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More "Raft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the canal 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 ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Rand arose, replaced the book on the shelf, sat down at his desk, and began to unfold papers. "Work!" he said presently, in a dull voice. "Work! That is the straw at which to catch! Perhaps one might make of it a raft to bear one's weight. I have known the day when in work I have forgotten hunger, thirst, weariness, calamity. I have worked at night and grudged an hour to sleep. What I have done, cannot I do again? But I would work better, Tom, if I ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... himself as I had done. "Seignior," says the Spaniard, "had we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should never have got half those things out of the ship, as you did: nay," says he, "we should never have found means to have got a raft to carry them, or to have got the raft on shore without boat or sail: and how much less should we have done if any of us had been alone!" Well, I desired him to abate his compliments, and go on with the history of their coming on shore, where they landed. He told me they ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of 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. ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... the chief in whose house it was held. It had been used sufficiently long, however, to show that it was appreciated by both parents and children, and thus encouraged, Mr. Duncan determined to commence to build a school-house. The wood had arrived in a raft, and a number of Indians were engaged to assist in the building; but scarcely had they begun to carry the wood up the hill, when one of the Indians dropped dead. The news ran through the camp, and great alarm spread on all sides. Mr. Duncan at first feared that owing to the superstition ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... lion, 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 ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... 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 ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... was being launched from the port side, but the Hawke at that moment heeled over before the boat could be got clear, and the cutter lurched against the cruiser's side and stove in one or two of her planks. As the Hawke went down a small pinnace and a raft which had been prepared for such an emergency floated free, but such was the onrush of men who had been thrown into the water that both were overcrowded. On the raft were about seventy men knee deep in water, and the pinnace also appeared ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... explained the 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 employ, and the effect of his trumpets at a certain moment, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... above Rising Sun. They secreted themselves during the day in the woods, and with the aid of his friend and Solomon Stevens's slave, previously alluded to, who was also attempting to escape with the family, he made a raft upon which they were about to cross a creek to reach the team on the opposite side. Suddenly six armed men pounced upon them, and captured the family, with Solomon. To save John from the hazardous attempt to defend his family, his friend held him back in the thicket, knowing ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... 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 a single street of a metropolis and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... tangle. During the wet 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, at 12.30 p.m. the whole ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... not to make the floating bulk Mask death upon its slippery deck, Itself in turn a shattered hulk, A ghastly raft, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The ice raft, with its four prisoners, was driving faster now, caught by the swifter water. It ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and made trial of a similar artifice. Bateaux were joined 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
... lands are washed away and as farm lands they are 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 ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... bring the kid here—I'm not a horse. So I did the next best thing; I carried him down the old creek bed a ways, to where the water flowed into it. It was flowing easy then. I laced a couple of broken off branches together and made the craziest raft you ever saw. Then I laid the kid on it and held his head and poled with the other hand and that way we got down to the Hudson. I intended to get him to some house down there and then notify camp. He ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... she said, "and you are as safe as though you were in your own armchair. No current that ever ran could upset this clumsy raft. The only reason I am working so hard is that I do not want to be carried down past the ridges. If we get too low down we shall have to walk ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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
... burned, not so bad as most of them. When the fire came we were going to our posts (we are engineers) to weigh anchor and get out. When we came up we found the ship afire aft, and fought it forward until 3 o'clock, when the Suchet came to our rescue. We were then building a raft." ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... notice that big raft we passed? It's wonderful to see the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet." She said nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. "If we stay we'd better go and pick up ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... say. It was at the Three 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 driftwood in ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... everywhere, waiting for their chance. Often their pictures prove of no value and are destroyed, but sometimes the scenes they catch are very useful to work into a picture play. A few weeks ago I was shipwrecked on the ocean and saved by clinging to a raft. That was not pleasant and I caught a severe cold by being in the water too long; but I was chosen because I can swim. Such incidents are merely a part of our game—a game where personal comfort is frequently sacrificed to art. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... not with the thought of love. It called to her as she stood at night alone under the stars, with her head lifted as if to drink the keen, sweet darkness; called to her from far-distant plains of blowing grass, virgin of man's foot; from rushing rivers, bare of canoe and raft; from high hills, smiling, sweet and fair, up to the cloudless sky—and always it called ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... be either that way or they would construct a raft and paddle themselves out to the schooner. Knowing the captain was on the Coral, and knowing how important it was that he should not be allowed to run away and leave them there, they would neglect no ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... mouth and fiery eyes and body of the hue of clouds, and said these words, "Listen, O Ghatotkacha, attend to what I say. The time is come for the display of thy prowess, and not of anybody else. Be thou the raft in this battle to the sinking Pandavas. Thou hast diverse weapons, and many kinds of Rakshasa illusion. Behold, O son of Hidimva, the army of the Pandavas is being beaten by Karna on the field of battle, like a herd of kine by the herdsman. Yonder, the mighty bowman Karna, endued with great ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... got into 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 ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... hardships, and peril, they all came in sight of the Euxine, and perhaps no shipwrecked sailors clinging to a raft ever cried "Land!" "Land!" with more joy than those Greeks who had climbed a hill-top ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... every thing else but the yellow fever; one might as well bin on a raft as such an infernal unlucky old tub as she is. It's the steward, sir—he's got a touch of a fever; but he'll soon be over it. He only wants rest, poor fellow! He's bin a bully at work ever since the first gale. He'll mend before he gets to town," ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... provisioned; put off. In three days we were at the Isle of Ogygia, where we landed. Before delivering the letter, I opened and read it; here are the contents: ODYSSEUS TO CALYPSO, GREETING. Know that in the faraway days when I built my raft and sailed away from you, I suffered shipwreck; I was hard put to it, but Leucothea brought me safe to the land of the Phaeacians; they gave me passage home, and there I found a great company suing for my wife's hand and living riotously upon our goods. All them I slew, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 stalks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... across if you'll get a canal boat or a raft," said he, "or, if the children are kept out of sight, I'll strip, ma'm, and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the idea as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... I'll have to get Mrs. Brennan come look after the house. That means money, too, and where's it to come from? All that I've saved from slavin' and sweatin' in the sun with a gang of lazy Dagoes'll be up the spout in no time. (Bitterly.) What a fool a man is to be raisin' a raft of children and him not a millionaire! (With lugubrious self-pity.) Mary, dear, it's a black curse God put on me when he took your mother just when I needed her most. (Mary commences to ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... it would take too long, and the ways would be too foul. 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 ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... 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 road shoving the dark before ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... camp, and paddled out swiftly into the night. It seemed an endless distance before we found the feeble light where the crippled launch was tossing at anchor. The captain shouted something about a larger steamboat and a raft of logs, out in the lake, a mile or two beyond. Presently we saw the lights, and the orange glow of the cabin windows. Was she coming, or going, or standing still? We paddled on as fast as we could, shouting and firing off a revolver until we had no ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the railroad between Dechard and Cowan. John Beatty, with his brigade of infantry marched to Hillsboro for the purpose of covering and supporting Wilder's movement. The latter reached Elk River and crossed his command, floating his mountain howitzers on a raft made of an old saw-mill. He then moved on to Dechard, where, after a slight skirmish with a detachment of the enemy, he destroyed the depot full of commissary goods, the water tanks, the railroad bridge over the Winchester ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... it, especially when we considered that we had so often unwittingly incurred the same danger before while bathing. We were now forced to take to fishing again in the shallow water, until we should succeed in constructing a raft. What troubled us most, however, was, that we were compelled to forego our morning swimming excursions. We did, indeed, continue to enjoy our bathe in the shallow water, but Jack and I found that one great source of our enjoyment was gone, when we could no ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... launched. Also, the circular life belts from the bridge and several splinter mats from the outside of the bridge were cut adrift and afterwards proved very useful in holding men up until they could be got to the raft. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of warning could reach those engaged in taking measures at Washington to prevent the spread of epidemic and infectious diseases in our stock, it would be "go slow." If the wishes of a few veterinarians are met and the demands of a raft of pauper lawyers and politicians are complied with, it will result in the creation of a half dozen commissions. Each one of them, as previous ones have done, will find sufficient reason for their continuance and reports ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... be 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 to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... no doubt that it would conduct us down to the lake, on the borders of which we hoped to find our friends encamped. How to cross it was the difficulty. I suggested that we should construct a raft, as the reeds which fringed the bank would supply us with abundance ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... lost their heads, and it was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates were less successful ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... threaded her way through numerous ocean steamers and foreign gun-boats anchored in the stream, and was slowly approaching the hulk alongside which she was to be made fast, an enormous raft of timber, bearing a whole village of huts and a considerable population of raft navigators, caught by the swirling eddy caused by a freshet from the River Han, which 200 yards above this point was pouring at right ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... is an expert canoe-man and something of a carpenter, and as he was a free man I took him into my household. At my request he related to me the cause of those white marks on his neck. It was thus. As he and another black man were floating down the river on a large raft of mahogany, it being Sunday he wished to bathe, and jumped into the river for that purpose. As he was swimming after the raft, which was close to the mangroves, and had nearly reached it, a large alligator seized him by the neck. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... was not 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 pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... 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 must be ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 cramp, and began nosing around ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... guns spoke. A minute had done it all. Sixty seconds before the gallant vessel had lain apparently at the Frenchman's mercy. Now the Frenchman was fastened inextricably, while the crowd upon deck stood as much exposed as if the galley were a raft. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... better still, if you are ready for whatever adventure may befall on a seldom used trail, descend Dr. Walcott's old trail to the river, and there build a raft (it is perfectly feasible and not too dangerous, unless the river be at the flood) and cross to the other side, letting your horses swim over. Then come out by way of the Tanner Trail, after riding up and down the wide beach ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Indiana and Illinois, however, were of 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 whites, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... after it was all frozen up solid, some men with two yoke of oxen came up to cut and put logs in the river to raft down when the ice went out. With them came a shingle weaver, with a pony and a small sled, and some Indians also. We now had to take up all of our steel traps, and rob all our dead-falls and quit business generally—even ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... old thing, really. Pretty soon Jimsy came wandering in with his arms full of books and games and puzzles and things he'd got to amuse himself while he was laid up! Of course the doctor expected him to keep perfectly still in bed, but he found he could make a sort of a raft of two table extension boards and slide downstairs to his meals. He had an awful time getting up again, but he didn't care. The first day he was laid up he had exactly nineteen people to see him, and he took the bandages off the leg and all the boys and teachers ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... he was 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. But the most unaccountable thing about it was that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an old raft, lying at one edge of the pond, under the willow tree. "I'll play on the raft," ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... in the Mediterranean near Syria on February 8, 1916. She went down within a few minutes, although about a hundred men managed to reach the lifeboats and rafts. The weather was bitterly cold, and only one survivor lived to bring the news. He was picked up on a raft with fourteen dead companions and told an incoherent story that bore little relation to the truth. But it was only too easy to guess what ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... hospital who have been shipwrecked, and as a rule 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 ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... bombarded some of the coast cities of Algeria they found themselves cut off on the east by a French fleet and on the west by an English fleet, but by a very clever bit of stratagem they escaped. The band of the Goeben was placed on a raft and ordered on a given moment to play the German national airs after an appreciable period. Meanwhile, under the cover of the night's darkness the two German ships steamed away. After they had a good start the band on the raft began to play. The British ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was able to do for us all that we asked Him to do, but we did not ask Him at first for half enough, and we did not learn at first a tithe of what was in Him. Suppose, for instance, some great ship comes alongside a raft with ship-wrecked sailors upon it, and in the darkness of the night transfers them to the security of its deck. They know how safe they are, they know what has saved them, but what do they know compared with what ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... were close aboard the derelict, and her cabin was a mass of flame. Figures of men showed against the light amidships, and I finally made out all hands getting out a spar and barrels to make a raft. The oil in the cargo, however, was too quick for them. It had become ignited aft and had cut off all retreat by the stove-in boat. Several explosions followed, and the flames roared high above ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... apparent long before any open revolt. Gros had made innovations on the classic in his battle-pieces, but the first positive dissent from classic teachings was made in the Salon of 1819 by Gericault (1791-1824) with his Raft of the Medusa. It represented the starving, the dead, and the dying of the Medusa's crew on a raft in mid-ocean. The subject was not classic. It was literary, romantic, dramatic, almost theatric in its seizing of the critical ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... the pursuit of which, according to Dr. Sal Muller, it prefers those that live on a vegetable diet. The Rev. Mr. Mason, in his writings about Burmah, says "they will occasionally attack man when alone;" he instances a bear upsetting two men on a raft, and he goes on to add that "last year a Karen of my acquaintance in Tonghoo was attacked by one, overcome, and left by the bear for dead." In this case there was no attempt to devour, and it may have been, as I have often ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... 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
... the 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 Junior Classics • Various
... likely to be recognized by every one. They belong to the arrowhead, Sagittaria, 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, burgrass, numerous pondweeds, several buttercups, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... 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
