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Phosphorescent   Listen
adjective
Phosphorescent  adj.  Shining with a phosphoric light; emitting phosphorescence; luminous without sensible heat.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books



... as so many Edens afloat upon a body of water as beautiful as any that mortal eyes have ever seen. Huge palms rose high in air, their long feathery leaves swaying softly in the golden light. Darkness fell like a curtain; but the waters now gleamed like nether heavens with their own stars of phosphorescent light. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... Von Humboldt says "It would seem as if this picture had its origin in the poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent condition of the ocean in which luminous points appear to rise from the breaking waves and, spreading themselves over the surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of stars." This mention of a sea brings to mind the striking ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... to wash them well in warm water, to put them in alcohol with the precautions that we shall point out, and to prepare a note which indicates the latitude of the place where they are taken, if they live solitary or in society, if they are phosphorescent, if they inhabit a certain depth or the surface of the sea. The colors of gelatinous animals not keeping well in liquor, it is very ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... his finger on his lips, and lowering himself noiselessly into the sea, swam towards the shore with such precaution that it was impossible to hear the slightest sound; he could only be traced by the phosphorescent line in his wake. This track soon disappeared; it was evident that he had touched the shore. Every one on board remained motionless for half an hour, when the same luminous track was again observed, and the swimmer was soon on board. "Well?" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Rubies were there like great drops of the blood that the chest and its treasure had wrung from the hearts of men; sapphires, mirroring the blue of the tropic sky; emeralds, green as the island verdure; pearls, white as the milk of the cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked them ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... round it, like the marks on a melon. What a beautiful iridescent light plays over them! They enable it to move over the water, while with its long tentacles it fishes for its food. At night those cilia shine with a phosphorescent light, and have a very beautiful appearance. Stop! oh, don't go away without looking more particularly at this submarine forest. The woods of America in autumn do not present more gorgeous colours. That beautiful pink weed is the Delesseria ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... electrolier. It cast a circular glow downward. Under it I saw a low platform raised a foot or two above the ground. A giant electro-microscope was hung with its twenty foot cylinder above the platform. Its intensification tubes were glowing in a dim phosphorescent row on a nearby bracket. A man sat in a chair on the platform at ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... attack was made, though the garrison had to be very wary to avoid the arrows which flew at intervals into the enclosure. One evening, soon after sunset, one of the men on watch noticed a small light approaching the barricade, and thought at first it was one of the phosphorescent insects which abounded in the woods, and which the garrison had seen every night like little lamps among the trees. But as it came nearer he perceived that it grew larger and brighter, and moved from side to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... that which is noblest and truest in his nature. To regard this life as the ne plus ultra of man's development, is to charge nature with a freak of folly, and an abortion in her best works. Men may laud human virtue for human virtue's sake; but if man is but the moth of a day, the fire-fly whose phosphorescent light flashes for a moment and then goes out in eternal night, his virtues are but the tales of the hour that have their value in the telling. If this life is all there is of man, then he is the most unmeaning portion of the creation of God. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... fair complexion and comely features—was so emaciated, that you might have counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow, you beheld in the candle-light the figure of death under the thin covering of the bones. She realized, in short, the description which doctors give of the appearance of those unfortunate beings who die of what is technically called atrophia ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... the stars which crusted a moonless sky, the vast stretches of billowing sand glimmered faintly golden as a phosphorescent sea. And among the dimly gleaming waves of that endless waste the motor tossed, rocking on the rough track like ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... 15th-a night so dark that from the ship's deck one could not see the water—schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the water alive with phosphorescent splendors: "Like glorified serpents thirty to fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost come suddenly flashing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... have looked like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed of a leisure which he had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... lovely phosphorescent effects, and as we neared Scotland, millions of pink and brown jelly-fish filled the water. At Thurso we hailed a boat to send telegrams ashore—such a collection!—to let our various friends know we had returned in safety from Ultima Thule. That night as we passed ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... hour of the night beheld us both—my guide and myself—he must have taken us for two spectres riding upon nightmares. Witch-fires ever and anon flitted across the road before us, and the night-birds shrieked fearsomely in the depth of the woods beyond, where we beheld at intervals glow the phosphorescent eyes of wild cats. The manes of the horses became more and more dishevelled, the sweat streamed over their flanks, and their breath came through their nostrils hard and fast. But when he found them slacking pace, the guide reanimated them by ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... the whaling quay. It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful—the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his fellows. We were unlucky ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... with the frost and the phosphorescent light of the moon; the birds sat tucked in their nest, pressing close together to keep themselves warm. Yet still the frost penetrated their feathers, got into their skin and made their feet, bills, and backs feel cold. The ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... surged violently beneath the touch. His flesh crept, and the shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. "Back!" he hissed, thrusting A-ya off to arm's length and bracing his spear point before him to receive the expected attack. A pair of faintly phosphorescent eyes, small, but so wide apart as to show that their owner's head must have been enormous, flashed round upon them. There was a hoarse squeal of alarm, and a heavy body went floundering off into the water. They could hear it swimming ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. At