"Phosphorescence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jousts of sex, as the prophets of romantic love would have us believe; he is so impatient of the fallacy that he puts it as far behind him as possible, and sets his conflicts amid scenes that it cannot penetrate, save as a palpable absurdity. Love, in his stories, is either a feeble phosphorescence or a gigantic grotesquerie. In "Heart of Darkness," perhaps, we get his typical view of it. Over all the frenzy and horror of the tale itself floats the irony of the trusting heart back in Brussels. Here we have ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of the dahlia. It has studied the spots on the sun, and the larvae in a beech leaf, and the light under fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculae that make up the phosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march of God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and shuttles—forces ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... minutes later they left the deck and went downstairs to dress for dinner. That same evening they stood again at the rail watching the mysterious phosphorescence as it sparkled in the moonlight. Her thoughts travelling faster than the ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... not the slightest idea where. But that fitted badly with hotels in Sydney and conventions he was going to teach her. In the evening they went to their favourite seat on the anchor and watched the phosphorescence shimmering away in ghostly paths to the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... gutter blood Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood, Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs To serve a whole eternity of terms? You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove? You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave Is phosphorescence from another's grave— Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? You whip a rascal out of office?—you Whose leadless weapon once ignobly ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have been more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... together some logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort had possessed itself ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... whom Tom had named Sambo glared around him. His eyes gleamed with a phosphorescence like that which one sees on the water on a lowering night. What Reade did not know was that this black man possessed eyes that were a little keener in the dark than ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in colour with the colour of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more deeply by his assistant, Professor Lenard, Lenard having, in 1894, reported that the cathode rays ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... visible here. Saw an auk or black guillemot to-day, and later a sea-gull in the distance. When I was hauling up a bucket of water in the evening to wash the deck I noticed that it was sparkling with phosphorescence. One could almost have imagined one's self to ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... grotesque and strange, the great sea monster glided along over the smooth sea. Full five-and-twenty fins aside made the water flash as it came on, and there was, as it were, a thin new-moon-like curve of light at its breast, while from its tail the sparkling phosphorescence spread widely as it was ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... should I reckon that by cords? I could find out later. I would wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles (possibly blinders in addition), and I should attend strictly to business for a while, but when a full moon rose over a South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees rustled and the phosphorescence broke in silver on the bow of the pearl schooner, where she rode at anchor in our little bay, could I keep my contract and avoid sentiment? How ridiculous to suppose that stipulating that the lady should be forty or over would make any difference! What is forty? If they had said that ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... they are silent; their eyes directed over the stern, watching the foam in the ship's wake, lit up with luminous phosphorescence. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... season of the year, the whole ocean seems to be alight with it; it is the effect of innumerable millions of tiny sea-creatures floating on the surface, though exactly why they do it at one time more than another is yet unknown. The curious thing is that there are so many different kinds of phosphorescence; there is the bright fiery kind like this we are seeing now in flashes, and there is a dull luminous kind which sailors call a "white sea." Then the whole sea appears as white as milk, or, as someone who has seen it describes it, as if it were changed to ice covered ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... rock threw a sheltering shadow; the moon was low in the west. In the blackness a phosphorescence was apparent. It rippled and rose in the dark with the pulsing beat of the jellylike mass. And through it were showing two discs. Gray at first, they formed to black, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... like lava, to a lifeless limb, They think the phosphorescence of the bark Is morning, which the long-belated lark Is hastening to welcome with his hymn; Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark, Miasma mist to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... principal servants were Elde and Funfeng, emblems of the phosphorescence of the sea; they were noted for their quickness and they invariably waited upon the guests whom he invited to his banquets in the depths of the sea. AEgir sometimes left his realm to visit the AEsir in Asgard, where he was always royally entertained, and he delighted in Bragi's many tales of the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the foam and every part of the surface of the waves glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. I am inclined to consider that the phosphorescence is the result of organic particles, by which process (one is tempted almost to call it a kind of respiration) the ocean ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... could speak he had sunk into the water, swimming beneath it. I could see the phosphorescence of his moving body as he swam away into the shadows ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... of these translucent waters is also extremely interesting. Here the floating jelly-fish, called, from its phosphorescence, the glow-worm of the sea, is observed in great variety, sheltering little colonies of young fishes within its tentacles, which rush forth for a moment to capture some passing mite, and as quickly return again to their shelter. One takes up a handful of the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... was midnight and over the dark walls of the valley peered a multitude of stars, while away on the southern horizon there glowed a subdued effulgence as though from hidden fires beneath the Gold God's caldron, or as though the phosphorescence of Bering had spread upward into the skies. Although each night grew longer, it was not yet necessary to light the men at work in the cuts. There were perhaps two hours in which it was difficult to see at a distance, but the dawn came early, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... stretching towards her, his hand coming straight forward like a stem. Her voluptuous, acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in her veins, her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the water perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He looked round at the boat. It was drifting off a little. He lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisite pleasure of slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was complete as ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... man was more eager than ever. If they would only pull into the bay hard by, he would anchor the punt and leave it. He begged Rob to take him for that night's fishing. He had discovered a sure sign of the presence of herring—unknown to any of the fishermen. What was the phosphorescence in the sea?