... me no special category," replied the other. "All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... night 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 ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... 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 ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... few miles of wading the little party issued out upon the Platte River. By this time the wounded men were so exhausted that a halt was called to improvise a raft. On this the sufferers were placed, and three or four men detailed to shove it before them. In consideration of his youth, Will was urged to get upon the raft, but he declined, saying that he was not wounded, and that if the stream got too deep for him to ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... set ourselves about. But the loss of our long-boat, which was staved against our poop when we were driven out to sea, put us to great inconveniences in getting our water on board: For we were obliged to raft off all our cask, and the tide ran so strong, that, besides the frequent delays and difficulties it occasioned, we more than once lost the whole raft. Nor was this our only misfortune; for, on the third day after our arrival, a sudden gust of wind brought home our anchor, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... my fine fellow," answered Roswell, laughing, "did you attempt to pass a winter here. The Sea Lion of Humse's Hull would not herself keep you in fuel, and you would have to raft it off next summer on your casks, or remain here ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Macaulay, walked shorewards from Dunseveric House. It appeared that they were going to bathe, for they carried bundles of white sheets and coloured garments, large bundles well wrapped together and strapped. Hannah Macaulay had, besides, a little raft made of the flat corks which fishermen use to mark the places where their lobster pots are sunk and to float the tops of salmon nets. It seemed as if one of the party were no great swimmer, and did ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... another classmate, my comrade Burton Babcock, whom I (in 1898) had left standing on the bank of the Stickeen River in Alaska. He, too, was characteristically American. He had carried out his plan. After leading his pack train across the divide to the upper waters of the Yukon, he had built a raft and floated down the Hotalinqua. He had been frozen in, and had spent the winter in a windowless hut in the deep snow of an arctic landscape—and when, after incredible hardships, he had reached the Klondike, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Barnes," he hailed. "Ain't drowned out after the gale, be you? Judas priest! Our place is afloat. Dad says he cal'lates we'll have to build a raft to get to the henhouse on. Here; here's somethin' Mr. Kendrick sent to you. Wanted me to give it to you, yourself, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... commander of the gun crew on the oil-ship Vacuum. When the ship was sunk he cheered his freezing men tossing on an icy sea in an open boat far from land, until he at length perished, his last words those of encouragement. There is Lieutenant S.F. Kalk, who swam from raft to raft encouraging and directing the survivors of the destroyer Jacob Jones after a torpedo had sent that vessel to the bottom. There are those two gunners on the transport Antilles who stood serving their gun until the ship sank and carried them down. There ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... it be to them? Harming a defenseless animal can surely give none, but it always seems a great temptation to them to do so. Once I saw a group of small boys stoning a kitten which they had tied to a raft. I was glad when a big policeman caught them at it. Dogs and boys were the only drawback to what was otherwise a perfect life, and a lazily lounging about one; first a feast and then ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... was able to administer the same kind of a defeat to the Russians that he had administered to the Austrians at Austerlitz and to the Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... believe all things are from God and pre-ordained. 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, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... to get him on to it, but she had pushed the raft well in the reeds so that it could not give, and though it was a painful operation for him, he was presently lying on a pile made of the tent canvas and blankets. Ten minutes later when he opened his eyes, they were afloat, and she was poling the raft into deeper water. She ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... 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
... you," replied Ernest, "who can swim; but we should be all drowned. Would it not be better to construct a raft and go all together?" ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... 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 ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... of further trouble from the friends of the discomfited guide impelled the two men to travel all that night and the next day, although Washington was suffering acute agony from his frosted feet. While recrossing the Allegheny River on a rude raft, Washington fell into the icy waters and was saved by Gist from drowning only after the greatest efforts had been employed to rescue him. Reaching Herr's Island (within the present city limits), they built a fire and camped there for the night, but in the morning Gist's hands were frozen. The ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... daytime he compared the ponds and the dams minutely, making measurements and diagrams. At night he lay in hiding, beside a different pond each night, and gained a rich store of knowledge of the manners and customs of the little wilderness engineers. On one pond—his own, be it said—he made a rude raft of logs, and by its help visited and inspected the houses on the island. The measurements he obtained here made his note-book pretty complete, as far as beaver life in summer and fall ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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 ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... reach him. At last, beside the body of his 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
... it 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
... of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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 to ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... of a raft, denotes that you will go into new locations to engage in enterprises, which ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... think of returning to the coast by the way we have followed together. He would be lost among these immense forests. He will seek, then, I am sure, to reach one of the rivers that flow toward the coast, so as to descend it on a raft. He has no other plan to take, and I know he will ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... 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
... venture to say I know just how ship-wrecked folks feel when they're off on a raft in mid-ocean and they sight a sail. Ain't this a funny fix, half past four in the afternoon and me ten miles from home? And to make it worse I wrenched my knee a mite cleaning house this morning." This last statement was strictly accurate though ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... employed the 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 favor, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... find out," replied Captain Hull. "But that wreck is not a raft. It is a hull thrown over ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... with a grim sort of humor; "I must do the best I can. It's the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces a subject he shall at least see that ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... tropical fevers whenever we choose to exercise it. It had long been known that the breeding-place of mosquitoes was in water; that their eggs when deposited in water floated upon the surface like tiny boats, usually glued together into a raft; that they then turned into larvae, of which the well-known "wigglers" in the water-butt or the rain-barrel are familiar examples; and that they finally hatched into the complete insect and rose ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... was, thanks to the natural 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 ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 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
... that under a changed name he returned to France, his native country. His conviction was easy. Antoine had long suspected him of a design to plunder their joint ward, and had determined to put him to the proof. The raft of chairs had floated after all; and by the help of these the faithful steward had gained the shore, far down the river. No one knew of his escape; and the idea occurred to this strange old man to remain for a while en perdu—a silent spectator of the conduct of Monsieur Dominique. No sooner ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... tree-trunks 70 Floats near, and upon it The pope's heavy daughter Is wielding her beetle, She looks like a hay-stack, Unsound and dishevelled, Her skirts gathered round her. Upon the raft, near her, A duck and some ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... squad race and the individual contest were to be for a quarter of a mile straightaway, with the start from a moored raft ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... of 'em are right here, Colonel. We ain't got what I wished; but we've taken 'em from friend and foe, and here comes the last of my boys with Major Skeene's big raft and, if I ain't mighty mistaken, with a bag o' charcoal aboard that must ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there was nothing unusually formidable; ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... seven years old, and I live on the east bank of the Mississippi. My papa owns a raft steamer, which is busy towing rafts from the foot of Lake Pepin to Hannibal and St. Louis. Every summer my mamma and I take a trip with papa up or down the river. We are gone a week or more. Oh, I just have jolly times! The men on the rafts make me whistles and little boats. The cook gives me ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... built its shrine for each, A shrine of rock for everyone, Nor paused till in the westering sun 70 We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done. When lo! what shouts and merry songs! What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs 75 Of gentle islanders! "Our isles are just at hand," they cried, "Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping; Our temple-gates are opened wide, Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping 80 For these majestic forms"—they cried. Oh, then we awoke with ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... who seemed to be asking for information about us, when we arrived at Fort Pitt. I am sorry I did not take the fur-trader's advice in regard to the guide. But I was in such a hurry to come, and didn't feel able to bear the expense of a raft or boat that we might come by river. My nephew brought considerable gold, and ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... denationalized the races of the south of Italy, 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 their Italian names as well as from their being situated ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... There were threats that the Massachusetts people were coming down to capture them all by force. This so preyed upon the Hutchinsons, who had suffered severely, that they packed their now scanty goods upon a raft, and with improvised sails headed for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... to be transacted, and that the management of the Indian affairs was left solely to Monsieur Joncaire. As I was desirous of knowing the issue of this, I agreed to stay; but sent our horses a little way up French creek, to raft over and encamp; which I knew would ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... into rafts. At a landing where the boat stopped, I on one occasion attempted to estimate the number of logs comprised in one of these marine novelties, and found it to be about eight hundred; the logs were large, and were worth from five to six dollars each. Here then was a raft of timber worth at least $4000. They are navigated by about a dozen men, with large paddles attached at either end of the raft, which serve to propel and steer. Often, in addition to the logs, the rafts are laden ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... reluctantly, remembering the unbroken bill in her "upper drawer." "I do' know's I have a right to send them back. I didn't tell her how many, but—mercy on us!—who'd dream of such a raft! If there's one, there's forty, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the ravages of the "devouring element," from the simple fact that it all but totally consumed every stick of timber covering a space of forty-five miles by twenty-five; and the value of what was thus destroyed may be partially estimated, when it is considered that one good raft of timber is worth from three to five thousand pounds. These rafts, which are seen dotted about the lake in every direction, have a very pretty effect, with their little distinguishing flags floating in the breeze, some from the top of a pole, some ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... 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 of wind-tossed wooden decoys. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... opposite wall of the gorge. On one side of the fire was pitched a small "outside" tent—the same tent Garth had watched so long when it stood outside Mabyn's shack—and on the other side stood a tepee. A small raft, half drawn out of the water, explained their ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... knowledge pluckily, albeit it had told on him more than he would have been willing to confess. It would have told on him still more, though, had it not been for his week with Whittenden. All that week, he had clung to Whittenden, as the drowning man clings to the life raft. In the end, Whittenden had dragged him to the shore. And now it was his own turn to do as much for his parents, and for Olive. Yes, for Olive. Poor Olive! Yes, she was ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 I came to where the army had crossed. Some teamsters mending transport ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... cords made of grass, and assumed the appearance of meshes worked in the form of a pentagon. Mr. Taw, the pilot of Macquarie Harbour, saw the natives cross the river: on this occasion, a man swam on either side of the raft—formed of the bark of the "swamp tree." The distance between the islets is not sufficient to shut us up to the notion of a local creation.[28] A New Holland woman, taken to Flinders', remembered a tradition, that her ancestors had driven out the original ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... enough," Fergus said with a laugh. "We have been down with a raft of timber from the mountains, and are on our way back. That must be our story till we have passed Ratisbon. There is but one objection, and that is a serious one. As raftsmen we should certainly speak the Bavarian dialect, which none of us can do. For that reason I think ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... what had happened. In a manner to be explained later, a lumber raft being towed up the lake by a steam tug had not only broken away, but likewise had broken apart, and the timbers which had composed it were now floating around over a large area of ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... The steward, Abraham, however, persisted in clinging to his berth, stupidly, like a mule—from sheer fright I believe, like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in an earthquake. So we went to look for him. It was chancing death, since once out of our lashings we were as exposed as if on a raft. But we went. The house was shattered as if a shell had exploded inside. Most of it had gone overboard—stove, men's quarters, and their property, all was gone; but two posts, holding a portion of the bulkhead to which Abraham's bunk was attached, remained as if by a miracle. We ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... birds, in the pursuit of which, according to Dr. Sal Muller, it prefers those that live on a vegetable diet. The Rev. Mr. Mason, in his writings about Burmah, says "they will occasionally attack man when alone;" he instances a bear upsetting two men on a raft, and he goes on to add that "last year a Karen of my acquaintance in Tonghoo was attacked by one, overcome, and left by the bear for dead." In this case there was no attempt to devour, and it may have been, as I have often observed ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... I've got an idea!" suddenly cried Dick. "We'll want the machine on the other side of the river. Why not build a raft and float her over instead of bringing her ashore here? There is plenty of stuff in that ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... ask for water. She knew he had none. He looked at her lying pale in his arms, and said with a smile that was not like a real smile, "It's a pity about the icebergs." She smiled and nodded, and lay still in the heat, watching the gulls, and thinking of ice. Some of the birds settled on the raft. One sat on the mast; another hovered at her knee, picking at crumbs. They played in the sun, rising and falling, and turned in her vision into a whirl of snowflakes, enormous snowflakes....She began to dream ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... its temperature up with worrying about getting some ebony logs off to a bothering wretch of a river steamer that must needs come yelling along for cargo just then, I said, "You leave it to me, I'll get it shipped all right," and proceeded, with the help of three Kruboys, to raft that ebony off. I saw as soon as I had embarked on the affair, from the Kruboys' manner, I was down the wrong path, but how, or why, I did not see until a neat arrangement of ebony billets tied together with tie-tie was in the water. Then ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... find a good raft necessary, axes, hatchets, hunting-knives, nails, one hundred and fifty feet of rope, and two Juneau sleds were purchased. To these were added snow-shoes, a strong duck-tent, fishing-tackle, snow-glasses to protect themselves against snow-blindness, ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... he, and they brought him pieces of wood, large and small, and he chose the largest, and having torn the lining of his jacket into strips, he spliced them into a rope and with this he tied the wood together until he had made a very good raft indeed. ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel
... they worked swiftly, Ellen making her selection of necessities while the men skidded the boat down to the water's edge. It was soon loaded. A small pile of lumber from Katleean for making sluice-boxes and furniture was made into a raft to be towed. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... are ourselves, from the boisterous state of the weather. Whilst on the creek in the morning, had there been much difficulty in getting the animals, we should have had to hoist the things up into trees, and constructed a raft of dead timber, and rafted them off to dry land, which would have been a great deal of trouble. Squally still; wind continues from same quarter. Towards evening a great portion of the flat is being covered with water from the creek, beyond the creek there is nothing visible but lines of trees, ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... the main 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 ...