any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. There was a smoking streak of phosphorescent light, the match flared for a moment, and he saw a vast wing sweeping towards him, a gleam of grey-brown fur, and then he was struck in the face and the match knocked out of his hand. The blow was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... shore, they realized fully what torrid heat means. This long stretch of southern travel is perhaps the most wearisome part of the long journey, yet there were sometimes scenes and sights of the dark hours that almost compensated. One night, there was a phosphorescent and electrical display that could never be forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into a soft glow, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... crystal, that the lantern, with its reflector and a blue spark in the focus, made an admirable instrument for throwing the invisible rays on the beast, and that he was all ready, except that his plates, which he had resensitized—with some phosphorescent substance that I forget the name of, now—must have time to dry. And then, he needed some light to work by when the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... The phosphorescent sea, covered with its tens of millions of animalcula, each one a miniature light-house, changed in color from inky blackness to silver sheen. Will the ocean take to itself this frail foothold? — we queried. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... numerous batches of spider-web-like substance fell in Montgomery, in strands and in occasional masses several inches long and several inches broad. According to the writer, it was not spiders' web, but something like asbestos; also that it was phosphorescent. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... bursting lungs. Well, he would have to try a new way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply would take him far down. He turned over and went down head first, swimming with all his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he went. His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will. But they did not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... fair above, Midnight, fierce and dark beneath,— All on high the smile of love, All below the frown of death: Waves that whirl in angry spite With a phosphorescent light Gleaming ghastly on the night,— Like the pallid sneer of Doom, So malicious, cold, and white, Luring to this watery tomb, Where in fury and in fright Winds and waves together fight Hideously amid the gloom,— As our cutter gladly sends, Dipping ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... boatman complied and the Richard began to lift her hull from the sea, the dark waters ahead were brightened by a phosphorescent flash. Directly across their course lay the Fuor d'Italia. Twisting the steering wheel with only the slightest pressure of his fingers to avoid turning the Richard over, Bronson opened the cut-out and stepped hard on the throttle. The speed-craft dipped, then raised and bumped the Fuor d'Italia ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... but from the great cross-seas. Night was approaching, and the hearts of all sank as they asked what they should do in the darkness when they would no longer be able to see these terrible waves. To their great joy, however, when it grew dark they discovered that they were in phosphorescent waters and that each dangerous wave rolled up crested with light which made it as clearly visible ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... ocean spectral fire-flecks flashed like mast-lights on swinging ships. These mysterious jack o' lanterns of the arctic are caused by the crashing together of icebergs covered with phosphorescent algae. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... gazers shuddered with mute affright, For the stilts burned now with a bluish light, While a glimmering, phosphorescent glow Did out of the lady's garments flow. And what was that very peculiar smell? Fish, or brimstone? no one could tell. Stronger and stronger the odor grew, And the stilts and the lady burned more blue; 'Round and around the long saloon, While ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... my heart like a great spiritual plummet They dropped down to depths not often stirred. And from those depths came up some shining sands of truth, worth keeping among treasures; having a phosphorescent light in them, which can shine in dark places, and, making them light ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... Chromidrosis, or colored sweat, is an interesting anomaly exemplified in numerous reports. Black sweat has been mentioned by Bartholinus, who remarked that the secretion resembled ink; in other cases Galeazzi and Zacutus Lusitanus said the perspiration resembled sooty water. Phosphorescent sweat has been recorded. Paullini and the Ephemerides mention perspiration which was of a leek-green color, and Borellus has observed deep green perspiration. Marcard mentions green perspiration of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... when thought flies from world to world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration large, tranquil, and profound, like that of the ocean, and hovers serene and boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the muse, Urania, who traces around the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent nimbus of contemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the tranquil intoxication, if not the authority of genius, moments of irresistible intuition in which a man feels himself great like the universe and calm like a god! From the celestial spheres down to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... subtlety of a delicate mannerism. Edmond was eighteen at the time. Scarcely free of the ferule of his pedagogues, he already looked at life with that air of keen astonishment which was never to leave him, and which was to kindle in his eye the sort of phosphorescent reflection that shone there to his last hour. It was the elder and more observant of the two who first attempted to represent his young brother, the one who was to be the greater artist of the pair, as if the compact had already been entered upon, as if ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... heavy dew and the nature of the ridge—of slate formation and sharply serrated—they had clung to it obstinately. Above them the clear and constellated dome of night turned almost perceptibly around its pole. At their feet the tide lapped the beach, phosphorescent, at ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... night, sometimes in swampy hollows, it was strange to wake when there was neither moon nor star, and see the great decaying trees that storm had felled or age had ruined, glow with a weird phosphorescent light, which followed the rents in them, and hovered about the seams in their bark, making them look like the ghosts of huge alligators prone in the places they had ravaged, and giving forth infernal gleams. Stranger yet it was to see in the dark, moving near the pine-wood ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... street of the sleeping town. The strange light, which was neither gloaming nor dawning, but a mixture of both, the waving boreal banners, the queer houses, gray with the storms of centuries, the brown undulating heaths, and the phosphorescent sea, made a strangely solemn picture which sank deep into their hearts. After a pause, Christine went into the house, but John sat down on the stone bench to think