. "I will sleep here a little in the sunshine, and when ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... last raft to cross the river. Doctor Carey watched with eager gaze as the last men reached the farther bank. He saw them scrambling up from the water's edge. He saw Thaine turn back to lift up a comrade blinded, ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... following morning we saw a large timber raft come down the lake and enter the Molyneux. There were extensive forests at the head of the lake, and an energetic contractor had engaged men to cut timber there, which he was now floating down the river to the coast some 200 miles distant. The raft was forty feet square, composed ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... God ascends From his verdant spring to light, And his raft's direction bends At the goddess' word of might,— While the hours, all gently bound, Nimbly to their duty fly; Rugged trunks are fashioned round ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the blackest you can imagine; from the moment the ship foundered I saw nothing either of the boat's crew or of the men who had been left with me. For what seemed an endless time I clung to my raft, and I imagine that the tide must have carried me some distance from the scene of the wreck. As the night wore on—it seemed as if it would never pass—I grew weaker and weaker, but presently the sky became lighter, and just as I was telling myself that I might as well ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... opinion, however, was that some few escaped the desolating element by one of those means most familiar to the narrator, by ascending some mountain, on a raft or canoe, in a cave, or even by climbing a tree. No doubt some of these legends have been modified by Christian teachings; but many of them are so connected with local peculiarities and ancient religious ceremonies, that no unbiased student can assign them ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... aim that all the rafts except the one I was upon were swamped, and their luckless crews drowned, without our being able to do anything to help them. Indeed I and my two companions had all we could do to keep our own raft beyond the reach of the giants, but by dint of hard rowing we at last gained the open sea. Here we were at the mercy of the winds and waves, which tossed us to and fro all that day and night, but the next morning we found ourselves near an island, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... sunset behind the blue summits of those hills before! Flowing yet nearer to him was the noble river Rhine, winding onward to the north, and bearing on its bosom many a little skiff which scudded quickly before the evening breeze, or raft of timber which floated slowly down its stream. How often had the stranger sailed in such little barks upon its surface, or bathed and fished in its waters! At his feet lay the little cluster of cottages which formed the village of Steinheim; and amid ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... proceeding, as we already know. They had to build themselves a small raft and carry this from one crossing ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... each, fearful of the depth. But there is more reason to believe that they were conveyed across on rafts; which plan, as it must have appeared the safer before execution, is after it the more entitled to credit. They extended from the bank into the river one raft two hundred feet long and fifty broad, which, fastened higher up by several strong cables to the bank, that it might not be carried down by the stream they covered, like a bridge, with earth thrown upon it, so ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... squall on the lake and an encounter with a log raft had placed all of the young people in great peril, from which Slugger Brown and Nappy Martell had refused to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... I will have no trouble going up the Miwasa or Musquasepi or across Caribou Lake, because Martin Sellers has steamboats there, and he is independent and friendly to us. They can't stop me on the Spirit River either, because I can build a raft and bring ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Her throne is like a raft upon a sea, That shifts, and rights itself, and may go ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... productive powers of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the river bank and feeble folk were we, That Julie Claire from God-knows-where, and Barb-wire Bill and me. From shore to shore we heard the roar the heaving ice-floes make, And loud we laughed, and launched our raft, and followed in their wake. The river swept and seethed and leapt, and caught us in its stride; And on we hurled amid a world that crashed on every side. With sullen din the banks caved in; the shore-ice lanced the stream; ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... shed any more, you understand? Wery well, then; you stay in here until that there clock have marked off a good half-hour; arter that you may come out and do the best you can for yourself; there's plenty o' spars knockin' about the decks here, which you can lash together, and make a tip-top raft out of 'em, upon which you can go for a cruise on your own account; but if you shows your ugly head outside this here cabin before the half-hour's out, damn me if I won't lash your neck and heels together, and heave you into the middle of the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... together, loaded with inflammable material, ignited, and sent on their mission but these 'fire-ships' floated harmlessly past the schooners and burnt themselves out. Then for a week the Indians worked on the construction of a gigantic fire-raft, but nothing came of ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... his frail raft, or some spar of his shattered vessel, could not be more at the mercy of wave and wind, than were the two men astride of the capsized canoe. Their situation was indeed desperate. The stroke of a strong sea would ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... have lost his raft as we did, and burned the trees to get logs of the right lengths ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... October 25th, very early in the morning, the inhabitants were alarmed by a long, easy swaying of the ground, and many sought refuge outside their doors. There were no shocks, but the ground moved back and forth, swung round, and rose and fell with the easy, gentle motion of a raft upon an ocean swell. Many became dizzy, and some ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... it dinner for all this raft ye'll be after wantin', Malcolm MacDonald?" he cried in alarm. "Sure, ye know I can't give ye a bite nor sup the day, man; the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of planks on the deck, and if it were daylight I could tie them together and make a raft, which would bear me up. How I longed for daylight, for I was afraid that the vessel would sink before I could see to do what was requisite. The wind had become much fresher during the night, and the waves now dashed against the sides of ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the same strange occurrence. I was not six years old when I was waiting at the side of a deep pond, and watching my brother, four years older, construct a raft, with which he had promised to come over and take me a-sailing. He put a number of boards loosely together, and using a shingle for a paddle, worked out from shore and began making his way toward me, who was in high spirits over ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... if there were any marks made on the rocks in any part of the country, and this led to his story. Lukerenga came from the west a long time ago to the River Lualaba. He had with him a little dog. When he wanted to pass over he threw his mat on the water, and this served as a raft, and they crossed the stream. When he reached the other side there were rocks at the landing place, and the mark is still to be seen on the stone, not only of his foot, but of a stick which he cut with his hatchet, and of his dog's ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was some provision made for escape in case any of them survived the blowing up of their ship. They carried one small dingy along, and an old life-raft was left on board. A steam-launch from the New York was to follow them close in under the batteries, and lie there so long as there was a chance of picking any of them up, or until driven off. Cadets Palmer and Powell, each eager to go on this ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... fills the entire channel and we wade perforce. In many places the bottom is a quicksand, into which we sink, and it is with great difficulty that we make progress. In some places the holes are so deep that we have to swim, and our little bundles of blankets and rations are fixed to a raft made of driftwood and pushed before us. Now and then there is a little flood-plain, on which we can walk, and we cross and recross the stream and wade along the channel where the water is so swift as almost to carry us off our feet ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... you told of the brave sailor who gave up his place on the raft to the woman, and the last drop of water to the poor baby. People who make sacrifices are very much loved and admired, aren't ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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 question of a ball, drips no ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... near, also. Pa Field-Mouse has built us a small raft of dried mushrooms and sometimes we go sailing across the water. Pa and Nimble-toes are down by the pond, gathering seeds. When they come home, Nimble-toes shall show the ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... charm camp war mare mast chart damp warp share cask lard hand warm spare mask arm land ward snare past yard sand warn game scar lake waft fray lame spar dale raft play name star gale chaff gray fame garb cape aft stay tame ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... rolls over among the eddies, having voyaged, for aught I know, hundreds of miles from the wild upper sources of the river, passing down, down, between lines of forest, and sometimes a rough clearing, till here it floats by cultivated banks, and will soon pass by the village. Sometimes a long raft of boards comes along, requiring the nicest skill in navigating it through the narrow passage left by the mill-dam. Chaises and wagons occasionally go over the road, the riders all giving a passing glance at the dam, or perhaps alighting to examine it more fully, and at last departing ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... First, a Yankee uniform; second, an Englishman; third, a whole raft, a "hull lot," of New Hampshire Yankees; and yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... exhaustion, as they did for their own. The remaining officers recovered their authority, which had been disregarded, and the shattered fragment of the Aspasia reassumed their rights of discipline and obedience to the last. In a few hours, sick, disabled, and wounded were all safely landed, and the raft which had been constructed returned to the wreck, to bring on ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... feet in diameter, nine feet high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolving with the turret. This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad; but compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her iron turret would resist shot and shell, and that the thin edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark to an ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... 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 ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... raft, sheltered by a tarpaulin roof, is attached to the charming island of Croissy by two narrow foot bridges, one of which leads into the center of this aquatic establishment, while the other unites its end with a tiny islet planted with a tree and surnamed "The Flower Pot," and thence leads ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the extremities of the corpse twisting among the faggots. Here and there is a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach. And over all is the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... now, Mr. Trenholm, and we ought to get away in an hour or so. The boats they left are smashed, but I can rig a raft with hatch-covers good enough to take ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the Foreign Secretary replied. "Consuls are down another point and the Daily Comet says that you are like a drowning man clinging to the raft of your majority. Excellent cartoon of you, by the bye. You shall see it ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were hungry. The roastingears looked tempting. We pulled off our clothes and launched into the turbid stream, and were soon on the other bank. Here was the field, and here were the roastingears; but where was the raft or canoe? ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... she's game!" With difficulty he maintained his equilibrium. "See here: maybe there's a chance, if any of them's left to help with the raft. But we've got ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... widest reaches, before the stream meets its tide. I went to the eyot for a boat, and my difficulties began. The crowd of boats lashed to each other in strings ready for the hirer disconcerted me. There were so many I could not choose; the whole together looked like a broad raft. Others were hauled on the shore. Over on the eyot, a little island, there were more boats, boats launched, boats being launched, boats being carried by gentlemen in coloured flannels as carefully as mothers handle their youngest infants, boats covered in canvas ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... and had waited for the larger synthesis in silence and in vain. They had refused to hear Stallo. They had betrayed little interest in Crookes. At last their universe had been wrecked by rays, and Karl Pearson undertook to cut the wreck loose with an axe, leaving science adrift on a sensual raft in the midst of a supersensual chaos. The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger, worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... all the anarchic chaos of this day, when old institutions are crumbling or crashing into decay, when the whole civilised world seems slowly and painfully parting from its old moorings, and like some unwieldy raft, is creaking and straining at its chains as it feels the impulse of the swift current that is bearing it to an unknown sea, when venerable names cease to have power, when old truths are flouted as antiquated, and the new ones seem so long ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and continued to fight the ship. A youth of seventeen, by name Villemoes, particularly distinguished himself on this memorable day. He had volunteered to take the command of a floating battery, which was a raft, consisting merely of a number of beams nailed together, with a flooring to support the guns: it was square, with a breast-work full of port-holes, and without masts—carrying twenty-four guns, and one hundred and twenty men. With this he got under ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... abandoned. Not only are the hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams, but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an overflow ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a while through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "Land be hanged,—it's a raft!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or four big ones, and Monsieur Delouche is in command; and then there is a great fire raft, as they call it—a lot of schooners, shallops, and such like, all chained together—a formidable-looking thing, for I got one of the sailors to show it me. I suppose they are all pretty much alike, crammed with explosives and combustibles; old swivels and guns loaded up to the muzzle, grenades, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... first deemed totally uninhabited, and filled with the hope that the stranger might be able to give him some information relative to the geographical position of the isle, and even perhaps aid him in forming a raft by which they might together escape from the oasis of the Mediterranean, Wagner proceeded toward the mountains. By degrees the wondrous beauty of the scene became wilder, more imposing, but less bewitching, and when ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... slowly rowing down the stream appeared a solitary figure, Odysseus, seated upon a raft to which were ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Smoky-hill fork, which is the principal southern branch of the Kansas; forming here, by its junction with the Republican, or northern branch, the main Kansas river. Neither stream was fordable, and the necessity of making a raft, together with bad weather, detained us here until the morning of the 11th; when we resumed our journey along the Republican fork. By our observations, the junction of the streams is in lat. 39 deg. 30' 38", ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... dropped, the sun came out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored. While he had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had been busy with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine weather; he had made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together, with mighty sacks of sail cloth into which the provisions might be bundled; and as soon as the sea had become calm enough he took this raft in over the bar to the settlement ashore, and began the business of embarking ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... round by the Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. She twice sailed from England. On her first departure, which was in March last, she had on board thirty female and ten male convicts; but being obliged to put back to Spithead, to stop a leak which she sprung in her raft port, eight of her ten male convicts found means to make their escape. This was an unfortunate accident; for they had been particularly selected as men who might be useful in the colony. Of the two who did remain, the one was a brick-maker and the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... made of lumber is taken in tow by a steamer loaded with the same material and they start on a voyage down the coast, but this is a dangerous venture. If the sea becomes rough the raft may break loose from the steamer and go plunging over the waves, no one knows where. The brave captains of our coasting vessels fear nothing so much as a timber raft adrift which may crash into a vessel at any moment and against which there ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... at midnight and in midwinter, thrown from a frail raft into the deep and angry waters of a wide and rushing Western river, thus separated from his only companion through the wilderness with no aid for miles and leagues about him, buffeting the rapid current and struggling through driving cakes of ice; when we behold the stealthy savage, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... 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, and he had ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... rafts down the river. His knowledge of the different bars that were formed by the bridge piers was utilized, and often proved of great assistance to his friends, the raftsmen. One day, he boarded a raft, the captain of which was evidently a stranger to the channel in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, and Paul saw that it was certain to run aground. He told the captain and was so earnest in his manner, the course was ordered changed. Less than 500 yards further down, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of Napoleon and the stolid apathy of England brought about a quite bewildering change in Russian policy. Delicate advances having been made by the two Emperors, an interview was arranged to take place on a raft moored in the middle of the River ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... high solitude of the waters naught Was seen but here and there unfrequently A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought Weakly with one another for the grass Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged, And here and there a drowned man's head, and here And there a file of birds, that beat the air With ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... stern of the ship; while as the waves that broke over the forecastle and weather quarter of the Nancy Bell washed through the vessel, they poured like a cascade from the inclined deck, threatened to swamp the little raft as she lay tossing uneasily alongside until the mutineers could complete their ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Jacobs' cottages at Dunton Green told me, with a guarded significance of manner not uncommon in those parts, who would "get washed up anyhow," and as regards the devouring element was "fit to put a fire out." He considered that Skinner would be as safe on a raft as anywhere. The retired seafaring man added that he wished to say nothing whatever against Skinner; facts were facts. And rather than have his clothes made by Skinner, the retired seafaring man remarked he ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... downwards as the larva does, the gnat would perforce have to dive into the water. With the beautifully adapted transfer of the functional spiracles, their position is appropriately arranged for the gnat's emergence at the surface, and the empty pupal cuticle floats serving the insect as a raft. On this it rests securely and the crumpled wings have opportunity to expand and harden before the ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... 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 back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... boats of different dimensions available to take off a portion of the passengers and crew: there was time and there was opportunity for the construction of a raft to receive the remainder. But the scene of confusion began among officers and men at the crisis, when an ordinary exercise of forethought and composure would have been the preservation of all. Every man was left to shift for himself, and every man did shift for himself, in that ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... river, we know not how, perhaps in the birch canoe of some friendly Indian, perhaps on a raft, swimming the horses. They then continued their journey two hundred miles farther west, till they reached a spot far enough from neighbors and from civilization to suit the taste even of Mr. Carson. This was at the close of ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... beast gone?" he asked. "I shall be obliged to show him the door, yet, Josephine. You ought to snub him. He's worse than his pictures. Well, you've had a whole raft of folks today,—as ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... brought disturbed Captain Boggs, who commanded the garrison, as a number of men were away on a logging expedition up the river, and were not expected to raft down to the Fort for ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... there Calypso found him now, sitting on a rock with dejected mien. She sat down at his side, and said: "A truce to thy complaints, thou man of woes! Thou hast thy wish; I will let thee go with all good-will, and I will show thee how to build a broad raft, which shall bear thee across the misty deep. I will victual her with corn and wine, and clothe thee in new garments, and send a breeze behind thee to waft thee safe. Thus am I commanded by the gods, whose dwelling is in the wide ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... bathing-place, and the three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving, displaying the human form in graceful curves. The crowd was an immensely good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of how the poor people went down to a dirty inland river and had killed a hog, taken its heart; killed a dog, taken its heart; and then after putting them on a little raft, floated them off down the river to drive the cholera away. Then he told me of how the natives had, in their desperation, tied tight bands about their ankles to keep the evil spirits from coming up out of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... hold, it appeared to them that the water was rising; if so, the ship must have sprung a serious leak. With the scanty supply of provisions they had obtained, they hurried on deck to report what they had remarked. Considerable progress had been made with the raft, but without food and water it could only tend to prolong their misery. Reuben, with three other men, were therefore ordered below, to get up any more provisions which they could find. They very soon returned with the only things ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of riding in the wagons of my early youth that a great many of our best people who kept either horses or domesticated elephants, still continued to drive about in stone boats, so-called, built flat like a raft, rather than suffer the shaking up which the new-fangled wheels entailed. Griffins were also used by persons of adventurous nature, but were gradually dying into disuse, and the species being no longer bred becoming extinct, because of the great difficulty in domesticating them. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... directed the energies of the peoples of Central Italy—very much indeed against the will of their instructors—towards navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... time from there now to Northwest River, and I would only follow the shore of the lake to Northwest River, and besides no mountains to go over. I went about 2 miles and came to a river, which made me feel very bad about it, and I did not know how I could ever get across, and could not make a raft without an axe. I thought I would try any way to make a raft, if I could only get wood to make a raft with. I followed the river up. The banks were so high, and the swift current run so swift along the steep banks, and the river very deep. I could not drop a log in without it float ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... of it. 