—the nights were too clear for that. What was the mere breaking of the water?—a moving shoal that might escape. But this sign that the old man had discovered went to show the presence of large masses of the fish, stationary and deep: it was the appearance ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... hollows where the batteries lie hid, in the middle of a fan-shaped phosphorescence, we see the silhouettes of the gunners as they thrust in the shells. Every time they maneuver the breeches, their chests and arms are scorched by a tawny reflection. They are like the implacable workers of a blast furnace; the breeches are reddened by the heat ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... precursor of a storm. It begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Observations in Electricity made at Philadelphia in America." This pamphlet was translated into several European languages, and established over the continent—particularly in France—Franklin's reputation as a natural philosopher. A great variety of phenomena engaged his attention, such as phosphorescence in sea water, the cause of the saltness of the sea, the form and the temperatures of the Gulf Stream, the effect of oil in stilling waves, and the cause of smoky chimneys. Franklin also reflected and wrote on many topics which ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... Here and there through the gloom shone a lamp. Across the north was a dim glow of phosphorescence, precursor of the aurora, from which occasionally trembled for an instant a single shaft of light. The group by the bronze field-cannon were humming softly the sweet and tender cadences of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... body. If we place a very irritable medusa on a pewter plate, and strike against the plate with any sort of metal, the slight vibrations of the plate are sufficient to make this animal emit light. Sometimes, in galvanising the medusa, the phosphorescence appears at the moment that the chain closes, though the exciters are not in immediate contact with the organs of the animal. The fingers with which we touch it remain luminous for two or three minutes, as ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... muttered words which she would speak in the silence of the night. Outside, the trees would creak with the wind, an owl would hoot, in the distant villages and the farms in the heart of the woods dogs would bark. In the dim phosphorescence of the night Olivier would see the dark, heavy branches of the pines moving like ghosts outside his window: and Antoinette's ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Science. These would in time be duly classified and examined. He instanced a snake, the cast skin of which, deep purple in color, was fifty-one feet in length, and mentioned a white creature, supposed to be mammalian, which gave forth well-marked phosphorescence in the darkness; also a large black moth, the bite of which was supposed by the Indians to be highly poisonous. Setting aside these entirely new forms of life, the plateau was very rich in known prehistoric forms, dating back in some cases to early Jurassic times. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... want to have the pleasure prolonged. I want you to come out and have a walk on the deck now in the starlight. It is a lovely night, and, besides, you are now halfway across the ocean, and yet I don't think you have been out once to see the phosphorescence. That is one of the standard sights of an ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... foam was slimy in appearance. The waves, seen through the twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here and there a wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of glass broken by stones; in the centre of these stars, in a revolving orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that feline reflection, of vanished light which shines ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your senior. P.O. boats are not lighted with the disgustful particularity of Atlantic liners. There is more phosphorescence at the bows, and greater silence and darkness by the hand-steering ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... to me. For a moment we stood, undecided. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. The tunnel was illumined by a dim phosphorescence from the rocks. I saw Alan fumbling for his vials, but Glora ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... pendent leaf or flower, but draws into its enfolding arms the wide vault of the cerulean sky. The richness of the majestic azure is deepened by that magnificent marriage. The pale blue is darkened to violet. Far through the ever-varying surface of the curious gelatinous liquid breaks the phosphorescence, sprinkled into innumerable lights and cross-lights. As you look upon those endless pastures thought is quickened with the conception of their innumerable phases of vitality. The floating weed, whose meshes measure the spaces of continents and archipelagoes, is everywhere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle, and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Thucydides thought in each case can only be guessed at. They have presented the facts without comment, and the facts tell their own tale, explain themselves, carry with them the feelings they should evoke, and shine by their own light, like the phosphorescence of the sea. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... particles of the electrodes, "of different sizes, often large lumps,"[5] Puluj attributes all the phenomena of heat, force and phosphorescence that I from time to time have described in my ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... visible, from the strong and vivid phosphorescence excited by his rapid motion through the sleeping waters of the dark creek, which lit up his jaws, and head, and whole body; his eyes were especially luminous, while a long wake of sparkles streamed away astern of him from the lashing of his tail. As the boats lost their speed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... which are duly noted. Tennyson told his son that the poem was partially suggested by Abbey Park at Torquay where it was written, and that the last lines described the scene from the hill looking over the bay. He saw he said "a star of phosphorescence made by the buoy appearing and disappearing in the dark sea," but it is curious that the line describing that was not inserted till long after the poem had been published. The poem, though a trifle, is a triumph ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... this mysterious man behind the operations of the liquor runners can be?" Frank asked, as they leaned in a group apart on the rail, watching the phosphorescence in the water alongside. ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... little luminous spots in her mouth. I had heard somewhere that there is a phosphorescence appearing during decay of organic substances which once gave rise to the ancient superstition of "corpse lights" and the will-o'-the-wisp. It was really due, I knew, to living bacteria. But there surely ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... to meet this ghastly-Phantasm of Christianity parading through almost all. "I will clean your foul thoroughfares, and make your Devil's-cloaca of a world into a garden of Heaven," jabbers this Phantasm, itself a phosphorescence and unclean! The worst, it is written, comes from corruption of the best:—Semitic forms now lying putrescent, dead and still unburied, this phosphorescence rises. I say sometimes, such a blockhead Idol, and miserable ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... the white fire maker, encountered by the Cakchiquels in Xahila's narrative (Sec. 21).[42-2] I have narrated the curious folk-lore about the woodsman in another publication, and need not repeat it here.[42-3] His second name, the White Fire Maker, perhaps refers to the "light wood" or phosphorescence about damp ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... was a red-haired, raw-boned Munster-man, but a real good fellow. We forgot the aggressive inequalities of the Mediterranean while he talked to us of 'the pizzantry.' Late the second evening he propounded a confidence. It was a lovely night; Orion overhead, and the plashing phosphorescence on the water below conspired with the hour to make him specially confidential. 'Now, Miss Cayley,' he said, leaning forward on his deck chair, and gazing earnestly into my eyes, 'there's wan question I'd like ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the reason. And another way to the soul only—rare, untransferable to words, and therefore not transmittable to others or to the reason. This way causes the creature a great amazement, and is like a flooding or moving of whiteness, or an inwardly-felt phosphorescence; it is a vitalising ministration greatly enjoyed by the soul. This is not any ecstasy, and is exceedingly swift; the soul must be at high attention to receive this, yet neither anticipates nor asks for it, but is in the act of giving great ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... merely on land that this phenomenon of phosphorescence is to be seen in living forms. Among marine animals, indeed, it is a phenomenon much more general, much more splendid, and, we may add, much more familiar to those who live on our coasts. There must be many in the British Isles who have never had the opportunity ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner, which he was examining. We all followed his movements with our eyes, for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. We all instinctively drew back. The whole place was ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... eight hours to swim before sunrise, an operation quite practicable if we relieved each other. The sea, very calm, was in our favour. Sometimes I tried to pierce the intense darkness that was only dispelled by the phosphorescence caused by our movements. I watched the luminous waves that broke over my hand, whose mirror-like surface was spotted with silvery rings. One might have said that we were in a bath ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... seemed to be no light at all. The darkness of a coal mine appeared to have settled down on the scene. But this soon passed away, as the men's eyes became accustomed to the change, and then the dark loom of the advancing billows, the pale light of the flashing foam, and occasional gleams of phosphorescence, and glimpses of black rocks in the midst of all, took the place of the warm, busy scene which the spot had presented ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... on, guiding myself by some much ruddier star on the horizon. The pale phosphorescence on the wave, the simple sounds as of fish stirring in the water—the beauty and wonder of Night's dwelling-place seemed beyond content ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... naturally luminous stones, a belief partly due to a superstitious explanation of the ruddy brilliancy of rubies and garnets as resulting from a hidden fire in the stone, and partly, perhaps, to the occasional observation of the phenomena of phosphorescence or fluorescence in ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... howls about his ears, a man gathers his cloak round him, and cleaves fast to his supporter. The midnight sea lies all black; but when it is cut into by the oar, or divided and churned by the paddle, it flashes up into phosphorescence, and so it is from the tumults and agitation of man's spirit that there is struck out the light of man's faith. There is the bit of flint and the steel that comes hammering against it; and it is the contact ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly, ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of water between two barks, and they darted rapidly over the smooth surface, that kindled into bluish phosphorescent light under the strokes of the oars. Behind the boat's stern lay a winding ribbon of this phosphorescence, broad ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... a villa near Santo Domenico, between Fiesole and Florence. He was then only fifteen, but he was already distinguished as a mathematician and possessed by a savage appetite to understand. He had been particularly attracted by the mystery of phosphorescence and its apparent unrelatedness to every other source of light. He was to tell afterwards in his reminiscences how he watched the fireflies drifting and glowing among the dark trees in the garden of the villa ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... looking in that direction, Jack caught the gleam of a pair of eyes, peering from the gloom like the orbs of a jungle tiger gathering himself for a spring. Nothing could be seen but the glow of the eyes, that seemed to have something of the phosphorescence of the cat species, but he could not mistake the meaning of ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Road was left quite empty. After that last great stroke Death seemed to be resting on his laurels. When thus unpeopled it looked a very vast place like to a huge arched causeway, bordered on either side by blackness, but itself gleaming with a curious phosphorescence such as once or twice I have seen in the waters of ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... observed:—it may be transmitted through the stone, diaphaneity, as it is called; it may produce single or double refraction, or polarisation; if reflected, it may produce lustre or colour; or it may produce phosphorescence; so that light may be (1) transmitted; (2) ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... always in a state of calm phosphorescence, however. On the contrary, it sometimes manifests great flames, like those of a fiery furnace, which shoot forth in great tongues, and dart forth suddenly in certain directions toward the objects attracting them. Under great emotional excitement the auric flames move around in swift ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... his friend composedly,—"I could have guessed as much; but that is a fire you may warm yourself at; no eternal phosphorescence;—it is the leaping up of an internal fire, that only shews ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... of death was Miss Aldclyffe still, though the old fire had degenerated to mere phosphorescence now. 