— 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
... printing. He was 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 feet; the name ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... why should he show readiness of the tongue?' CHAP. V. The Master was wishing Ch'i-tiao K'ai to enter on official employment. He replied, 'I am not yet able to rest in the assurance of THIS.' The Master was pleased. CHAP. VI. The Master said, 'My doctrines make no way. I will get upon a raft, and float about on the sea. He that will accompany me will be Yu, I dare say.' ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... takes a Musket in her hand, Raft from a dying Souldiour newlie slaine, And ayming where th' vnconquered Knight did stand, Dischargd it through his bodie, and in twaine Deuids the euer holie nuptiall band, Which twixt his soule, and worlds part shold remaine, Had ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. When ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Wayland. "They'll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait. All right, my friends! You'll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft. We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too cold ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... science absolutely hopeless. But advantage would be early taken of the buoyant property of water, particularly of the sea, which must have been known to mankind from the creation. The canoe and the raft would be first constructed, and, in the course of time, experience would teach men to build vessels of a larger size, to fix the rudder to the stern, to erect the mast, and unfurl the sails. Thus would the art of navigating the ocean advance from step to step, while the art navigating ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... All day we built its shrine for each, A shrine of rock for everyone, Nor paused till in the westering sun 70 We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done. When lo! what shouts and merry songs! What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs 75 Of gentle islanders! "Our isles are just at hand," they cried, "Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping; Our temple-gates are opened wide, Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and, accompanied by another of similar character, stole a boat at Green River, Utah, and proceeded down the river. Soon after entering Cataract Canyon, they lost their boat and provisions. Finding a tent which had been washed down the river, they tore it into strips and constructed a raft out driftwood, tying the logs together with the strips of canvas. Days of hardship followed, and starvation stared them in the face; until finally Foote's partner gave up, said he would drown himself. With ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... much," Hugh 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 down ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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
... 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 ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... succession of side faces, and it was strange what a hungry, appealing look these pale cheeks and staring eyes had. Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were. She thought, fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr. Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and the last ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... 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 ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... we felt very seriously affected by it, especially when we considered that we had so often unwittingly incurred the same danger before while bathing. We were now forced to take to fishing again in the shallow water, until we should succeed in constructing a raft. What troubled us most, however, was, that we were compelled to forego our morning swimming excursions. We did, indeed, continue to enjoy our bathe in the shallow water, but Jack and I found that one great source of our enjoyment was gone, when we could ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... twenty-four hours more on the block of ice, without food or firing; but at last we met with an ice-field; we jumped on to it, and with the help of an oar we fastened ourselves to an iceberg that we could guide like a raft, and we got to land, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... 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
... the 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 ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... never do to venture to sea in her," said Mr Henley, and Johnny Spratt agreed with him. "She would answer, however, to form the centre of a raft, on which, if strongly put together, we might venture to sail for some port in ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there was nothing unusually ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind the boom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walked up to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up the hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the rocky ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the conduct of the virtuous as proof, neither this nor the other world existeth. Doubt not, O Krishna, the ancient religion that is practised by the good and framed by Rishis of universal knowledge and capable of seeing all things! O daughter of Drupada, religion is the only raft for those desirous of going to heaven, like a ship to merchants desirous of crossing the ocean. O thou faultless one, if the virtues that are practised by the virtuous had no fruits, this universe then would be enveloped in infamous darkness. No one then ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... lashed together. But a roller ground the wreck farther on to the reef, and the sudden snap broke the rope, as I suppose, and the boat went to sea. I never knew the misfortune till I saw her adrift. I could have got over that by making a raft; but the gale from the north brought such a sea on us. I saw she must break up, so I got ashore how I could. Ah, I little thought to see your face again, still less that I should owe ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to 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 sharp stumps, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... casks that we had found, and Ernest and I soon cut them in half. With these tubs we made a kind of raft, though it was no slight task. The tubs, in fact, were a fleet of eight small round boats, made so fast to some planks that no one of them could float from the rest. The next thing to be done was to launch the raft. This we at length ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... blade fixed in a fork or crutch. Those who steer are obliged to exert the whole strength of the body in those places especially where the fall of water is steep, and the course winding; but the purchase of the scull is of so great power that they can move the raft bodily across the river when both ends are acted upon at the same time. But, notwithstanding their great dexterity and their judgment in choosing the channel, they are liable to meet with obstruction in large trees and rocks, which, from the violence ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the 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 favor, whatever that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the driftwood of the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 was at rest. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... A raft of poles was constructed for the wounded man, and the party started down the stream, protected by the bank, and keeping the Indians at bay with their guns, for they ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... Karna hath been slain by Savyasaci in single combat, I am plunged in an ocean of woe like a wrecked vessel in the vast deep! Indeed, hearing that that foremost of men, that best of car-warriors, hath been slain in single combat, I am sinking in an ocean of grief like a person without a raft in the sea! When, O Sanjaya, I do not die of such grief, I think my heart is impenetrable and made of something harder than the thunderbolt. Hearing of the defeat and humiliation of kinsmen and relatives and allies, who else in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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
... basin. When they had all finished, she whistled again, and bade two or three coil themselves round her arms and neck, while she turned one into a cane and another into a whip. Then she took a stick, and on the river bank changed it into a raft, and seating herself comfortably, she pushed off into the centre of ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... thirst. Moreover, the waters thereabouts are full of sharks, and the evening was so squally that our stranded boat was raised and banged with every wave. We could scarcely move, and the other boat was nowhere in sight. And now it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a raft of spars and old pieces of wood, that might at all events keep ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... dumb-show that when they reached its banks they would make a raft and float down ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... 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 timber and plank ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... out to buy the turkey—the biggest gobbler he can get, he told me—for Mrs. Judy has a raft of young ones, 'all av thim wid appetites like a famine in ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... 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 as ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... those brave men who save, or attempt to save, life from shipwreck, and to those who do not require money a medal is given. This medal was executed by W. Wyon, Esq., R.A. The subject of the obverse is the sea-nymph Leucothea appearing to Ulysses on the raft; the moment of the subject chosen is ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... used 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," says he, "why, Lord ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... 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
... declare war, so as to occupy Alexander elsewhere. The czar, however, was loyal to his allies until, on the 14th of June, his army was almost annihilated at Friedland. This loss compelled him to enter into negotiations. On June 25, 1807, the two emperors met on a raft at Tilsit. Napoleon was prepared to do almost anything that would induce Alexander to cease interfering in Europe. An offensive-defensive alliance was concluded, whereby Napoleon agreed not to oppose the expulsion of the Turk or Russia's conquest of Constantinople. The czar ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... 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 ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... every one supposed that he was in one or other of the boats, and they had pushed off, leaving him marooned. For an hour or more the flames smoldered, and the deck was quite bearable. He tried to gather materials for a raft, but almost everything on the ship was iron. The cabin fittings were wood, but he couldn't find an ax, the sockets where the axes were usually ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... see the stranger and found her aunt in high spirits. "She is as natural and sweet as a flower," said Mrs. Murray. "To be sure she has a few Western tricks; she says she stopped awhile at Chicago, and that she has a raft of things in her trunks, and she asks haeow, and says aeout; but so do half the girls in New York, and I will break her of it in a week so that you will never know she was not educated in Boston and finished in Europe. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... capstan bar and knocked the wedges and battens off a hatch cover. Then I got a small piece of line. I passed it through a ring bolt and made fast. I figured that when the ship went down the cover would float free for a raft on which I could keep up. Before I was fully ready the compressed air blew the cover off with a 'boom'. It ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... answered, for see, the roof is bare! The current swept the slippery raft, the maiden is not there! An angel band descended, her lover led the way, And now she joins her loved and lost in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... so. 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 ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... looked a little like a life preserver; the more since there was a hole in the center, albeit the hole was no wider than an inch across. The rubber bag or cushion was extremely light, the material being twice the weight of that employed in the making of toy balloons. Inflated and considered as a raft, the rubber cushion would support a weight of twenty pounds, and draw no more than three inches of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... human eye. In reality, we stand, in the midst of a luminous ocean, almost blind! The little that we can see is nothing, compared to the vastness of that which we cannot. But it may be said that out of the very imperfection of his senses man has been able, in science, to build for himself a raft of thought by which to make daring adventure on the great ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... clutch it—missed—and fell into the sea, to be seen no more alive. 'Another rope!' was the cry. But from the mismanagement of those in charge there was no other there. They then saw the poor fellows constructing a raft and launching it. A call for the lifeboat, one of large cost, provided with all good gear, kept close by. She was run down to the water. A shout for men—none—a few of the Hovillers, pilotmen, got on board, but refused to put ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... to his people, "Let us hence: Take up the litter." And they set their feet Toward the raft whereby men crossed that flood. And while they journeyed, lo, the giants sat Within the fairest hall where all were fair, Each on his carven throne, o'er-canopied With work of women. And the dragon lay In a place of honor; and with subtlety He ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... The man on his raft now signed to Chebron to take up one of the spears; but the lad shook his head and motioned to him to undertake the attack, for he felt that, ignorant as he was of the habits of the animal, it would be folly for him to engage in such an adventure. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... all 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, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... Tigris is the raft of light wood and air-inflated skins which comes down from the north to Samara and Baghdad. On this section of the river there are many shallows, sometimes caused by traces of old rubble weirs. Consequently any kind of craft which drew more than a few inches would be always in trouble. ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... sunken brig lay, Claude had made a rude raft, and with the assistance of Marie, whose strong young arms and bright, courageous spirit were invaluable to him, he soon had enough planks and timber transported to the place where they had landed. To get them ashore, and carried to the spot he had selected as being the most ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... one another with the ringing of bells and firing of pistols, unheeded. By the time the signal came to clear the course for the crews, the pleasure-craft pushed within the barriers formed a vast, softly undulating raft covering the whole surface of the water, so that you could have walked from the barrier to the shore without dipping foot in the flood. I have suggested that the situation might have had its perils. Any panic must have caused a commotion ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... had 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
... suddenly. "I 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
... arrowhead, Sagittaria, 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, burgrass, numerous pondweeds, several buttercups, the hop, nettles, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... the 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, but not injured, by the smoke of a gun. He saw ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 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 ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... a mile it came pretty near a point, and Billy, he climb on a rock and reach out, but he fall in deep water and was carried far, so he had to swim for his life. I jump on rocks anoder mile to anoder point; I got ahead of de bag, den I get two logs, and hold dem between my legs for raft, and push out; but dat dam river he take dem logs very slow, and dat bag very fast, so it pass by. But Billy he swim ashore, and run some more, and he make a raft; but de raft he stick on rock, and de bag he never stick, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... boys 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
... crowded on deck, and it soon became known that they had run into a log raft, which, though no lives were lost had been nearly swamped, and much injured by the collision. The "St. Michael," too, had received a bulge, which rendered a little tinkering at the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... goes from two to three geographical miles an hour. The canal yields abundance of carp and eel. I see also small fish, resembling our perch and chub. Some plants of white clover, and some of yellow, on the banks of the canal near Capestan; santolina also, and a great deal of yellow iris. Met a raft of about three hundred and fifty beams, forty feet long, and twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, formed into fourteen rafts, tacked together. The extensive and numerous fields of saintfoin, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mouth o' Brushy Fork and Tinker Creek whar dey goes together dar is a large pond o' water. Us n'used to fish in dat pond. One day, me and Matilda tuck off a-fishing. I fell in dat pond, and when I riz up, a raft o' brush held my head under dat water and I couldn't git out no ways. 'Tilda sees my dangerment, and she jump in dat deep water and pull me from under dat raff. She couldn't swim but us both got out. Can't think no ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... of desperadoes 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 ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... localities in northwestern Boxelder County: Grouse Creek, Park Valley, Grouse Creek Mountains, 12 miles northwest of Grouse Creek, and Goose Creek. C. b. crebrus now is known to inhabit all the major drainages of the Raft River, Goose Creek, and Grouse Creek mountains. In addition to extending the known area of occurrence of this animal in Utah, these specimens prove also that this species is not restricted to the Snake River Drainage as ...