'Tis a bit of a raft, some poor chap on a spar. English too, 'twas an English shout. Well, and if he was Boney himself we're bound ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... the danger. He was not the sort to give up while there was any hope left. Surely the guard in the cabin would have departed with the others, leaving him free to act. He could smash his way out through that door, and find something on deck to construct a raft from. This was Lake Michigan, not the ocean, and not many hours would pass before he was picked up. Vessels were constantly passing, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... of the Old Buccaneer would have inherited a tenderness for the sight of blood. She should make a natural Lady Patroness of England's National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose; wander over England with a tail of shouting riff-raft; have exhibitions, join in them, display our accomplishments; issue challenges to fence, shoot, walk, run, box, in time: the creature has muscle. It's one way of crowning a freak; we follow the direction, since the deed done ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from ambush, but missed his mark, and to escape pursuit by his tribesmen, they walked steadily forward for a day and a night, until they reached the Allegheny. They tried to make the crossing on a raft, but were caught in the drifting ice and nearly drowned before they gained an island in the middle of the river. Here they remained all night, foodless and well-nigh frozen, and in the morning, finding the ice set, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... much larger, and was about attempting to land upon one, when I caught sight of a glimmering light at a distance in the centre of the stream. I directed my course towards this in preference; and I perceived as I approached that it proceeded from a raft, moored off one of the islands, upon which the crew were probably cooking their evening meal. I knew that if I approached this raft in front, I should inevitably be sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... beach guard drifted along the outer line of breakers beyond which the more adventurous bathers were diving from an anchored raft. Still farther out moving dots indicated the progress of hardier swimmers; one in particular, a girl capped with a brilliant red kerchief, seemed to be already nearer to Hamil than ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... was the reply. "A number of logs broke loose from the raft and I had a hard time to collect them. There's a heavy sea ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... water's running zwift, and we're making the boat move pretty fast. They can't zwim half as fast as we're going, and they've no horses, and the dogs can't smell on the river, even if they made a raft of the trees they've ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... place of rivers that I don't quite understand. I can't find it, and the longer I live the more I feel, Brace Leigh, that we ought to have eaten our bread when it was ready buttered, and brought the stuff away upon a raft." ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... went ashore, some jumped into the river to get away, and some fell on their knees in fear, believing that their last day had come. It is said that one old Dutchman exclaimed to his wife: "I have seen the devil coming up the river on a raft!" ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... the trouble. I saw a big door go shut in that stone floor. They're cunnin', clever beasts; I'll say that for 'em. And there was a raft of 'em; and plenty more down in hell where they live, I've ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... the idea as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating down ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... detour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White was picked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that his hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked by Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapids and his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was washed through the ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... squad along the shore of the lake to try the fishing. Another was engaged in forming a rude raft so that they could have something on which to paddle around from time to time. Still another group followed Paul and Wallace to hunt for signs of the raccoons they had heard ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... stream," murmured Jack, with half a shudder, as he looked out upon the prodigious volume rushing southward like myriads of wild horses; "it seems to me no one can swim to the other shore, nor can a raft or boat be ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... nothing more at the cottage for me, and now all I wanted was to get on board of the Splash. My skiff was destroyed, and my pursuer would not permit me to build a raft. I could have swum off to her; but the water might injure, if not ruin, the priceless document in my pocket. Tom was at my heels, and all I could do ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... 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 floating, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... their own annals of massacre. On his part, he doubted not that Ribaut was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty men, he 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. But the Adelantado, regardless of this warlike show, ordered his men to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... student seated himself near me. He 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 against the French, inciting to hatred and to war. Seeing that nothing was thought ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Know don't go on lake, cause wind blow. Know don't go up river, cause dat hard work; know come here, cause dat easy. Injin like to do what easy, and pale-face do just what Injin do. Crowsfeather make raft, pretty soon; den he come look ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... a wide tow of coal-barges, loaded clear down to the gunwales, Gave us the slack of the current, with proper formalities shouted By the hoarse-throated stern-wheeler that pushed the black barges before her, And as she passed us poured a foamy cascade from her paddles. Then, as a raft of logs, which the spread of the barges had hidden, River-wide, weltered in sight, with a sudden jump forward the pilot Dropped his whole weight on the spokes of the wheel just in time ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... information, derived through a black, that at a long distance beyond the settled districts some white men were living, and that the black had obtained a portion of their hair. The white men were described as being entirely naked, and as living upon a raft on a lake, supporting themselves by catching fish: that they had no firearms nor horses, but some great animals, which, from the description given by the native, were evidently camels. There could, therefore, be but little doubt as to this being Burke's ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... a board raft, ten or twelve feet square. Cut a round hole in the center, eight or ten inches in diameter. Lie down on the raft with the face over the hole, covering the head with a coat or shawl, to exclude the light. By this contrivance the rays of the light are concentrated directly under the raft, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... merely a hope, and we have every reason to believe that it is part of the Divine element in our nature. This conviction, like other mystical intuitions, is formless: the forms or symbols under which we represent it are the best that we can get. They are, as Plato says, "a raft" on which we may navigate strange seas of thought far out of our depth. We may use them freely, as if they were literally true, only remembering their symbolical character when they bring us into conflict with natural science, or when they tempt us to regard the world of experience as something ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... 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
... or October that I began to think of making a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after day in experimental chopping and binding ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... 1872," writes the valuable phenomenon. Unto "millers, rafters, choppers, and jammers," this Fountain of Oratory has gushed forth his "four hundred and twenty-first consecutive Presidential lecture." Imagine a possible scene upon a raft! GEORGE FRANCIS, mounted upon a whiskey-barrel, is making all the air resonant with rhetoric. The "rafters" are swearing! The "choppers" are cursing! The "jammers" are most reprehensibly blaspheming! The enormous mass ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Shi-Seneferu, and rested on the open field. In the morning I went on and overtook a man, who passed by the edge of the road. He asked of me mercy, for he feared me. By the evening I drew near to Kher-ahau (? old Cairo), and I crossed the river on a raft without a rudder. Carried over by the west wind, I passed over to the east to the quarries of Aku and the land of the goddess Herit, mistress of the red mountain (Gebel Ahmar). Then I fled on foot, northward, and reached the walls of the prince, built to repel the Sati. ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... to think that I didn't pay no attention to Mr. and Miss Parmer; I didn't see 'em at all whilst I wuz there. But I spoze she wuz busy helpin' her hired girls, it must take a sight of work to cook for such a raft of folks, and it took the most of his time ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... 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 they die cursing sleep For having sent them dreams: I ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... document in my pocket, with sealing wax but no ribbons on it, which says that I am the duly authorized representative of the Panhandle Cattle Association. I also have a book in my pocket showing every brand and the names of its owners, and there is a whole raft of them. I may go to St. Louis to act as inspector for my people when the ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Tsarevich Malandrach; "I am a merchant from India, and have come hither in a ship with my wares. Our vessel was wrecked in a storm, and I was cast upon the shore of this kingdom upon a raft, to which I ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... 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 to be drifted with the tide towards the enemy's shipping. ...
— 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
... telescope. 'A large raft!' he exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... commonly find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... her having been torpedoed by a German submarine. Only 27 of the Bayano's crew of 250 were saved. Fourteen officers, including the commander, went down with the ship. The Bayano was a new twin screw steel steamer of 5,948 tons. The survivors were afloat on a raft when rescued. The loss of the Bayano was the most serious of the submarine blockade of the British coasts up ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... They constructed a raft of a few pieces of drift-wood, and having secured their arms and provisions, commenced ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... the surface of the earth. In fact, dew formation is essentially like cloud formation, except that in the one case the water is gathered on fixed bodies, and in the other on floating objects. Each little dust raft with its cargo of condensed water tends, of course, to fall downward toward the earth's surface, and, except for the winds which may blow upward, does so fall, though with exceeding slowness. Its rate of descent may be only a few feet ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... to me like a good plan," Ree reflected aloud, when he and John were alone. "If we went to General Putnam's settlement we would still feel that we must go up the Muskingum river to reach the Indians and profitable trading, and would have to build a raft or buy a boat to carry our goods. Moreover, people here say that within a few years the country all about Pittsburg will be settled up and that land will ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... fiction; but in real life we commonly find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of water tears off large rafts of this floating water-grass, which accumulate in any favourable locality. The difficulty of clearing a passage is extreme. After cutting out a large mass with swords, a rope is made fast, and the raft is towed out by hauling with thirty or forty men until it is detached and floated down the stream. Yesterday I cut a narrow channel from above stream in the hope that the rush of water would loosen ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... about him. The Nina seemed to quiver, packed and dark with men. His deep voice went on, and they could hear him, but he did not seem to know that they were there. "As though upon a raft, here a thousand leagues in Ocean-Sea! Yet wilt Thou care for thy Good News. I will come to Spain, and I will tell it. Chosen, and almost by very name pointed out in Thy Book! The first Christian shore that I touch I will walk barefoot ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... various motives he was to employ; the motive of aspiration, or the woman motive, was repeated constantly on the horns during the building of the raft. St. Clare sang the motive. It was with this motive that he began the prelude. Then came two variations on the motive, and then the motive of jealousy. St. Clare was eager to explain the combinations of instruments he intended to ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... and the news spread consternation in every Northern port. On the very next morning there came into the mouth of the James the rival product of the Northern Navy Department and of the Swedish engineer Ericsson's invention. She was compared to a "cheesebox on a raft"; she was named the Monitor, and was the parent of a type of vessel so called which has been heard of much more recently. The Merrimac and the Monitor forthwith fought a three hours' duel; then each ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... started slowly down stream, keeping an eye out for signs. In less than an hour I struck a dim log road which led to the river and there was a "landing," with the usual debris of skids, loose bark, chocks and some pieces of broken boards. It did not take long to construct an efficient log raft from the dry skids, and as I drifted placidly down the deep, wild river, munching the last bit of Johnnycake, I inwardly swore that my next wilderness cruise ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... 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 against the pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet of water, but I fortunately ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... of the whip to the horse on his right, the driver sat down sideways on the right edge of the seat, so that the reins hung over that side, and with evident desire of showing off, he drove quickly down to the river, which had to be crossed by a ferry. The raft was coming towards them, and had reached the middle of the river. About twenty carts were waiting to cross. Nekhludoff had not long to wait. The raft, which had been pulled far up the stream, quickly approached the landing, carried by the swift ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... thickly upon its surface; here in single logs, there in raft-like clusters. To run a boat against one of these is attended with danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy bumping against the bows shakes the boat, and startles the equanimity of the less experienced ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... then offered 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
... he and Johnnie Jones, dressed in their bathing suits, went in the water. The little boy considered bathing great fun as long as he remained close to shore where the water was shallow but he did not like it so well when Father carried him out to the raft, where the water was so deep that it reached the shoulders of the grown people ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... 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 against the table ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... delighted to find that the enemy had not stopped to contest our crossing further at the bridge, which he had burned. The troops were set to work at once to construct a bridge across the South Fork of the Bayou Pierre. At this time the water was high and the current rapid. What might be called a raft-bridge was soon constructed from material obtained from wooden buildings, stables, fences, etc., which sufficed for carrying the whole army over safely. Colonel J. H. Wilson, a member of my staff, planned and superintended the construction of this bridge, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Tilsit. Peace had become necessary for the Russians; for the Prussians it had long been so. Napoleon resolved on negotiating for himself. In response to the request for an armistice, he proposed an interview, with the Emperor Alexander. It was in the middle of the Niemen, upon a raft constructed for this purpose, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... as the darkness fell, I passed several islands much larger, and was about attempting to land upon one, when I caught sight of a glimmering light at a distance in the centre of the stream. I directed my course towards this in preference; and I perceived as I approached that it proceeded from a raft, moored off one of the islands, upon which the crew were probably cooking their evening meal. I knew that if I approached this raft in front, I should inevitably be sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too wide a berth, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... human breathing form of far, O! far more worth than subtlest imagery of sculptured stone; and the daily, nay, hourly decrease visible in our numbers, visited the heart with sickening misery. This summer extinguished our hopes, the vessel of society was wrecked, and the shattered raft, which carried the few survivors over the sea of misery, was riven and tempest tost. Man existed by twos and threes; man, the individual who might sleep, and wake, and perform the animal functions; but man, in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... ashore after a long battle with the sea, following his attempt to escape on a raft from Calypso's island. He has been saved by the intervention of the goddess Athene, who often protects distressed heroes. When Book VI opens, he is sleeping in a secluded nook under an olive tree. (For Odysseus's ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... business over again. We drifted, of course, into the same set; for already we had become necessary to each other. We set the pace of that set—were its apparent leaders. But in truth we were alone—you and I—as utterly alone as two shipwrecked men on a raft. The others were shadows to us: we followed their code because we had to be gentlemen, but we did not understand it in the least. For, after all, the roots of that code lay in the breeding and tradition of honour, with which we had no concern. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is successfully carried out. The wanderers then make a raft on which they embark on a river which plunges into a cavern in the heart of a mountain; and after a time they emerge in the country of Arimaspia inhabited by the Cyclopes; and so on. The Gryphon story also appears in the romance ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... deal about what happened on the raft last night. I could not sleep for thinking of it; and then, when I went to sleep, I dreamed—dreamed that my mother was standing by me all in white. She was smiling down at me, and held out her arms to me. I tried to get to her, and in trying to get to her ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... only nine hundred samples of hen fruit in town, and one store had a corner on them. I went down to buy some. Lord! how I wanted them eggs. I kept thinking how I'd have them done, shipwrecked, two on a raft or sunny side up, when who should come along but Bill. He sees what I want, and quick as a flash what does he do but buy up the whole bunch at a dollar apiece! 'Now,' says he to me, 'if you want eggs for breakfast just ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to the inner room, where was a large-sized figure of Buddha, with the attendant figures at each side called his sons, Buddhavista, meaning "future Buddhas." Driving on, we came to another missing bridge. Here we were taken across on a rude raft, the carriage following, and then the horses. As we drew near Boro Boedor, a feeling of awe came over us, for we were to behold a temple which for centuries had been buried from the sight of man. Indeed, until the debris of time was removed, after English occupation in 1811, not ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... a Jewish traveller died, the physicians took half his property. Petachiah saw through the real danger that threatened him, so he escaped from the perilous ministrations of the royal doctors, had himself carried across the Tigris on a raft, and soon recovered. Clearly, it was imprudent of a Jewish traveller to excite the rapacity of kings or bandits by wearing rich dresses. But it was also desirable for the Jew, if he could, to evade recognition as such altogether. Jewish opinion was very sensible ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... boys got the measles. The raft on which one of them, Private Day, was being transported, got smashed on the rocks and he was thrown into the water. He took cold and died the next day. His comrades took his body with them and did not bury it until they finally ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... dexterously tie them into bundles, and truss these together by means of spears. They had no canoes, for the very children were amphibious, living, so it seemed, as much in the water as out of it. When the raft was completed, I was invited to embark. My original friend, who had twisted a tow-rope, took this between his teeth, and led the way. Others swam behind and beside me to push and to pull. The force of the water was terrific; but ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... are welcome as a green oasis in a sandy desert. A cool and healthy mountain climate gives unwonted zest for the lovely excursions of which Garoet is the centre. From the little lake Setoe Bajendit, a covered raft plies to a cupola-crowned hill, facing a noble panorama of volcanic peaks the Soendanese desa of basket-work huts, through which we pass, presents a curious spectacle, with the village street lined on either side by rows of kneeling children, clad in Dame Nature's brown suit alone; each little ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... sir," was the reply. "A number of logs broke loose from the raft and I had a hard time to collect them. There's a heavy ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... rollers, not so hard as might have been anticipated. Ben and Frank managed the placing of the rollers, which were carried in front of the logs as fast as its hinder end cleared some of them. In this manner their "raft," if such it could be called, was ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of 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 ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... 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 bank. When a wagon had been taken ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... thee; the lamps of the town singe thy wings. small Moth! Each shall seem all the world to thee, each shall seem as thy grave! Thy heart is a feather blown from one mouth to the other. But be not afraid! For the life of a man is for all loves in turn. 'Tis a little raft moored, then sailing out into the blue; a tune caught in a hush, then whispering on; a new-born babe, half courage and half sleep. There is a hidden rhythm. Change. Quietude. Chance. Certainty. The One. The Many. Burn on—thou pretty flame, trying to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the wind blew high and chill, the sea increased in fury, and the ship groaned and shuddered at each fresh onslaught. Fowler, however, was hard at work constructing a raft, ready for launching at dawn, and his men, exhausted as they were, bore themselves as do most British seamen in the hour of death ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... liquefied, realizing the most beautiful effects of painting—quadrigae, warriors, arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture—La Meduse, by Gericault. It is a shipwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean. I gazed until all surrounding objects disappeared, and I was alone upon the wide Atlantic. Those transparent emerald waves are no fiction; they leap madly, hungering for their prey. That distended sail is ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... floated on. The baby's cradle was alone on the waste of waters; the tree approached slowly and surely. The cradle tossed up and down, and then—the forked branches caught and held it firmly just above the water-line. The tree became a raft. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and the boat I was in was the hindmost 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 down and go under first. As soon as we struck, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... wallowed just before him, the helpless body of the bowhead whale, the killers darting in a mad melee for its head. Then a figure was literally hurled upon the slippery mass of the mammal, its gray belly plain in the welter, a living raft against which the waves ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... tinged yellow about two feet across alone combated the white fields and the black trees .... At six o'clock a man's figure carrying a lantern crossed the field .... A raft of twig stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert .... A load of snow slipped and fell from a fir branch .... Later there was a mournful cry .... A motor car came along the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... stood—for an instant in dumb amaze—balancing himself upon his rocking raft with the pole he had been using. To attempt to swim ashore would have been useless. He was a clumsy swimmer at best; and the cold, rushing waters and floating ice cakes ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... for all this raft ye'll be after wantin', Malcolm MacDonald?" he cried in alarm. "Sure, ye know I can't give ye a bite nor sup the day, man; the byes ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... ice, arrested in its course, brought up, while the swift running current overflowed it. The four were ankle deep in water. But the rope held. Slowly, but surely, the ice raft yielded to the strain. It came in, out of the rush of the current, into quieter water. It touched the shore—and the yawning brink of the dam was only a ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and, rushing forward to the door of Arria's deck-house, found her and the slave-girl within it, unharmed. The two were crying with fear, and he bade them dress quickly and await his orders. Then he took command. Soon a raft and small boats were ready alongside the wreck. Within half an hour Appius and the two maidens and part of ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... believe Columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a while through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "Land be hanged,—it's a raft!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rode at the head of the procession, his proud little head crowned with a wreath of fire-tree blooms, the corners of his raft decorated with sprigs of the flaming buds. Cautiously they poled down the swift stream, avoiding treacherous logs and snapping crocodiles. Piang chuckled with delight as they stole along, for the enemy would not discover the ruse ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... 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
