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Plank   Listen
noun
Plank  n.  
1.
A broad piece of sawed timber, differing from a board only in being thicker. See Board.
2.
Fig.: That which supports or upholds, as a board does a swimmer. "His charity is a better plank than the faith of an intolerant and bitter-minded bigot."
3.
One of the separate articles in a declaration of the principles of a party or cause; as, a plank in the national platform. (Cant)
Plank road, or Plank way, a road surface formed of planks. (U.S.)
To walk the plank, to walk along a plank laid across the bulwark of a ship, until one overbalances it and falls into the sea; a method of disposing of captives practiced by pirates.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books



... then stepped into the low chaise beside him. Then the eager intimation was given to the pony, which set off as if knowing that impatience was behind him. The smooth, wide, gravelled road was as good and much better than a plank flooring; the chaise rolled daintily on under the great trees; the pony was not forgetful, yet ever and anon a touch of his owner's whip came to remind him, and the fellow's little body fairly wriggled from side to side in ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder, they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank, or a stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample; return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... no center-board, dependent on her draught and heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed with stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat in the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal her lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nose narrowly ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... "Cousin Helen has entirely recovered from her fright,—anger she calls it. She is not afraid of either of the Lupos, although the dent in the plank where the knife was still standing when we finally did get home will always make me feel trembly. Dr. Hume is making us a visit. Cousin Helen will not hear of his leaving us. She says she will certainly have another attack of heart failure if he goes away, but ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... sky at my feet. The women were tender with his little body. They cried over him as they washed him for burial. The children went outside the stockade and brought green boughs and August wild flowers, bearing the early autumn colors of gold and scarlet. With these they bedded the child in his plank coffin, unafraid ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... on the inside, formed a rampart from five to six feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. The entrance to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as a bridge across the trench, close to which two detachments mounted guard, armed with clubs ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... drainage-pipe underlie the twenty-one and a half acres of plank floor in this building. The pillars and trusses contain thirty-six hundred tons of iron. The contract for it was awarded in July, 1874, and it was completed in eighteen months, being ready for the reception of goods early in January last. The cost was $1,420,000, and in mechanical execution ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... under all circumstances, and so it was with me. One day, while longing for something to do, I discovered that the crew had been ordered to paint the ship outside; as a pastime I put on old clothes and joined the painting party. Planks were hung round the ship by ropes being tied to each end of the plank; on these the men stood to do their work. We had not been employed there very long when there was a cry from the deck that the ship was surrounded by sharks. It seems that the butcher had killed a sheep, whose entrails, having been thrown overboard, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... and Damia were playing at see-saw in the garden, with a long plank balanced on the saddling-stone, I could not help wondering how it is that one's thoughts play in that way. Each end seems sometimes up, and then the other end comes up, and that goes down. I wish I were wiser, and understood more. Perchance it ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... hard in the field like a black stepchild. My ma had nine chilluns and I was the oldest of the nine. She said her old miss wouldn't let her come to the house to nurse me, so she would slip up under the house and crawl through a hole in the floor. She took and pulled a plank up so she could ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... evidently forcing its way through the seams, but Murray hoped that it would not prove of much consequence, and that the pumps might easily keep the vessel clear. Still he was aware that at any moment the plank nailed on might be forced in. It seemed a wonder indeed that the yacht had not been sunk at once by ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... switch was run out into the field, right along the edge of the piles of pig iron. An inclined plank was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and dropped it on ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... thickness of the gate a heap of reeds in a corner; and strewn all about in this artificial grotto, old rusty utensils, a grater, a strainer, broken pots, papers, rags, half-burnt logs, a straw hat, and a walking stick! And over a kind of recess, on a plank, a little shrine, two broken Madonnas picked