— Additional Records and Extensions of Known Ranges of Mammals from Utah • Stephen D. Durrant
... of water, set below the level of the floor like the swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one side of the pool floated an odd-looking black object. Whether it were some strange monster of these buried waters, or a queer raft, I could not ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of Enticement," explained the Fairy. "Its depth is ten thousand chang; its breadth is a thousand li; in its stream there are no boats or paddles by means of which to effect a passage. There is simply a raft, of which Mu Chu-shih directs the rudder, and which Hui Shih chen punts with the poles. They receive no compensation in the shape of gold or silver, but when they come across any one whose destiny ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... out of this hole. If it caught us here, Frank, I reckon we'd just have to let our nags shift for themselves, and take to climbing the sides. And wouldn't I hate to lose Domino the worst way; even if he does give me a raft ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... 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 ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... other side, the signal-lights, white and crimson and green, creeping slowly along in the shadows, revealed one of the packets ploughing her steady way to the great marts below. Nearer at hand, just shaving the long strip of sandy, wooded point that jutted far out into the lake, a broad raft of timber, pushed by a hard-working, black-funnelled stern-wheeler, was slowly forging its way to the outlet of the lake, its shadowy edge sprinkled here and there with little sparks of lurid red,—the pilot-lights that gave warning of its slow and silent coming. Far down along the southern ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... these four lads. Their courage is unshaken, and they look cheerful and hopeful on all occasions. Take example from them, and keep up your hopes. I propose to make a raft upon which I myself will embark, and by making out from this bay into the open sea, may succeed in catching sight of the pinnace, and bringing it hither to ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... ought to be 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 of standing a wonderful amount of wear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... 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 of the best man on board; very possibly, also, she ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... directed, and very soon they were standing on the little raft a few yards from shore. Then her companion put down his stick, and took the coil ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... they soon heard a voice, it was that of Charley Meadows, crying out, "There is something floating ahead of us, a raft or a sunken boat." ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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
... for the moment to one, or possibly two, of the small outbuildings. These were used largely for storage purposes; they were crammed full of packing cases, extra carboys of acids and loose heaps of bark—a raft of stuff that was highly combustible. A glance told ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... into 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 ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... aground just as darkness put an end to the 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 practically destroyed the Merrimac, which was compelled to seek ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 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 the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... but a raft," said Washington. "And we have but one hatchet to aid us in making it. Let ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... During the wet 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 ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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 ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... him,—Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 330 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young Were dead ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the bay. But a squall was encountered, the land-loving men lost their heads, and it was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates were ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... 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
... (notwithstanding Campbell's beautiful description,) were extremely litigious, used to receive all their fees in kind, such as skins, corn, whiskey, etcetera, etcetera, and, as soon as they had sufficient to load a raft, were to be seen gliding down the river to dispose of their cargo at the first favourable mart for produce. Had they worn the wigs and gown of our own legal profession, the effect would ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 they've ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... whispered Bob, beginning to bring his gun-stock nearer to his shoulder. "Say, there's a whole raft ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... himself in the 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. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... wanderers were kept in movement until at last they reached the bleak shores of the North Pacific. Even there something—perhaps sheer curiosity—still urged them on. The green island across the bay may have been so enticing that at last a raft of logs was knotted together with stout withes. Perhaps at first the men paddled themselves across alone, but the hunting and fishing proved so good that at length they took the women and children ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... Woodcutters, and they used to leave their village and go into the woods. Then they cut down the trees, and sawed them into planks, and shaped them into the parts of a house. When the house was finished, they put numbers on all the parts, and took it to pieces again, and put it on a raft; and the raft floated down the great river to the place where the house had been ordered. Then they put up the house in a very short time, because you see it was all ready made, and only ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... 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 ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... loved ones, yea, even one's would-be enemies is equivalent to leaving one's companions on a sinking raft and, without sentiment or remorse, save ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... 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 into ten feet of water, but I fortunately saved ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... field-glasses, leather leggings, patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks. They go all the way to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they themselves shall not be conscious of it.—This trip will take 100 pages or more,—oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Empire. One writer defined it as a sort of transition between the earth and the sea. Another calls it "an immense surface of earth floating on the water." Others speak of it as an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth and the beginning of the ocean—a huge raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it "the country ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... raw-hide shoes are hell on corns While tramping through the sands, And driving jackass by the tail,— Damn the overland! I would as leaf be on a raft at sea And there at once be lost. John, let's leave the poor old mule, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... made a raft, sir,—'Louette and me,—and poled over to the levee, and I walked every fut of the way down to follow me husband, as I swore I would whin we was married. I'd 'a' come in Anatole's boat, sir, but 'twas gone,—gone since last night. Did ye ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... 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 ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... arrived. The transfer of the men from the boats and rafts to the destroyers was effected as quickly as possible and the destroyers remained in the vicinity until after daylight the following morning, when a further search was made for survivors who might have drifted in a boat or on a raft, but none were found, and at about 6 a.m. the return trip ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... I can, and I'll take care of you; but there is plenty of wood and we can make a raft. That reminds me that there was a raft here last week, when Sam Harper and I had a swim: I wonder where it can be. Help ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... determined to make another trial but, for a long time, no one was able to suggest where a crossing of the swollen river might be effected. It was clearly impossible to build a bridge but, after much discussion, it was agreed to make a raft. It consisted of a platform of planks, built across empty barrels; and was lashed together by the only rope at the station. A couple of natives took their places upon it, with long poles; but their efforts to push against the strong currents were quite ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... that I know of. I think they all came away and made a raft and floated across the mouth of the creek and got ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... waters might have regained their tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there was nothing unusually formidable; a ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... toward the Winkie Country," said he; "and so, if we had a boat, or a raft, the river would float us there more quickly and more easily ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 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 ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... officer in the United 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 by. Its commander ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... fells at home. Russian fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest of great trees—a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it—is the hut where old Peter sits at night ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... a moment. Try to think of those ten patients as ten shipwrecked men on a raft—a raft that is barely large enough to save them—that will not support one more. Another head bobs up through the waves at the side. Another man begs to be taken aboard. He implores the captain of the raft to save him. But the captain can only do that ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... so still... The fountain slobbering its stone basin Is louder than They— Flotsam of the five oceans Here on this raft ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... in my labouring chest to destroy vitality. The black fragment of the wreck rose with the waters, and raised obliquely the side of the bell, which may have been an additional cause for the rising of the sea within. Through my glazed eye I saw, lying in a hollow of the broken raft, a white figure—probably that seen by Vanderhoek when he fell into the sea. By and by, it became more visible as the waters rose, and I saw that it was the body of a female who had perished in the vessel. The image of the apparition has haunted me to this hour, and shall do till I die. A ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... rigorous boundary line can be drawn. We read that at Mathura on the Jumna doles of food are provided by the piety of pilgrims for the sacred river-tortoises, which are so crowded when there is food going that their smooth carapaces form a more or less continuous raft across the river. On that unsteady slippery bridge the Langur monkeys (Semnopithecus entellus) venture out and in spite of vicious snaps secure a share of the booty. This picture of the monkeys securing a footing on the moving mass of turtle-backs is almost a diagram of sheer dexterity. It ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better for a fish that lies ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... and 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 ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... a battle royal. Whatever the thing was that had felt the spears, it certainly lost no time in showing its resentment. It thrashed the water into furious waves until I momentarily expected the raft to be swamped. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... 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 service, drew lots to ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... often had the 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 ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... Sinhalese and attributed to Mahinda, but it is in any case clear that the works which he consulted were considered old in the fifth century A.D. Some of their names are preserved in the Samanta-pasadika where he mentions the great commentary (Maha-Atthakatha), the Raft commentary (Paccari, so called because written on a raft), the Kurundi commentary composed at Kurunda-Velu and others.[79] All this literature has disappeared and we can only judge of it by Buddhaghosa's reproduction ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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 ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... had done the others. The birds, now well trained to indifference, scarcely moved till he was in the midst of them, when, making rapid snaps right and left, he secured two fine young ducks as his prey, and floated forward triumphantly on his raft; while the surviving fowls, clamouring in terror, took to flight, and returned no more to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... all their business with these people was to be transacted, and that the management of the Indian affairs was left solely to Monsieur Joncaire. As I was desirous of knowing the issue of this, I agreed to stay; but sent our horses a little way up French creek, to raft over and encamp; which I knew would make it ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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 ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was her father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream, and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficulty against the bank by two men with long poles. In its centre was a roll of blankets, a valise and saddle-bags, and the shining ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... The different species are described in "Palm Land" and "Western Africa" (pp. 369-373), from which even the account of the "tubular bridge" is taken—Mr. Wilson less sensationally calls it what it is, a "live raft." The most common are the Nkazeze, a large reddish and fetid ant, which is harmless to man; the Njenge, a smaller red species, and the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a woman's voice. He began to reason with himself. What was there strange in this? He was told, or had inferred, that a woman had been left upon a ship. Doubtless this was she, upon some rock or raft, perhaps. Only then she would have been crying for help, and this voice was singing, and in a strange tongue, more sweetly than he had heard ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... had been foolin' around on a raft there, an' first thing you know Dick fell in, right into deep water, over by the dam. Couldn't swim a stroke, neither. And the Perfessor, who jest happened to be comin' along in that 'bus of his, heard the boys yell. Didn't ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... smoothly adjusted; notes are given and paid with smiling faces; one would think that honor and manliness were the commonest of qualities. Now, every man was put to the severest proof, and showed the inborn and essential traits of his nature. Like a ship's crew on a raft, alone on the ocean without provisions, they looked at each other as they were. There, in their extremity, were to be seen calm resignation, unmanly terror, moody despair, turbulent passion, and stealthy, fiendish glances that blinked ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... it she drew in her breath sharply and brushed a hand across her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming. On the thing that was not a piece of driftwood at all, but looked like a sort of crudely and hastily constructed raft, were lashed three small, unconscious ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... 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 natural negligence of joyfulness (for though they ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the water, he plunged in, and is seen mid-stream, astride upon an inflated skin, quietly pursuing his avocation. [PLATE CXXVI., Fig. 1.] Occasionally he improved his position by amounting upon a raft, and, seated at the stern, with his back to the rower, threw out his line and drew the fish from the water. Now and then the fisherman was provided with a plaited basket, made of rushes or flags, which was fastened round ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying 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 water. No forms can have any dangerous importance whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... once the foreman found he was beginning to feel faint, so he told the labourer they would go up to the top for fresh air. But he had not the strength to carry out his purpose. The raft was pulled to the ladder by which they were to get out; but he was unable to ascend, and fell down in ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... 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
... 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 for ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... 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
... is getting awfully hot, I vote we get into the shade of those stunted trees, and have a nap till the afternoon. It won't do to begin even to make the raft till the sun ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... and one of the two cabins was quite dry. Timar 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 ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... said, "but I can't get back. I've got the cramps. Can't you make some sort of a raft, and come over to me! The water's ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Henceforth, though the law of the fairy world would not allow her to touch again the realm of earth, she, having once been wife and parent, could not forget the babies born of her body. So, making a sod raft, a floating island, she came up at night, and often, while these three mortals lived, this fairy mother would spend hours tenderly talking to her husband and her two children, who were now big boy and girl, as they ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... enough, might as well stay ashore, Mr. Dodge, and publish an hebdomadal. And so, my dear young lady, by looking along the land, the day after to-morrow, in the northern board here, you may expect to see a raft booming down upon you that will cheer your heart, and once more raise the hope of a Christmas dinner in New York, in all lovers ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it half in flood and fording out of the question. We were on the upstream 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 crossing. Our horses and ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... 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 and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... evidently astonished, the Misses J. not a little vexed at the "raft" of elegant ladies present, and the independent manner in which they monopolized attention ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... earthen basin. When they had all finished, she whistled again, and bade two or three coil themselves round her arms and neck, while she turned one into a cane and another into a whip. Then she took a stick, and on the river bank changed it into a raft, and seating herself comfortably, she pushed off into the centre ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... forces. . . . I come 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
... life was marked by a sort of patriarchal simplicity. Manual labor was not yet thought to be degrading. Ulysses constructs his own house and raft, and boasts of his skill in swinging the scythe and guiding the plow. Spinning and weaving were the chief occupations of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... rear controlled horizontal steering, while rise and fall was controlled by horizontal planes arranged in box form. Accident attended the first trial of this second airship, which took place over the Bodensee on November 30th, 1905, 'It had been intended to tow the raft, to which it was anchored, further from the shore against the wind. But the water was too low to allow the use of the raft. The balloon was therefore mounted on pontoons, pulled out into the lake, and taken in tow by a motor-boat. It was caught ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... upper countries. For this trade he contracts with the natives inhabiting the lands lying near the shores of the rivers, and the wood is floated down on rafts to Tombo, where ships come to take in their cargoes. The African oak is so heavy that the natives are obliged to raft it on wood of a much lighter specific gravity. This trade is of considerable benefit both to our colonists and the native tribes. It not only promotes a friendly intercourse between them, but affords constant employment to great numbers of the latter, by which they are enabled to secure many of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... a raft coming down the lake, manned with a rugged set of half-breeds, who had a cask of whiskey on board, and were very drunk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... everything not actually bolted down, except the wreckage of the mainmast, which we had lashed firmly to ring bolts in the deck before the gale arose. There was that wreckage, it is true, and also the wreckage of the foremast under the bows; if it could possibly be got alongside, a raft of sorts might perhaps be constructed out of that, and there our resources would end. But there was no time for pondering and consideration, whatever was done would have to be done at once; I therefore called the gunner, the carpenter, and the boatswain to me, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... usual that night, reckoning stores, tidying lockers, and securing movables. 'We must economize,' said Davies, for all the world as though we were castaways on a raft. 'It's a wretched thing to have to land somewhere to buy oil,' was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and see what Christian countries are now doing, and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society, without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a great raft built about two thousand years ago,—call it an ark, rather,—the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be launched right out into the open waves of life,—and here it has been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... and frail, As I cherish thy light in each draught, His lamp is not more to the miner - their sail Is not more to the crew on the raft. For Hope can make feeble ones earnest and brave, And, as forth thro' the years I look on, Believe me, my friend, between this and the grave, I see ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and he had securely moored it just inside the muddy point of land at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as to be out of the way of drifting logs that would no doubt strand on the point during the freshet. Mahmat walked through the wet grass saying ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... pilot, "when the brave Scot was put on the raft, which carried him through the Traitor's Gate into the Tower. His hands and feet were bound with iron; but his head, owing to faintness from the wounds he had received at Lumloch, was so bent down on his breast as he reclined on the float, that I could ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and longest nails in the tool-chest. Be quick now." Kittie was off like a flash, and when she came back, there were three or four logs lying ready for use, with some planks and a long pole, and Mr. Bering with coat off, fell to work with a will and such speed, that in ten minutes, a small raft lay in the water, and Mr. Dering was making preparations for his voyage, by pulling off his boots and tucking his ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... elder of the Indians; "without doubt the canoe is dashed to pieces, and our comrades are even now with their forefathers. We shall see them no more; and my advice is that we construct a raft and try to return on it to the lands whence ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... 