'But you are your ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... singular phenomenon has given rise to many theories and much discussion among naturalists. It was for a time contended that this phosphorescence was a quality of the water itself. But later and more accurate observers ascertained beyond a doubt, that some marine worms and other insects were luminous. On pursuing the investigation it is ascertained that the sea water is far less pure than has been supposed, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the foot of the rock, ordinarily so still and so dark, lighted up, not on the surface only, but down to half its depth; so that, as it tossed in the wind, like a tortured sea of writhing flames, or incandescent half-molten serpents of brass, they could not tell whether a strong phosphorescence did not issue from the transparent body of the waters, as if earth and sky lightened together, one consenting source ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... one great lighthouse ray, concentrated through the loop above the pillar, and there this night also the ray ran far above us like a lance of fire. But now that we were nearer to its fount we found ourselves bathed in a soft, mysterious radiance like that of the phosphorescence on a summer sea, reflected downwards perhaps from the clouds and massy rock roof of the column loop and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... had crossed the Channel. The rhythm of his great phrases was as the rhythm of those waves, and his head swayed in accordance to it like the wave-rocked boat itself. He hymned in memory the surge and darkness, the thunder and foam and phosphorescence—'You remember, Theodore? You remember the PHOS—phorescence?'—all so beautifully and vividly that I almost felt stormbound and in peril of my life. To disentangle one from another of the several occasions on which I heard him talk is difficult because the procedure was so ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... unlike real life, they said—nothing. The boy moved round and stood close to his side so that he found himself placed between them, all three leaning forward over the rails watching the phosphorescence of the foam-streaked Mediterranean. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing, did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold phosphorescence of ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... commonest forces, such as his mind refused to credit. He could not conceive but that some one, somewhere, could tell him all about the magnet, if one could but find the book — although he had been forced to admit the same helplessness in the face of gravitation, phosphorescence, and odors; and he could imagine no reason why society should treat radium as revolutionary in science when every infant, for ages past, had seen the magnet doing what radium did; for surely the kind of radiation mattered nothing compared with the energy that radiated and the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... The phosphorescence of the diamonds of Darius was to the people far less important than the joyous fact which they were not slow to grasp, that the Hereditary Treasure was, if they might believe the king's words, restored to them, and the burden of the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Woman in the Louvre," two paces from "Titian's Mistress." Compare the two women, study closely the two pictures, and you will understand the difference between the two brains. Rembrandt's ideal, sought as in a dream with closed eyes, is Light: the nimbus around objects, the phosphorescence that comes against a black background. It is something fugitive and uncertain, formed of lineaments scarce perceptible, ready to disappear before the eye has fixed them, ephemeral and dazzling. To arrest the vision, to set it on the canvas, to give it its shape and moulding, to preserve the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... couches kings are dreaming! The Golden Rule dries many tears! The Golden Number rules the spheres! Gold, gold it is, that sways the nations: Gold! gold! the center of all rotations! On golden axles worlds are turning: With phosphorescence seas are burning! All fire-flies flame with golden gleamings! Gold-hunters' hearts with golden dreamings! With golden arrows kings are slain: With gold we'll buy a freeman's name! In toilsome trades, for scanty earnings, At home ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... Advice to Writing Mediums. Drawing Mediumship. The Planchette. How to Use the Planchette. Healing Mediumship. How To Heal by Spirit Power. Materialization Mediumship. The Spirit Cabinet Is Necessary. How To Make the Spirit Cabinet. How To Use the Spirit Cabinet. Spirit Phosphorescence. Appearance of Materialized Substance. Materialized Spirit Forms. Scientific Proof of Materialization. How To Conduct a Materializing Seance. Trumpet Mediumship. Spirit Playing on Musical Instruments. Independent Slate Writing. The Slate Writing Circle. ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... unlit. Our little stream of light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently the rocky walls had vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were towards the rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that the reflection of the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... morning, a loud splash was heard in the water, succeeded by the cry of, 'A man overboard.' A boat was immediately sent, and from the phosphorescence of the water, some one was discovered swimming towards the shore. On approaching him, he turned round in the direction of the Eden; and, when within twenty yards of the ship, he all at once disappeared, and was not seen afterwards. On inquiry, it was found that the native ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... long procession filed from the mountain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night was dark, the moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the ground was dimly lighted by the phosphorescence of the general putrefaction. The Adepts went stumbling over dead bodies, disturbing Rats and Vultures, and proceeded to the formation of the magic chain, which consisted in high-grade Masons, provided with silk hats, sitting down in a vast circle, every Adept embracing his ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Formerly the spark- and absorption-spectra were the sole methods available; a third method was introduced by Crookes, who submitted the oxides, or preferably the basic sulphates, to the action of a negative electric discharge in vacuo, and investigated the phosphorescence induced spectroscopically. By such a study in the ultra-violet region of a fraction prepared from crude yttria he detected a new element victorium, and subsequently by elaborate fractionation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... moonlight it was an immense plane of vivid silver streaked with serpentine shadows. Its soft doughlike undulations, replete with microscopic life, illuminated the nights. The infusoria, a-tremble with love, glowed with a bluish phosphorescence. The sea was like luminous milk. The foam breaking against the prow sparkled like broken ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I fear," answered the strange fisherman. "I have a sort of hobby about what they call 'phenomena of phosphorescence.' But it would be rather awkward to go about ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... glittering stranger Knight to brise le sceau de ses petites solitudes, as the Vicar of Diane-Artemis phrases it. The landscapes of these tales are fantastically beautiful, and scattered through the narrative are fragments of verse, vagrant and witty, that light up the stories with a glowworm phosphorescence. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... back close to his head, his yellow eyes glowed as though they were balls of phosphorescence, and the hair on his back seemed to stand up ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... mene, Tekel Upharsin has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage. While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of Tashtego revealed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... station to get the news in Paris, promising to come back later in the evening, but Clerambault stayed in the isolated house, from which in the distance could be seen the far-off phosphorescence of the city. He had not stirred from the seat where he had fallen stupified. This time he could no longer doubt, the catastrophe was coming, was upon them already. Madame Clerambault begged him to go to bed, but he would ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... miles, and was probably much more. The propeller was kept in constant operation, and, no doubt, aided our progress materially. As the sun went down, the gale freshened into an absolute hurricane, and the ocean beneath was clearly visible on account of its phosphorescence. The wind was from the East all night, and gave us the brightest omen of success. We suffered no little from cold, and the dampness of the atmosphere was most unpleasant; but the ample space in the car enabled us to lie down, and by means of cloaks and a few blankets, we ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... boat with Ashipattle in it and the sound of surging waters filled his ears. It was light there in the monster's throat, for the roof and the sides of it shone with phosphorescence so ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... velocity, till at a certain distance from the pole the mass of the gaseous molecules and their speed become so great that a luminous display begins. In an analogous manner the author explains the phenomena of phosphorescence which Crookes' elicits by the action of his radiant matter. In like manner the thermic and the mechanical effects are most simply explained, according to the expression selected by Crookes himself, as the results of a "continued molecular bombardment." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... there bloomed quite a collection of moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of the greatest ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and yet, behind the eyes, as they looked out into the darkness, there was something—some such effort, perhaps, as one seeking to penetrate the darkness of life must needs show. And as she looked, the white, living breakers gradually resolved them-selves out of the dark, thin filmy phosphorescence, and the roar of the lashed sea broke like thunder upon the pebbled beach. She leaned a little more forward, carried away with her fancy—that the shrill grinding of the pebbles was indeed the scream of ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compressed liquid, collapsed when lifted into a lighter medium, and which, despite the assumed perpetual darkness of their profound abode, were adorned with variegated colors and furnished with organs of phosphorescence whereby they could create for themselves ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... that the ship clove the dark sea into a blaze of phosphorescence, and her wake streamed like a comet's tail, a waggish middy got a bucketful hoisted on deck, and asked the doctor to analyze that. He did not much like it, but yielded to the general request; and by dividing ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to take the soundings, swung gently on the faintly heaving ocean breast. You felt you were in a tropical clime, for, though no breath fanned your cheek, your senses easily detected the delicious odor of a distant garden of sweet roses. The sea sparkled with phosphorescence. Not a sound was heard except the panting of the hard-worked little donkey-engine and the whirr of the line as it came up taut and dripping from the ocean depths. The lamp, hanging from the mast, threw a bright glare on deck, presenting the strongest contrast with ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... as a narrow ribbon of blue between the edges of the canon's walls. The sun was behind the wall down which they were climbing, out of sight, and throwing their side of the valley into shadow. And already they could begin to see a dim phosphorescence glowing from ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... Light Methods of Producing the Spectrum, Glass Prism and Diffraction Grating Spectroscopes, The Spectrum, Wave Motion of Light, Recomposition of White Light, Hue, Luminosity, Purity of Colours, The Polariscope, Phosphorescence, Fluorescence, Interference.—II., Cause of Colour in Coloured Bodies. Transmitted Colours, Absorption Spectra of Colouring Matters.—III., Colour Phenomena and Theories. Mixing Colours, White Light from Coloured Lights, Effect of Coloured Light on Colours, Complementary Colours, Young-Helmholtz ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... it? A great deal of the work of the Christian Church—but do not let us hide ourselves in the generality of that word—a great deal of our work is artificial light, brewed out of retorts, and smelling sulphureous; and a great deal more of it is the phosphorescence that glimmers above decay. If the Christian Church has ceased in any measure, or in any of its members, to be able to attract by the exhibition of its light, let the Christian Church sit down and bethink itself of the sort of light it gives, and perhaps it will find a reason for its failure. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... neither gas nor electricity, and on such a night as this neither moon nor stars dared show their faces in so gray a sky; but a sort of all-diffused luminosity was in the air, as though the sea of atmosphere was charged with an ethereal phosphorescence. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... over the side filled me with terror. There were literally scores of sharks, racing along on both sides of the boat, some almost on the surface, others some feet down, and the phosphorescence of the water added to the horror of the scene. At first I was in hopes that they were harmless porpoises, but they were so close that some of them could have been touched with one's hand. Most fortunately I was steering with a ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... leaden gray took on a tinge of green; he quaked with rage, and the glare he loosed on Lanyard made that young man wonder if he were mistaken in believing that the eyes of the prince shone in that dusky room with something nearly akin to the phosphorescence to be seen in the eyes of an ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of light is the result of chemical action, such as the lime, magnesium, and electric light. A third source of light is phosphorescence, as we see it in the glow-worm ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... primitive fancy may be roused even more strongly in darkness than by daylight. How living seem the smoulderings and the flashings of the tide on nights of phosphorescence!