out of some dust-heap, withered flowers in a crock, and a sprig of olive, evidently of last Palm Sunday! Poor little properties, so poor, so wretched that they had remained unmolested, despised even by the poorest, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... as requested, and with a strong push Larry shifted one end of the plank above, so that it left an opening ten inches wide and several feet long. Catching a good hold he pulled himself to the apartment above, to find it stored with boxes and barrels containing old military uniforms and other army equipments, relics ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... are not provided. In its primitive and unfortunately common form, the privy vault is nothing but a hole dug in the ground near or at some distance from the house; the hole is but a few feet deep, with a plank or rough seat over it, and an improvised shed over all. The privy is filled with the excreta; the liquids drain into the adjacent ground, which becomes saturated, and contaminates the nearest wells and water courses. The solid portion is left ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... and Harry to come home just in time, and Mary Rymer, and what a dear—oh! how pleasant—how—" Poor David was asleep. No wonder, after having been awake for so many hours, and only just a little more than one hour's rest on a hard plank. He still held the tiller, and instinctively moved it to or from him, as he felt the boat inclined to broach to. His eyes, indeed, were not quite closed, so that in reality he saw the seas as they rolled ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... when the Montreal boat came in sight, the women would have her a saw-mill till she stood in full view in mid-channel. Their own vessel paddled out into the stream as she drew near, and the two bumped and rubbed together till a gangway plank could he passed from one to the other. A very well dressed young man stood ready to get upon the Saguenay boat, with a porter beside him bearing his substantial valise. No one else ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... other light that was ghostly and terrifying. But I had now regained a little courage,—and slight as it was I held to it as my last hope, and gradually steadied myself upon it like a drowning creature clinging to a plank for rescue. Presently I found myself able to ask questions of my inner consciousness. What, after all, could this Phantom—if Phantom it were—do to work me harm? Could it kill me with sheer terror? Surely in that case the terror would be my own ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... the best way to drive the hours before you four-in-hand, is to select a soft plank on the gun-deck, and go to sleep. A fine specific, which seldom fails, unless, to be sure, you have been sleeping ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... say that a grand display of the national sport of surf-bathing was going on, and a large party of us went down to the beach for two hours to enjoy it. It is really a most exciting pastime, and in a rough sea requires immense nerve. The surf-board is a tough plank shaped like a coffin lid, about two feet broad, and from six to nine feet long, well oiled and cared for. It is usually made of the erythrina, or the breadfruit tree. The surf was very heavy and favourable, and legions of natives ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... have been content to live all his days, so he thought he would live, going down to the dangers of the sea, trading in strange ports, and transmuting hard, untiring effort into gain for her at home and her children, and he would grow old and grizzled, until he could no longer brace to a heeling plank or stand the responsibility of a ship's mastery, and then they would buy a little house on some harbor, while their sons went rolling down to Rio or fought the typhoon in the China Seas, and he could sit there with his telescope, watching the ships go by, or come ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... my passenger's devotion to his friends would lead him to accompany them down the river. I went up into the cabin, and found him taking a "parting drink" with them. I told him the boat was just starting; he hastily shook hands with his companions, and accompanied me down to the plank. I crossed it, and had hardly touched the shore before I heard a splash behind me. I turned, and saw that Squire Fishley had toppled into the river. His last dram appeared to be the ounce that had broken ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... high mass, an evening entertainment at the convent with acting. City people would laugh to think of it! You simply cannot imagine ... Just to stroll through the big streets in the evening—not on little plank-walks like those of Roberval, but on fine broad asphalt pavements as level as a table—just that and no more, what with the lights, the electric cars coming and going continually, the shops and the crowds, you would find enough there to amaze you for weeks together. And then all the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... the back of the house and near it was the tool shed. Then there was a carriage house, and a plank walk leading to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... asked Marie timidly of Father De Smet as he was about to draw in the plank. "The babies are both asleep and I have ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... it to me, I'll fix it. Those planks—I've known lots of planks—and they can't tell the truth. Don't you care. I wouldn't believe what