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 ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... sound, not more than the sigh of a stray breeze, came from a point far up the stream. He listened and the sound pleased him. The lone, weird note was in full accord with the night and his mood, and presently he knew it. It was some mountaineer on a raft singing a plaintive song of his own distant hills. Huge rafts launched on the headwaters of the stream in the mountains in the eastern part of the state came in great numbers down the river, but oftenest at this time of the year. Some stopped at Frankfort, and others went into ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 into ten feet of water, but I fortunately saved myself ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... 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 all ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... it was all frozen up solid, some men with two yoke of oxen came up to cut and put logs in the river to raft down when the ice went out. With them came a shingle weaver, with a pony and a small sled, and some Indians also. We now had to take up all of our steel traps, and rob all our dead-falls and quit business generally—even then they ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... this planet had been doomed by the approach of an alien star. Their great scientist, Ravv, had met the emergency by inventing the disc, into whose construction they had poured all their resources. The pick of their populace had been salvaged on this giant life-raft. The rest had perished when that destroying star had crashed down ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... wipe the 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 ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... came, the dams and booms were opened above, and forests of logs came riding down to Bamber's Boom. The current was strong, and the logs came on swiftly. As Brydon's gang worked, they saw a man out upon a small raft of driftwood, which had been suddenly caught in the drive of logs, and was carried out towards the middle channel. The river-drivers laughed, for they failed to see that the man was old, and that he could not run across the rolling logs to the shore. The old man, evidently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intelligence came to him. "Hold on!" he cried, as St. Vincent started to speak, "I got my finger on you. You were smooth-faced then. Let's see,—'86, fall of '87, summer of '88,—yep, that's when. Summer of '88 I come floatin' a raft out of Stewart River, loaded down with quarters of moose an' strainin' to make the Lower Country 'fore they went bad. Yep, an' down the Yukon you come, in a Linderman boat. An' I was holdin' strong, ez it was ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... at eight went on; at ten reached the first portage, passed it in an hour; went on till one o'clock; afterwards passed two other portages of about three hundred yards each; and went on to the great raft of flood wood, being the fourth portage, where we encamped at three o'clock, at its head. Mosquitoes very annoying. Estimate ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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; ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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 it must ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... kinder mortified 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
... I heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and massive—like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a raft—which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... every way, took from them their churches, banished their bishops, tortured and put to death many. Some bishops he made slaves. He exposed Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage, with a number of clergy, to the mercy of the waves on a wretched raft. Yet they reached Naples. The Arian clergy encouraged the king in all his cruelties. It was only in private houses or in suburbs that the Catholics could celebrate their worship. The violence of his tyranny, which led many to doubt even the providence of God, brought the ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... planetary foundlings, they have known hard treatment at the hands of the brute forces of nature, from the control of which they are soon to be set free. There are some old pessimists, it is true, who believe that they and a few others are on a raft, and that the ship which they have quitted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down with all on board. It is no wonder that there should be such when we remember what have been the teachings of the priesthood through long series of ignorant ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the boat appeared. It came from down the river, propelled close inshore by two members of their own party who had gone to fetch it. At first the travelers thought it a long, oblong raft. Then as it came closer they could see it was constructed of three canoes, each about thirty feet long, hollowed out of tree-trunks. Over these was laid a platform of small trees hewn roughly into boards. The boat was propelled by long, slender poles in the hands of the two ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... 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 Minnesota now lay a peculiar vessel. No one had ever seen anything like her. She seemed nothing but a flat raft with a big round cistern—such as are seen in the South and West—amidships, and a very big box or barrel ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... enters Free Frisia at Stavoren, once the home of kings and now a mere haven. A little steamer carries the passengers from Enkhuisen, while the cattle trucks and vans of merchandise cross the Zuyder Zee in a huge railway raft. The steamer takes an hour or a little longer—time enough to have lunch on deck if it is fine, and watch Enkhuisen fading into nothingness and ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of the Chalicodoma of the Pebbles! She eats not a half, hardly a third of it. The rest remains as it was, untouched. We see here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste which aggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, the survivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism; but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to take advantage ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... hour, without seeming to take any farther notice of us. We were more curious than they, and observing them with our glasses from on board the ship, we saw some of them cross the river upon a kind of raft, or catamarine, and four of them carry off the dead body which had been covered by the boy, and over which his uncle had performed the ceremony of the branch, upon a kind of bier, between four men: The other body was still suffered to remain where ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 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
... they came up, stopped for a moment around the body of their slain comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to the depth ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the deck, the blades of the propellers, the compartments of the cabins, all formed a sort of raft. When a wounded bird falls on the waves its wings keep it afloat. For several hours Robur and his men remained unhelped, at first on the wreck, and afterwards in the india-rubber boat that had fallen uninjured. A few hours after sunrise they were sighted ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... boys was a balsa, or raft, made by the Mojaves, of the cane-grass which grew in the river-bottoms to the height of fifteen feet. A large bundle bound at the ends with grass ropes would sustain two men. The boys borrowed one of an ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... subject. 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 and Space, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... out of danger before we 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 they ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... 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
... 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
... bridge was pulled down, and a new one begun. To aid in this task, a raft was used by the workmen ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... comparatively 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
... with Frederick William, by the terms of which he temporarily kept his strong places in Silesia and Pomerania; but his propositions for an alliance were incontinently rejected. Next day there was another meeting on the same raft, but this was tripartite, for the King of Prussia was present. Napoleon was blunt and imperious, reproaching Frederick William with the duplicity of his policy, vindictively (the descriptive word he used himself), and with emphasis, demanding Hardenberg's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... until at last they reached the bleak shores of the North Pacific. Even there something—perhaps sheer curiosity—still urged them on. The green island across the bay may have been so enticing that at last a raft of logs was knotted together with stout withes. Perhaps at first the men paddled themselves across alone, but the hunting and fishing proved so good that at length they took the women and children with them, and so advanced another step along the route toward America. At other times distress, strife, ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... found too many sandbars, and most of its cargo had to be jettisoned, lost in a time when rations had been reduced to a few ounces a day per man. January 9 the Colorado River was reached, and the command and its impedimenta were ferried over on the same raft contrivance that had ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... 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
... 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
... anything of our friends; to which they replied in the negative, and told us that we were still nearly a day's journey from the river. One of them undertook to guide us to a part where he thought we might possibly find a canoe. If not, he advised that we should descend the stream on a raft, until we reached some settlers' huts, which he told us we should come to in a few hours. He begged us, however, not to mention, on any account, having met with him and his companions. This we willingly promised. The ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cretan pirate, and had been taken prisoner by the Egyptians when he was robbing there, and how he had worked for many years in their stone quarries, where the sun had burned him brown, and had escaped by hiding among the great stones, carried down the Nile in a raft, for building a temple on the seashore. The raft arrived at night, and the beggar said that he stole out from it in the dark and found a Phoenician ship in the harbour, and the Phoenicians took him on board, meaning to sell him somewhere ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... that are selling rum and 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 of life. And she worked herself to death in ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Well, an egg famine came along. There was 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 come ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... as many of them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the ship's side, and pulling them to me I tied four of them together at both ends, as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them, crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... word will be photographed on our brains from this time on. Didn't old Jesse say that Martin Mabie was a big stockman now, and had really quit being a guide and hunter? Then it's mighty kind of him to undertake to convoy a raft of tenderfeet into the wilderness. Money didn't enter into ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... the 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse to a slight skiff, that can easily pass through the current and the most shallow parts. My guide and my lieutenant soon contrived to make a small raft of bamboos; when it was finished we embarked, Alila and myself, our guide refusing to accompany us. After much trouble and fatigue, casting ourselves often into the water to draw our raft along, we at length got clear of ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... Emperor 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... our thanks to the Rev. E. Warre, of Eton College, for certain corrections on nautical points. In particular, he has convinced us that the raft of Odysseus in B. v. is a raft strictly so called, and that it is not, under the poet's description, elaborated into a ship, as has been commonly supposed. The translation of the passage (B. v.246-261) ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... 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 let go of the raft and bring ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... especially when we considered that we had so often unwittingly incurred the same danger before while bathing. We were now forced to take to fishing again in the shallow water, until we should succeed in constructing a raft. What troubled us most, however, was, that we were compelled to forego our morning swimming excursions. We did, indeed, continue to enjoy our bathe in the shallow water, but Jack and I found that one great source of our enjoyment was gone, when we could no longer dive down ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... right towards the Circassian coast, at a rate perhaps of from four to five knots. The gale, too, now gradually subsided, and enabled the half-wrecked people to take more comfortable positions, and Aphiz and Selim to prepare a raft with the assistance of the crew, for it was but too apparent that the schooner must go down before long. Hollow groaning sounds issued from the hatches as she settled lower and lower, and it really seemed as though the fabric was uttering exclamations ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... Glide, or for a town, like the 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 shoot rapids, craps or big game ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 officer, was one ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... she was directed, and very soon they were standing on the little raft a few yards from shore. Then her companion put down his stick, and took the coil ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... 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
... I have! Let me recall one of the boyhood pictures that has never faded. It was just after school, one hot day, in the Illinois September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house, and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One of the two—who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull thatch—was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling handicap and wallowed ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... they are laid all night before the idols, either to help their sickness or make an end of them. If they do not mend that night, the friends come and sit up with them, and cry for some time, after which they take them to the side of the river, laying them on a raft of reeds, and so let them float ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... 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
... the glowing, glancing, glittering, golden-oak center-table. Miss Proudfoot shuffled sternly. Mr. Wrenn sat still and frightened, like a shipwrecked professor on a raft with two gamblers and a press-agent, though Nelly was smiling encouragingly at him from the couch where she had started her embroidery—a large Christmas lamp mat for the wife of the Presbyterian pastor at ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... that old raft up here and we'll hold it up. We'll just say 'hello' to be sociable, show the town ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... boats reached the flood-wood, where, to Joel's great amusement, Mike and the negroes, the latter having little more calculation than the former, had commenced their operations on the upper side of the raft, piling the logs on one another, with a view to make a passage through the centre. Of course, there was a halt, the females landing. Captain Willoughby now cast an eye round him in hesitation, when a knowing look from ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... so, as our memory gazes on the past, the light spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battled and argosies gone down,—it falls narrow and confined along the single course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, and see the sparkles but reflected from the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... need a steamer above the fleet; a raft would do just as well. I think I shall go up the river, and see what can be done. Well, boys," added Somers to the men in the boat, "there will be no fun to-night, and you may as well ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... was finished. My next work was to look for the ship's boats, but they were gone, as I expected. I could not bear to remain in the ship; it seemed a vast tomb for me. I resolved to make some sort of raft, and depart in it. This occupied two or three days; at length it was completed, and I succeeded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... finding them, Frank Hatch became discouraged at seeing us lay around the levee, so he tied the oars on with tarred rope and we got off, three of us besides the other dogs. The water was so high that we crossed Barron's island, only having to get out and pull the boat over two or three sand-bars and a raft or two. Every time we got out to pull the boat, the dogs would get out to look for woodcock, around the stumps, and when they got in the boat would be full of water and mud, and of course we had our best clothes on. Did it ever occur ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... rose and warmed the air, the boys strength and spirits revived, and in a few hours they were so refreshed that they determined to set about their raft. The wind had now entirely dropped, the waves were still very high, but they came in long, smooth, regular swells, over which they ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... of the Medusa is already known to the public, as one of the most awful and appalling that ever befel any class of human beings. The Shipwreck, and the dreadful scenes on the Raft, have been recorded in the Narrative of Messrs Savigny and Correard. But the adventures of the party who were cast ashore, and forced to find their way through the African Desert, could be reported only imperfectly by those gentlemen who were not eye-witnesses. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... himself, he smells again a stinking odor. He looks around, and, as he does not see any one, he thinks that he himself is dead. There is nobody to bury him. So he goes to the river, takes five or six banana-trunks, and makes a raft of them. He lies down on the raft, and lets the current of the river carry him away. In three hours the current has carried him into the woods. While he is floating through the forest, all of a sudden he is called in a fierce voice by some one on shore. This man was the captain of a band ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... all was in readiness for a new start, and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived. So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony, as he knew that 'in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,* which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... be entitled to the afternoon off to spend with Beth. At noon we built a fire and cooked a sumptuous dinner. Beth baked up some things to keep them supplied a couple of days longer. After dinner I asked her to go for a row. She insisted on taking Diogenes along, and the others all followed us on a raft. So I decided to cut the water sports short, and Beth and I started for a walk in the woods. Three or more were constantly right on our trail. I begged and bribed, but to no avail. They were sticktights all right, and," he added morosely, "she seemed covertly to aid and abet them. When we ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the 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 ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... right here, Colonel. We ain't got what I wished; but we've taken 'em from friend and foe, and here comes the last of my boys with Major Skeene's big raft and, if I ain't mighty mistaken, with a bag o' charcoal aboard that must ha' ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... 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 by the sea at high water. One of the first steps taken ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... necessary, in the present time and society. Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... from many a craft Goes drifting by on a broken raft Pieced from a vessel that clove the brine Taller and prouder ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Northwest Fur Company." With this band he trapped to the head of Salmon River. Thence they went to Malade River, trapping down it to where it empties into the Big Snake River. They continued on up this latter river, and then, after trapping on Goose Creek and Raft River, returned to Fort Hall. Their stock of fur was quite extensive on their arrival here and, an opportunity offering to dispose of it, they sold out at a fair valuation. After recruiting their strength at the Fort for one month, Kit Carson, accompanied by most of the trappers, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... by raft and on foot along the banks of the raging Conemaugh and in the refugee trains between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. Such was the trip, fraught with great danger, but prolific of results, which the writer has just completed. All along the line events of thrilling interest ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the problem might not seem so hard, for there are not so many islands shown. The difficulty is that few maps show all of them, and even on the best of navigating maps there may be one or two that are not charted. The shipwrecked ones, providing they lived to get off on a life raft, or in a boat, might as likely have been driven to one of these little islands, as to ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... "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 ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... time, all was in readiness for a new start, and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived. So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony, as he knew that 'in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,* which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again with ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... 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 brutes). The author shows us an oldish husband—a ...