over the alternatives ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... while the ship's bells recorded the passing of hours. From the decks above drifted little fragments of human talk and human laughter, but to him they were meaningless. Late in the evening he rose with an effort and went on deck where he sought out an unoccupied place. Phosphorescent gleams broke luminously in the wake. Clusters of great stars and the bright dust of star-spray sprinkled the sky, but whether he looked up or down Stuart Farquaharson could see only the light of victorious surrender in the eyes of the woman he loved, declaring ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... wandered to correct him; their hands met; the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells sent through the darkness, hung over her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul away. And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... and he crouched forward watching intently. His eyes were staring wide-open and startled at the Wondership. Its bulk lay blackly against the faint, phosphorescent ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... into crystalline brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the dark green ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel kept on its dead shove of the Marie's keel into the sand. Hogjaw had shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water circling about the bow when Crump ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... to brush a cobweb from your cork by and by. O little fool, that has published a little book full of little poems or other sputtering tokens of an uneasy condition, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special sensibility that runs through your exiguous organism, and the one phosphorescent particle in your unilluminated intelligence! But if you don't leave your spun-sugar confectionery business once in a while, and come out among lusty men,—the bristly, pachydermatous fellows that hew out the highways for the material progress of society, and the broad-shouldered, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... he rolled to his feet. He saw the huge coils of the Venusian water-constrictor. One lidless phosphorescent eye gleamed evilly at him, but its great jaws were spread and the dead fish was ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis

... two choice spirits reeled out of a hostelry near Wall Street and saw the lights go out in the tap-room windows they started up town to their homes in Leonard Street, but hardly had they come abreast of old St. Paul's when a strange thing stayed them: crying was heard in the churchyard and a phosphorescent light shone among the tombs. Rooney was sober in a moment, but not so Dirck Van Dara, who shouted, "Here is sport, friend Rooney. Let's climb the wall. If the dead are for a dance, we will take partners and show them how pigeons' ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop preparatory to ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over which we hung:—- the stars also were reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... a firm hold on one arm of the skeleton, I loosened it from the body with a quick jerk. The movement loosened the head as well, and it rolled out through the opening right to my very feet. I took up the skull to lay it in the coffin again—and then I saw a greenish phosphorescent glimmer in its empty eye sockets, a glimmer which came and went. Mad terror shook me at the sight. I looked up at the houses in the distance, then back again to the skull; the empty sockets shone more brightly than before. I felt that I must have ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... the said kinks; during my watch again, but this time no earthly power could have saved it. I had taken all manner of precautions to prevent the end doing any damage when the smash came, for come I knew it must. We now return to the six-wire cable. As I sat watching the cable to-night, large phosphorescent globes kept rolling from it and fading ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... five minutes the canoe went flying over the water, and I continued to haul in line fathom by fathom, until I caught sight of, deep down in the water right ahead, a great phosphorescent boil and bubble. Then the pace began to slacken, as the gallant fighter began to turn from side to side, shaking his head and making futile breaks from port to starboard. Bidding me come amidships with the line, Ioane took in his paddle, and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... limitless, over which floated masses of luminous haze. The insurrectionary force might well have thought they were following some gigantic causeway, making their rounds along some military road built on the shore of a phosphorescent sea, and circling ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... down. Grief, face downward, watched his phosphorescent track glimmer, and dim, and vanish. A long minute afterward Mauriri broke surface ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... as he leaned on the taffrail, looking down at the phosphorescent gleam in the ship's wake, and his own laughter startled him by its evil note. He checked suddenly, and shivered. A sob broke from him to end that ribald burst of mirth. He took his face in his hands and found a chill ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... can think of a fish that's been a long time dead," he suggested, "an' has turned a sort of phosphorescent brown-yellow in decayin', ye'll have a general idea of the color. The head, like all the vipers, is low, flat an' triangle-shaped. The eye is a bright orange color, an' so shinin' that flashes from it look like sparks ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... that it was a fungus growth known in the country as "foxfire," which gives out a phosphorescent glow in the darkness; but after watching and studying it for a long time, he was convinced it was ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... world. Musquitoes and sand-flies infest the woods, and the neighborhood of water, in incredible numbers, during the hot weather. There are many moths and butterflies resembling those seen in England. The beautiful fire-fly is very common in Canada, their phosphorescent light shining with wonderful brightness through the shady forests in the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... and the two young men always sat together upon deck late into the evening. One night, toward the last, they were at the stern of the great ship, watching her grind the solid blackness of the ocean into phosphorescent foam. They talked on these occasions of everything conceivable, and had the air of having no secrets from each other. But it was on Roderick's conscience that this air belied him, and he was too frank by nature, moreover, for ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... I fell over one of the heaps of old Danish bones in a corner of the crypt. The candle fell from my lantern, and I was in darkness. As I sat there I passed into a semi-conscious state. I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of phosphorescent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the 'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal,' scattering seeds over the earth below. At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading with the Queen ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... can see nothing more. With difficulty I can make out, along our trampled platform, a dark flock, the buzz of voices, the smell of tobacco. Here and there a match flame or the red point of a cigarette makes some face phosphorescent. And we wait, unoccupied, and weary of waiting, until we sit down, close-pressed against each other, in the dark and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... the sailor hesitated, uncertain as to which way to turn. Little by little, however, his eyes grew accustomed to the touch of the water, and he saw, lying on the bottom a few feet ahead of him, a small ball glowing with a pale phosphorescent light. Stooping to touch this strange object, the sailor discovered it to be a small round sea-plant which had anchored itself to a stone, and presently he discovered that this light was but one of thousands which together formed a long ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston

... aground in the creek and were in danger of being upset. Upon extinguishing the torchlights, about twelve in number, the darkness of the night seemed quite horrible; the water being also much charged with the phosphorescent appearance which is familiar to every one on shipboard, the waves, as they dashed upon the rock, were in some degree like so much liquid flame. The scene, upon the whole, was ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have dwelt in darkness for untold ages are absolutely colorless. Pigmented or colored fishes, nevertheless, having well-developed organs of vision, have been taken from such depths (over a mile) as to preclude the possibility of a single ray of daylight.[7] These fishes, however, are phosphorescent, and thus furnish their own light. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the vast depths of the ocean, in certain localities, lie bathed in a continuous phosphorescent glow, so that creatures living there neither lose their color nor their eyes, sufficient light being present ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... Bay, surrounded by mountains, sleeps tranquilly in the stillness of the elements, as if it had not joined the chorus of the tempest on the night before. As first rays of dawn appear in the eastern sky and awaken the phosphorescent myriads in the water, long, grey shadows appear in the dim distance, almost on the border of the horizon. They are shadows of fishermen's boats at work drawing ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... possessed of this property, after being exposed to the sun's rays, appear luminous in the dark. The shells of fish, the bones of land animals, marble, limestone, and a variety of combinations of earths, are more or less powerfully phosphorescent. ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... the wheel and slammed the door of the sedan. The moonlight was gone. The darkness was velvet just tinged with the gray that precedes the dawn. Back in the deeper blackness at the cliff-base a phosphorescent something wavered and glowed. The light rippled and flowed in all directions over the mass. Thurston felt, vaguely, its mystery—the bulk was a vast, naked brain; its quiverings ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... Pharaohs who are celebrated in the ballads sung by blind men at the street corners. She remembered also her thin, wretched mother, wandering like a hungry cat about the house, which she filled with the tones of her sharp voice, and the glitter of her phosphorescent eyes. They said in the neighbourhood that she was a witch, and changed into an owl at night, and flew to see her lovers. It was a lie. Thais knew well, having often watched her, that her mother practised no magic arts, but that she was eaten up with avarice, and counted all ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... street, stark against a sky pulsing with the faintest foreboding of daybreak, the gaunt, steel-girdered framework of the new Grand Central Station stood—in its harshly angular immensity as majestic as the blackened skeleton of a burnt-out world glimpsed against the phosphorescent pallor of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... Night came down upon them and seemed to crush the spirit out of them. As they emerged from the wood, the moon rose and flooded the broad plain with weird, phosphorescent light. They struggled on, swaying with sleep, past the ghostly outlines of poplars and hayricks, past quiet, deserted cottages and empty stables. There was something almost unearthly about that march ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... a wild cry from the poop and felt the engines stop and reverse beneath him. He cast one glance over the rail and like every man on board was struck motionless and silent. In the phosphorescent gleams of the waves churned up by the incredible muscular power of the killers, the old whale—sixty feet in length at least, and weighing hundreds of tons—was rushing at a maddened spurt of fifteen or even twenty miles an hour straight for the vessel's side, where a blind instinct ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... no move, but in the clear moonlight I could see its body expand and contract in breathing; its yellow eyes seeming to radiate a phosphorescent light. I felt no fear, nor any inclination to retreat, yet I was now facing a beast that few men had ever succeeded in seeing. Thus we stood looking at each other, scarcely moving an eyelid, while the great silent monster looked at us. I slid ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... 'dream' in my letter to Miss Steele for want of a better word. (2) I woke up and then had the vision of Miss Steele. (3) I did not notice anything in the room at the time I had the vision. The room appeared dark. (4) Miss Steele appeared to me in a bright light, not self-luminous or phosphorescent, but just as she would have appeared in daylight. She appeared to me in the part of the room ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally

... closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as sea-leopards, crab-eater and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... whole was like some luminous transparency on which the slender shafts of the columns, the elegant curves of the girders, and the geometrical tracery of the roofs were minutely outlined. Florent feasted his eyes on this mighty diagram washed in with Indian ink on phosphorescent vellum, and his mind reverted to his old fancy of a colossal machine with wheels and levers and beams espied in the crimson glow of the fires blazing beneath its boilers. At each consecutive hour of the day the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... exhilarating, and one cannot help feeling in it like a gilded cork adrift in a jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne punch. In the sense of luxurious ease with which it envelops the bather, it is unrivaled on earth. The only approximation to it is in the phosphorescent waters ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... whole heaven of glorious stars most of us have never seen and never shall see in this world. No belching smoke obscured, no plunging paddles deepened; all was musical; the soft air sighing among the sails; the phosphorescent water bubbling from the ship's bows; the murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the great calm: home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the sky, the heart: the ship, making a track of white fire on the deep, glided gently, yet swiftly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... those who have no little games of their own are wont to look on sympathetically, or, better still, to turn away the understanding eye. The long, lazy, somnolent days and the magic nights, star-spangled above and lit with phosphorescent seas below, lend themselves to the dangerous kind of flirtation that says little and looks much, and if there is any place in the world where Cupid is rampant and "Psyche may meet unblamed her Eros," it is on the deck of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... the cliffs and the clouds overshadowed us. Everything was of the vaguest description, without form and void. There seemed to be one hut on shore, with the spark of a light in it—a cannery of course. Canoes were drifting to and fro like motes in the darkness, tipped with a phosphorescent rim. Indian voices hailed us out of the ominous silence; Indian dogs muttered under their breath, yelping in a whisper which was mocked by Indian papooses, who can bark before they have ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... England they still linger, these quaint, phosphorescent middle-aged creatures, lurking behind a screenage of muffins and crumpets and hip baths. And thither fled one of the most delightful born bachelors this hemisphere has ever unearthed, Mr. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... tallow candles, just lighted in the store, sputtered dismal circles of dingy glare in the damp fog; in front, a vague slope of wet night, in which she knew lay the road and the salt marshes; and far beyond, distinct, the sea-line next the sky, a great yellow phosphorescent belt, apparently higher than their heads. Nearer, unseen, the night-tide was sent in: it came with a regular muffled throb that shook the ground. Doctor Dennis went down, and groped about his horse, adjusting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... it on my head, I ran back to camp, shouting that I had found one, and that he had attempted to seize me by the hair. The savages, who had been lying down, sprang to their feet, and uttered yells of terror at sight of my blazing head. 'There he is now!' I shouted, pointing back to the phosphorescent face. 'Shoot him quick, or ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... which the country underwent from the middle of the eighteenth to the earlier part of the nineteenth century was indeed immense. Then Poland, to use Carlyle's drastic phraseology, had ripened into a condition of "beautifully phosphorescent rot-heap"; now, with an improved agriculture, reviving commerce, and rising industry, it was more prosperous than it had been for centuries. As regards intellectual matters, the comparison with the past was even more favourable to the present. The government that took ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... vessel dived into the sea as if it were never going to rise again. The night was dark, shreds of cloud raced across a steel-grey sky, while a greenish patch showed the position of the moon. At the horizon glistened an uncertain light, but the sea was a black abyss, out of which the phosphorescent waves appeared suddenly, rolled swiftly nearer and broke over the ship as if ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the "Fairy's Ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his thought. There are very few of these paragraphs that are easily separable; they are fixed in the page, and cannot be understood apart from it. Besides, many of these beauties are minute,—a gleaming word here and there,—but making the track of the story glow like the phosphorescent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... also wears the usual costume of my female figures, great or small, young or old, and in it you will find the type frequently occurring in my works. I love what glitters, and that is why I have clothed her in brilliant materials. As for those phosphorescent gleams that astonish you here, whilst elsewhere they pass unnoticed, it is only the light in its colourless splendour and supernatural quality that I habitually give to my figures when I illuminate them at all strongly."—Do you not think that such a reply ought to satisfy the most difficult, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... which modern religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... and fishes, of Walter Raleigh's Virginian colony and its ill success, of the half-starved men whom Sir Richard Grenville had found only too ready to leave Roanoake, of dark-skinned Indians, of chases of Spanish ships, of the Peak of Teneriffe rising white from the waves, of phosphorescent seas, of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Never had there been such an assemblage or such gay festivities in the Fish-World before. The train of bearers who carried the bride's possessions to her new home seemed to reach across the waves from one end of the sea to the other. Each fish carried a phosphorescent lantern and was dressed in ceremonial robes, gleaming blue and pink and silver; and the waves as they rose and fell and broke that night seemed to be rolling masses of white and green fire, for the phosphorus shone with double brilliancy ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... cold morning, and as the twilight slowly brightened into sunshine, the whole landscape glistened radiantly with a heavy hoar-frost that for the moment gleamed and shimmered as if the face of the country had been rubbed with some phosphorescent substance, or as if the riders were viewing it ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... of their origin, and as they formed a considerable colony who were then reveling in the dregs of the Empire and the last orgies of a tottering court, eventually cost her her place. A republican so aristocratic was not to be tolerated by the true-born Americans who paid court to De Morny for the phosphorescent splendors of St. Cloud and the Tuileries, and Miss Helen lost their favor. But she had already saved enough money for the Conservatoire and a little attic in a very tall house in a narrow street that trickled into the ceaseless flow ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... on deck. The ship lay far over. The waves came leaping upon her in successive surges. All around the sea was glistening with phosphorescent lustre, and when at times the lightning flashed forth it lighted up the scene, and showed the ocean stirred up to fiercest commotion. It seemed as though cataracts of water were rushing over the doomed ship, which now lay helpless, and at the mercy of the billows. The force of the wind ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... been mine. Oft have I seen him lost in musings sad, And overwhelmed with this absorbing love. I know no cure for such corroding thoughts But thoughts less sad, for such absorbing love But stronger love." "But how awake such thoughts?" The king replied. "How kindle such a love? His loves seem but as phosphorescent flames That skim the surface, leaving him heart-whole— All but this deep and all-embracing love That folds within ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... fire had widened its path, and is enveloping the tiny island. The serpents, hedged in from the outer line, uproar in blood-curdling masses, their dull eyes gleaming, and their tongues phosphorescent, darting out in their agony. Dick doesn't mind them now, for he has, for the first time, begun to realize that his illumination has destruction as the sequel of its delight. Great clouds of smoke settle a moment on the water and then rise, impelled by the cold surface. Even the green verdure ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... forward, with a frightened gaze at something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a vast, misty swine-face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame, of a greenish hue. It is the Thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems to drip with a continual, phosphorescent slaver. The eyes are staring straight into the room, with an inscrutable expression. Thus, I ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... all its horror, he hastily disrobed and turned into bed, hoping to sleep away the unpleasant thoughts and pictures that had possession of his mind; but no sooner had sleep overtaken him than a face, framed in a halo of red-brown hair, looked down upon him from an eminence; a white hand with a phosphorescent glow pointed at him, while a voice kept repeating, to the accompaniment of a childish wail, "Man—atom of the great iniquity, ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock

... me a second miracle for being able to play it. In the evening she sits back in a corner, the darkest corner she can find, and listens. She never speaks, never moves, never expresses one iota of emotion. But in the gloom I can often catch the animal-like glow of her eyes. They seem almost phosphorescent. Dinky-Dunk had a long letter from Percival Benson to-day. It was interesting and offhandedly jolly and just the right sort. And Percy says he'll be back on the Titchborne place in a ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... on the silent ocean: An anchored barque swayed slowly on the swell. And here and there a phosphorescent glimmer Showed where the trailing ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren

... Agassiz's statement that species of sea animals, living below the depths to which sunlight penetrates, "may dwell in total darkness and be illuminated at times merely by the movements of abyssal fishes through the forests of phosphorescent alcyonarians." ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... pools seen through the trees are as full of light as the sky. "The light of the day takes refuge in their bosoms," as the Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hillside. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind one of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... towards silence. A few hundred feet from us, a cross-road continually shelled by the enemy echoed to the shock of projectiles battering the ground like hammers on an anvil. We often found at our feet fragments of steel still hot, which in the gloom seemed slightly phosphorescent. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... like a draft of cold air. Virginia was quivering with excitement. She could see the leading boat as it passed not three hundred yards away, and the next, both spouting flames from their funnels, throwing up water, which fell in silvery, phosphorescent spray—racketing, clawing the restless sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their decks, First ploughed the flag-ship El Toro, next El Teuera, and last the "battleship" El Manuel, sitting almost on her stern, plugging along doggedly ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... uttered inwardly. She saw Seraphitus standing erect, lightly swathed in an opal-tinted mist that disappeared at a little distance from the body, which seemed almost phosphorescent. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... pacing, and resting in the chair. The gale became a hurricane in the occasional squalls; and at these times the seas were beaten to a level of creamy froth luminous with a phosphorescent glow, while the boat's rolling motion would give way to a stiff inclination to starboard of fully ten degrees. Then the squalls would pass, the seas rise the higher for their momentary suppression, and the boat resume her wallowing, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... went back to the pavilion and walked along the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... front of bows and around sterns with impunity, leaving in their trail a phosphorescent wake. Sometimes in the case of a fast liner the destroyers, what with the high speed of the craft they are protecting and the uncertain course, narrowly escape disaster. As a matter of fact, one of them, the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... beautifully phosphorescent rot-heap has Poland ripened, in the helpless reigns of those poor Augusts;—the fulness of time not now far off, one would say? It would complete the picture, could I go into the state of what is called "Religion" in Poland. Dissenterism, of various poor ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the pleasure my father seemed to take "in pointing out to me as a youngster the delights of the tropical nights, with their balmy breezes eddying out of the sails above us, and the sea lighted up by the passage of the ship through the never-ending streams of phosphorescent animalculae." ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... boat, from the throbbing of the screw, made it impossible for them to hear our approach. They doubtless thought they were completely in the dark; but they were deluded in that idea, because the turmoil of the water left a brilliant phosphorescent belt far in the rear of the ship, and against this bright, faintly yellow luminous track their forms were distinctly outlined. It needed no second glance to see that the two were Glendenning and Mrs. Tremain. ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... ruts, pools, and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... deliberate, noiseless tread of an Indian, looking steadily upward at the eyes which assumed a curious, phosphorescent glare, that scintillated with a greenish light, as the relative position of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... upon something, then remained fixed. The room was dimly lighted by a small lamp, but the corners were dark, and in one of these dark corners something was shining with a faint, uncertain light. The phosphorescent match-box! He had made it himself, and had ornamented it with a grotesque face in luminous paint. This face now glimmered and glowered at him from the darkness; and Don Alonzo lay still and looked back at it. Lying so and looking, ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... moved slightly. A vivid flash of lightning made the two round stern-ports facing him glimmer like a pair of cruel and phosphorescent eyes. The flame of the lamp seemed to wither into brown dust for an instant, and the looking-glass over the little sideboard leaped out behind his back in a smooth sheet of livid light. The roll of thunder came near, crashed over us; the schooner trembled, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... changes at the front, the present writer, by that time off the hill and in the plain below, saw the heavens gloriously alive with the pageantry of conflict. The vault was pitted with woolly tufts of shrapnel and beautiful dead-whitesmoke-wreaths from the phosphorescent bombs. These spread their sinuous toils high and low and seemed to fill the skies. On both sides the aerial combatants were going home to roost, exchanging challenges by the way. And all the time, hidden in a hundred woods and brakes, the Archies sang in chorus. These evening ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... opened sharply to drop its unconscious burden upon the deck, and the watching man, petrified with horror, saw within the gaping maw great sucking discs and beyond them a brilliant glow. The whole cavernous pit was aflame with phosphorescent light. Dimly he knew that this light explained the ability of the beastly arms to grope so surely