an old plank said. Trees ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... tenement which was rented at only ten pounds per annum. The major part of the said island was stocked with cabbage plants; but on one side there was half a boat set upright, with a patch of green before it. At the time that old Beazeley hired it there was a bridge rudely constructed of old ship plank, by which you could gain a path which led across the Battersea Fields; but as all the communications of old Tom were by water, and Mrs Beazeley never ventured over the bridge, it was gradually knocked away for firewood, and when it was low-water, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the fore hatchway, even with Billy's help; but when at length we managed it we were amply rewarded for our labour, an abundant supply of planks and scantling for our utmost need being found. I took careful stock of it all, recording the nature and dimensions of each piece of scantling and plank, and then, providing myself with paper, pencil, and scale, I set to work to scheme out a craft that should be easy to build, fast, stiff and weatherly under canvas, a fairly good sea-boat, and of light draught. It was a decidedly ambitious scheme ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... to the shore on large rafts, and hauled up on the beach by men belonging to the brig. The mark on every separate board or plank was called out in a clear voice by the man who dragged it from the raft to the beach, and was noted down by the mate of the brig and a clerk of the mercantile house that purchased the lumber. Those parties were comfortably seated beneath the shade of a tamarind tree, at some distance, smoking ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... Rathskeller is the "admiral's table," said to be made from a plank of the ship of the last Admiral of Luebeck, who flourished in 1570; and even more interesting than the Rathskeller is the Schiffergesellschaft, with its strange motto and ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

... o'clock in the evening the jailer came into the cell, and reached down, and removed something which was rolled up on a plank near the ceiling. This "something" ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... to the plank, he looked up at the knife, saying: "When I reflect that I was once a Bonapartist!" Then, raising his eyes to Heaven, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... kind of flat sled, made of a thick piece of plank, and used to haul stones on, and they found it just where ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car—why then it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening. And—which rather surprised himself—he did not lift a supercilious eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he turned ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... changed a plank or a tile since he last saw it. There were the same cracks in the wall of the shed, the same bushes on either side of the gate—nay, he was sure those wisps of hay clinging to the branches of the holly had been there two ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... brink of the well hesitating. It was too far to leap and he remembered that behind the lilac bush he had seen a builder's plank. This he dragged out and passed it across the chasm, leaning the other end upon a ledge of brickwork which ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... derived, and intense ones probably, from working all day against the "face" of a gravel-pit, with the broken edge of the field up above one's head for horizon; and from the skilled use of pick and shovel; and from the weight of the wheelbarrow full of gravel as one wheels it along a sagging plank. That is something to have experienced; as it is to have sweated at night in a railway-cutting along with other men under the eye of a ganger, and to have known starlight, or rain, or frost, or fog, or tempest meanwhile. It is something, even, to see the life ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... the skies, which provokes the Tories all the more, nor does their praise spring in all probability from a purer or more unselfish source than the complaints of their adversaries, for they are more rejoiced at finding so often this plank of safety than struck with admiration at his magnanimity. Wise, moderate, and impartial men of all parties view the Duke's conduct in its true light, and render him that justice the full measure of which it ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Officer, a captain in the Royal Navy, endeavoured to make up the 90 minutes lost by urging speed in the move from one ship to the other. When the futility of expecting fully equipped men to move quickly over the solitary 15-inch plank laid down as a gangway was pointed out to him, he showed signs of irritability and threatened an adverse report on the handling of the troops. On being informed that it was his privilege to make such a ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... merchandize and dead bodies floating on the waters, and from thence concluded, that the hurricane had destroyed the ship which followed them. Immediately their opinion was confirmed by two mariners, who had gotten on a plank when the ship was foundering; and who, having afterwards struggled with the waves, were driven by them to the board of Pereyra's vessel. The rest of the navigation was prosperous; a calmer season was never known. The ship being landed at the port of Sincapour, Xavier (who knew certainly ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... but