—how reptilian the subtle shifting of the tints of its chilly flame! Dive into such a night-sea;—open your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, as seen through the flood, like the opening and ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... accustomed to the semi-darkness. Drifting in was some object—a small, three-cornered, sail-like thing. Another flash of phosphorescence, and the triangular fin disappeared. Drew shuddered as he stood naked at the water's edge. He could not fail to identify the creature. Something besides the Bertha Hamilton had been shut in the lagoon ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... sparkles of fire, so long did it retain its brilliancy. The slightest movement in the water caused a flash of light. Jerry and I agreed that we had never seen anything more beautiful. The doctor told us that this phosphorescence or luminosity of the ocean is caused by a minute animal, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, though sufficient to tinge the water of a brown or reddish colour. Other marine substances are, however, luminous. While we ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... They resemble fine threads of delicate structure, and where found are always discovered in great abundance. Most conspicuous by their shape and considerable size are the rhizomorph, Fig. 3a, and they are remarkable, not only for their brilliant phosphorescence, but also for the peculiar fact that they are only found in places where light does not enter. These rhizomorph, though this is not easily recognizable from their external appearance, also belong to the fungi and are often seen in strings ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... and Summer developed in their multi-coloured glory: they burned with fiery splendour; the pine-trees glowed with a resinous phosphorescence. There was the fragrance of wormwood. Chicory, blue- bells, buttercups, milfoil, and cowslip blossomed and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... is so vast, so divine, so inexhaustible and unfathomable, that we must seek for the explanation of fortunate or contrary chances. Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, our first-born: immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal. Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays on this inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it. But our intellect is gradually learning that every secret of the human phenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and there alone. This unconscious being lives on ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... impractical for the purpose, because, you see, phosphorus must at intervals be placed where it can absorb the light in order to retain its brilliancy. Now as a man's watch stays most of the time in his pocket, a watch dial treated with phosphorus would have no opportunity to regain its phosphorescence. Hence the Ingersoll Company developed a sort of radium coating for their dials. It probably was not actually made from radium because there is not enough of it to be found in all the world even if a watch company could afford to buy it up. Just what this magic watch dial was made from was Ingersoll's ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... tropics, if only for the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the moonlight or starlight, and the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the 10 harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. A night for a lover, a lady, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... performance at the theatre. On Sundays a military band performs here forenoons and evenings. Under the starlight you may look not only among the low growing foliage to see the fireflies, which float there like clouds of phosphorescence, but now and again one will glow, diamond-like, in the black hair of the fair senoritas, where they are ingeniously fastened to produce this effect. It is strictly a Spanish idea, which the author has often seen in Havana. So brilliant are these tropical fireflies that with ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... smoking cigar after cigar from the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon came up into a pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough to out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole trooping unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous purpose, a boundless congregation, in the sweep of a strong oceanic current. I could ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Decouvertes, Peron wrote a number of short "memoires sur divers sujets," suggested to his mind by observations made during the voyage. One of the most valuable of these, from a scientific point of view, was an essay upon the causes of phosphorescence in the sea, frequently observed in tropical and subtropical regions, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... last words, still subdued, smell of wine: "Ah, la, la! Talk about a filthy war! Don't you think we should be a lot better at home!—Hullo! What's the matter with the ass?" A rifle has rung out beside us, making a brief and sudden flash of phosphorescence. Others go off here and there along our line. Rifle-shots ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... himself, the tarpaulin was bent on, and with a "sheet" attached to one corner rigged sail-fashion. In an instant it caught the stiff breeze, and bellied out; when the pinnace feeling the impulse, began to move rapidly through the water, leaving in her wake a stream of sparkling phosphorescence ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... one of the large species, the cap being 15—20 cm. broad, the stem 12—20 cm. long, and 8—12 mm. in thickness. It occurs in large clusters, several or many joined at their bases. From the rich saffron yellow color of all parts of the plant, and especially by its strong phosphorescence, so evident in the dark, it is an easy plant to recognize. Because of its phosphorescence ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... arisen in the mind of the laird a fear: might not Cosmo unwittingly have had some share in the frightful event? When first he entered the room, there was Cosmo, dressed, and with a light in his hand: the seeming phosphorescence in the snow must have been one of his PLOYS, and might not that have been the source of the shock to the dazed brain ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the 'Porcupine' in the distance, and from them again to the figures passing and repassing me on the deck. The "All's well" of the look-out seemed to come from an endless distance; the swish of water against the dividing hull of the 'Fulvia' sounded like a call to silence from another world; the phosphorescence swimming through the jarred waters added to the sensation of unreality and dreams. These dreams grew, till they were broken by a hand placed on my shoulder, and I saw that one of the passengers, Clovelly, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... line of sight which he had indicated, perceived, at a distance of about two hundred yards a faint glow, so faint indeed that I think only Hans would have noticed it. Really it might have been nothing more than the phosphorescence rising from a heap of fungus, or ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been made by a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... two in the morning of October 12th, amid the sheen of the stars and phosphorescence of the sea, one of the crew, with eyes accustomed, like some nocturnal creature, to the ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... something more about the animalcula that cause the phosphorescence yonder—making the top of each wave look like a fringe of fire. It is true that they are little round things that look like jelly—so small that it takes one hundred and seventy, all in a row, to make an inch; and that a wineglass can hold ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... exterior to the earth's orbit, but almost concentric with it. The rocky coast, its metallic surface reflecting the glow of the dazzling luminaries, appeared literally stippled with light, whilst the sea, as though spattered with burning hailstones, shone with a phosphorescence that was perfectly splendid. So great, however, was the speed at which Gallia was receding from the sun, that this meteoric storm lasted scarcely more than four ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... larvae and even the eggs. It has been supposed by some authors that the light serves to frighten away enemies, and by others to guide the male to the female. At last, Mr. Belt (12. 