in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... Mallett," and looking up Frank saw a ball of phosphorescent light, some eighteen inches in diameter, ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... and cordage. A faint gleam came through the glass below the compass-box. The wheel and the heaps of coiled rope beyond rose and fell with the motion of the vessel, now against the stars, now black against the phosphorescent foam that trailed along the sea like shining lace. But the human figures, he next saw, were now doing nothing, not even pacing the deck; they were no longer of unusual size either. Quietly leaning over the rail, father and son side by side, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... and its wave crests gleamed with phosphorescent light, as the furious wind ripped off their tops and sent them scurrying over ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... I saw something that nearly caused me to loose my hold from astonishment. Beneath the head, the centre of the back and the feet were crystal boxes about eight inches square, or rather crystal blocks, for in them I could see no opening, and these boxes emitted a faint phosphorescent light. I touched one of them and found that ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... and moved along; there was a little illumination from the phosphorescent markers at some of the corners, and from the stars. He could just make his way without marking himself ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... vegetation in the yard outside, were truly horrible in their outlines; detestable parodies of toadstools and Indian-pipes, whose like we had never seen in any other situation. They rotted quickly, and at one stage became slightly phosphorescent; so that nocturnal passers-by sometimes spoke of witch-fires glowing behind the broken panes of the ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... getting sharper; mast and funnel swung into a wide sweep. Sometimes the dark hull lurched up high above the tug's stern, and sometimes sank in a hollow. The rollers had angry white tops, and a belt of filmy vapor that looked luminous closed the view ahead. Lister knew the vapor was phosphorescent spray, flung up by the turmoil on the bar, through which they must go. If the tug struck and stopped, the white seas would beat her down into the sand. In the meantime, she was using full steam, because, since tide and surf carried her on, one ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... quite six feet high, and so still that you could hear the beating of your heart. Achmet's slippers went scuf-scuf-scuf. Boris swayed from side to side, his tongue lolling, his eyes phosphorescent. He resembled those ghost-hounds of old stories, terrific beasts that follow the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... night long we were compelled to remain in the sea, clinging to the canoe, half drowned, and tossed about like the insignificant atoms we were in the midst of the stupendous waves, which were literally ablaze with phosphorescent light? Often as those terrible hours crawled by, I would have let go my hold and given up altogether were it not for Yamba's cheery and encouraging voice, which I heard above the terrific roar of the storm, pointing out to ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... household knew that a dead body lay in the cellar?—nay more, that, although it lay still and dead enough all day, it would come half alive at nightfall, and, turning the whole house into a sepulchre by its presence, go creeping about like a cat all over it in the dark—perhaps with phosphorescent eyes? So it was not surprising that the painter abandoned his studio early, and that the three found themselves together in the gorgeous room formerly described, as soon as twilight ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... fitful phosphorescent light of the water, some dark object seemed to float up alongside; and Jonathan gave vent to a scream of horror, that rang through the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... woman was short, and stooped; but her eyes were wonderfully bright. Nay, when she looked from the dark corner, phosphorescent jets seemed to break ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... in between—and all the fixings for a materializin' seance, the straight fixings that the dope sees and the crooked ones that only the medium and the spook sees, tucked inside. A shutter lamp, blue glass—a set of gauze robes, phosphorescent stars and crescents, a little rope ladder all curled up—and whole books of notes. Right on top was"—she paused impressively to get suspense for her climax—"was them notes on yellow foolscap that I seen in the hands of the visitor last week. And"—another impressive pause—"they're ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark. The next few moments were of vital importance to both ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... precise spot of the beat. He knew it well too, this monotonous huckster's round, up and down the Straits; he knew its order and its sights and its people. Malacca to begin with, in at daylight and out at dusk, to cross over with a rigid phosphorescent wake this highway of the Far East. Darkness and gleams on the water, clear stars on a black sky, perhaps the lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in the middle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... rifle in his hand, ready to sell his life as dearly as he could; but the Arabs did not issue from their cover, and they sped on at a sharp trot unmolested, Strachan keeping a correct course by a compass he had, with an ingenious phosphorescent contrivance, by which he could distinguish the north point. When an hour had elapsed they all began to breathe more freely, for it is uncanny work expecting to be attacked every minute in the dark. But still strict ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... and the gentle breeze setting in from the ocean was so cool and grateful, after the excessive heat of the day, that we continued for some time loitering along the shore. The sea was highly phosphorescent; that is, during the earlier part of the evening, and before the mist or haze before spoken of cleared up. The tiny wavelets, as they rippled upon the beach in rapid succession, sparkled with phosphoric fire, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... could see stretched a level plain of ashy white, faintly phosphorescent, a sea of velvet fog that lay like motionless water, or rather like a floor of alabaster, so dense did it appear, so seemingly capable of sustaining weight. If it were possible, I think that sea of dead white ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... along rapidly; Simpson excited the dogs by calling to them; in consequence of a phosphorescent phenomenon they seemed to be running on a ground in flames, and the sledges seemed to raise a dust of sparks. The doctor went on in front to examine the state of the snow, but all at once he disappeared. Bell, who was nearest to him, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... good-night, and went below, while a comrade took his place at the helm; but feeling no desire to enter into conversation with him, I walked aft, and leaning over the stern, looked down into the phosphorescent waves that gurgled around the rudder, and streamed out like a flame of blue light in the vessel's wake. My thoughts were very sad, and I could scarce refrain from tears as I contrasted my present ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers. They made them appear like men drunk with