... wind at S.W., with heavy rains; at six this morning went under sail, but could make no hand of it, therefore were obliged to put back again: As soon as we came to an anchor, the boatswain employed himself in making a raft to get ashore with; this raft was made with oars and water barrels; when it was made, and over the side, it would carry three men, but it was no sooner put off from the vessel's side but it canted, and obliged the people to swim for their lives; the boatswain got hold of the raft, and with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... and gave themselves up to carousing. Amid their jollity, about midnight, the ship struck with such violence that she immediately filled and sank. They had only a small boat, to which they attached a hastily-constructed raft to be towed along with it; room, however, was made for only twenty-six, while the crew exceeded fifty. In the wild and desperate struggle for existence that ensued May fortunately got into the boat. They had to beat about nearly all the next day, dragging ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... entailed the utmost caution and watchfulness in the neighbourhood of the lake. Unfortunately, we nearly succeeded in drowning some young friends of ours, whom we persuaded to accompany us in an attack on the pirates' stronghold. We embarked on a raft used for cutting weeds, but no sooner had we shoved off than the raft at once, most inconsiderately, sank to the bottom of the lake with us. Being Christmas time, the water was not over-warm, and we had some difficulty ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... 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 ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by along comes part of a log raft—nine logs fast together. We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. Nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... valley of Raft River, which is tributary to the Snake River, and finally empties into the Columbia, we came to a deep, ditch-like crack in the earth, partly filled with water and soft mud. It was about a rod in width, but ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... do believe you're one of those awful people who compromise. You're always right in the middle of the raft." ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... sprees. They had talked big, indeed, and made at first a show of resistance; but the general body of the exiles had authorised a powerful force of young and middle-aged men to take them into custody, and convey them on a raft, constructed for the purpose, to an island some ten miles distant. Here the rioters were left with a sufficient supply of provisions; a warning being given them that, should they attempt to return to Comoro, they would be put in irons, and kept in custody till they could be brought ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... men each. The pickled and dried roe of this fish is shipped to Wilmington and to Cincinnati. Wild-fowls abound, and the shooting is excellent. The fishermen say flocks of ducks seven miles in length have been seen on the waters of Bogue Sound. Canvas-backs are called "raft-ducks" here, and they sell from twelve to twenty cents each. Wild geese bring ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... trout was the first thing in order. On a rude raft of log which we found moored at the shore, and which with two aboard shipped about a food of water, we floated out and wet our first fly in Thomas's Lake; but the trout refused to jump, and to be frank, not more than a dozen and a half were caught during our stay. Only ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Feb. 1824, when all hands were set to work to construct a raft out of the spare spars, upon which to convey ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... far cry from the clash of armies to the romance of a honeymoon spent on a raft de luxe drifting lazily down a river of Burma. That is the theme of Love's Legend (CONSTABLE), by Mr. FIELDING HALL, author of The Soul of a People. But there may be a war of sex with sex scarcely less tragic than the wars of men with men (or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... arrived at Mosul on the 20th of March, 1850, going by way of Beirut, Aleppo, Aintab, Oorfa, and Diarbekir; from this last place he floated down the Tigris on a raft supported by inflated goat-skins, in less than four days to his new home. He describes the river as breaking through between bold precipices, and scenery delightfully and unexpectedly romantic. Mr. Schneider was his travelling companion from ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... "We made a raft and crossed the river, but the enemy's matchlock men peppered us so severely that we lost thirty English and fifty Sepoys in getting over. The enemy's entrenchment was not finished, but in front of it was a deep rivulet, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... sped the woodman's team, And deepest sunk the ploughman's share, And pushed the laden raft astream, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... believer in the productive powers of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... build on Trees. Ducks whistling, at Sapona. Ducks scarlet-eye at Esaw. Blue-wings. Widgeon. Teal, two sorts. Shovelers. Whistlers. Black Flusterers, or bald Coot. Turkeys wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... read this Interesting Narrative without being deeply affected by the perils and misfortunes to which the small remnant of persons, who were saved from this deplorable Shipwreck, were exposed. Of one hundred and fifty persons embarked upon the raft, and left to their fate, only fifteen remained alive thirteen days afterwards; but of these fifteen, so miraculously saved, life constituted the sole possession, being literally stripped of every thing. At Paris, some benevolent individuals have recently opened a subscription for their relief. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' he exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat and ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... whole section of the atoll near where we were standing was movable! Kippy jumped up and down on it and it rocked like a raft. At the edges I saw that it was lashed to the near-by trees with vines! Cheap? You could have bought me for a bad clam. As I thought of the days we had sweated over those damned cocoanuts, of Triplett's peril, of the danger to the yawl, while our very families looked on ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... men begin to gather together the pieces of drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he exclaims with evident joy, in his native French "Voila les vaisseaux!" or words to that effect, for he has descried two ships entering the bay from the Gulf. The ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... pig what would serve the chickens, in making Jenny go short to save to-day's baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim's bowl of porridge—his appetite being a burden on her estate which she often declared would break her—she had more than once given a hundred pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must otherwise have sunk. In fact, she was one of those people who are small with the small things of life and great with the great—who will grudge a daily dole of a few threshed-out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... on land. In the country, back a little from the coast, we have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to the bravery of a seaman who superintended the making of a raft after the ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted every thing to his frail craft, which, alas! was all of our brave vessel that ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... middle of the nineteenth century. Huckleberry Finn, the son of a drunkard, and the friend of Tom Sawyer, is the hero of the book. The reader becomes deeply interested in the fortunes of Jim, a runaway slave, who accompanies Huck on a raft down the river, and who is almost hourly in danger of being caught and returned or again enslaved ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... keep the island in sight. It was almost daylight the next morning when at length they found themselves driving in towards the rocks. With great difficulty they kept off, and coasted round to the very bay where Mr Martin had landed. Finding, however, that they could not get in their frail raft, they had after all, having repossessed themselves of their shirts, to swim on shore, Mr Oliver towing young Bramston, who was supported on a spar. They were almost exhausted when they landed, but, finding a shady place under ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... they reached it; but the weather was fine, there was a bright moon at night, and they determined to start back at once. They bought three thousand feet of boards, with which they formed a raft. Soon after the sun rose they reached the landing ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a very short time the mass would be swept away. Upon the timbers thus exposed were three little pups scarce two months old, yelping most dismally as they crouched together, or crawled to the edge of their raft; while on the floor of the ruin from which this side had been torn away, was their poor mother, whose fearful howl had attracted us thither, and who was running from side to side of the shattered hut as ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... walked and drove, in an endless stream, along the great highroads which ran along either bank. He carefully avoided every boat that passed him, from the gilded barge of the wealthy landlord or merchant, to the tiny raft buoyed up with empty jars, which was floating down to be sold at some market in the Delta. Here and there he met and hailed a crew of monks, drawing their nets in a quiet bay, or passing along the great watery highway from monastery to monastery: but all the news he received from them was, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... by report of Waldo Emerson, says "that 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, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable; and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may go to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer competitively ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... you stay here with a sick man on your hands and newspaper men taking the house by storm at all hours of the day. Come now, will you go? Mr. Ferriss is in no danger, and you will do him more harm by staying than by going. So long as you remain here you will have this raft of people in the rooms at all hours. Deny yourself! Keep them out! Keep out the American reporter when he goes gunning for a returned explorer! Do you think this," and he pointed again to the crowd in the anteroom, "is ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... all stood before him, actually caught a flounder with his own hand, whereat he screamed loud enough to scare all the folks on Eagle Island. We have also been to Maquoit. We have visited the old pond, and, if I mistake not, the relics of your old raft yet float there; at all events, one or two fragments of a raft ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... a raft of ethical tracts of the Middle Kingdom, all more or less repetitions of Lao-tsze's insistence on heaven's quiet way, I ignored the sounding of the telephone; but its continuous bur—I had had the bell removed—triumphed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... horizon of observation. He uses largely, but always humorously, the western style of exaggeration; as, for example, when he makes one of his reformers tell a steamboat captain that if he will stop drinking whiskey, he will make a reputation, and "be as famous as the Red River raft or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the sort west of the Alleghanies." He describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same color, the color ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... quantity of tba varying from one-half to two sacksful is put into a dugout and brought to the spot selected. Everybody comes provided with a fish spear, fishing bow, bolo, boat or raft, and conical traps[60] made for the occasion. The tba is then pounded as it lies in the boat, a little water being added. This process occupies the greater part of an hour, and is a very animated one, everybody being in high hopes of ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Indians of Terra Firma believe, that when the great deluge took place, one man, with his wife and children, escaped in a canoe; and the Indians of the North American lakes hold, that the father of all their tribes being warned in a dream that a flood was coming, built a raft, on which he preserved his family, and pairs of all the animals, and which drifted about for many months, until at length a new earth was made for their reception by the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... blackest you can imagine; from the moment the ship foundered I saw nothing either of the boat's crew or of the men who had been left with me. For what seemed an endless time I clung to my raft, and I imagine that the tide must have carried me some distance from the scene of the wreck. As the night wore on—it seemed as if it would never pass—I grew weaker and weaker, but presently the sky became lighter, and just as I was telling ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... softly. "I'll do all I can to get us off this island. Perhaps we can build a raft, and set out. If we stay here there is no telling what will happen, if that scientist's theory is correct. But there is our camp, just ahead. You will be more comfortable, at least for a ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... up till he could brace his feet, he took steady aim at the beast's wild and bloodshot eye. It was a perfect shot. The walrus, crumpling, began to sink into the water. Seeing this, Bruce clung to the cake until the tusk slipped off. In another moment the uncertain raft ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... Tom thought might once have been a boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning. Close by it was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the rushing water. One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being carried downstream in ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the words before the whole group rushed to the ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd, if their scheme ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... not kill him because of his station, deprives him who takes it of his reason, sometimes for ever and sometimes for a year or more. After this, said Kari, he remembered little or nothing, save long travellings in boats and through forests, and then again upon a raft or boat on which he was driven alone, for many, many days, drinking a jar of water which he had with him, and eating some dried flesh and with it a marvellous drug of his people, some of which remained to him in the leathern ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... crawled down to the river bank and feeble folk were we, That Julie Claire from God-knows-where, and Barb-wire Bill and me. From shore to shore we heard the roar the heaving ice-floes make, And loud we laughed, and launched our raft, and followed in their wake. The river swept and seethed and leapt, and caught us in its stride; And on we hurled amid a world that crashed on every side. With sullen din the banks caved in; the shore-ice lanced the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Forks that Colter and Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... might bring us together! Bertha was on that vessel, trusting, perhaps, entirely to me: and what could I do if some breeze did not bring us together? I looked about for something on which I might float to her; but if I made a raft I was not sure that I could steer or propel it, and I might float away and become a third derelict. Once I thought of boldly springing into the water, and swimming to her; but the distance was considerable, my swimming powers were only moderate, and there might be sharks. The ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the old 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 better shore ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... especially for her and lit with torches on either side. She had no sooner stepped upon the bridge than a new spectacle was provided, for as soon as the music gave signal that she was so far advanced, a raft on the lake, disposed as to resemble a small floating island, illuminated by a great variety of torches, and surrounded by floating pageants formed to represent sea-horses, on which sat Tritons, Nereids, and other fabulous deities of the seas and rivers, made its appearance upon the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... together into Appalachicola Bay, where, some of us remembered, a 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 ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was all aglow; Far out the mad Sea went; Beyond the raft, like one gone daft; (I saw them, and I know) While radiant and well content ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... from laying her keel, 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 British had scarcely a boat upon the waters. No time was now lost in seeking the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... 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 expulsion of ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... were seated on the extreme link of the raft, extending far into the smooth expanse of the river. Boards were spread out on the raft and in the centre stood a crudely constructed table; empty bottles, provision baskets, candy-wrappers and orange peels were scattered about everywhere. In the corner of the raft was ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... purchased from the natives. permited Windsor and McNeal to go to the indian village. Sergt. Ordway and Goodrich returned this morning with a good store of roots and bread. about noon 2 indian men came down the river on a raft and continued at our camp about 3 hours and returned to their village. we.sent out Shannon and Colter to hunt towards the mountains. we sent Sergt. Pryor down to the entrance of Collins's Creek to examine the country and look out for a good position for an encampment ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... his needs. He describes in a column the happy scenes in the cabin before the calamity is feared. He depicts the stern face of the commander as he stands, pistols in hand, to keep the passengers from the boats. The full moon rises. The wind abates. A raft is constructed at a cost of one column and a half of out and out plagiarism. Corkey, Lockwin and forty wood-choppers are saved on the raft. The captain goes down on his ship, ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... to some of our friends in Washington," said old Frisby, whose temper had been soured probably by a neglect to recognize his long services; "and most of them I should by all means insist on sending to the Moon. Every month I would ram a whole raft of them into the Columbiad, with a charge under them strong enough to blow them all to the—But—Hey!—what in ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... that burning sun, Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many scores of tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success, and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap, or ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Drury Lane. Anyone, moreover, who reads any authentic account of actual adventures will perceive at once that those of the Odyssey are the creation of one who has had no history. Ulysses has to make a raft; he makes it about as broad as they generally make a good big ship, but we do not seem to have been at the pains to measure ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... sort of raft used in the East Indies, Brazils, and elsewhere: those of the island of Ceylon, like those of Madras and other parts of that coast, are formed of three logs; the timber preferred for their construction is the Dup wood, or Cherne-Maram, the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... war mare mast chart damp warp share cask lard hand warm spare mask arm land ward snare past yard sand warn game scar lake waft fray lame spar dale raft play name star gale chaff gray fame garb cape aft stay tame barb shame ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... bullet from some thicket, for pure love of slaughter. For a time it was a favorite ruse of hostiles, who had secured a white captive, to send him alone to the river's edge, under threat of torture, there to plead with outstretched hands for aid from the passing raft. But woe to the mariner who was moved by the appeal, for back of the unfortunate, hidden in the bushes, lay ambushed savages, ready to leap upon any who came ashore on the errand of mercy, and in the end neither victim nor decoy escaped the fullest infliction of redskin barbarity. There ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... In the country, back a little from the coast, we have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to the bravery of a seaman who superintended the making of a raft after the ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted every thing to his frail ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons after them, is not uncommon. For example, most of the pagan tribes on the coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic disease as follows. They carve one or more rough human images from the pith of the sago palm and place them on a small raft or boat or full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other food. The boat is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made from its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... anything to try and save his life, my man? Life-preservers, raft, or anything of ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... and, about twelve o'clock, he and Johnnie Jones, dressed in their bathing suits, went in the water. The little boy considered bathing great fun as long as he remained close to shore where the water was shallow but he did not like it so well when Father carried him out to the raft, where the water was so deep that it reached the shoulders of the ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... States Navy, was another leader. He was crossing the Atlantic in the big American transport, President Lincoln, when it was torpedoed by the submarine U-90, on May 31, 1918. He went down with the ship, but came to the surface again and crawled up on a raft where he stayed until one of the lifeboats came by and the men took him off. But the boat had gone but a short distance, when the guilty submarine pushed its nose up through the surface of the water near ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... their nearest cache, and nearly three hundred from the nearest settlement, already greatly used up, needing rest and plenty of food; in a country that forbade any extended tramping inland to cut off corners, on a river in most places either too rough for a raft or with too sluggish a current to make rafting pay; and above all, left with a stock of food comprising one quart of good rice, brought back with them, three quarts of mixed meal, burnt flour and burnt rice, a little tea, one can of badly ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... me!" said the fox. "Come up to the surface of the water and form a raft that will reach from this island to the mainland. Then I can walk over all of you, and I shall be ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... complained, "the river's running ice the size of a raft, and the wind's a-blowing ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Gould tells us, is a raft of weeds and aquatic plants carefully heaped together in a rounded form. The young ones have delicate rose-coloured bills and harlequin-like markings on the body, and rosy-white breasts. "So active and truly aquatic is the dabchick, even ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Indians came on a raft and were taken on board, where they were entertained and given something to eat. They learned how to ask ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... a little way out of their cavern; no further than the 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 blossomed, and the celandine ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... 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, so sweet, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... your 'Robinson Crusoe' and your 'Swiss Family Robinson' and you will know. We must make a kind of raft, so that we can go back and forth to the houseboat without getting wet every time we ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... already formed into a running bowline knot, over the spars as they were swept past the side of the Susan Jane, while he fastened the other end fast in-board, slackening out the line gradually, so as not to bring it up too tight all at once and so jerk the man off the frail raft. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "I desire to tell you everything! I will tell you all, Euan! I ran back along the trail, meeting the boat-guard, batt-men, and the sick horses all along the way to Tioga, where they took me over on a raft of logs.... I paid them three hard shillings. Then Colonel Shreve heard of what I had been about, and sent a soldier after me, but I avoided the fort, Euan, and went boldly up through the deserted camps until ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... about attempting to land upon one, when I caught sight of a glimmering light at a distance in the centre of the stream. I directed my course towards this in preference; and I perceived as I approached that it proceeded from a raft, moored off one of the islands, upon which the crew were probably cooking their evening meal. I knew that if I approached this raft in front, I should inevitably be sucked under, and never see the light again; at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... yet unhealed wounds, could not swim; Wallace therefore tore up the benches of the rowers, and binding them into the form of a small raft, made it the vehicle for the earl and countess, with her two maids and the child. While the men were towing it, and buffeting with it through the breakers, he too threw himself into the sea to swim by its side, and be in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the natives of the Fly River Delta. It is a picturesque sight to see the large lakatois, or trading canoes, creeping along in the shadow of the palm-fringed shores under the great wall of the mountains, the lakatoi consisting of a raft composed of six or more canoes lashed together side by side, and covered by a platform which bears a thatched hut serving to house the sailors and their wares. The craft is propelled by graceful crescent-shaped lateen sails of pandanus matting and steered by sweeps from the stern. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... 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