— 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 ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... who 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
... 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 ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... widened out into a broad pool, with sandy shores. In one of these we encountered a raft of lumber, on its way to Jacksonville. The men on it were wiry, hatchet-faced fellows, good-natured and easy-going. Just before sunset we came to Silver Spring Run, into which the pilot turned the boat. If the water had been clear before, it was perfectly transparent in this run, or stream flowing ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... up, stopped for a moment around the body of their slain comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Yankee. This uncomfortable voyage was undertaken partly to promote the sale in England of these rafts, and partly to pay the three men by fees from visitors, while they could see Europe themselves at a cheap rate. One of Mr. White's steamers towed the raft in front of the Castle, where the members of the Royal Yacht Squadron Club have their spacious house, with a sea wall ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... At last my horrible task was finished. My next work was to look for the ship's boats, but they were gone, as I expected. I could not bear to remain in the ship; it seemed a vast tomb for me. I resolved to make some sort of raft, and depart in it. This occupied two or three days; at length it was completed, and I succeeded in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... were soon in a position to see for themselves, and what they beheld was a curious sort of raft, with torn sails, or so at least it seemed, floating down with the current. Then, as the waters swirled about the odd craft, a piece, like the tail of some great fish, arose ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... 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
... 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 ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... "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, which had ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... the ringing of bells and firing of pistols, unheeded. By the time the signal came to clear the course for the crews, the pleasure-craft pushed within the barriers formed a vast, softly undulating raft covering the whole surface of the water, so that you could have walked from the barrier to the shore without dipping foot in the flood. I have suggested that the situation might have had its perils. Any panic must have caused a commotion that would have ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... 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. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... to produce eggs for her. He gathered barks and sluiced roots on the raft in the lake, for her. He grubbed the spice thicket before the door and moved it into the woods to make space for a lawn, for her. His eyes were wide open for every woven case and dangling cocoon of the big night moths that propagated around him, for her. Every ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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 that the beasts might tread upon it without ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... were said to be between the Tallahatchie and Yazoo, though the stream is one. The fort, which was called Pemberton, was built of cotton and earth; in front of it was a deep slough, and on its right flank the river was barricaded by a raft and the hull of the ocean steamer Star of the West, which, after drawing the first shots fired in the war, when the batteries in Charleston stopped her from reinforcing Fort Sumter in January, 1861, had passed by some chance to New Orleans, where she was seized by the Government of Louisiana ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... 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 so long that we could not see ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... 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 ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the sand, while the tide fell and the wind 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 waves that broke ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... 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, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... are 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 danger of foundering. But OLIVER was made ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... Laurance outlined the facts of his escape upon a raft, which was hastily constructed by several of the crew when the boats were beyond their reach. Upon this he had placed Maud, and on the morning after the wreck of the vessel they succeeded in getting into one of the boats which was floating bottom upward, and providentially ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... vessel, little craft consisting of no more than the trunk of a tree hollowed out, seldom more than a foot broad, and perhaps eighteen inches deep, all with outriggers—namely, a slight wooden frame or raft to balance them, and for the most part containing two men, or sometimes three or four. Before long, not less than fifteen or twenty had come on board, with woolly hair and mahogany skins, generally wearing a small strip of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Running to the water to pick them up," he says, "God only knows the inexpressible joy that filled my heart, at beholding the water move, and finding that we were on the banks of a large river." They all set to work actively the next day, and had soon completed a raft on which they embarked, and trusted themselves to the current to reach the ocean, so long and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... were then to save themselves by swimming ashore, or to another boat. Sometimes, also, the "wreck" was loaded with broken spars, pieces of board, and bits of rope; and the problem was for the crew to construct a raft in the water, often in a rough sea. All these exercises, and many others, were heartily enjoyed by the boys, and a ringing cheer always announced the safety of a crew, either on the shore, in a boat, or on ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... six inches high and proportionably broad and deep; and I remember how people would turn round to look after him, as he came pounding along Notre-Dame Street, in Montreal, in his red shirt and tan-colored shupac boots, all dripping wet after mooring an acre or two of raft, and now bent for his ashore-haunts in the Ste.-Marie suburb, to indemnify himself with bacchanalian and other consolations for long-endured hardship. Among other feats of strength attributed to him, I remember the following, which has an old, familiar taste, but was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... him, 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 ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... forward to offer congratulations to the newly-wedded pair," she would say as she sharpened her pencil-point: "There's nothing like a wedding to reveal what a raft of common kin people have," and we knew that it was all over and that she was closing the article with: "A dazzling array of costly and beautiful presents was exhibited in the library," for then she would pick up her copy, dog-ear the sheets, and jab them on the hook as she sighed: "Another ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... 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 Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... day we built its shrine for each, A shrine of rock for every one, Nor paused till in the westering sun We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done. When lo! what shouts and merry songs! What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs Of gentle islanders! "Our isles are just at hand," they cried, "Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping: Our temple-gates are opened wide, Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping For these majestic forms"—they cried. Oh, then we awoke with sudden start From our deep dream, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... 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
... the river with at least part of his force. For this purpose he had brought on the train a boat, which was promptly launched. As, however, the boat was small, and hardly capable of holding more than four men, the General gave orders for the construction of a raft. After some trouble this was ready by 4 p.m., and some two hours later about seven companies of the Connaught Rangers had succeeded ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... awake, and far from 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 ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... 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
... and the sun stole in through the window. Then, 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 ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... gangrene of the penis, caused by a prostatic abscess following gonorrhea. In this case there was thrombosis of the pelvic veins. Hutchinson mentions a man who, thirty years before, after six days' exposure on a raft, had lost both legs by gangrene. At the age of sixty-six he was confined to bed by subacute bronchitis, and during this period his whole penis became gangrenous and sloughed off. This is quite unusual, as gangrene is usually associated with fever; it is more than likely that the gangrene ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was, that such a road might be made to float upon the bog, simply by means of a sufficient extension of the bearing surface. As a ship, or a raft, capable of sustaining heavy loads floated in water, so in his opinion, might a light road be floated upon a bog, which was of considerably greater consistency than water. Long before the railway was thought of, Mr. Roscoe had adopted the remarkable expedient of fitting his plough-horses with ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... 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 twenty men. With this he got under the stern ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... 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 he reached ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Millionaires in legend-wealth, though no bank would back 'em, But old Benny Havens by the West Point Shore. Off with lazy vagabonds, social ghosts that shiver, Give to worthy road-men the great green way, And we'll hear a song again up the Hudson river, Ringing from a drifting raft, set ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... Hovey went on: "Lads, I've bad news, bad and good news together. The boats are gone—though who the devil destroyed them we don't know—and now the wireless is destroyed. The boats are a big loss, for now we'll have to rig up some sort of a raft to make shore when we beach the Heron. The busting of the wireless almost balances that loss. Now we're sure they can't slip out any quick wireless call that would bring a dozen ships after us. Bad news and good news together; and here's some more ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Tourneville, attended by Hannah Macaulay, walked shorewards from Dunseveric House. It appeared that they were going to bathe, for they carried bundles of white sheets and coloured garments, large bundles well wrapped together and strapped. Hannah Macaulay had, besides, a little raft made of the flat corks which fishermen use to mark the places where their lobster pots are sunk and to float the tops of salmon nets. It seemed as if one of the party were no great swimmer, and ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... abbreviated bathing suit, with water wings fastened to her back. She walked rapidly into the sea, and, perforce, he followed. Miss Wilder shouted orders in vain from the shore. The tide was running in, and nearly high, so she was over her depth in a second, but she paddled out toward the distant raft, her head well out of the water, thanks to her wings. Much amused, Wally swam beside her into ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... told me 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
... shore of Seriphus. No emblem of our human state and lot, with their mysteries, perils, threats, and promises, could be either more natural or more impressive than that of a vessel launched on the deep. The dying Socrates said "that he should trust his soul on the hope of a future life as upon a raft, and launch away into the unknown." Thus the imagination broods over and explores the shows and secrets, presageful warnings ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 of wind-tossed ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... light, raft after raft of wild ducks rose and whirled into the east; blue herons flopped across the water; a silver-headed eagle, low over the waves, winged his way heavily toward some goal, doggedly intent upon ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... that day; 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 retired into harbour without fatal ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... mistress to give me one spoonful of the meal, but she would not give me a taste. They quickly fell to cutting dry trees, to make rafts to carry them over the river: and soon my turn came to go over. By the advantage of some brush which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon, I did not wet my foot (which many of themselves at the other end were mid-leg deep) which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of God to my weakened body, it being a very cold time. I was not before acquainted with such kind ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... to the two soldiers. On the way, most of the goods were lost. The paint melted, and the horse's back was all red. The Indians on the bank across the river saw what the soldiers wanted. They loaded some roots and bread on a raft. They tried to cross to the soldiers. A high wind sent the raft on a rock. The raft turned over. The roots and bread were lost. Then the captains and men felt unhappy. They cut the buttons from ...
— The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition • Katherine Chandler
... 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 ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... further solemnity being impossible, a signal was given, and from a barge far out on the water a score of rockets shot hissing into the air, announcing the beginning of fireworks. A brilliant display of these followed, closing the evening's entertainment, and immediately afterward a large raft was towed up to the landing, and the whole merry party embarked and returned to Joppa together, the band following on another boat and treating them to music all the way. Halloway stood near Gerald in the crowd, but he did not attempt ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... in getting clear and when I came to the surface I swam a few yards to a life raft, to which were clinging three men. We climbed on board this raft and upon looking around observed Doyle, chief boatswain's mate, and one other man in the whale boat. We paddled to the whale boat and embarked from the life raft. The whale boat was about half full of water ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... 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 sea ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... on his raft now signed to Chebron to take up one of the spears; but the lad shook his head and motioned to him to undertake the attack, for he felt that, ignorant as he was of the habits of the animal, it would be folly for him to engage in such an adventure. The man nodded, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... expanse, though it seems to gild but one broken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the light spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battled and argosies gone down,—it falls narrow and confined along the single course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, and see the sparkles but reflected from the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 and we are in danger every moment of being swept down, until night ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... were the jackal to him. But this sounds rather absurd. It looks as if man had already acquired enough seamanship to ferry himself across the zoological divide, and to take his faithful dog with him on board his raft or dug-out. Until we have facts whereon to build, however, it would be as unpardonable to lay down the law on these matters as it is permissible to fill up ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... 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 Literature
... 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 ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... bring them to me," said he, and they brought him pieces of wood, large and small, and he chose the largest, and having torn the lining of his jacket into strips, he spliced them into a rope and with this he tied the wood together until he had made a very good raft indeed. ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel
... me recall one of the boyhood pictures that has never faded. It was just after school, one hot day, in the Illinois September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house, and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One of the two—who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull thatch—was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling handicap and wallowed in to pull poor ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... with heavy rain. As he stayed longer than usual, Hector began to feel uneasy lest some accident had befallen him, knowing his adventurous spirit, and that he had for some days previous been busy constructing a raft of cedar logs, which he had fastened together with wooden pins. This raft he had nearly finished, and was even talking of adventuring over to the nearest island to explore it, and see what game and ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 practically destroyed the Merrimac, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 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 was ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... river near the village which it was necessary for the Spaniards to cross in their advance. De Soto, accompanied by Ocali and several of his subjects, was walking on the banks of this stream to select a spot for crossing, by means of a bridge or raft, when a large number of Indians sprang up from the bushes on the opposite side, and assailing them with insulting and reproachful language, discharged a volley of arrows upon them, by which one of ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... arrival we set out on our journey through the great desert of Tartary, and came to the Boristhenes, which separates Tartary from Russia, and which is some miles broad[9]. As it was necessary to pass the river, our Tartars cut down some trees, the stems of which they fastened together into a raft, which was covered over by the branches, and upon which the whole of our baggage was placed. They fastened their horses by the tails to this raft, by which means it was dragged across the river, they themselves swimming along-side of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the sea was green once more, the sky blue, and beautiful with the young, fresh light. He was lying on an old raft of black, water-logged spars and planks lashed together with chains and rotting ropes. But alas! there was no shore in sight, for all night long he had been drifting, drifting further and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... 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
... 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, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... leave them a living, and, for this reason, he had his life insured today while in town for $5,000. Heavy rains were falling up the Cumberland and John Ramon was working hard, he and his hired hands, to get the log raft ready to go down the river and carry his logs to Nashville when the river got ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought of his flower. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The immense 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... river of the obstruction placed below the forts. Farragut ordered two gunboats to steal through the darkness without lights and clear this raft. The work was swiftly done. The task was rendered unexpectedly easy by a break caused by ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... W.W. 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 would take ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... it drawn in again, and stepped upon the raft, which, although it sank down lower in the water and was all awash, still seemed buoyant. He also took Puck with him, and tried to incite some others of the boys to venture out in ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... simpler; as for instance in his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... 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, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... two poor comrades, were helplessly contending with the tumbling waves, almost within reach of them, but without their being able to afford them the slightest assistance. After a minute or two, and when one more would have been their last, a long oar or sweep, belonging to the wretched raft, came floating by. They instantly seized it, and held on till they were carried down more than a mile, loudly calling for help as they went along; but what aid could we render them? No craft, none, at least, which were on the banks of the river, could ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... shipwrecked, and as a rule 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 ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... 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
... and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods, combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer, whose morale is not much better than ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... all that, 'n' made me say arter her the things I wisht 'd strike me daid if I didn't git the fellers what had got him. Then one day, from up in the rocks, she p'inted 'em out, so'd I know 'em. One got drowned takin' a raft down ter Frankfo't—he fell off jest arter I shot. 'N' t'other-un I didn't git fer a long time. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... us," said Wayland. "They'll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait. All right, my friends! You'll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft. We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... caught them. At the beer garden a 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 ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... thousand pounds. At the 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, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and trying to find out what he might get out of the business if he helped to save the brig, the captain and I, with a few men, quietly let down into the water the aft hatch, one of those big doors they cover the hatchways with, and when that was resting on the water it made a very good raft for one man. And I got down on it, with my ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... favor, was dead low, and would turn before I could round the northern point of the city. After all my traps had been put on board, seating myself carefully, the oars were handed in, and a few strokes sent me ahead of the raft. The tide was low, dead low, in the fullest meaning of the word; the sea-weed slowly circled and eddied round, floating neither up nor down; while the unrippled surface of the Back Bay reflected the city and bridges ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... a Musket in her hand, Raft from a dying Souldiour newlie slaine, And ayming where th' vnconquered Knight did stand, Dischargd it through his bodie, and in twaine Deuids the euer holie nuptiall band, Which twixt his soule, and worlds part shold remaine, Had not his hart, stronger then Fortunes will, Held life perforce ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... had of it at the 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; ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... dad, servin' on the Roanoke, was lucky enough to see both them craft:—-the big, clumsy Merrimac, all covered with railroad iron and smeared with grease, and the nifty little Monitor, that they said looked like 'a cheese box on a raft'! ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... 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