wine. This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the result of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... balcony. The light of the policeman's lantern glared over the ghastly scene—along the double row of miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch—over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and sleeping-sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish grave-lights—over bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth—over the slow sullen rows of oily ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... this section—the Ciliograde acalephae, as they are called—is the Girdle of Venus, which resembles a ribbon in form, and is sometimes five or six feet in length, covered with cilia, and brilliantly phosphorescent. This must be one of the most beautiful of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... surface of the water, as if the engulfed orb cast a sigh of satisfaction across the world. The twilight was short, night fell with its myriad stars. Pre Lastique took the oars, and they saw that the sea was phosphorescent. Jeanne and the vicomte, side by side, watched the fitful gleams in the wake of the boat. They were hardly thinking, but simply gazing vaguely, breathing in the beauty of the evening in a state ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... church tower again sang the half hour and then it came—a sudden sword leap of red flame on the horizon! A shell rose in the sky, glowing in pale phosphorescent trail, and burst in a flash of blinding flame over the dark lump in the harbor. The flash had illumined the waters and revealed the clear outlines of the casemates with their black mouths of steel gaping through the portholes. A roar of deep, ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... door, entering cautiously. "Let me light up, Mrs. Kaufman." He struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... of the blackness projected a half phosphorescent face. It was the face of the little professor. He stammered. " We-we-do you really speak English? " Coleman in his feeling of superb triumph could almost have laughed. His nerves were as steady as hemp, but he was in haste and ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... of the Beagle this evening we remarked large luminous spots in the water. They appeared to be about 12 inches in circumference, were very numerous, and perfectly stationary. The light they emitted was phosphorescent, but far brighter than I had ever before witnessed; it was so vivid as to be distinctly visible for nearly a quarter of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substance that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, and dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and from the tanks into which it fell it ran in conduits ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... the blade of the keen-edged sword, as if it were phosphorescent, but the lambent quivering was not seen by the holder of the lantern, who hid Capel with his own hand as the light was flashed upon the bed and into the corners of the room, ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn

... in the sight of the frightful animal approaching in this noiseless fashion, his jaws parted just enough to show his long, white teeth, but giving utterance to no growl, or threatening act, beyond the mere advance itself. His large, round eyes had a phosphorescent glow, and the long, sinewy body and limbs were the repository of a strength and activity that might well make a veteran hunter ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... were dissipated and destroyed, beneath the clear, pure light of heaven that he invoked and made apparent! Why passed the syllables now coldly and ineffectually across the heart they could not penetrate? Why glittered they before the eye with phosphorescent lustre, void of all heat and might? I could not tell. The charm was gone. It was misery to know it. The minister having concluded, "Brother Buster was requested to engage in prayer." That worthy rose instanter. First, he coughed, then he made a face—an awful face—then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship was ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... several yards, as lightly as a shadow. Teddy caught only a glimpse of the beast, but could plainly detect the phosphorescent glitter of his angry eyes, that watched every movement. The Irishman's first proceeding was to replenish the fire. This kept the creature at a safe distance, although he began trotting around and around, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... time, the place nor the ideal accompaniment to philosophy, you might think. Blackie was as nervous as a squadron commander may well be who has sent a party on a midnight stunt, and finds three o'clock marked on the phosphorescent dial of his watch and not so much as a ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... eye of some larger planet rolling and flashing among them as the revolving beacon of a lighthouse. Here the muffled throb of the propeller, and the rushing hiss of water as the prow of the great steamer sheared through the placid surface, furrowing up on either side a long line of phosphorescent wave. Such a contrast he who stood alone in the darkness, leaning over the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... of pale phosphorescent mist had just appeared on the port bow, which spread and spread till it blotted out sea and sky, and all was one dim, impenetrable pall. From the far distance came a strange, ghostly whisper, while the sea-birds, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... used in various chemical experiments, and for making matches; for various kinds of fire-works, &c. It will combine with all metals except gold and zinc; and also with some earths. Some animals, as the glow-worm, possess very peculiar phosphorescent qualities. ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... earths. It takes its name from the Greek [Greek: barus] (heavy) on account of its presence in barytes or heavy spar which was first investigated in 1602 by V. Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently called Bolognian phosphorus. In 1774 K. W. Scheele, in examining a specimen of pyrolusite, found a new substance to be present in the mineral, for on treatment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... The dew lies thick on everything; myriads of frogs and night insects yet hold their croaking concert; and the fire-fly cucullo, with its phosphorescent lantern, darts about here and there, like falling stars and fireworks. A stony stream has now to be forded. Into it splash the gigs; our horses following willingly, for they are thirsty, poor beasts, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... not very good, but they could see a sort of phosphorescent glow on the water, where some object was struggling for ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... branch of natural history is expounded in most agreeable style by this delightful book. Mr. Holder furnishes a great mass of information concerning fire-flies, luminous beetles and other insects, the phosphorescent animals and animalculae of the sea, and even of plants and flowers that give light. He has revealed a world of new wonders to those who are inquisitive about certain mysteries of great interest, concerning which no other naturalist has ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett



Words linked to "Phosphorescent" :   phosphoresce



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