... twel'th day o' March, wi' another schooner in company,—the Sparrow. There was a many of us was n' too good, but we thowt wrong of 'e's takun the Lord's Day to 'e'sself. Wull, Sir, afore I comed 'ome, I was in a great desert country, an' floated on sea wi' a monstrous great raft that no man never made, creakun an' crashun an' groanun an' tumblun an' wastun an' goun to pieces, an' no man on her but me, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... to do as he had done in preceding years. Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito all the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to start, for the waters, increased by the floods of the upper basin, would gradually and gradually subside ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... installed himself here, and then began the hard work. He tore up the deck, and with the help of a crane drew up one sack after the other. They were first piled near the cabin, that the water might drain away; then they were transferred to a raft, and taken ashore: there straw mats were laid, on which the grain was shaken and spread out. Timar bargained meanwhile with the millers for immediate grinding of the corn. The weather was favorable, there was a strong wind, and the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... 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 against the pole, that it jerked me out ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... groan I dropped back upon my raft and watched the islands slipping by, while over my feet the southern sky darkened to purple. There was no help there, but glancing round away on the left and a few furlongs from me, I noticed on the surface ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... ground under his feet, and came noiselessly abreast of the man on his raft of cedar timbers. He could almost hear his breathing. And very faintly he could see in the vast gloom a shadow—a shadow that moved slowly against the background of a still ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... and provisions with very little difficulty, and embarked all our party, also without any difficulty whatever. In obedience to Lancelot's resolution, which he had privately communicated to me beforehand, we divided our forces into two parties. That is to say, half of the sailors were set on each raft, and with each raft half of our armed men; for though we had little or no apprehension now that there would be any trouble with the sailors, we still deemed it best to let them see very plainly that we were and meant to be the masters. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... asked if there were any marks made on the rocks in any part of the country, and this led to his story. Lukerenga came from the west a long time ago to the River Lualaba. He had with him a little dog. When he wanted to pass over he threw his mat on the water, and this served as a raft, and they crossed the stream. When he reached the other side there were rocks at the landing place, and the mark is still to be seen on the stone, not only of his foot, but of a stick which he cut with his hatchet, and of his dog's ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... reel-wagons. I was just wondering what we'd better do to kill time till then. I hain't got a thing to buy that you hain't got in your stock at home, and I hain't a person to go in and nose about and have clerks pull down a whole raft of bolts and boxes without paying for the trouble. You see, I reckon it ain't later 'n nine ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... to saying, with his little eyes widened to excite wonder, "this five year! In p'int o' looks," says he, smirking, vain as you please, "I'm t' windward o' most o' the bullies when I trims my beard. Ah, lad, they's a raft o' bar-maids an' water-side widows would wed ol' Nicholas Top. An' why? 'Tain't money, God knows! for Nicholas Top haves none. Nar a dollar that a lone water-side widow could nose out! An' if 'tisn't money," ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Buenos Ayres in good season, and I noted where the Peveril was docked. We moored outside a raft of small sailing crafts and had the dickens of a time taking Ben Gibson ashore on his mattress. A couple of blacks helped us, and after sending in a telephone message to the hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... the Tsarevich Malandrach; "I am a merchant from India, and have come hither in a ship with my wares. Our vessel was wrecked in a storm, and I was cast upon the shore of this kingdom upon a raft, to which ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... till they took to the stream. They had tied the bell-wether to the axle, and, as I started, men and dog drove the sheep after me. The oxen wallowed in the deep water, and our sheep, after some hesitation, began to swim. The big cart floated like a raft part of the way, and we landed with no great difficulty. Farther on, the road became nothing better than a rude trail, where, frequently, we had to stop and chop through heavy logs and roll them away. On a steep hillside the oxen fell, breaking the tongue, and the cart tipped sidewise ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... speak at once, and have a quarrel over the honor; but looks now like I might have to do the grand wading act myself, holding up my clothes-bag and blanket, to keep from getting the same more soaked than they are now. If we could only make a raft like old Robinson Crusoe did, it would be fine. Can we get this cabin roof off, and would it float, do you ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... chief personages of the kingdom, and a multitude of priests, both Buddhist and Brahmin, accompanied by troops of players and musicians, come out to meet him, and conduct him with all the honors to his stable-palace. A great number of cords and ropes of all qualities and lengths are attached to the raft, those in the centre being of fine silk (figuratively, "spun from a spider's web"). These are for the king and his noble retinue, who with their own hands make them fast to their gilded barges; the rest ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... graphical 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 the explanation of the whole was suggested at once: graphical projections ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... this way, managing to keep the Indians at a safe distance with our guns, until the slough made a junction with the main Platte River. From there down, we found the river at times quite deep; and in order to carry the wounded man along with us, we constructed a raft of poles for his accommodation, and in ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... further at the bridge, which he had burned. The troops were set to work at once to construct a bridge across the South Fork of the Bayou Pierre. At this time the water was high and the current rapid. What might be called a raft-bridge was soon constructed from material obtained from wooden buildings, stables, fences, etc., which sufficed for carrying the whole army over safely. Colonel J. H. Wilson, a member of my staff, planned and superintended the construction of this bridge, going into the water and working ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... in its course, brought up, while the swift running current overflowed it. The four were ankle deep in water. But the rope held. Slowly, but surely, the ice raft yielded to the strain. It came in, out of the rush of the current, into quieter water. It touched the shore—and the yawning brink of the dam was only a ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... his documents and retired to his room, hoping they would forget all about him. He had luncheon there. About four o'clock he looked out of the window toward the beach. They were in bathing; half a dozen young men and women. The diving-raft bobbed up and down. Only yesterday she had tried to teach him how to swim. After all, he was only a bally haberdasher's clerk; he would never be anything more ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of the peoples of Central Italy—very much indeed against the will of their instructors—towards navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their Italian names ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Vishnu, Father Boushet mentions an Indian tradition, concerning a flood which covered the whole earth, when Vishnu made a raft, and, being turned into a fish, steered it with his tail. Vishnu, like Dagon, was represented under the figure of a ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the work of unloading the wreck. There was an inlet or mouth of a creek not far from the place where they first landed, and, constructing a raft on the wreck and loading it with arms, provisions, ammunition and tools, they took advantage of the tide to float it in to shore. This was repeated daily for weeks. Clothing, sails, provisions of all kinds, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... though his soul shouted something hidden round the corner of his mind, it would not let his lips articulate the desperate cry. He stared at the passing moment as a castaway, gagged, and bound to a raft of pirates, might wake from a delirious sleep, stare dumbly up at the steep side of a galleon that rides slowly, and know that with it rides away his chance of life because he cannot speak. Love of this girl meant infinite joy ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... by pleading 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 ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... tie all their canoes together into one big raft. They obeyed him there, too, with ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Greg get some of the fellows and rush down as many ties as you can from that pile by the railroad tracks. Dalzell, you and Harry get down at the edge of send him your way. Make a raft by laying four ties side by side, and lash the ends. Do it as quick as a flash. I'll be ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... fight. On Sunday morning, March 9, the Merrimac renewed her attack upon the Minnesota, and was completely surprised by the appearance of a small vessel which, in the expressive description of the day, resembled a cheese- box on a raft. She had arrived from New York at the close of the first day's fight. From her turret began a furious cannonade which not only diverted the attack from the Minnesota but after a ferocious contest of many hours ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Kentucky, February 12, 1809; died in Washington, April 15, 1865. His father was unable to read or write, and his own education consisted of one-year's schooling. When he was eight years old his father moved to Indiana, the family floating down the Ohio on a raft. When nineteen years of age, the future President hired out as a hand on a flat-boat at $10 per month, and made a trip to New Orleans. On his return he accompanied the family to Illinois, driving the cattle on the journey. Having reached their destination he ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... answered, looking more like himself every moment. By this only I learned that it was a steamer. I had till then supposed they had been starving in boats or on a raft—or perhaps ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... a tennis ball, a broom stick and four rafts— one large and three small. The batsman and catcher stand on the big raft. On a small raft, ten yards away, stands the pitcher and the other two rafts are placed at easy swimming distance for bases. In striking, everything counts—bunt, swat or foul tip. The moment bat and ball come in contact the batsman starts for first base. There are five men on a side. Lots of fun. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... banging her stick up and down in the water so the ship would rock more violently. "They've got to be wrecked, you know," she added. "I'll drive them on that rock, then you can grab them before they sink and get them on the raft." ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... and drivers at fabulous wages. "Oh, the lake is your highway," replied the would-be seller, airily; "you have nothing to do but lash your felled trees together, as they do in the mahogany-growing countries, and set them afloat on the lake, they will thus form a natural raft, and cost you little or nothing to get down to a good market. You know the Dunstan diggings are just at the foot of the lake, and they haven't a stick there; timber is very badly wanted in those parts, not only for fuel and building, but also for slabbing the shafts which ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... smoothbores, were a revolutionary development in mid-century. They were low-hulled, armored, steam vessels, with one or two revolving turrets. Although most cannonballs bounced from the armor, lack of speed made the "cheese box on a raft" vulnerable, and poor visibility through the turret slots was ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... loaded clear down to the gunwales, Gave us the slack of the current, with proper formalities shouted By the hoarse-throated stern-wheeler that pushed the black barges before her, And as she passed us poured a foamy cascade from her paddles. Then, as a raft of logs, which the spread of the barges had hidden, River-wide, weltered in sight, with a sudden jump forward the pilot Dropped his whole weight on the spokes of the wheel just in ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... after casting about for some way of reaching safety, he noticed trees floating slowly down the river. With 'the most confident and cheerful expression, he asked: "Who would accompany him to sea on the raft he was about to form with those timbers?"' A sail was 'made of a bisket-sack,' and with 'an oar shaped out of a young tree for a rudder,' they set out to sea, in danger of being swamped by every wave, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... 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 get into ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... were incorruptible. It was not possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy weight of guns, to draw back its spider-like ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft 100 Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... caution and watchfulness in the neighbourhood of the lake. Unfortunately, we nearly succeeded in drowning some young friends of ours, whom we persuaded to accompany us in an attack on the pirates' stronghold. We embarked on a raft used for cutting weeds, but no sooner had we shoved off than the raft at once, most inconsiderately, sank to the bottom of the lake with us. Being Christmas time, the water was not over-warm, and we had some difficulty in extricating ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... that the whole island would soon be submerged; and logs, driftwood, green trees, etc., were sweeping down the river at a tremendous speed. To rescue the wounded, sick, and attendants at the hospital seemed impossible. Various suggestions were made; a raft was proposed, but this was decided impracticable as, if made and launched, it would in such ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... faded out of the light streaming between the branches. And depression, always lying in ambush of the novelty of his freedom, began like mist to rise above his restless thoughts. It was all so devilish empty—this raft of the world floating under evening's shadow. How many sermons had he listened to, enriched with the simile of the ocean of life. Here they were, come home to roost. He had fallen asleep, ineffectual sailor that ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the finger something good to eat. The two puppies play endlessly. One of them belongs to Lieutenant Evans. The crew will not be allowed ashore at Panama or else I know they would pick up a whole raft of other pets there. The jackies seem especially fond of the little coons. A few minutes ago I saw one of the jackies strolling about with a coon perched upon his shoulder, and now and then he would reach up his hand and give it a small piece of ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... about September or October that I began to think of making a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no ropes, and could ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... when her task is accomplished, the mother passes to a new cell to confide to it another of her descendants. During this time the parasite larva hastily descends the abdominal hairs and allows itself to fall on the egg of the Anthophora, to be then borne upon it as upon a raft; its fall must take place at the precise instant which will enable it to embark without falling into the honey, in which just now it would be glued fast, and perish. This series of circumstances results only in the introduction ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... season the rush of water tears off large rafts of this floating water-grass, which accumulate in any favourable locality. The difficulty of clearing a passage is extreme. After cutting out a large mass with swords, a rope is made fast, and the raft is towed out by hauling with thirty or forty men until it is detached and floated down the stream. Yesterday I cut a narrow channel from above stream in the hope that the rush of water would loosen the mass of vegetation. After much labour, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... back with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then come ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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. But the Adelantado, regardless of this warlike show, ordered his men ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... only were the rocky islands of Gorgona and Capraja and Monte Cristo visible, but also the mysterious flat Pianosa, so rarely seen, so capricious and singular in its comings and goings that it fades from sight before the very eyes, and in clear weather seems to lie like a raft on the still water. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said, referring to their lonely quest—that actual existence was like a forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what radiant coasts or awful headlands might ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... streams before they arrived at the sand beach which connected Long Point with the mainland. To effect the first crossing they walked four leagues inland before they found a satisfactory spot. To cross Big Creek, they were obliged to spend a whole day constructing a raft. They were further delayed by a prolonged snow storm and a strong north wind. On the west bank was a meadow more than 200 paces wide, in passing over which they were immersed to their girdles in mud and slash. Arriving at the ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... we saw a large timber raft come down the lake and enter the Molyneux. There were extensive forests at the head of the lake, and an energetic contractor had engaged men to cut timber there, which he was now floating down the river to the coast some 200 miles distant. The raft was forty feet ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... hacking with a little hatchet cut down trees enough—not apple trees—to make a raft, on which they adventured; but in mid-stream Washington's pole upset him, and he was fain to get ashore on an island. There must they pass the night; and so cold was it, that the next morning they were able to reach ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... served to irrigate the gardens of the monastery, entered a wall by a large semicircular arch or opening near the garden itself. The lady, prodigal in the expenditure of money, and in the employment of faithful and trustworthy agents, procured a raft to be constructed, by means of which, all other things being prepared, she ventured through the opening, and was carried down the stream to the desired spot. The secret was kept. No one had the least suspicion of this ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost to the Kentucky shore. Eliza stood for a moment contemplating this unfavourable aspect of things, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from running, and then turned into a small public-house ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... synthesis in silence and in vain. They had refused to hear Stallo. They had betrayed little interest in Crookes. At last their universe had been wrecked by rays, and Karl Pearson undertook to cut the wreck loose with an axe, leaving science adrift on a sensual raft in the midst of a supersensual chaos. The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger, worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut itself loose from the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... accompanied him, then took the command, and continued to fight the ship. A youth of seventeen, by name Villemoes, particularly distinguished himself on this memorable day. He had volunteered to take the command of a floating battery, which was a raft, consisting merely of a number of beams nailed together, with a flooring to support the guns: it was square, with a breast-work full of port-holes, and without masts—carrying twenty-four guns, and one hundred and twenty men. With this he got under the stern ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... built of logs and planks so in case the house fell it could be used as a raft and Crescimir exerting all his strength pulled from the sides the flat boards which held ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... on my life-preserver for several hours," he said, "then I came across a big oak dresser with two men clinging to it. I hung on to this till daybreak and the two men dropped off. When the sun came up I saw the collapsible raft in the distance, just black with men. They were all standing up, and I swam to it—almost a mile, it seemed to me—and they would not let me aboard. Mr. Lightoller, the second ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... stream of the Biobio, he had to use a primitive raft, formed of four trunks of trees, about eighteen feet long, lashed together by hide-thongs to two poles, one at each end. A horse was fastened to it, by knotting his tail to the tow-rope, and on his back was ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of escape, especially for the lady sitting beside me, than by boarding one of these very rafts. In order to effect this (against the wish of our two oarsmen) I seized with one hand a projecting peg on a raft we were passing and held our little vessel fast, and, while the two rowers screamed that the Ellida would be lost, quickly hoisted the lady out of the skiff on to the raft, across which we walked to the shore, calmly leaving our friends to save the Ellida as best they could. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... seen properly. It would have required an hour before each, if they had wanted to understand it. What a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a halt opposite the "Raft of the Medusa" and he explained the subject to them. All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word. When they started off again, Boche expressed the general feeling, saying ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... points of land near the shore were collected piles bristling with ragged stumps and limbs of trees. The great gnarled branches of forest trees sometimes spread over half the river, while timbers lodging among them formed a sort of raft which kept out of the water the most wonderful things—pieces of furniture, and kitchen utensils which shone in ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... lights had been burnt on the ship every half-hour, as a guide to the Bridgewater, whose lights were visible till about two o'clock in the morning. Fowler also occupied time in constructing a raft from the timbers, masts and yards of the Porpoise. "Every breast," says Smith's narrative, "was filled with horror, continual seas dashing over us with great violence." Of the Cato nothing could be seen. She had struck, not as the Porpoise had done, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... on a fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described in a graphic style that stamps Mr. Calhoun as a master of ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... Life, by its Athenian banks, he had floated upon his raft of reason serene, in cloudy as in smiling weather, for seventy years. And now the night is rushing down, and he has reached the mouth of the stream, and the great ocean is before him, dim heaving in the dusk. But he betrays no fear. There ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... time forth, this child is sublimely made a sacred charge. He is pushed, on a little raft, across broad rivers by the swimming sailors; they carry him by turns through the deep sand and long grass (he patiently walking at all other times); they share with him such putrid fish as they find to eat; they lie down and wait for him when the rough carpenter, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... In urging my raft along the shore line of one of the stagnant lagoons one day I was surprised to find a broad rock jutting out from the shore, its upper surface some ten coprets above the water. Disembarking, I ascended it, and on examination recognized it as the remnant of an immense mountain which ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... that he has a boat," replied the mother, with an extraordinary calmness of manner that told of internal effort. "Our caverns run very deep into the rocks; and the ledges run out far into the sea. Rollo has made a kind of raft of the driftwood he found: and on this he crosses the water in the caverns, and passes from ledge to ledge, fishing as he goes. This is our only way of getting fish, except when a chance boat comes into ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... over and over again. This concatenation had formed it, or that concatenation; the surrounding phenomena varied, but essentially it was always the same, like a dream place. The question was, would he turn his boat, or raft, or whatever was beneath him, or his own stroke as swimmer, and escape from this glassy place whose currents were yet but tendrils? He could do it; it was the Valley of Decision.... But so often, in all those lives whose bitter and sweet were distilled into ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... he had visited the rude wharf where Jeff Lynn, the grizzled old frontiersman, busied himself with preparations for the raft-journey down the Ohio. Lynn had been employed to guide the missionary's party to Fort Henry, and, as the brothers had acquainted him with their intention of accompanying the travelers, he had constructed a raft ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Columbia are not satisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake front of Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and the locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle the lumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of a launch, and earth, and sky, and sea alike are ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... entire business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope of discovering her, and would start up in the night, saying, 'That rascal's torturing her to maintain him!' To which his wife would answer peevishly, 'Don't 'ee raft yourself so, Ned! You prevent my getting a bit o' rest! He won't hurt her!' and fall ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... it was proposed to send logs from Canada to New York, by a new method. The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind great logs together by cables and iron girders and to tow the cargo as a raft. When the novel craft neared New York and success seemed assured, a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the tempest, the iron bands snapped like icicles and the angry waters scattered the logs far and wide. The chief of the Hydrographic Department at Washington heard of the failure ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... seen on water. It was the famous Monitor, designed by Captain John Ericsson, to whose inventive genius we owe the screw propeller and the hot-air engine. She consisted of a small iron hull, on top of which rested a boat-shaped raft covered with sheets of iron which made the deck. On top of the deck, which was about three feet above the water, was an iron cylinder, or turret, which revolved by machinery and carried two guns. She looked, it was said, like "a ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... delighted tone. "Sometimes we agree, and again we have different minds; but in this case it looks like we might be on the same raft." ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... Croghan to the Delawares and the Shawnees at their villages about the Scioto River; all promised to be at the gathering at Logstown. From the Shawnee village, near the mouth of the Scioto, the two emissaries shaped their course north two hundred miles, crossed the Great Moneami, or Miami River, on a raft, swimming their horses; and on the 17th of February arrived at the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... went the big raft. We sailed on for a quarter mile or so. "Let go!" Over went the second. A quarter mile farther and the third one went. Each mine had its time-fuse. In a very few minutes—the Bess was in by the corner of the ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... for his pilot, our argonaut seeks no improvement upon his aerial raft. Like the bow and arrow, it long ago reached perfection, and, though he may cherish some choice and secret recipe for varnish or be the inventor of an improved valve, he generally builds with a birdlike ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... remarks that he had wandered over a 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
... woman, a widow with "a raft of children." Probably for that reason her uncle had left her the house, which was large and comfortable. As she stood looking down the road, one of the girls came out to the gate. She was a plump, strong creature, a neighbor's girl who had ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... till I came to the Ohio. I went up along the bank of this last river about the fourth part of a day's journey, that I might be able to cross it without being carried into the Missisippi. There I formed a Cajeux or raft of canes, by the assistance of which I passed over the river; and next day meeting with a herd of buffaloes in the meadows, I killed a fat one, and took from it the fillets, the bunch, and the tongue. Soon after I arrived among the Tamaroas, a village of the nation of the Illinois, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... badly. Carson was the first to propose scuttling the frigate. The others argued that even a sinking ship was better than no ship at all, so the Irishman went overboard and sailed away on his own raft. Bonar Law representing the good old Tory element kept on working the pumps; Mr. Asquith kept on assuring the crew that all they needed was to "wait and see"; and Lloyd George was wondering whether he had better take a hand at the pumps as well or throw both ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... weavers, finding the flat and so-called loess territory too confined for their ever-increasing numbers, threw out colonies wherever attraction offered, and wherever the riverine systems gave them easy access; whether by boat and raft; or whether—as seems more probable, owing to the scanty mention of boat-travel—by simply following the low levels sought by the streams, and tilling on their way such pasturages as they found by the river-sides. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the open trench, and the embrace of night and storm resumes the sole possession of this confusion of corpses, stranded and cramped on a square of earth as on a raft. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... more at the cottage for me, and now all I wanted was to get on board of the Splash. My skiff was destroyed, and my pursuer would not permit me to build a raft. I could have swum off to her; but the water might injure, if not ruin, the priceless document in my pocket. Tom was at my heels, and all I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... uncomfortable. She was a flat-bottomed river-boat, and carried cargoes of hides and other Saladero produce. There were some live pigs with immense tusks, and some tasajo in the hold, and a raft of pipes of tallow which a hawser towed behind. The boat was supposed to draw only two feet of water, but in her present overloaded state she dragged heavily against the mud in the shallower parts of ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... his, by the way, having been built several years previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that point for a grub-stake. They had been most hospitable lads, and, after they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an object to arrive there at nightfall. It was very handy, saving them all the time and toil of ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... describe the original formation of the world but they all spoke of a universal deluge caused by an attempt of the fish to drown Woesackootchacht, a kind of demigod with whom they had quarrelled. Having constructed a raft he embarked with his family and all kinds of birds and beasts. After the flood had continued for some time he ordered several waterfowl to dive to the bottom; they were all drowned but a muskrat, having been despatched on the same errand, was more successful and returned with a mouthful ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Saturday at poor Sainte-Beuve's funeral. How the little band diminishes! How the few survivors of the Medusa's raft ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the Falls, an' was a-takin' a raft down the river fur Gibson. Sandy Beale was along o' me, an' I dunno ez ever I enjoyed raftin' more 'n on the first o' thet trip. Doubtless yez all knows what purty raftin' it is in them parts. By gum, it kinder makes ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... more to take compassion on me, and put it in my mind to go to the bank of the river which ran into the great cave; where, considering the river with great attention, I said to myself, 'This river, which runs thus under ground, must come out somewhere or other. If I make a raft, and leave myself to the current, it will bring me to some inhabited country, or drown me. If I be drowned I lose nothing, but only change one kind of death for another; and if I get out of this fatal place, I shall not ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... conclusion was, that the sharpshooters were guarding something, which must, necessarily, be of value, especially to the army. His mind went back to the time when he had captured the ammunition and gun on the raft. Would it be his good fortune to make another haul of as much, or ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... much given to fishing, for which purpose they venture out to sea in bark-logs.[162] These are constructed of several round logs of wood, forming a raft, but different according to the uses they are intended for, or the customs of those that make them. Those meant for fishing consist only of three or five logs of wood about eight feet long, the middle one longer than the rest, especially forewards, and the others gradually shorter, forming a kind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... not let it remain there festering in the hot sun, and it seemed impossible for him to carry it over the rough rocks on his shoulders. At last he thought he might tow it to the shore. There were plenty of materials for forming a raft. He soon lashed a few pieces of wreck together, when, having launched them, he took off his clothes and towed them out. Had it not been for the uniform he could not have distinguished his young shipmate. Extricating ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... replied. "Let's play at being in a ship at sea" (the plaint of the old house under the buffeting wind suggested this, naturally); "and we can be wrecked on an island, or left on a raft, whichever you choose; but I like an island best myself, because there's more ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... fouled with ropes and chains fastened to the rocks. In the afternoon the rafts which had been launched reached the narrow part of the strait. The two smaller ones got through, but the largest stuck. Octavian then attacked. On the big raft were one thousand Opitergian colonists, under the captaincy of the tribune Vulteius. They fought till night, when, seeing that their case was hopeless, they determined to die rather than surrender. At dawn the struggle recommenced, the Istrians joining in the attack. The end was the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... 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 succeed is the man on the raft who never goes to sleep. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval officers—pleasure excursions that are in reason—pleasure excursions that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi on a raft—" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the 26th ultimo which was delivered to me by Overseer Burnett on the 5th of this 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 as well as a ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... red letters, three feet high; third, that ye'll inthra-jooce me to th' Prince iv Wales; foorth, that I'll sail it mesilf. Nawthin',' he says, 'wud give me gr-reater pleasure thin to have me handsome an' expinsive raft in th' hands iv men who I wud considher it an honor to know,' he says. 'An' so,' he says, 'I'll on'y ask ye to sign a bond an' lave a small security, say about five hundherd thousan' dollars, in me ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... perforce. In many places the bottom is a quicksand, into which we sink, and it is with great difficulty that we make progress. In some places the holes are so deep that we have to swim, and our little bundles of blankets and rations are fixed to a raft made of driftwood and pushed before us. Now and then there is a little flood-plain, on which we can walk, and we cross and recross the stream and wade along the channel where the water is so swift as almost to carry us off our feet and we are in danger ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... been long 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 ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... beaver of the Whitefish. Him I slew. And there were three men seeking gold on the Whitefish long ago. Them also I slew, and left them to the wolverines. And at the Five Fingers there was a man with a raft ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... 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, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... 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), ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... She lies a hundred fathoms deep under the stormy waters off Cape Hatteras. But "the little cheese-box on a raft" has made herself a name which will not soon be forgotten ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... obstacle to speed at this season—every stream was at flood, all were difficult to cross. The brooks he could wade or sometimes could fell a tree across them, but the rivers were too wide to bridge, too cold and dangerous to swim. In nearly every case he had to make a raft. A good scout takes no chances. A slight raft means a risky passage; a good one, a safe crossing but loss of time in preparations. Fifteen good rafts did Rolf make in that cross-country journey of three days: dry spruce logs he found each time and bound them together with leather-wood and withes ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... constantly increasing till they arrive hereabouts, they make platforms of from four hundred to seven hundred feet long, and one hundred and forty feet in breadth. When in motion, a dozen boats and more precede them, carrying anchors and cables to guide and arrest their course. The navigation of a raft down the Rhine to Dort, in Holland, which is the place of their destination,[4] is a work of great difficulty. The skill of the German and Dutch pilots who navigate them, in spite of the abrupt turnings, the eddies, the currents, rocks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... in times of war they have been known to take them off their posts, and carry them away to some place which was safe from attack. The roofs are very large, but they are so constructed that they can be taken down in three or four pieces, and each of these may be placed upon a raft made of canoes, and carried ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I can, quite well. The boat tumbled ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... in its passing wrought havoc on the enemy was one too small to support a man. It was a tiny raft, and it was propelled by one-man power, who swam ashore from a destroyer, towing this craft which was to bluff the Turks into believing that a whole army was descending upon them. The man was Lieutenant Freyberg, and on ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... region in which he struck the Little Tennessee river, was strongly Union, and the people would have betrayed him to a certainty, if they had discovered who he was. The river was guarded at every point, and there was no boat or raft upon it, which was not in possession of the enemy. He was, in this vicinity, joined by some thirty nomadic Confederates, and they set to work and constructed a raft ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... traveller seen such a sunset behind the blue summits of those hills before! Flowing yet nearer to him was the noble river Rhine, winding onward to the north, and bearing on its bosom many a little skiff which scudded quickly before the evening breeze, or raft of timber which floated slowly down its stream. How often had the stranger sailed in such little barks upon its surface, or bathed and fished in its waters! At his feet lay the little cluster of cottages which formed the village of Steinheim; ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... soon come back with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... on much longer, my head is on fire!" So the mother exerted all her strength in a piercing scream, and to her joy, an answering cry came back through the rain. Hugh made an effort to steer the spars towards the floating deck, and those on board pushed their raft towards him as well as they could. Still it was slow work, and as the dawn grew brighter, the mother saw her preserver's haggard face, and the blood matted in his curly hair. He did not speak, as, holding the baby in one arm, with the other ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... belonged—the out-trailer, the hater of humdrum, of dull orbits and of routine. The thrilling years he had spent—business! This was the adventure of which he had always dreamed, and since it would never arrive as a sequence, he had proceeded to dramatize it! He was Tom Sawyer grown up; and for a raft on the Mississippi substitute a seagoing yacht. There was then in this matter-of-fact world such a man, and he sat across the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interval in causing to be constructed a sort of floating bridge, or long raft, by means of which he hoped to cross the moat in despite of the resistance of the enemy. This was a work of some time, which the leaders the less regretted, as it gave Ulrica leisure to execute her plan of diversion in their favour, whatever that ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Andernach, an antiquated town with strange morisco-looking towers, I spied a raft, at least three hundred feet in length, on which ten or twelve cottages were erected, and a great many people employed in sawing wood. The women sat spinning at their doors, whilst their children played among ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... emerged upon a hill plateau, and 300 feet below was raging the mighty South Saskatchewan, with great masses of floating, grinding ice. We contrived a raft made from the box of the wagon, but we could not accomplish the passage in it. Later on, hard frost having set in, we were able to cross the river on foot, with the loss of my horse Blackie, and when half a dozen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... band of hostile Indians was at his heels, and he had to plan some way of crossing the Alleghany. He decided to build a raft, but had only one poor hatchet with which to construct it. The men set to work with this, and labored all day, but night came before the raft was finished. As soon as they could they launched it and tried to ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... my mind to go to the bank of the river which ran into the great cavern. Considering its probable course with great attention, I said to myself, "This river, which runs thus under ground, must somewhere have an issue. If I make a raft, and leave myself to the current, it will convey me to some inhabited country, or I shall perish. If I be drowned, I lose nothing, but only change one kind of death for another; and if I get out of this fatal place, I shall not ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... in the Val-Tenebre. They drive them on 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. ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... was of no avail with him: he was too much herself to be treated cunningly. She felt that she floated on a sea vastly bigger than she had ever known, and its waves were love and fear and cruelty and fate, but in a moment he turned and she saw a raft on which she ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... gathering wood and planks from the wrecks, wrought of them the semblance of a boat [to wit, a raft,] and bound it fast with ropes, saying, 'I will embark thereon and fare with this water into the inward of the mountain. If it bring me to the mainland or to a place where I may find relief and safety, [well and good]; else I shall [but] perish, even as my companions have ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the brim with the lava-stream which dazzled the sight and sent a dreadful terrestrial dawn into the whole of night. With its heart aflame Earth seemed to become transparent as glass along that crevasse; and amid the lake of fire heaps of living beings floated on some raft, and writhed like the spirits of damnation. The other men fled upwards, and piled themselves in clusters on the straight-lined borders of the valley of filth and tears. I saw those swarming shadows huddled on the upper ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... would be severed, and the floating platform rowed towards the further shore. The elephants, seeing the water all round them, would be seized with a panic, and either jump into the river in their fright and swim by the side of the raft, guided by their Indian riders, or else from sheer terror would remain where they stood, trembling with fear. But though the rafts were to be built without delay, the passage was on no account to be attempted till the signal was given ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... will not bother with their transportation, the Indian makes for himself. And so quickly and easily! I have seen a thoroughly waterproof, commodious, and comfortable bark shelter made in about the time it would take one to pitch a tent. I have seen a raft built of cedar logs and cedar bark ropes in an hour. I have seen a badly-stove canoe made as good as new in fifteen minutes. The Indian rarely needs to hunt for the materials he requires. He knows ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... but the rock being guarded on all sides, escape was thought impossible. The murids, however, having devised a plan for preserving the life of their chief by the loss of their own, constructed from materials previously collected in the cave, a raft of sufficient size to carry several persons, and letting it down at night into the river below, then followed themselves. The guard on the bank observing this manouvre, immediately gave chase to the raft, those on horseback plunging into the stream, those on foot running along ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... their proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proposed to send logs from Canada to New York, by a new method. The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind great logs together by cables and iron girders and to tow the cargo as a raft. When the novel craft neared New York and success seemed assured, a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the tempest, the iron bands snapped like icicles and the angry waters scattered the logs far and wide. The ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... to bed." Jock stood up and laughed good-naturedly. "Go to bed and get up steam for to-morrer. When you see the whole collection you'll warm up your ideas. You're a terrible plucky kid to trust your own soul on a trifling little raft like this religion of yours. You better not overload it with more souls, though; the risk's ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... I came back to my raft, and fell to work to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day; and what to do with myself at night I knew not, nor indeed where to rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some wild beast might devour me, though, as I ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... nothing. Only in the Black 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 it ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... "'Thus by degrees the raft reaches the place of destination, occasionally with some loss and damage to the timber. In this case the master-lumberer bears the loss, and is obliged to refund the expenses incurred as best he can. At any rate, the men are now paid ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep. But I only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station. When we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... to me!" said the fox. "Come up to the surface of the water and form a raft that will reach from this island to the mainland. Then I can walk over all of you, and I shall be able to ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... the situation when on a Sunday at the end of July a Negro boy at a bathing beach near Twenty-sixth Street swam across an imaginary segregation line. White boys threw rocks at him, knocked him off a raft, and he was drowned. Colored people rushed to a policeman and asked him to arrest the boys who threw the stones. He refused to do so, and as the dead body of the Negro boy was being handled, more rocks were thrown on both sides. The trouble thus ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... fierce storm on the sea-coast, and a vessel got in the breakers and was going to pieces. They threw up some signal of distress, and the people on the shore saw them. They put out in a life-boat. They came on, and they saw the poor sailors, almost exhausted, clinging to a raft; and so afraid were the boatmen that the men would give up before they got to them, they gave them three rounds of cheers, and cried: "Hold on, there! Hold on! We'll save you!" After awhile the boat came up. One man was ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the unwonted amenities of a more familiar civilisation are welcome as a green oasis in a sandy desert. A cool and healthy mountain climate gives unwonted zest for the lovely excursions of which Garoet is the centre. From the little lake Setoe Bajendit, a covered raft plies to a cupola-crowned hill, facing a noble panorama of volcanic peaks the Soendanese desa of basket-work huts, through which we pass, presents a curious spectacle, with the village street lined on either side by rows of kneeling children, clad in Dame Nature's brown suit ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... crew from many a craft Goes drifting by on a broken raft Pieced from a vessel that clove the brine Taller ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they rode the logs, and when the tide began to come in, they had the best time of all. It picked up the little raft and floated the children, screaming with joy, far up the beach on a ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... country to take their gouter, or afternoon meal, at some farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere the Paul et Virginie must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance, as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... back to what I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills 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