... the galleon from Filipinas in this Nueva Espana has been unladen a raft [flota] of news, which other pens, less awkward than mine, will relate; I can only tell what I have known. In the year 1687 the examiner [pesquisidor]—as the Chinese say, the fisherman [pescador]—Don Francisco ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... to question one man who looked like a waterman, concerning the falls. The fellow said he had gone over once on a raft, when the water was much higher. "An' would yeou b'lieve it," he added, "one o' them 'ere wimmen were boun' an' determined ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Kirby commented. "Splashin' 'round some in a little-bitty wadin' pool, an' gittin' out in this, don't balance none. Ain't every hoss takes kindly to water, neither. I'd say we'd better see what's the chances of knockin' together a raft or somethin'. 'Less we can ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the eye, and be calm. I found out, over there, that a kazark is exactly the bulk of a HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE WORLDS LIKE OURS! They hove all that load overboard. When it fell it wiped out a considerable raft of stars just as clean as if they'd been candles and somebody blowed them out. As for the race, that was at an end. The minute she was lightened the comet swung along by me the same as if I was anchored. The captain stood on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Merrimac's hull, and she sank; but, 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 fleet ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... were prepared to start, with the horses only, we received a senseless refusal; and like Sekomi, who had thrown obstacles in our way, he sent men to the Bayeiye with orders to refuse us a passage across the river. Trying hard to form a raft at a narrow part, I worked many hours in the water; but the dry wood was so worm-eaten it would not bear the weight of a single person. I was not then aware of the number of alligators which exist in the Zouga, and never think of my labor in the water ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... 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
... us to the Cumberland, tawny and swollen from the rains, and here we had to stop to fell trees to make a raft on which to ferry over our packs. We bound the logs together with grapevines, and as we worked my imagination painted for me many a red face peering from the bushes on the farther shore. And when we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... float on real water. Have the slender sticks for the raft all of the same length, and use about sixteen or eighteen sticks for each raft. Weave them together with a string. Begin by tying the centre of a long string around each end of a stick, which should be about eight inches in length ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... paused, the air quivered with a hoarse moo! as of a gigantic cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat whistling for the bridge to open the draw and let her through to the south with her raft of logs. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Salmon and a Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better for a fish that lies flat on ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... American life-raft was in Cowes after her Atlantic voyage of forty-three days at sea. Two of her three adventurous crew were Germans, who could speak English only imperfectly, and the third was a Yankee. This uncomfortable voyage was undertaken partly to promote ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... 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
... 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 ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... or slouch, or throw his arms and legs about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,—great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in log-running,—"Don't insult your Creator by making a scarecrow of the body He has seen fit to give you. With reverence, He might have given it to one of better understanding; but since you have it, for piety's sake hold up your head, square your shoulders, and ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... nothing for it but a raft," said Washington. "And we have but one hatchet to aid us in making it. Let us ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 and shoals that oppose their progress, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... Sigurd sat heedless of the hurricane without and feasted with his lords and ladies, they came and told him that a raft had been driven ashore at the foot of the castle, with a man upon it half dead. Sigurd bade them instantly bring him to the castle, and give him fire and clothing and food, to revive him in his ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... negociation: They immediately gathered round him, and continued in a body above an hour, without seeming to take any farther notice of us. We were more curious than they, and observing them with our glasses from on board the ship, we saw some of them cross the river upon a kind of raft, or catamarine, and four of them carry off the dead body which had been covered by the boy, and over which his uncle had performed the ceremony of the branch, upon a kind of bier, between four men: The other body was still ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 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 always ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... When the raft was floating quietly alongside I felt better. It looked then as if we were to have a little more run ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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
... wind 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 reliance on instinct and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... canoes laden with his goods, they would sail homeward. One day they had tarried to raft redwood planks of California from the schooner in the bay to the site of Kivi's new house. So that night in gratitude he would make merry for them. There would be much to eat, and there would be kava in plenty. He prayed that I would join ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... destruction. The telegraph carried the news everywhere, and in dread and anxiety the people awaited the fate of another day. When morning came at Hampton Roads a small nondescript vessel, looking like an oval raft with a turret, interposed between the Merrimac and its prey. It was the Monitor, the invention of Captain John Ericsson, and it had arrived during the night of March 8. The Monitor had been constructed at Greenpoint, Long Island, and was towed to Hampton Roads by steamers. Her turret was a revolving, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... the unexpected production of a large tin of Devonshire cream, contributed by Captain Bobby Little, relieved the canned peaches of their customary monotony. Last of all came a savoury—usually described as the savoury—consisting of a raft of toast per person, each raft carrying an abundant cargo of fried potted meat, and provided with a passenger in the shape of a ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... brilliant butterflies, among them a very large metallic green and black species (Ornithoptera priamus) and a large one of a bright blue (Papilio ulyses). The same afternoon we three went out shooting on the lake. Two of the Agai Ambu canoes were lashed together and a raft of split bamboo put across them, and two Agai Ambu men punted and paddled us about. Before starting we had first educated them up to the report of our guns, and after a few shots they soon got ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... "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 I came to where the army had crossed. Some teamsters mending transport wagons ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 Civitas Romae, and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... them overboard as I could manage, tying every one of them with a rope, that they might not drive away. This done, I went down to the ship's side, and tyed four of them fast together at both ends, in form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crosswise, I found it would bear me, but not any considerable weight. Upon which I went to work again, cutting a spare topmast into three lengths, adding them to my raft with a great deal of labour and pains. I then considered what ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... it on the beach, and hoisted to the top of it the tattered flag of the English vessel, which chanced to be flung up by the waves. For weeks and months his signal passed unnoticed; and meanwhile the sailor made a raft, and at low water reached the hulk of the Spanish ship several times, from which by degrees he carried away the treasure. This he hid in the cave which he occupied, hoping that one day he would be rescued. He found arms and ammunition in the galleon in abundance, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the buggy was by no means limited to potatoes for his conversation. He was learned in the geography of the valley and told us how once the Cohocton River, now merely a decorative stream among willows, was once a serviceable waterway, how it was once busy with mills, and how men used to raft down ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... reinforcing steel used varies from 50 lbs. to 275 lbs. per cu. yd. of concrete; the highest figure will be had only in very heavy work and where very heavily reinforced raft foundations are employed, and the lowest only in one-story buildings consisting of walls and roof. A fair average is perhaps 150 lbs. per cu. yd. The cost of fabricating and placing reinforcement will run from 1/3 ct. to 1 cts. per pound, but the last ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... 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 road shoving ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... other. "Why, you must have read of it dozens of times in those novels you're always poring over. The hero and heroine on a raft—she looks up into his eyes and sighs. 'Have another morsel of boot soup, darling!' Why, the time dad had to use the money he had half promised me for that charmeuse, and we bought the supper at the delicatessen—you ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... actually bolted down, except the wreckage of the mainmast, which we had lashed firmly to ring bolts in the deck before the gale arose. There was that wreckage, it is true, and also the wreckage of the foremast under the bows; if it could possibly be got alongside, a raft of sorts might perhaps be constructed out of that, and there our resources would end. But there was no time for pondering and consideration, whatever was done would have to be done at once; I therefore called the gunner, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... done. "Seignior," says the Spaniard, "had we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should never have got half those things out of the ship, as you did: nay," says he, "we should never have found means to have got a raft to carry them, or to have got the raft on shore without boat or sail: and how much less should we have done if any of us had been alone!" Well, I desired him to abate his compliments, and go on with the history of their coming ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... bordering the river, dashed through it, and plunged into the stream. He swam to a neighboring island, against the upper end of which the driftwood had lodged in such quantities as to form a natural raft; under this he dived, and swam below water until he succeeded in getting a breathing place between the floating trunks of trees, whose branches and bushes formed a covert several feet above the level of the water. He had scarcely drawn breath after all his toils, when he ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... was met, that funeral of the sea: the prone, tearing steamers, the reluctant bulk. Sometimes a captain's glass might make out a few men lost on the roof like men on a raft, smoking, seated, leaning over ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... 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 ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... had to defend himself from the debris of the shipwreck. After having grasped the raft as his last means of salvation, he had to avoid the floating casks, rolling toward him on the swelling billows, which might send him to the bottom ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... shrug. He had forgotten his work while he thought about the girl, and there was much to be done. For one thing, he had come up to see if the smith had tempered some boring tools; and then he must send the Metis river-jacks to float a raft of props down to the mine. Pulling himself together, he set about the work with characteristic energy, but as he walked through the murmuring woods he unconsciously began to sing a romantic ballad he had learned when a boy. Presently, ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the afternoon, a great sight was to be seen in the middle of the Niemen. A raft had been placed midstream in plain view from both banks of the river. All the rich stuffs that could be found in the little town of Tilsitt had been taken to make a pavilion on a part of this raft for the reception of the Emperors of France and Russia. From one bank Napoleon embarked with Murat, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... bank, when the bottom had failed 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 that the beasts might tread upon it without fear, as over solid ground. Another ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... usually armed with powerful 11- or 15-inch 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 a serious ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... the spot by the marines if they had then been seen from the boats. The rope which fastened the float to the ship was too short to let it swing free, and one of the pontoons that supported it was dragged partly under water, lifting the other above the surface. If the raft had lain flat on the water they would have had to climb on top and would have made an excellent mark for the marines. As it was they got under its lifted side, and by thrusting their hands through the slats that formed the deck they kept their heads above ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... which render it impossible to walk along its banks. To reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse to a slight skiff, that can easily pass through the current and the most shallow parts. My guide and my lieutenant soon contrived to make a small raft of bamboos; when it was finished we embarked, Alila and myself, our guide refusing to accompany us. After much trouble and fatigue, casting ourselves often into the water to draw our raft along, we at length got clear of the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... fire, but the site was bought by A.H. Davis and Son, who erected a new mill, which they operated for a while and then sold to Wells, Fargo & Co. It was not until 1873 that Yerington & Bliss came to Glenbrook. They revolutionized the lumber industry. While Captain Pray had long used a steam tug to raft logs across Lake Tahoe, the lumber itself was hauled down to Carson and Virginia City. Now, owning large areas of timberland, operating two and then three saw-mills in Glenbrook, and several others in the nearby mountains, Messrs. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... colored stones seem 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 filled with the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seem a 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 brutes). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... luxurious beds, and they slept profoundly all night. In the morning they went down to the sea. Not a vestige of a boat was to be seen, and they began to question whether it would not be possible to make a small raft, and to paddle along the foot ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... six 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, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... heads battered awry. Wedged clumsily in between these pieces, and secured by a supplementary nail, is a bit of broken rope. Let us touch that rope tenderly; for who knows what despairing hands may last have clutched it when this rude raft was made? It may, indeed, have been the handiwork of children, on the Penobscot or the St. Mary's River. But its Condition betokens voyages yet longer; and it may just as well have come from the stranded ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Winslow. The men were all mightily pleased with the success of our work, and I was secretly delighted, not with the instrument as a producer of music, but at knowing that we had a box which might serve those of us who could not swim as a raft. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... 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. It was, in the darkness, supposed to ...
— 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
... We're sailing! We're sailing!" joyfully cried Sue, as she felt the barn-door raft ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... care, you dog, that you don't drown us," said the Officials, when they saw the raft rising and falling ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... a wild native Sculled the stranger to the island, On a raft made of rough pine logs. Wild the island: limes and alders In low marshes here were growing; On the shore with pebbles covered, Also stood huge ancient willows; And some scattered huts with thatched roofs. Here in summer, when the salmon Are migrating up the river, Eager fishermen stand waiting ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... 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
... hell on corns While tramping through the sands, And driving jackass by the tail,— Damn the overland! I would as leaf be on a raft at sea And there at once be lost. John, let's leave the poor old mule, We'll never get ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... that a 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 steer it across with long ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... importance of constructing a raft, which was my intention in going, and finishing it without a second trip, I determined to remain on board for the night, as the boys had, unintentionally, given me the chance of sending a message ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... show place for visitors. After passing, by the flare of torches, down long galleries of underground workings, we were plunged into darkness by a rush of wind over a subterranean river through which we had to shoulder our way on a raft. Then suddenly, no face being visible in that black tunnel under the earth, the Polish part of our company broke into a wild, fierce, frenzied singing of their national anthem which, in those days, they dare not sing on the surface ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... visitor into the "rank 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 ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... 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
... sinner see as much as I can see. If I could kind of get 'em to see what this big, old riveh is like! Hit's carryin' a leaf er a duck, an' steamboats an' shanty-bo'ts; hit carries the livin' an' hit carries the daid; hit begrudges no man it's he'p if he comes to it to float down a log raft er a million bushels of coal. If Ole Mississip'll do that fo' anybody, suttin'ly hit's clear an' plain that God won't deny a sinner His he'p! Yas, suh! Now I've shore found a handle to keep hold ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... brig, the captain and I, with a few men, quietly let down into the water the aft hatch, one of those big doors they cover the hatchways with, and when that was resting on the water it made a very good raft for one man. And I got down on it, with my ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... "She seems to have a raft in tow, and it will probably be for Drayton's people. If you'll edge in toward her I'll send him word that we're ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... industrious cultivators and 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. When it is said that the earliest Chinese we know ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... in the shadows, revealed one of the packets ploughing her steady way to the great marts below. Nearer at hand, just shaving the long strip of sandy, wooded point that jutted far out into the lake, a broad raft of timber, pushed by a hard-working, black-funnelled stern-wheeler, was slowly forging its way to the outlet of the lake, its shadowy edge sprinkled here and there with little sparks of lurid red,—the pilot-lights that gave warning of its slow and silent coming. Far down along the southern ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... covered avenue of Mureaux (Seine et Oise) carne from the other side of the Seine, so that the builders must have crossed the river in a raft. Excavations have brought to light several skeletons that had been buried without any attempt at orientation, the bores of which were still in their natural position. The objects found in this tomb were very numerous mid belonged ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... that you will knock under if 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 ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... look, the 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 Junior Classics • Various
... no 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 ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... a more generous girl in the world than Malvina. If she had been afloat on a raft after a shipwreck she would have been the one to give up her last ration of water to any one who needed it more. She was ready to pour out money in any case of distress, but she had no idea of its value, and none of her charities prospered, except so far as her rosy, good-natured face could be ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... of dyspepsia; in every drink a demon of torture. Every man he meets is a scoundrel, and every woman a leech. Children are growing worse daily, and society is "rotten." The Church is organized for the mere fattening of a raft of preachers and parsons who preach what they don't believe and never try to practice. Lawyers and judges are all dishonest swindlers caring nothing for honor and justice and seeking only their fees; physicians and surgeons are pitiless wretches who scare their patients ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... it was a tremendous old place. It was a two- hours' job to go through it even as we did, and then Verna said we had skipped a whole raft of things she would let me see some other time. There was a private theatre, a chapel with effigies of cross-legged Crusaders, an armoury with a thousand stand of flint- locks, a library, magnificent state apartments with wonderful tapestries, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... pounds. At the 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 ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... tree which hung over the latter, avoided being sucked into the whirlpool, and by-and-by came to land in the island of the nymph Calypso, who kept him eight years, but he pined for home all the time, and at last built a raft on which to return. Neptune was not weary of persecuting him, and raised another storm, which shattered the raft, and threw Ulysses on the island of Scheria. Here the king's fair daughter Nausicaa, going down to the stream with her maidens to wash ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sand, while the tide fell and the wind 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... their stables. With other boats visits are made to acquaintances to inform them amid shouts and laughter that the river is rising. Sometimes boats gather in one place, like a flock of daws, and then shoot apart on all sides before a broad raft bearing down from Upper Egypt immense blocks of stone hewn out ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... 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. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... artifice. Bateaux were joined 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 ...