'The Naturalist in Nicaragua,' 1874, pp. 316-320. On the phosphorescence of the eggs, see 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' Nov. 1871, p. 372.) appears to have solved the difficulty: he finds that all the Lampyridae which he has tried are highly distasteful to insectivorous ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... most singular of all worlds. She has the light, the uncertainty, and the wavering of a pale fire. The more we examine her, the less we can grasp the subtle lineaments that serve as envelope for her uncorporeal existence. We end by seeing in her nothing but a kind of extraordinarily strange phosphorescence which is not the ordinary light of things, nor yet the ordinary brilliance of a well-regulated palette, and this adds more sorcery to the peculiarities of her countenance. Notice that in the place she occupies, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... nice of me, I suppose. But, dear, I'm dead tired of moral squalor. I do like the brightness of things, too, but I don't care for the phosphorescence of social decay." ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... The phosphorescence that played in the black waves near Elias's boat shone weirdly in the foam round the other boat, which seemed to plough up and roll waves of fire about her sides. By their bright light he could even distinguish the spars and ropes in her. He could also distinctly see the men on board, with ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... sea were ablaze with phosphorescence, and appeared to tower above the poop as high as the main-topsail-yard, and the sight of them sweeping along after the ship was positively appalling. The wind now began to increase in violence, literally tearing off the summits of the huge ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to near the new line of reefs: in another moment the waves were seen dashing on submerged rocks. It was a moment of inexpressible anxiety. The spray was luminous, just as if lit up by sudden phosphorescence. The roaring of the sea was like the voice of those ancient Tritons whom poetic mythology endowed with life. Wilson and Mulrady hung to the wheel with all their weight. Some cordage gave way, which endangered the foremast. It seemed doubtful ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a white amorphous powder, sparingly soluble in water, is formed by heating the sulphate with charcoal, or by heating lime in a current of sulphuretted hydrogen. It is particularly noteworthy from the phosphorescence which it exhibits when heated, or after exposure to the sun's rays; hence its synonym "Canton's phosphorus," after John Canton (1718-1772), an English natural philosopher. The sulphydrate or hydrosulphide, Ca(SH)2, is obtained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... surprised to find himself enveloped in a phosphorescent halo; this continued for several days and recurred after further indiscretions in diet. It is well known that there are insects and other creatures of the lower animal kingdom which possess the peculiar quality of phosphorescence. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... taper, candle, lantern, head-light, cresset; publicity, public notice; phosphorescence, luminescence; aureole, halo, nimbus, aureola, glory. Associated Words: photology, photologist, photophobia, catoptrics, dioptrics, photics, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to which so many beautiful but dead words of our language have been unhappily banished. It is not that these words lose their lustre, as many words lose it, by hackneyed use and common handling; the process is exactly opposite; by not being used enough, the phosphorescence of decay seems to attack them, and give them a kind of shimmer which makes them seem too fine for common occasions. But once a word falls out of colloquial speech its life is threatened; it may linger on in literature, but its radiance, at first perhaps brighter, will gradually diminish, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... there trying to pierce the blackness, out of which the anchor lights of the ships stood like stars, but he could see nothing save a faint bluish-greeny gleam now and then far below, where the phosphorescence of the sea washed gently, like so much luminous oil, over the bases of the cliffs and played among the masses ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the avenues and streets in the business parts of the city, including the former sidewalks, is given up to wheel traffic, an iron ridge extending along the exact centre to compel vehicles to keep to the right. Strips of nickel painted white, and showing a bright phosphorescence at night, are let into the metal pavement flush with the surface, and run parallel to this ridge at distances of ten to fifteen feet, dividing each half of the avenue into four or five sections, their width increasing as they approach the middle. All trucks ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... wildest Halloween moods—visited this cellar by night, but in some of our daytime visits could detect the phosphorescence, especially when the day was dark and wet. There was also a subtler thing we often thought we detected—a very strange thing which was, however, merely suggestive at most. I refer to a sort of cloudy whitish pattern on the dirt floor—a vague, shifting deposit of mold or niter which we sometimes ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... ship's side, and flung the end of his cigarette overboard; it struck, a red spark amidst the lurid phosphorescence of the bubbles that swept backward from ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... voyage through what seemed to us like a sea of phosphorescence, every splash and ripple producing liquid gems, brought us to Penang, the most northerly sea-port of the Malacca Straits, situated at the point where they open into the Indian Ocean, and just one hundred miles from the island of Sumatra across ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... evening as we stand at the vessel's side, watching the marvellous display of phosphorescence that plays about the prow of the San Miguel, Mrs. Steele is joined by Senor Noma, and the Baron urges me to come a little further away from the light—"ve can see dthe yelly fishes viel besser." I move away unsuspectingly out of the shine of the ship's lanterns, and the Baron, folding his ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... are fringed by a number of cays among which the sea breaks heavily, while the whole surface of the shoal is white water. And it is this same white water which gives rise to the phenomenon above referred to, locally known as "Bank Blink." It is simply the reflection of the phosphorescence of the water in the clouds above; and the darker and more overcast the night, the more distinctly is the reflection seen. The phenomenon is, of course, quite natural and easily