... he made them sharp like knives. With these, and no other instruments, he cut down some branches of trees, which he joined together with twigs and osiers, and as well as he could made a boat, or rather a raft, with which he crossed over the rivers. Thus he reached the Cape of Golfotriste, as was said before, where he happened to find a certain vessel of pirates who wore great comrades of his own, and were lately ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... lightning ensued. A stroke of lightning shattered their mast, which in its fall killed the pilot. At last the vessel itself came to pieces. The keel and mast floating side by side, Ulysses formed of them a raft, to which he clung, and, the wind changing, the waves bore him to Calypso's island. All the rest of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Mobile Mop-Up, and the Far Rockaway Rock and the South Bend Bend. His friends would interfere—or the authorities would. He can go in swimming, it is true; but if he turns over and floats, people yell out that somebody has set the life raft adrift; and if he basks at the water's edge, boats will come in and try to dock alongside him; and if he takes a sun bath on the beach and sunburns, there's so everlasting much of him to be sunburned that he practically amounts to a conflagration. He can't ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... years ago crossing the Mahawelli river upon a raft which my coolies had hastily constructed, and reaching a miserable village near Monampitya, in the extreme north of the Veddah country. The river is here about four hundred paces wide, and, in the rainy season a fine volume of water rolls along in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... at the cottage for me, and now all I wanted was to get on board of the Splash. My skiff was destroyed, and my pursuer would not permit me to build a raft. I could have swum off to her; but the water might injure, if not ruin, the priceless document in my pocket. Tom was at my heels, and all I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... from which she had been separated by a violent storm. It was broad daylight and in full sunshine. Suddenly the watch signalled a disabled vessel; the crew looked in the direction signalled, and every one, officers and sailors, clearly perceived a raft covered with men towed by boats which were displaying signals of distress. Yet this was nothing more than a collective hallucination. Admiral Desfosses lowered a boat to go to the rescue of the wrecked sailors. On nearing the object sighted, the sailors and officers on board the boat saw "masses ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... a little hatchet cut down trees enough—not apple trees—to make a raft, on which they adventured; but in mid-stream Washington's pole upset him, and he was fain to get ashore on an island. There must they pass the night; and so cold was it, that the next morning they were ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... side of a huge dome of rock, rising from the river itself, the only way around which was to cross twice. The rest of the party coming up with the cargadores, we had to wait until bamboo rafts could be built, the raft really being nothing but a flat bundle lashed together with bejuco. In this case our rafts were so small that under the weight of only one man and his kit they immediately became submarines, so that one got partially wet ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... us with such good aim that all the rafts except the one I was upon were swamped, and their luckless crews drowned, without our being able to do anything to help them. Indeed I and my two companions had all we could do to keep our own raft beyond the reach of the giants, but by dint of hard rowing we at last gained the open sea. Here we were at the mercy of the winds and waves, which tossed us to and fro all that day and night, but the next morning we found ourselves near an island, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... mission that had been assigned to Col. Hazelden. The Bolshevik was found the next morning strongly entrenched on the other side of the river Emtsa near the burned bridge and after severe losses suffered in the gaining of a foothold on the north side of the river by crossing on a raft, the Americans had to dig in. In fact they lay for over a week in the swamp hanging tenaciously to their position but unable to advance. Men's feet swelled in their wet boots till the shoes burst. But still they hung on under the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Southern extraction. Tennessee and Kentucky, having no longer a supply of good land at low prices, sent the younger generation on to a new frontier. In the year 1816 the father of Abraham Lincoln took his family across the Ohio on a raft and hewed his way into the timber lands along the river bottoms of Indiana. With these migratory Kentuckians went also descendants of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish who had peopled the Great Valley in the previous century. Even from the Carolinas came all sorts and conditions of men,—poor ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... said 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 time work fails or sickness comes they are liable to drop helplessly ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Well, I thought you was something or other—they's sech a raft of agents along; though my Mary tells me 'tain't a circumstance to the city—Mate works out in the city. Let me make you acquainted with Mis' Flaherty. She's the lady what lives in Bachelor's Row and takes in boarders and washin's—now, Johnny, you stop a-tuggin' at my skirts, will ye? You've ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in the ship. Yet for all that I could not but see it was a matter that concerned me very closely. Should the vessel be crushed, what was to become of me? It was easy to propose to myself the making of a raft or the like of such a fabric; but everything was so hard frozen that, being single-handed, it was next to impossible I should be able to put together such a contrivance as would be fit to live in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... little girl whom I suspected of being very pretty; but I forgot them both in watching a steamboat passing up the river towing a flotilla of barges, covered with awnings and attended by their lighters, and a huge raft laden with timber from the Black Forest, manned by fifty or sixty boatmen, some of whom in front, and some in the rear, directed its course with ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... sailor, floating upon his frail raft, or some spar of his shattered vessel, could not be more at the mercy of wave and wind, than were the two men astride of the capsized canoe. Their situation was indeed desperate. The stroke of a strong sea would be sufficient to swamp their frail embarkation; and, should the tempest ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... there is little that is interesting about them—most of them are the type of ordinary seamen. Our latest case, however, was entered by the captain of a sailing vessel, who reported that they had picked the man up from a raft. That he was delirious then, and had never been able to tell them who he was or whence he came. He is still very ill and unconscious, and there is not a paper about him of identification. He is a gentlemen—I am sure of that, for his broken sentences ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... fifty miles from their nearest cache, and nearly three hundred from the nearest settlement, already greatly used up, needing rest and plenty of food; in a country that forbade any extended tramping inland to cut off corners, on a river in most places either too rough for a raft or with too sluggish a current to make rafting pay; and above all, left with a stock of food comprising one quart of good rice, brought back with them, three quarts of mixed meal, burnt flour and burnt rice, a little tea, one can ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... few days since Mother had said, "Never go on the raft, Bobby, unless Father or John is at the pond ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... deck, levelled his glass at it, and made it out a raft, with a sort of rail to it, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... on to the anchorage, a large raft-like vessel with barges in tow made out to meet us. The Old Man turned his glasses on her and gave an ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... 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, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... is floated down stream, and from which it is loaded into vessels for Europe and other parts of the world. The stock of timber balks floating in the basins about these wharfs and landings is now so great, that for three miles the margin of the river looks like one great raft. We passed two immense rafts of timber, floating down the stream, to be stowed here, one of which was some 400 yards long, had eighteen sails set, and four wooden houses complete, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... at length appeared, to say how hungry they were, they burst in more like two schoolfellows who have been trying a new game, than little lads on whom others were depending for subsistence in the midst of a heavy calamity. They had made a raft—a real stout, broad raft, which would be of more use to them (now the currents were slackening) than anything they had attempted yet. Oliver told that among the many things which the current brought from poor neighbour Gool's, was a lot of harness ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... mouth of the river, booms of logs chained together at the ends had been prepared. Into the enclosure the drive was floated and stopped. Then a raft was formed by passing new manila ropes over the logs, to each one of which the line was fastened by a hardwood forked pin driven astride of it. A tug dragged ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... mountainous region. He arrived at length at the bank of a little stream, which he was at first unable to cross. Hunger, in the meantime, began to urge him; he might have appeased it with game, of which he saw plenty, but unfortunately he had lost the flint of his gun. At last, with a raft of sticks, he crossed the river, and arrived at a village, the inhabitants of which disarmed him, and made him prisoner. Our people hearing where he was, sent to seek him, and gave some ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... for several hours," he said, "then I came across a big oak dresser with two men clinging to it. I hung on to this till daybreak and the two men dropped off. When the sun came up I saw the collapsible raft in the distance, just black with men. They were all standing up, and I swam to it—almost a mile, it seemed to me—and they would not let me aboard. Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, was one ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... these, and flung as many of them overboard as I could manage of 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 fast 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 the carpenter's saw I cut a spare topmast into ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft floating down the Edisto. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... I will soon come to the River of Death and with these boards I can make myself a raft whereon ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... flowing still unfrozen in an angry flood which they could not cross. In vain they ranged the banks above and below. Below them was a great lake; beside and above them a swift, deep current broken by rapids. There was no crossing. They tried to gather willow faggots, and bind them into a raft. But the green wood sank so {101} easily that only one man could get upon the raft: to paddle or pole it in the running water was impossible. A line was made of strips of skin, and Richardson volunteered to swim the river so as to haul the raft across with the line. The bitter cold of the ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... came to grips and fought and floundered till the bed rocked, and the poor little Seraph clung to his pillow as a shipwrecked sailor to a raft in a stormy sea. Exhaustion alone made us stop for breath; still we clung desperately to each other, our small bodies pressed hotly together, Angel's nose flattened against my ear. The Seraph snuggled up to us. "Just you wait"—breathed Angel—his ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... 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, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great, undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 get into ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... answered Tom, softly. "I'll do all I can to get us off this island. Perhaps we can build a raft, and set out. If we stay here there is no telling what will happen, if that scientist's theory is correct. But there is our camp, just ahead. You will be more comfortable, at least ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... believe, that when the great deluge took place, one man, with his wife and children, escaped in a canoe; and the Indians of the North American lakes hold, that the father of all their tribes being warned in a dream that a flood was coming, built a raft, on which he preserved his family, and pairs of all the animals, and which drifted about for many months, until at length a new earth was made for their reception by the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... by the gale; so that by the time of deep night—while the snow still whipped past in clouds that stung and stifled us—our pan rode breaking water: which hissed and flashed on every hand, the while ravenously eating at our narrow raft of ice. Death waited at our feet.... We stood with our backs to the wind, my sister and I cowering, numb and silent, in the lee of the doctor.... Through the long night 'twas he that sheltered us.... By and by he drew my sister close. She sank against ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... up and reported "Massa captain got 'im ship ashore," and down came Colonel Whaley, with all the pomp of seven lord mayors in his countenance. "What sort of a feller are you to command a ship? I'd whip the worst nigger on the plantation, if he couldn't do better than that. Rig a raft out and let me come o' board that vessel!" said he, accompanying his demands with a volley of vile imprecations that would have disgraced ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... amended to embarrassment | | Page 29: on amended to an | | Page 41: missing /s/ in gesture added | | Page 47: made amended to make; pallour amended to pallor | | Page 51: villanious amended to villainous | | Page 57: dependant amended to dependent | | Page 59: state raft amended to statecraft | | Page 63: circumambiant amended to circumambient | | Page 69: spoken off amended to spoken of | | Page 73: milklivered amended to milk livered | | Page 95: gallopping amended to galloping ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... 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 that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the depths into which he had fallen he had cried unto God and been delivered. He believed that he had received God's forgiveness, as he knew that he had received men's forgiveness. Out of the wreck of his former life he had constructed a little raft and trusted to it bearing him safely through what remained of the storm of life. If Felicita had lived he would have remained in the service of his father's old friend, proving himself of use in numberless ways; not merely as an attendant, but in assisting him with the affairs of the bank, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... quiet sea, water and an emergency ration-cask put aboard each, and Mr. MacMasters brought his instruments and papers, taking his place in the stern of the boat. The latter had a small engine, and there was a hawser with which she might tow the raft. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... hammock, and two suits of clothes; and, when they were rigged out in their blue shirts and wide pants, they made fine-looking sailors. At Mr. Winters' request they were granted permission to remain on shore until a raft of men was ready to be sent away. The boys were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased while they remained, for, as they were to leave so soon, Mr. Winters could not find it in his heart to raise any objections to the plans they proposed for their amusement. Besides, he knew that Archie ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... November, met in Toronto about the middle of February following. But before the arrival of Kant, Raff had already come from Hayti (United States) and was able to pry in upon our political friends and enemies. When they met each other they continued the voyage incognito, as Raft had done previously, making themselves known to a very few people; but later on, and according to the instructions carried by Caney, they made themselves known to a greater number of people, and have succeeded in interviewing Bryan who happened to be in New York. Senor Raff said that ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... there watching 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 within a foot of the windows; then the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... he succeeded in constructing a raft sufficiently buoyant to float him without resting any part of his body in the water. Pushing this out into the stream, he drifted fully three miles, gradually working the support toward ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... to have the armed heel of the country crush the serpent head of secession, now and forever, so that it shall never again glare with its baleful eyes, or brandish its venomous tongue. Let not the fate and fortunes of this glorious country be committed to the keeping of a clumsy, misshapen raft, compacted of twenty-four or thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned—in which every ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... could have got ashore. But they did not entertain any such idea. Some of us requested that the lifeboats of the sailing ship might be sent over to our ship, as we had only two lifeboats, a couple of small dinghies, and an improvised raft made of barrels and planks lashed together and surrounded by iron uprights and ropes—not sufficient for sixty-five people; but the Germans would not send us these lifeboats, as ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... trade if possible with the Spaniards, and establish another post high up Red River. He and his party soon came upon that vast entanglement of driftwood, or rather of uprooted forests, afterwards known as the Red River raft, which choked the stream and forced them to make their way through the inundated jungle that bordered it. As they pushed or dragged their canoes through the swamp, they saw with disgust and alarm a good number ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and the Boones. Abraham Lincoln was born in a hilly, barren portion of Kentucky in 1809. In 1816, when Lincoln was a boy of seven, his father, a poor carpenter, took his family across the Ohio on a raft, with a capital consisting of his kit of tools and several hundred gallons of whiskey. In Indiana he hewed a path into the forest to a new home in the southern part of the state, where for a year the family lived in a "half-faced camp," or open shed ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the raft with the boathooks, and crowd the stuff over to the starboard side," said the captain when he had found ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... winning, side. Casting his rote for the diffusion 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 are ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... corners, how absorbing to stand and speculate on what might be coming round either corner, and which would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully; perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding it; perhaps a barca punted by men in blue blouses, one at front and two at the back, with a load of golden hay, or with provisions for the Ghetto—glowing fruit and picturesque vegetables, or bleating ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... watched the islet, and, as Rooney had said, it soon became evident that the current was indeed carrying their ice-raft ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... a good swimmer. There are plenty of watery crossings to be got over, and often there are no means at hand but what Nature has provided in legs and arms. But one of the easiest things in the world to make is a raft. Inflatable India-rubber boats also are now used in every climate, and a full-sized one weighs only forty pounds. General Fremont and Dr. Livingstone have tested their excellent qualities, and commend them as capable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... getting on too fast. When the good ship crashed upon the rock and split in twain, it seemed like that all aboard must perish. Fortunately OLIVER was made of stern mettle. Hastily constructing a raft and placing the now unconscious JILL upon it, he launched it into the seething maelstrom of waters and pushed off. Tossed like a cockle-shell upon the mountainous waves, the tiny craft with its precious freight was in imminent ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... in the fall of 1816 to emigrate to Indiana, he at once began to build another boat, which he launched on the Rolling Fork, at the mouth of Knob Creek, about half a mile from his own cabin. He traded his farm for what movable property he could get, and loaded his raft with that and his carpenter tools. Waving good-bye to his wife and two children, he floated down the Rolling Fork, Salt River, and out into the Ohio River, which proved too rough for his shaky craft, and it ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... was soon to render the country a service which will never be forgotten. In 1861, he appeared before the navy department with a plan for an iron-clad consisting of a revolving turret mounted upon an armored raft. He secured an order for one such vessel, to be paid for only in the event that it proved successful. The majority of the board which gave the order doubtless laughed in their sleeves as the inventor withdrew, for what chance of success had such a vessel? There were some ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... on us," said Bell grimly. "In the morning I'll try to make a raft. We can't stay here indefinitely. I'll hunt for maps and we'll try to plan something out. But I'll admit that this business worries ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... freight the shingles from Grays Harbor to San Francisco in the Unicorn; re-ship on cars from Long Wharf and beat the direct car shipments from the mills ten cents, and still make our regular profit. Besides, the cut in price will bring us in a raft of orders we could not get otherwise. We can thus keep the Unicorn busy for sixty days without losing a cent on her, and if we haven't come to terms with the Mannheim people at the end of that time ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... the inner room, where was a large-sized figure of Buddha, with the attendant figures at each side called his sons, Buddhavista, meaning "future Buddhas." Driving on, we came to another missing bridge. Here we were taken across on a rude raft, the carriage following, and then the horses. As we drew near Boro Boedor, a feeling of awe came over us, for we were to behold a temple which for centuries had been buried from the sight of man. Indeed, until the debris of time ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... development; and, watching their opportunity, they pass from the male to the female bee. Guided by these indications, M. Fabre examined several cells of the bee; in some, the egg of the bee floated by itself on the surface of the honey; in others, on the egg, as on a raft, sat the still more minute larva of the Sitaris. The mystery was solved. At the moment when the egg is laid, the Sitaris larva springs upon it. Even while the poor mother is carefully fastening up her cell, her mortal enemy ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... undying splendour the drama of the forests, I travelled twenty-three times through various parts of the vast northern woods, between Maine and Alaska, and covered thousands upon thousands of miles by canoe, pack-train, snowshoes, bateau, dog-train, buck-board, timber-raft, prairie-schooner, lumber-wagon, and "alligator." No one trip ever satisfied me, or afforded me the knowledge or the experience I sought, for traversing a single section of the forest was not unlike making one's way along ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the smaller stones knocking against each other under the rage of the waters, as upon a seashore. Fording was out of the question. I could not swim and carry my swag, and I dared not leave my swag behind me. My only chance was to make a small raft; and that would be difficult to make, and not at all safe when it was made,—not for one ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... long, easy swaying of the ground, and many sought refuge outside their doors. There were no shocks, but the ground moved back and forth, swung round, and rose and fell with the easy, gentle motion of a raft upon an ocean swell. Many became dizzy, and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... are washed away and as farm lands they are entirely abandoned. Not only are the hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams, but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an overflow of ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... was glorious, Jim!" gasped the actress, as they gained the raft that was always their goal and pulling herself up to sit siren-wise upon it. She was breathless, radiant, bubbling with the joy of sun and air and green water. She took off her cap and let the sunlight beat on ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... There, as I looked up from my restless raft and followed the gleam of the afternoon sun as it broke through the clouds, I perceived just such another vision in the offing—a brig, with canvas set, and the light glancing on her sails as she laboured over the waves ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was going to coal. She put to sea without explanations, though three forts fired at her for half an hour. As the Julia M'Gregor she had been concerned in picking up from a raft certain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but who preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant to authority in quite another quarter of the world; and as the Shah-in-Shah she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full of munitions of war, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... 