— 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
... The screws were turned into the sands to the depth of twenty-one feet and a half, the upper extremities being left standing about five feet above the surface of the sands. For the purpose of fixing the screws, a stage or raft of timber, thirty feet square, was floated over the spot, with a capstan in the centre, which was made to fit on the top of the iron shaft, and firmly keyed to it. A power of about thirty men was employed for driving the screws, and their labours ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 forty ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... their soldiers not only for its energy value but as a convenient form of rations, since every army travels on its stomach and can't go faster than its impedimenta. The last notable mention of cheese in war was the name of the Monitor: "A cheese box on a raft." ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... his operations and bring out the ultimate prosperous result, Jordan threw one-half of his land into market and forced the sale at five dollars an acre. The proceeds of this sale did not last him over six months. Then he got a raft afloat, containing about a thousand dollars' worth of lumber, and sent it off under charge of his overseer, who sold it at Cincinnati, and absconded ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... gone through many a storm at sea; had once escaped, the only soul saved out of fifty-three, from a foundered bark, and endured five days' suffering, without bread or water, on a raft. But, as I heard him tell Mr Clare afterwards, he had never undergone an experience more painful than those two or three hours of gale in our little cutter. It was his affection for us boys; the reflection that he had proposed the pleasure sail, and the terrible ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... 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 would take his chance of ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... 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 pitching camp; and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to 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 ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... continue our walk," said Dominick. "You don't fully appreciate the loss of our boat Otto. Don't you see that, even if we do build a raft, it will at best be a clumsy thing to manage, and heavy to pull, slow to sail, and bad to steer, and if we should chance to be on it when a stiff breeze springs up from the land, we should probably be driven out to sea and lost—or separated, ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... black pipe and ramming some equally black tobacco into it with a horny thumb, "a full hold makes fair sailin', that's my motto and 'Be Prepared' is yers. A man can be no better prepared than with a good meal under his belt. Give me a well-fed crew and I'll navigate a raft to Hindustan, but a pack uv slab-sided lime juicers couldn't work a full-rigged ship uv the finest ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... their floats to swim back right up to the bank. The high reddish reeds rustled quietly around, the still water shone quietly before them, and quietly too they talked together. Lisa was standing on a small raft; Lavretsky sat on the inclined trunk of a willow; Lisa wore a white gown, tied round the waist with a broad ribbon, also white; her straw hat was hanging on one hand, and in the other with some effort she held up the crooked rod. Lavretsky gazed at ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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! ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... courteously furnished me with some interesting information on this subject, states that it is especially in the Southern Moluccas that the placenta is mixed with ashes and hung in a tree. Wider spread is the custom of placing the after-birth on a small bamboo raft in a river "in order that it may be caught by crocodiles, incarnations of the ancestors, who will guard it till the person to whom it has belonged dies. Then the soul of the placenta is once more united with that of ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... seen a favourite sketch of the imaginative youthful artist, who delights to portray scenes on a raft amid the tossing waters, where sweet and satiny ladies, in a pardonable abandonment to the exigencies of the occasion, are exhibiting the full energy and activity of creatures that existed before sentiment was born. The ladies of Brookfield had almost as utterly cast off their garb of lofty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 with the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... had just embarked for their voyage to the starting-point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a floating platform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was pushing them off with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity. The raft was thronged with Old Judasians—mostly ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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 entirely ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... of the mast and oar lashed together. But a roller ground the wreck farther on to the reef, and the sudden snap broke the rope, as I suppose, and the boat went to sea. I never knew the misfortune till I saw her adrift. I could have got over that by making a raft; but the gale from the north brought such a sea on us. I saw she must break up, so I got ashore how I could. Ah, I little thought to see your face again, still less that I should owe my ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Joaquin on a raft, swimming their horses. Valois sees nothing yet to hint his impending fate. Far away the rich green billows of spring grass wave in the warm sun. Thousands of elk wander in antlered armies over the meadows. Gay dancing yellow ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... time the other boys had pulled a number of boards and planks out of the jam, and laying them across the logs, made a kind of raft upon which the exhausted swimmers were gradually hauled, and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... amused the boys was a balsa, or raft, made by the Mojaves, of the cane-grass which grew in the river-bottoms to the height of fifteen feet. A large bundle bound at the ends with grass ropes would sustain two men. The boys borrowed one of an Indian girl, who was sitting in the shade of some willows ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... third of it. The rest remains as it was, untouched. We see here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste which aggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, the survivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism; but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to take advantage of ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the honest-man-figure-head and book-keeper of the Cave. This fellow near us," (gesturing towards a scraggy-looking little man), "has got himself appointed a judge and once securely off the raft, poses as a little tyrant to young advocates, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... 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 ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... 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 ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... should have many a frank, For if I might make three good voyages to Shooter's Hill,[153] And have wind and weather at my will, Then would I never travel the sea more: But it is hard to keep the ship fro the shore, And if it hap to rise a storm, Then thrown in a raft, and so about borne On rocks or brachs[154] for to run, Else to strike aground at Tyburn, That were a mischievous case, For that rock of Tyburn is so perilous a place, Young gallants dare not venture into Kent; But when ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... his mariners, who resolutely boarded the fire ships, and towed them fast aground, where they lay burning to the water's edge, without having done the least prejudice to the English squadron. On the very same day of the succeeding month they sent down a raft of fire-ships, or radeaux, which were likewise consumed without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... had he found one, he would have been unable to manage her. He knew that should he attempt to make his way overland he would, to a certainty, be re-taken. Finding a piece of wreck, with some broken oars, and other drift-wood, and a coil of rope, he contrived to put together a raft, on which seating himself, he shoved off, expecting to be picked up by some passing vessel. Instead of this, he was—fortunately for himself— discovered by the active coastguardmen, and brought back to prison. Had he succeeded in ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... it pleased God once 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 cavern. Considering its probable course with great attention, I said to myself, "This river, which runs thus underground, 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 ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... a 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
... 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 up before ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... in hope of being seen by a ship, they made a raft from the remains of the wreck, and eight of the crew set off in it to try to reach Tristan, but were never heard of again, poor fellows. A few weeks later a second and successful attempt was made. The men reached Tristan, but in a very exhausted state. Then ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... at the village of Sab. We here crossed the great river Sab by means of rafts, the mode of constructing which is certainly very ancient. They consist of leathern bottles, filled with air, fastened together with poles, and covered with planks, reeds, and rushes. Our raft had twenty-eight wind-bags, was seven feet broad, nearly as long, and carried two horse-loads and six men. As our caravan numbered thirty-two loaded animals, the crossing of the river occupied half a day. Four or five of the animals were tied together and drawn over by a man seated across ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to Wheeling. Apprehensive that it would be dangerous to apprize those on the opposite side of the river of their situation, by hallooing, Lewis set himself to work as silently, and yet as expeditiously [124] as possible, and with the aid of his little brother, soon completed a raft on which they safely crossed the Ohio; and made ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the passage off, and, immediately on our arrival alongside the "Victory," the preparations were commenced. Anchors, chains, ropes, blocks, etcetera, were loaded into the ships' boats, spare spars were launched overboard and formed into a raft, and that same evening the "Mouette" left the fleet, with fourteen boats and the raft in tow; and the wind happening to be dead fair, and just a nice little breeze for the purpose, enabling us all to crowd every ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... before night. She was launched in twenty-eight days 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 ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... in a 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
... believe us," said Wayland. "They'll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait. All right, my friends! You'll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft. We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... That sailors dying of thirst upon a raft, Poor castaways upon a lonely sea, Dream of green fields and pleasant water-courses, And then wake up with red thirst in their throats, And die more miserably because sleep Has cheated them: so they die cursing sleep For having sent them dreams: I will not curse you ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... we were visited by a party of natives from the neighbouring island, consisting of six men in a canoe, and one on a catamaran or raft. They were perfectly unarmed and came boldly alongside with a quantity of yams and coconuts for barter; when their stock was exhausted, they returned for more, and, accompanied by others, repeated the visit several times ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Miss Theale then could do nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... who chose it among many others—taper and stately in its group of firs—to be the chief adornment of a gallant ship, and lift a pointing finger to the stars themselves, as an index of its might, and, with this exception, the hope of those it served—that of a charred and blackened life raft. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... going back for anybody," said the skipper. "But you can make your mind quite easy: you're as safe aboard my ship as what you would be alone on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic; and as for the mate, he was only chaffing ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... boat was on the shore, not a barge at the little wharf, nothing even of which a raft could be made large enough to carry three people. Michael questioned Nicholas, who made the discouraging reply that the crossing ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... therefore exerted themselves to the utmost to avoid them; whereas I could see no other way 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. We two ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... would take too long, and the ways would be too foul. 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 beside the river, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... aside all care 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. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... snow-white. The stone parapets of bridge and tower shine against the purple of the mountains, which are low in tone, and look like hovering storm-clouds. Across the fields dun oxen pass to their labour; through the shadows peasants go their way to mass; down the river a raft drifts slowly, with the pearly water swaying against the canes; all is clear, tranquil, fresh ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... certainly not outrun the use. For, first, your Majesty may securely reckon that eighteen hundred acres will be won from the water; that will be six-and-thirty colonists, allowing each 50 acres. And now if there were a small light toll put upon the raft-timber and the ships that will frequent the new canal, there would be ample interest for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... dinner," Hiram said; "and while Pete is cooking it we will get ashore with the saw and cut the heads off some of these small trees, and fasten them to this trunk, so as to make a sort of raft that we can put all these tubs on. The ropes would never hold her with her cargo on board. I reckon some of the sugar is spoilt; but the boss always has good casks, and may be there ain't much damage done. The rum is right enough, and I reckon there ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... was impossible for us to carry it so much as fifty yards. What then could we do without a boat? Swimming seemed to be out of the question because of the crocodiles. Also on inquiry I discovered that of the whole party Stephen and I alone could swim. Further there was no wood of which to make a raft. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Havens by the West Point Shore. Off with lazy vagabonds, social ghosts that shiver, Give to worthy road-men the great green way, And we'll hear a song again up the Hudson river, Ringing from a drifting raft, ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... impressions, as regards Great Britain, point to the Royal Sovereign as embodying the idea of two protected stations with a narrow and partial connecting belt; and to the Nile as embodying the idea of a vast and absolutely protected raft. For France, we have the Marceau as representing the wholly belted type with four disconnected but protected stations; and the Dupuy de Lome, in which the armor plating is thinned out to a substance of only 4 in., so as entirely to cover the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... interpreter and not knowing Arabic. I do not believe in man's free will; and therefore believe all things are from God and pre-ordained. 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, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... aboard. These were got over into the comparatively 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
... burning of the steamer Farringford, on the upper Missouri, in which my father and mother and myself—then a child two years old—were passengers, I had been committed to a raft formed of a state-room door, and bolstered with pillows to keep me from rolling off. By an accident this frail craft was carried away from the burning steamer, then aground, and I was separated from my father, who, I grieve to say, was intoxicated at the time, and ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... 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 into ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Mrs. Barnes," he hailed. "Ain't drowned out after the gale, be you? Judas priest! Our place is afloat. Dad says he cal'lates we'll have to build a raft to get to the henhouse on. Here; here's somethin' Mr. Kendrick sent to you. Wanted me to give it to you, yourself, and ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he said, "were rescued from a raft by a Cunarder. Both were pretty well used up, when one saw the vessel and murmured, 'A sail, a sail!' The other who was stretched on the raft revived long enough to exclaim, 'Mein ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to death by the raft of people who have ways to spend your money," continued the Colonel. "Don't listen to any of them. Take your time. You'll have a new chance to make money every day of your life, so go slowly. I'd have been rich years and years ago if I'd ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... 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
... nights, thereby demoralizing the garrison by depriving it of sleep and causing it to surrender at the first attempt to escalade. Another plan, not in general favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature. Still another, with perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... purpose of finding the cruiser Le Berceau, 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 ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... 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
... 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 and Space, Joannes the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves of armour. Trustfully sunk in sleep, they will be like dead men. That crooked-minded man who would wage hostility with them then, it is evident, would sink in deep and limitless hell without a raft save himself. In this world thou art celebrated as the foremost of all persons conversant with weapons. Thou hast not as yet committed even a minute trespass. When the sun rises next morning and light shall discover all things, thyself, like a second sun in effulgence wilt conquer the foe in battle. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... operation was an extremely difficult one. Very strong and massive rafts were joined together until they extended two hundred feet into the river, being kept in their place by cables fastened to trees on the bank above them. At the end of this floating pier was placed another raft of immense size, capable of carrying four elephants at a time. A thick covering of earth was laid over the whole, and on this turf was placed. The elephants were then ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... parched meal. Being very faint I asked my mistress to give me one spoonful of the meal, but she would not give me a taste. They quickly fell to cutting dry trees, to make rafts to carry them over the river: and soon my turn came to go over. By the advantage of some brush which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon, I did not wet my foot (which many of themselves at the other end were mid-leg deep) which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of God to my weakened body, it being a very cold time. I was not before acquainted with such kind of doings or dangers. ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... might have regained their tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there was nothing ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... 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 ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... usually believe in omens, but this one impressed me. I dreamed we were all at sea, on a vessel in a storm, and, somehow, we became separated. I saw you girls going down with the ship, while I was taken up on a life raft." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... printed Paper: the original maps, curves, and 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, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... 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 ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... variety actress. When the money of his first find had been dissipated she refused to live with him, and tried to extort high alimony by claiming their two-year-old son. The penniless prospector knew that he was no equal for law courts and sheriffs and lawyers; so he made him a raft, got a local trader to outfit him, and plunged with his baby boy into the wilderness, where no sheriff could track him. I asked him why he did not use pack-horses. He said dogs could have tracked them, but 'the water didn't leave no smell.' In the heart of the wilderness west of Mounts Brown and ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... after the house. That means money, too, and where's it to come from? All that I've saved from slavin' and sweatin' in the sun with a gang of lazy Dagoes'll be up the spout in no time. (Bitterly.) What a fool a man is to be raisin' a raft of children and him not a millionaire! (With lugubrious self-pity.) Mary, dear, it's a black curse God put on me when he took your mother just when I needed her most. (Mary commences to sob. Carmody starts and looks at her angrily.) ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... dangerous, as they cannot be then forded, and must be crossed in barks or floats like those formerly mentioned, or on a kind of rafts made of gourds inclosed in a net, on which the passenger reclines, while one Indian swims before pulling the raft after him with a rope, and another Indian swims behind and pushes the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... 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 a single street of a metropolis and then ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
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