to be accounted for, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the Butan Islands. The evening looked dull, but the sky was occasionally lighted up by flashes of the most brilliant lightning. The sea was so full of phosphorescence that when Baby and I had our ante-prandial 'hose' our bathing-dresses glistened beautifully. I felt rather unwell all day, and not being able to go down to afternoon prayers, listened to them ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... kicking up a harsher surf, Nissr must have begun to break. But as the cupped hand of night, closing over the earth, had also shut away the wind, the air-liner was now resting more easily. Surf still foamed about her floats and lower gallery—surf all spangled with the phosphorescence that the Arabs call "jewels of the deep"—but unless some sudden squall should fling itself against the coast, every probability favored the liner taking ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Pater! He reminds me, in the disturbed midnight of our actual literature, of one of those lucent match-boxes which you place, on going to bed, near the candle, to show you, in the darkness, where you can strike a light: he shines in the uneasy gloom—vaguely, and has a phosphorescence, not a flame. But I quite agree with you that he is not of the little day—but ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... their ghosts standing amid the crosses on the hillside staring longingly across the world toward that sun-baked Karroo of Australia and to the blue New Zealand mountains which they called "Home." It was a night never to be forgotten, for the glassy surface of the AEgean glowed with phosphorescence, the sky was like a hanging of purple velvet, and the peak of our foremast seemed almost to graze the stars. Across the Hellespont, to the southward, the sky was illumined by a ruddy glow—a village ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... on the evening of the Last Supper, in his pilgrim robe, with his blackened lips, on which the torture has left its traces, his great brown eyes soft, widely opened, and raised towards heaven, with his cold nimbus, a sort of phosphorescence around him which envelops him in an indefinable glory, and that inexplicable look of a breathing human being who certainly ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... a strange, great wind that blew From undiscovered lands, and took my soul And set it on an uttermost peak of Hell Amid the gloom and fearful silences. Slowly the darkness paled, and a weird dawn Broke on my wondering vision, and there grew Uncanny phosphorescence in the air Which seemed to throb with some great vital spell Of mystery and doom. With aching eyes I gazed, and lo! the dreadful scene evolved, Black and chaotic, like an awful birth To Desolation, of a lifeless world! My soul in agony cried out to God, When of a sudden ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... must have been electricity; it could not be attributed to a bank of fish spawn, nor to a crowd of those animalculae that give phosphorescence to the sea, and this showed that the electrical tension of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... still cast a red glow, but the bulk of the ashes were cold. I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissary spoke a word to ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... arched passage, at the entrance of which Penn paused and placed the torch in a niche. A projection of the rock prevented the light from shining before them, yet their way was softly illumined from beyond, as by a dim phosphorescence. They advanced, and in a moment their eyes, grown accustomed to the obscurity, came upon a scene ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... phosphorescence, which is very common in tropical seas, sometimes the whole sea is alight with it. Look at that! It is a vivid light like a wave of green fire, most beautiful! It is only, however, where the ship strikes the water that we see it to-night. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... devoted it to a nobler service. Yet it must be confessed that, with the single exception of the "Areopagitica," Milton's tracts are wearisome reading, and going through them is like a long sea-voyage whose monotony is more than compensated for the moment by a stripe of phosphorescence heaping before you in a drift of star-sown snow, coiling away behind in winking disks of silver, as if the conscious element were giving out all the moonlight it had garnered in its loyal depths since first it gazed upon its pallid regent. Which, being interpreted, means that ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... while the crest of a wave broke into a long snowy-white line which appeared to be filled with a thousand lights; this effect was caused by the infinite number of animalculae, which are struck together by the movement of the wave and give out phosphorescence. These animalculae are living creatures which cannot be seen without the help of the microscope. It is wonderful that such small things can give ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... spread forth to tempt their praise. I curled my snowy spray about their feet; flashed back the silver beams of harvest moon in one long, shimmering sheet of mellow light; rolled waves of brilliant phosphorescence, that seemed like silver billows, diamond-studded, breaking on a beach of gold, and sang the sweetest odes of the poets of ten thousand years; but they heard nor saw aught but the beating of their hearts in holy rhythm and the love-light flaming like fires celestial ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... its lights fairly subdued by the splendour of the waters. Under the awnings the ship's company lounged in lazy attitudes or promenaded slowly, talking low voiced, cigars glowing in the splendid dusk. Overside, in the furrow of the disturbed waters, the phosphorescence flashed perpetually beneath the shadow ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... blew out of the black night. They staggered unsteadily to the rail and emptied the pail into the darkness. The splash was lost in the sound of the waves and of churned water fleeing along the sides. Fuselli leaned over the rail and looked down at the faint phosphorescence that was the only light in the whole black gulf. He had never seen such darkness before. He clutched hold of the rail with both hands, feeling lost and terrified in the blackness, in the roaring of the wind in his ears and the sound of churned water ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... came, dancing, swaying and spinning at a rate inconceivable, so that it looked like a gigantic wheel of fire. Yet it was not fire that clothed it but rather some phosphorescence, since from it came no heat. Yes, a phosphorescence arranged in bands of ghastly blue and lurid red, with streaks of other colours running up between, and a kind ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... moon-swept sky with its far, pale wreaths of stars, blotting it out with monstrous folds and convolutions of impenetrable purple-black. Along its crest fire played like swords in the sunlight, and now and again sheeted flame lightened the monstrous expanse so that it glowed with the pale phosphorescence of a ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to mine—almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candour, her warm beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit darkness—all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt impelled to a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various |