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 for to go to that, so ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the river several miles in this way, managing to keep the Indians at a safe distance with our guns, until the slough made a junction with the main Platte River. From there down, we found the river at times quite deep; and in order to carry the wounded man along with us, we constructed a raft of poles for his accommodation, and in this ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... take an interest in Jim, so I brought him up into the office and set him to copying circular letters. We used to send out a raft of them to the trade. That was just before the general adoption of typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. But Jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... whole party of five sickened with malaria, and found themselves unable to move to the high land at the head of the river owing to all their horses having died from eating "poison plant." Too weak to travel by land, they determined to build a raft and reach the mouth of the river, where there was a small cattle station. Here they intended to remain till the end of the rains, buy fresh horses and provisions, and return and prospect some of the deep gullies and watercourses at the head of ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering, and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death with their own hands during the following night. It is ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Ducks pied, build on Trees. Ducks whistling, at Sapona. Ducks scarlet-eye at Esaw. Blue-wings. Widgeon. Teal, two sorts. Shovelers. Whistlers. Black Flusterers, or bald Coot. Turkeys wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. Water Witch, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... 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 as well as a safe mode of shipment for the boxes ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... 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 against the pole, that it jerked me out into ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... right. This water's running zwift, and we're making the boat move pretty fast. They can't zwim half as fast as we're going, and they've no horses, and the dogs can't smell on the river, even if they made a raft of the trees ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... one's hand. Nature, in the neighbourhood, had placed conveniently a shallow pond. It was Saturday afternoon. The nearest public-house was a mile away. Immunity from interference by the British workman was thus assured. It occurred to me that by placing my three depressed looking relatives on one raft, attacking them myself from another, taking the eldest girl's sixpence away from her, disabling their raft, and leaving them to drift without a rudder, innocent amusement would be provided for half an hour ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... pleaded to deaf ears. But at length his promises of promotion and reward moved the man. "Come" he said "I will do my best," and, rising, led the way to his own house. Here in the inner room was a high machan—a huge bamboo shelf made like a raft and suspended from the roof and reached by a moveable ladder, used for ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... we had each lain down and had a good hearty drink of clear water, "the way to get home is to make a raft and float down ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... 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 be expected to ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... were crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... 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 herdsman Gabriel on ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of ice, arrested in its course, brought up, while the swift running current overflowed it. The four were ankle deep in water. But the rope held. Slowly, but surely, the ice raft yielded to the strain. It came in, out of the rush of the current, into quieter water. It touched the shore—and the yawning brink of the dam was ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Stallo. They had betrayed little interest in Crookes. At last their universe had been wrecked by rays, and Karl Pearson undertook to cut the wreck loose with an axe, leaving science adrift on a sensual raft in the midst of a supersensual chaos. The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger, worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut itself loose from the Civitas Romae, and the Cross took ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... country. On April 15, von Muehlbach, I, and two fully armed agas of the pasha, together with our servants and dragomans, embarked on a vessel built in a style well known even in the times of Cyrus, a raft supported by inflated sheep-skins. The Turks look upon hunting as a sin, they despise venison and beef, but eat an enormous quantity of sheep and goats. The skins of these animals are cut in front as little as possible ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Good Hope. She twice sailed from England. On her first departure, which was in March last, she had on board thirty female and ten male convicts; but being obliged to put back to Spithead, to stop a leak which she sprung in her raft port, eight of her ten male convicts found means to make their escape. This was an unfortunate accident; for they had been particularly selected as men who might be useful in the colony. Of the two who did remain, the one was a brick-maker ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should have been able to do as I pleased; but now I was associated with a bloody-minded rogue whose soul was in the treasure, and who was certain to oppose any plan I might propose for the construction of a boat or raft out of the material that formed the schooner. The sole ray of hope that gleamed upon me broke out of the belief that this island was going north, and that when we had come to the height of the summer in these seas, the wasting of the coast or the dislocation of the northern ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... dancing over the side on the tops of the waves and be left on the very spot from which we had lifted them overboard. The old man should have thrown the deck-load over two days before. The water now grew deeper all the time, and the ship wallowed like a waterlogged raft. The fo'c's'le was full of water. The El Dorado was drowning ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... blessed minit. She's bound to Pensacola in ballast, or with just a few notions of hardware sent out as a venture, for a load of pine lumber to fill out a contract I've taken in New York. She can run into the St. Mark's and drop you jest as well as not. But you'll have to pick up and raft your fixin's down to Bangor in a terrible hurry, for she's going to sail next week, Wednesday, and ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the thing? It looks like a raft with two round turrets upon it, and a funnel." A moment's consideration, and the truth burst upon them. It was the ship they had heard of as building at New York, and which had been launched six weeks before. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... lost no time, and already the tow-boats were overboard, while a raft of timber was taking form alongside the ship. As soon as it was completed, it was loaded with crates and boxes and paraphernalia of all sorts, then towed ashore as the tide served. Another took its place, and another and another. All that night the torches flared and the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... 16. The raft and the money had been thrown near her, none of the lashings having given way; only what is the use of a guinea ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... priestess who looked along the starry Hellespont for the young Leander; and her ear had not deceived her. The oars were dashing in the wave's below, and dark and rapid the boat bounded on towards the rocky shore. She gazed long and steadfastly on the dim and shadowy forms which that slender raft contained, and her eye detected amongst the three the loftier form of her haughty wooer. Presently the thick foliage that clothed the descent shut the boat, nearing the strand, from her view; but she now heard below, mellowed and softened in the still and fragrant ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... thou hast desired of me. I will by my servants cut thee in abundance timber of cedar and timber of cypress, and will bring them down to the sea, and command my servants to construct of them a float, or raft, and navigate it to whatever point of thy coast thou mayest wish, and there discharge them; after which thy servants can carry them to Jerusalem. But be it thy care to provide me in return with a supply of food, whereof we are in want as ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... begun upon the construction of a raft, and was not in a home-going mood. Thus encouraged by his young friend the man who mended the boats ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... be rare. I imagine a raft of some sort could always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would float on and be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the vanished name. Then that ship would not be, properly speaking, missing. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and to write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by the illness ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... get up, he rigged his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath across green seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means of its mahogany drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his drinking tumbler screwed to his eye, in search of rescuing sails. He made a daily raft out of the towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows. He saved the juice from his French plums, bottled it in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned the raft with the rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of little saved-up bits of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were no boats the soldiers began forthwith to construct rafts from barrels that had been brought for the purpose. As soon as the first of these was completed, it was sent on a trial trip. The result was not encouraging. The raft supported ten men, occupied five hours in the passage, was carried ten miles down stream, and came back for its second journey on the afternoon of the next day. It was evident that this means of transport was out of the question. The only chance ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of a fine large English ship, called the Charles Eaton, which was wrecked in the Southern Ocean. The crew, you see, have made a raft of some of the spars and planks of the ship, and having all got upon it, are about cutting loose from the wreck, with the hope that they may reach one ...
— The Young Captives - A Narrative of The Shipwreck and Suffering of John and William Doyley • Anonymous
... and went and dragged the lad to the spring, and dipped him over head and ears in it. So, when he had got his sight again, he went down to the shore and made signs to the lions that they should all lie close together like a raft; then he stood upon their backs while they swam with him to the mainland. When he had reached the shore he went up into a birchen copse, and made the lions lie quiet. Then he stole up to the castle, like a thief, to see if he couldn't lay hands on ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... 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 in a few minutes. When the moat was dry the assailants mounted with great ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in need of gifts, for the faithful bring them eggs, fruit, and even instruments for removing thorns from their feet. There are vineyards around Pisperi, and those of Pabenum have a raft, in which they go forth ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... nothing. Gaspard offered to take Veronique on his back and swim with her to a place of safety. Pierre suggested a raft. Cyprien finally said: ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... found in shallow ponds or slow streams. They are flattened, and on one edge, or both, and at the apex is a spongy ridge. Very likely, by this time, the reader has surmised that this serves the purpose of a raft to float the small seed within, which would sink at once if separated from the boat that grew on its margins. In this connection may be studied achenes of water plantain, Alisma, bur reed, cat-tail flag, arrow grass, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... promises of promotion and reward moved the man. "Come" he said "I will do my best," and, rising, led the way to his own house. Here in the inner room was a high machan—a huge bamboo shelf made like a raft and suspended from the roof and reached by a moveable ladder, used for ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... most general opinion, however, was that some few escaped the desolating element by one of those means most familiar to the narrator, by ascending some mountain, on a raft or canoe, in a cave, or even by climbing a tree. No doubt some of these legends have been modified by Christian teachings; but many of them are so connected with local peculiarities and ancient religious ceremonies, that no unbiased student can assign them wholly to that source, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... good feed, seeing we could not remove them at present, we descended safely to our boat and gained the shore without any accident. Then having housed our treasures, we were for putting together a raft of the various planks and barrels that were knocking against the rocks, but as I knew this would take a good deal of time, I thought I would inspect the ship's boats, which, bottom upwards, were drifting about within a ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... in unhappiness, called aloud for solitude. He must struggle alone through his deep waters: waters of the soul, wherein float neither life-preserver nor raft, rope or even light; neither coral reef nor oozy grave, for such as he. Darkness and struggle alike lasted till the end of his strength; but, with exhaustion and the coming of dawn, came at last one mighty breaker, by which Ivan was thrown high upon ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... But why should they not go by water? There was the river at their feet, roaring down in full spate, tumbling the trunks of trees destroyed in last night's storm. Why in the world should they not make a raft of the trees, "and put ourselves to sea"? "I will be one," he concluded, "who will be the other?" The appeal went home to the sailors. An Englishman named John Smith at once came forward, with a couple of Frenchmen "who could swim very well." The Maroons formed into a line ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... faith in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream, with a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at the mouth of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... 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
... Napoleon, whose courtesy was manifest in all his actions, ordered a large raft to be floated in the middle of the river, upon which was constructed a room well covered in and elegantly decorated having two doors on opposite aides, each of which opened into an antechamber. The work could not have been better executed in Paris. The roof was surmounted by two weathercocks: ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... strikes me we'd better be on the safe side and help God a little at this stage of the game. He is wonderful, Andrew, but He isn't wonderful enough to keep man afloat very long unless man himself builds the raft. So don't ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... an interpreter and not knowing Arabic. I do not believe in man's free-will, and therefore believe all things are from God and preordained. Such being the case, the judgments or decisions I give are fixed to be thus or thus, whether I have exactly hit off all the circumstances or not. This is my raft, and on it I manage to float along, thanks to God, more or less successfully. I do not pretend my belief could commend itself to any wisdom or science, or in fact anything; but as I have said elsewhere, a bag of rice jolting along ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... immersed that it would appear to float with difficulty. An elephant shot dead within the water will float immediately, with a considerable portion of one flank raised so high above the surface that several men could be supported, as though upon a raft. The body of a hippopotamus will sink like a stone, and will not reappear upon the surface for about two hours, until the gas has to a certain degree distended the carcase: thus the hippopotamus is ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... running bars just as though there wasn't any prohibitory law in our constitution." He had turned from the window. "You're looking at that map, eh? You think I've stolen land, do you? Look here! I came down that river out there on a raft—just married—my wife and a few poor little housekeeping traps on it. We never had a comfort till we got to the age where most folks die. I've had to live to be eighty-five to get a little something out ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... ground up with him," sniffed Jerry. "She can swim overhand to the raft and get back almost before her brother has started. By Guy! I never saw a woman swim as she does! Dick gets kinder peeved with her sometimes when she jollies him. But let her car play a prank and he has her, for she's no more idea what to do with an engine than the man in the moon. She ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the trout was the first thing in order. On a rude raft of log which we found moored at the shore, and which with two aboard shipped about a food of water, we floated out and wet our first fly in Thomas's Lake; but the trout refused to jump, and to be frank, not more than a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... way of getting to this island, for the sea-maiden would sink each boat and raft that would go on the loch. He thought he would try to leap the strait with the black horse, and even so he did. The black horse leaped the strait. He saw the hind; and he let the black dog after her, but when he was on one side of the island, the hind would be on the other side. "Oh! ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... a great deal of trouble. They were wafted over the next day in the following manner. From the bank of the river was thrown a raft, two hundred feet in length, and fifty in breadth; this was fixed strongly to the banks by large ropes, and quite covered over with earth; so that the elephants, deceived by its appearance, thought themselves upon firm ground. From this first raft they proceeded to a second, which was built ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... efforts made by the sufferers, some in the jolly boat, some on a raft, others by lashing themselves to pieces of timber, hogsheads, and even hencoops, to reach the shore; but out of four hundred and seventy-two persons who a few days before had left the coast of Holland, not more than eighteen escaped the raging billows. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... boat; when her task is accomplished, the mother passes to a new cell to confide to it another of her descendants. During this time the parasite larva hastily descends the abdominal hairs and allows itself to fall on the egg of the Anthophora, to be then borne upon it as upon a raft; its fall must take place at the precise instant which will enable it to embark without falling into the honey, in which just now it would be glued fast, and perish. This series of circumstances results only in the introduction of a single Sitaris into a chamber; the moment which ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... gamble." He had but two dollars in his pocket; but this was enough for his purpose. The Rhine was not far distant from his native village, and this part of his journey he easily accomplished on foot. Upon reaching the river, he is said to have secured a place as oarsman on a timber raft. The timber which is cut in the Black Forest for shipment is made up into rafts on the Rhine, but instead of being suffered to float down the stream, as in this country, is rowed by oarsmen, each raft having from sixty to eighty men attached to it. As ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... his part, he doubted not that Ribaut was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty men, he 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. But the Adelantado, regardless of this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... the Nor'-Westers strongly objected. For the time the proposal was dropped, but when Robertson had gone, then the Governor proceeded with a force of thirty men to pull down Gibraltar, which was done in a week. The stockade was taken down, carried to the Red River and made into a raft. Upon this was piled the material of the buildings, and the whole was floated to the site of Fort Douglas and used in erecting a new structure and fully completing the Fort which John McLeod had begun. The same aggressive course was pursued under orders from the Governor ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... began—on one 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, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... in coves and creeks unknown to the scouts. Hour after hour he patiently toiled, collecting these, and lashing them together with timber-dogs and ropes he had brought with him. It was long after dark when he at last took his raft in tow, and began to row for his own shore. The tide was favourable, so after a pull of over an hour he had the satisfaction of making them fast to a tree in ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... fifteen Indians came on a raft and were taken on board, where they were entertained and given something to eat. They learned how to ask ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... marine deities were incorruptible. It was not possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy weight of guns, to draw back its spider-like feebleness of limb, and open its bosom ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... to all things," replied Bobus. "The truest kindness to her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible. She has quite enough ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of distinguishing fact from fancy. Of St. Bridget we are gravely told that to dry her wet cloak she hung in out on a sunbeam! Another Saint sailed away to a foreign land on a sod from his native hillside! More than once we find a flagstone turned into a raft to bear a missionary band beyond the seas! St. Fursey exchanged diseases with his friend Magnentius, and, stranger still, the exchange was arranged and effected by correspondence! To the saints moreover ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... does, the gnat would perforce have to dive into the water. With the beautifully adapted transfer of the functional spiracles, their position is appropriately arranged for the gnat's emergence at the surface, and the empty pupal cuticle floats serving the insect as a raft. On this it rests securely and the crumpled wings have opportunity to expand and harden before the insect ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... 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
... eyes solved the mystery. It was a rudely built raft with a stool upon it, and upon the stool sat a ragged urchin ten ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... think how they tampered with the chains on that lumber raft so that the raft went to pieces in that storm on the lake!" added May. "Oh, I think they ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... its wash rising all along the shore. A multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her crew, while the mob of mixed boats ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... 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, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... she steadily refused to be separated from Ossoli and Angelo. On a raft with them, she would have boldly encountered the surf, but alone she would not go. Probably, she had appeared to assent to the plan for escaping upon planks, with the view of inducing Mrs. Hasty to trust herself to the care ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a triangular sail, having a black spot painted in the middle, supported by a raft, also triangular, which is floated by three barrels, ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... changed. 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Second time she Stuck fast; but this was of no consequence any farther than giving us a little trouble, and was no more than what I expected as we had the wind. While the Ship lay fast we got down the Foreyard, Foretopmast, booms, etc., overboard, and made a raft of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... python faced him. The great snake, escaping somehow from the catastrophe to the menagerie ship, had swum for the same refuge Jack had chosen. Now it was dragging its brilliantly mottled body, as thick as a man's thigh, up upon the hatchway. The floating "raft" dipped under the great snake's weight, while Jack, literally petrified with horror, watched without motion ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 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 ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... on the raft with the boathooks, and crowd the stuff over to the starboard side," said the captain when he had found the place ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... such cruelties by an overseer to a slave, that he twice attempted to drown himself, to get out of his power: this was on a raft of slaves, in the Mobile river. I saw an owner take his runaway slave, tie a rope round him, then get on his horse, give the slave and horse a cut the whip, and run the poor creature barefooted, very fast, over rough ground, where small black jack oaks had been cut up, leaving the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... some of the compartments; putting, for instance, two or even three small bags into one, and tin cases into a few of the others, instead of the large bags. These panniers, with the bags inflated, and connected together by a stage, would form an excellent and powerful raft. If secured within a wagon about to cross a deep river, they would have enough power, in all ordinary cases, to cause it to float and not to sink to the bottom. I trust some explorer will try this plan. I may add that the macintosh ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... day I heard him talking about it in the club. "Yes," he was saying, "a submarine. It torpedoed William,—my gardener. I have both a chauffeur and a gardener at the war. William was picked up on a raft. He's in pretty bad shape. My son Alfred had a cable from him that he's coming home. We've both telegraphed him to stick ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... same spot as he had found the first party. But this time the Frenchmen had made a raft, and upon this they were preparing to cross the water when the Spaniards came upon them. The Frenchmen were in such misery that many of them greeted the appearance of their enemies with joy. But others were filled with misgiving. Still they resolved ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... they paid less attention than the others to the angling, and allowed 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. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... feel astonished that the number of Indians and negroes embarked were only sufficient to work the raft, and that a larger number were not taken in case of an attack ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... rapids the large rafts are, as it were, unyoked, and divided into small portions, which go down separately. The excitement and motion of such transit must, I should say, be very joyous. I was told that the Prince of Wales desired to go down a rapid on a raft, but that the men in charge would not undertake to say that there was no possible danger; whereupon those who accompanied the prince requested his Royal Highness to forbear. I fear that, in these careful days, crowned heads and their heirs must often find themselves in the position ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... every virtue. And I, rejoicing at these things, will do all that thou hast desired of me. I will by my servants cut thee in abundance timber of cedar and timber of cypress, and will bring them down to the sea, and command my servants to construct of them a float, or raft, and navigate it to whatever point of thy coast thou mayest wish, and there discharge them; after which thy servants can carry them to Jerusalem. But be it thy care to provide me in return with a supply of food, whereof we are in want as inhabiting ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... following morning the Handsome King of the Apes rose very early, built him a raft of old pine trees and took a bamboo staff for a pole. Then he climbed on the raft, quite alone, and poled his way through the Great Sea. Wind and waves were favorable and he reached Asia. There he went ashore. On the strand ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... send his family to a Graymouse school. He said that Uncle Squeaky's band couldn't play as good as the Frog Orchestra, and that Uncle Squeaky didn't know anything about the Lake, if he did make a raft and float around. Ah, Grandpa Bull Frog thinks he is a ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... at that moment. A lieutenant, who had accompanied him, then took the command, and continued to fight the ship. A youth of seventeen, by name Villemoes, particularly distinguished himself on this memorable day. He had volunteered to take the command of a floating battery, which was a raft, consisting merely of a number of beams nailed together, with a flooring to support the guns: it was square, with a breast-work full of port-holes, and without masts—carrying twenty-four guns, and one hundred and ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... "But we are not in a desperate case. We have food, I have my rifle, and it will be possible to make a raft and float down the river until we meet your ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... began, Siddhartha 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 light ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... direst distress thou dependest on thyself. To cross the fearful river of life without a raft and with the aid of only one's bare arms implies ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... inlet has been used before for some such purpose as that for which we are using it, namely, for careening vessels for repairs and refit. These poles have been employed for lifting guns or other heavy material taken out of a ship or from off a raft. Now I wonder who it may be that has used these things? The Spaniards would not need to use this inlet for any such purpose, for they have their own ports on the island, where this kind of work could be done far ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Paul must soon come back with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... make a 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 ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... marked by 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 ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... attempting to land upon one, when I caught sight of a glimmering light at a distance in the centre of the stream. I directed my course towards this in preference; and I perceived as I approached that it proceeded from a raft, moored off one of the islands, upon which the crew were probably cooking their evening meal. I knew that if I approached this raft in front, I should inevitably be sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too wide ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... unchallenged sway over his subordinates, his mastery of the river; the variegated colours of that lawless, picturesque, semi-barbarous life of the river—all these sweep by us in a series of panoramic pictures as Huck's raft swings lazily down the tawny river, and Horace Bixby guides his boat through the dangers of the channel. Mark Twain is primarily a great artist, only unconsciously a true sociologist. But his power as a sociologist is no less real that it is unconscious, indeed infinitely ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... submarine. Only 27 of the Bayano's crew of 250 were saved. Fourteen officers, including the commander, went down with the ship. The Bayano was a new twin screw steel steamer of 5,948 tons. The survivors were afloat on a raft when rescued. The loss of the Bayano was the most serious of the submarine blockade of the British coasts ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... work of unloading the wreck. There was an inlet or mouth of a creek not far from the place where they first landed, and, constructing a raft on the wreck and loading it with arms, provisions, ammunition and tools, they took advantage of the tide to float it in to shore. This was repeated daily for weeks. Clothing, sails, provisions of all kinds, half a hundred guns and as many pistols and cutlasses, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... one way of hiding our trail," he mused. "If we could come upon some river or large stream of water, where there was a boat, or we could make a raft, we should be safe. A big rainstorm would do as well, for it would wash out ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... start. First I tried a pontoon bridge, but the stones for the bottom course were so heavy that they sank the pontoons, and I lost a couple of hundred niggers before I saw that it couldn't be done. Then I tried a big raft, but in order to get her to float with the stones I had to use such big logs that she was unwieldy, and before I knew what had struck me I had lost six big dressed stones and another hundred niggers. I got the laugh, of course. Every numskull in Egypt wagged his beard over it; I could ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... roe of this fish is shipped to Wilmington and to Cincinnati. Wild-fowls abound, and the shooting is excellent. The fishermen say flocks of ducks seven miles in length have been seen on the waters of Bogue Sound. Canvas-backs are called "raft-ducks" here, and they sell from twelve to twenty cents each. Wild geese bring ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Sioux. The Indians killed a cow and when the drovers remonstrated, they killed one of them and stampeded the cattle. The drovers all ran for their lives. Two of them managed to elude the Indians, and took the road leading east. Our man was one, the other was drowned while crossing the river on a log raft, the rest were never found. Many of the cattle ran wild on the prairies. The Indians used often to kill them and sell the meat to the whites. One of the claims at Traverse de Sioux was for these cattle from ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... with a tenacity that would end only with life. One stroke of Drusus's fist as he surged alongside the wreckage sent the dagger flying; and in a twinkling he had borne Pratinas down and had him pinioned fast on the planking of the rude raft. There was a great shout rising from the enemy on the mole. A few darts spat in the water beside the fugitives; but at the sight of the approaching galley the Alexandrians gave way, for on her decks were swarming archers and slingers, and her powerful ballistae were already working ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... understand? Wery well, then; you stay in here until that there clock have marked off a good half-hour; arter that you may come out and do the best you can for yourself; there's plenty o' spars knockin' about the decks here, which you can lash together, and make a tip-top raft out of 'em, upon which you can go for a cruise on your own account; but if you shows your ugly head outside this here cabin before the half-hour's out, damn me if I won't lash your neck and heels together, and heave you into the middle of the fire there ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... water, Thorogood had no very clear recollection; but by instinct he struck out through the welter of gasping, bobbing heads till he was clear of the clutching menace of the drowning. The Commander, clad simply in his wrist-watch and uniform cap, was standing on the balsa raft, with scores of men hanging to its support. "Get away from the ship!" he was bawling at the full strength of his lungs. "Get clear ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the Mississippi, and then make their way down that 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
... that we see such a Trial!—Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual worship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumping lumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to smoother. Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting level?—enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If Society is to subsist, it must have the human with the logical argument against the cry of the free-flags, instead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... arrival of the Nuestra Senora del Rosario at Manila the coastguard cutter Candelaria sailed for Dinshaw's island. Peth and Doc Bird, seeing the steamer approaching, attempted to leave the island on an uncompleted raft, which broke up with them, and both were drowned, Doc clinging to the mate when they were thrown ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... deemed totally uninhabited, and filled with the hope that the stranger might be able to give him some information relative to the geographical position of the isle, and even perhaps aid him in forming a raft by which they might together escape from the oasis of the Mediterranean, Wagner proceeded toward the mountains. By degrees the wondrous beauty of the scene became wilder, more imposing, but less bewitching, and when he reached the acclivities of the hill, the groves of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... last victim—Frankenstein himself—the creature is filled with remorse at the "frightful catalogue" of his sins, and makes a final bid for our sympathy in the farewell speech to Walton, before climbing on an ice-raft to be "borne away by the waves and lost ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... were, I doubt if Mr Scoones would let us; besides, she will run a great risk of being thrown on the rocks, or swamped during the darkness. The ship does not give signs of going to pieces yet; perhaps the wind may abate before morning, we shall then be able to get ashore on a raft, if any shore is near, and there is one boat left which nobody seems ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... to keep the frightened child from risking their main chance of safety. A few more strokes and she would reach the boat, rest a moment, then, clinging to it, push it leisurely to shore. Feeling that the danger was over, she hurried on and was just putting up her hands to seize the frail raft and get her breath when Milly, thinking she was to be taken in her arms, leaned forward. In rushed the water, down went the boat, and out splashed the screaming child to cling to Ruth with the desperate ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... meticulously serious in their ritual, and then boys and girls deriving also a little fun from their immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the extremities of the corpse twisting among the faggots. Here and there is a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach. And over all is the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but soon ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... 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, embarked with him on the raft, which was fitted out with a sail made ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the men to set up some fifty feet of the fence where it parted us from an alley- way, for I wanted a chance to dry some of the boards, which had just been hauled from a raft in the North River. The truckmen had delivered them helter- skelter, and they lay, still soaking, above each ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... me quick." I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any others I had not the good fortune to know of them. What a red-letter-day it is to a boy, the day he first opens "Tom Sawyer." I would rather sail on the raft down the Missouri again with "Huck" Finn and Jim than go down the Nile in December or see Venice from a gondola in May. Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of his Missouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of Arc. And certainly he never did a better ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... 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 had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... set, build a raft and set himself and the apparatus adrift upon the water in the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... middle of August that the carpenter received instructions from the landowner to make some wooden steps and a small raft and to fix them up on the banks of the river for the convenience of bathers. It did not take the carpenter and Petrushka long to make these things, and one afternoon Petrushka drove down to the river to fix them in their place. The river was broad, the banks were ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... year 1822, the first settlers to dwell on the island were traders in the Archipelago, and they lived in raft houses, so called, or more probably in huts, erected on poles in the Malay style, and these were located on the site of the present "Commercial Square," which was then little more than a mud flat covered ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... where Charley, standing where you all stood before him, actually caught a flounder with his own hand, whereat he screamed loud enough to scare all the folks on Eagle Island. We have also been to Maquoit. We have visited the old pond, and, if I mistake not, the relics of your old raft yet float there; at all events, one or two fragments of a raft ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... heathen deity, Vishnu, Father Boushet mentions an Indian tradition, concerning a flood which covered the whole earth, when Vishnu made a raft, and, being turned into a fish, steered it with his tail. Vishnu, like Dagon, was represented under the figure ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... parties to kill them, and who destroy several thousands at one chase: their flesh is considered a great delicacy. These animals migrate, at different seasons; and have the credit of ingeniously ferrying themselves over rivers, by using a piece of bark for a raft, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... this one held out longer than the others; but the rock being guarded on all sides, escape was thought impossible. The murids, however, having devised a plan for preserving the life of their chief by the loss of their own, constructed from materials previously collected in the cave, a raft of sufficient size to carry several persons, and letting it down at night into the river below, then followed themselves. The guard on the bank observing this manouvre, immediately gave chase to the raft, those on horseback plunging ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... the present moment the negro was placing in the water a curious-looking little raft that he had brought on one shoulder from its place of concealment. It was something like a flat-bottomed scow, the sides being just high enough to prevent whatever cargo it carried, from rolling off into ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... the wiggler grew tired, and came, like many tired beings, to the top. For a time he was quiescent, but soon the sun's rays gave force to the inner impulse which "rent the veil of his old husk," and transformed it into a canoe or raft, containing a draggle-tailed-looking creature with a big head and six staggery legs. Poising itself upon the raft, the outcome of the wiggler sunned its crumplety wings, till "like gauze they grew," and then all of it, a whole pailful of it, made for the sleepers, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... up within ten days like shipwrecks on a raft," Martin Leland said when he managed to make a trip back to the ranch in December. "We're in for a hard winter. I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't get in again or you get out before well on ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... perfect trap," said Meta, trying to squeeze the muddy water from her own dress and Monica's. "I believe it's nothing but a kind of raft, made out of all the dead wood and rubbish that have accumulated in the lake. I expect seeds have blown on to it, and then trees and bushes have sprung up. Now I think of it, I don't believe it was in the same place last year, so it ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... more in height, the Christ visible afar, stretched upon His red cross; arundo donax is waving all around, and willows near; behind, far off, soar the peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds; past the cypress, on the Rhone, comes floating a long raft, swift through the stream, its rudder guided by a score of men: one standing erect upon the prow bends forward to salute the cross; on flies the raft, the tall reeds rustle, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... prove it to me!" said the fox. "Come up to the surface of the water and form a raft that will reach from this island to the mainland. Then I can walk over all of you, and I shall be ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... paralyzed by the danger. He was not the sort to give up while there was any hope left. Surely the guard in the cabin would have departed with the others, leaving him free to act. He could smash his way out through that door, and find something on deck to construct a raft from. This was Lake Michigan, not the ocean, and not many hours would pass before he was picked up. Vessels were constantly passing, and daylight would ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... say," replied the Tsarevich Malandrach; "I am a merchant from India, and have come hither in a ship with my wares. Our vessel was wrecked in a storm, and I was cast upon the shore of this kingdom upon a raft, to which ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... water—and these illuminated spots finely relieved the otherwise sombre depth of colour. Our boat was slow, and we had between two and three hours of unsurpassed scenery before reaching our destination. An immense raft of timber, gathered from the loose logs which are floated down the Lougen Elv, lay at the head of the lake, which contracts into the famous Guldbrandsdal. On the brow of a steep hill on the right lay the little town of Lillehammer, where we ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... away into slavery. The village was burned after being plundered, and the unfortunate people have since been living in the jungle, with only such food as they could get there. The head of the tribe and about six of his followers came down the river on a raft to ask assistance from me, and I had the story from them. They were relieved as far as my means admitted, and returned far happier than they came. The very same day arrived news that six men of the Sows were cut off by a wandering ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... in the Hudson Bay Store yesterday and found it much more metropolitan than I had expected. And I find I am three whole laps behind in that steeplechase known as Style. But I got a raft of things for Pauline Augusta, and a Boy ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... to 25 tons, belonging to Torbay, which were at this time accustomed to run across the Channel, load up with the usual contraband, and then hover about outside the limits of the land. When they were convinced that the coast was clear of any cruisers they would run into the bay and land, sink or raft ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... ingratitude had I repined because there was no boat in the ship. Yet for all that I could not but see it was a matter that concerned me very closely. Should the vessel be crushed, what was to become of me? It was easy to propose to myself the making of a raft or the like of such a fabric; but everything was so hard frozen that, being single-handed, it was next to impossible I should be able to put together such a contrivance as would be fit to live in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the cause of the democracy as its own. The feeling which prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering, and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death with their own hands during ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... rendered it less marvellous than hers.—Just after the loss of Snowball, came floating into the farmyard, over the top of the gate, with such astonishment of all who beheld that each seemed to place more confidence in his neighbour's eyes than in his own, a woman on a raft, with her four little children seated around her, holding the skirt of her gown above her head and out between her hands for a sail. She had made the raft herself, by tying some bars of a paling together, and crossing them with what other bits of wood she could find—a brander she ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... head of secession, now and forever, so that it shall never again glare with its baleful eyes, or brandish its venomous tongue. Let not the fate and fortunes of this glorious country be committed to the keeping of a clumsy, misshapen raft, compacted of twenty-four or thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned—in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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, so ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... not a peso at the disposal of the Provincial Governor for local improvements. If a bridge broke down so it remained for years, whilst thousands of travellers had to wade through the river unless a raft were put there at the expense of the very poorest people by order of the petty-governor of the nearest village. The "Tribunal," which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dak Bungalow for wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... said modestly, "you should see my raft—that is worth seeing. I have invented a way of arranging corks so that it will float in the severest storm. It could not sink if it tried, unless, of course, it became waterlogged. But I can only work at that when we are ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
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