it's a fact, I launched my first ship myself; owned her; commanded and navigated her, and was wrecked on my first voyage. It happened this way; my father was a mill-wright, he was, and lived near a small lake, where I used to splutter about a good deal. One day I got hold of a big plank, launched it after half an hour o' the hardest work I ever had, got on it with a bit of broken palm for an oar, an' shoved off into deep water. It was a splendid burst! Away I went with my heart in my mouth and my feet in the water tryin' to steady myself, but as ill luck would ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... accomplish his objects. He illustrated this by telling me, in his own humorous style, " When you want to go from London to Greenwich, don't go round by Inverness." Another of his droll sayings was that he "considered no man a thorough mechanic unless he could cut a plank with a gimlet, and bore ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... to climb up to the roof, and knock a plank off. Say, those fellows must have been spying out here when I met them this ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... Johnny's direction, and said that he was right. His father's hand—rough and with a broken nail or two—was that of a superintendent who on occasion helped with a plank or a mortarboard. He had an open face and a pleasant manner; he was not at all the dominant personage I remembered meeting in that "yard," years ago. Johnny, it seemed, was putting up a row of small houses on the suburb's edge, and his father ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... pleasant boat-shop, close on the shore of a little arm of the sea. The tide ebbs and flows before its wide double doors, and sometimes rises so high as to flow the sills; then you have to walk across in front of the shop on a plank, laid upon iron ballast. There is a little wharf or pier close at hand, the outer end of which is always going to be repaired. There are two or three other shops near by, and about them is the pleasant litter of a boat-yard. In the cove before ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... picture of all was Noah's Ark. First the ark came on alone—then a plank seemed to be put down—then came the great elephants, lions, tigers, and bears, marching up the plank two and two into the ark—and after them all the rest of the animals in the world, getting smaller and smaller, until little wee monkeys, ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... Sweden near two-thirds of the iron wrought up or consumed in the kingdom, copper, boards, plank, &c. ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... of the room, unmoved by all this din, about a table consisting of a plank laid across two beer kegs, one empty, the other for the convenience of the players half full, sat four men deep in a game of cards. Rosenblatt with a big Dalmatian sailor as partner, against a little Polak and a dark-bearded man. This man was apparently very ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... our house, or, as I fondly styled it, our palace. It is an edifice fifty-four feet square, mounted upon numerous posts of the Nibong palm, with nine windows in each front. The roof (atap) is of Nipah leaves, and the floor and partitions are all of plank: furnished with couches, tables, chairs, books, &c. the whole is as comfortable as man would wish for in this out-of-the-way country; and we have, beside, a bathing-house, cook-house, and servants' apartments detached. The view from the house to the eastward ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... roar, with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It's "Gang-plank up and in," dear lass, It's "Hawsers warp her through!" And it's "All clear aft" on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're backing down on tile Long Trail—the trail ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... they leave off bawling, "Anybody else for the shore?" The last grape and Bell's Life merchant has scuffled over the plank: the Johns of the departing nobility and gentry line the brink of the quay, and touch their hats: Hutchison touches his hat to me—to ME, heaven bless him! I turn round inexpressibly affected and delighted, and whom do I see ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... few ever passed this way. By day, a solitary shepherd watched his flocks here. By night the marsh was deserted. Across some of the dykes a plank is thrown, the whereabouts of which is indicated by a post, waist-high, driven into the ground, easily enough seen by day, but hard to find after dark. Not all the dykes have a plank, and for the most part the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... the car—of the floor and ceiling and walls. But there was not a loose plank nor a crack—the car was new. And that suggested another idea—that he might suffocate before he starved. He was beginning to feel weak ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... boy's movement for an instant, and then faced back toward the forge, where the three workmen had stood. The last one was just disappearing through an opening in the wall, and, with a bound the boy was after him. A heavy plank door snapped ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... full to the brim of slab-sided and painted animals of wood. Even the live tourist animal was nowhere in evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room at one end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to my sleepy eyes, seemed as if it would tilt up like a see saw plank, since there was no one at the other end to balance it against our two dusty and travel-stained figures. Then we hastened up stairs to bed in a room smelling of pine planks, and I was fast asleep before my head touched ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... on with no thought of surrender, for we knew that capture would mean death by walking the plank. Four of the English on our side were killed, besides seven or eight of those of other nationalities, whilst many were wounded. The decks were slippery with blood, and a gathering mist made it impossible to ascertain the extent of our losses. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... extremely dark, she had provided herself with a lanthorn and candle, by the assistance of which she found her way to the bridge, and had already passed part of the dangerous structure, when she unfortunately trod on a plank that had by some accident lost the tenons originally fixed to the ends of it, and had slipped from its proper situation; the faithless board yielded to the weight of the good lady, who was rather corpulent, and carried her through the flooring, with her candle and ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... one sort and another kept us quite busy that morning. The Doctor had no sooner gone below to stow away his note-books than another visitor appeared upon the gang-plank. This was a most extraordinary-looking black man. The only other negroes I had seen had been in circuses, where they wore feathers and bone necklaces and things like that. But this one was dressed in a fashionable ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... fortune, with several of the merchants and mariners, to get a plank, and we were carried by the current to an island which lay before us: there we found fruit and spring water, which preserved our lives. We stayed all night near the place where the sea cast us ashore, without ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... "We are shipwrecked, it is true, and we are now drifting on the waves, but we must save ourselves. Every one must try, to the best of his ability, to do so; he must grasp at the first thing that falls into his hands—at a plank, at a straw. Some fortunate rope may at last save us, and draw us to the shore. We shall then build a new ship, and man her with fresh hands. Do you agree with me, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... name of his friend, who, as if loath to cross the plank, held back for a few more words. Tom gave him a little push at last, and said, "Good-bye, you really must go. Success to you, but don't for a moment think of carrying out that quixotic plan you first mentioned. Better jump ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... of each being inquired into, and duly registered in one of the large books, each one after having his eyes blindfolded, was led by the sailors to the forecastle and seated on a plank, under which was placed a large tub of water. The next operation was to shave them, and accordingly their faces were smeared over with a horrible mixture of shoemaker's wax, train oil and soot, most ungently laid on with a coarse painter's brush. Neptune then performed the office of barber himself, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... getting out of the creek directly the Sissie floated. After steaming some twenty miles clear of the coast, he (in his own words) 'committed the body to the deep.' He did everything himself. He weighted her down with a few fire-bars, he read the service, he lifted the plank, he was the only mourner. And while he was rendering these last services to the dead, the desolation of that life and the atrocious wretchedness of its end cried aloud to his compassion, whispered to him ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... of thick glass which rested above it on two thick balks of dark oak, cut to exceeding smoothness, which lay across it, one at either end. On the far side from where I stood each of these was joined to another oak plank, also cut smooth, which sloped gently to the rocky floor. Should it be necessary to open the tomb, the glass could be made to slide along the supports and descend by the ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... so near to the Black Mountain that we saw all the nails and iron fly out of the ships and dash themselves against the mountain with a horrible noise. A moment after the vessels fell asunder and sank, the crews with them. I alone managed to grasp a floating plank, and was driven ashore by the wind, without even a scratch. What was my joy on finding myself at the bottom of some steps which led straight up the mountain, for there was not another inch to the right or the left where ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... salutation as they passed. The crowd was being constantly increased by new arrivals from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the day, determined to take the evening breeze into their ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... part of every week it lies sweltering in heat, in spite of the strong west winds that drive dust-clouds through its rutted streets. As a rule, during the remaining day or two the temperature sharply falls, thunder crashes between downpours of heavy rain, and the wet plank sidewalks provide a badly-needed refuge from the cement-like ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... ribs, they are cut into strips and boiled in spring water. They are dried first in the shade, and afterwards in the sun, then made into rolls, and kept in store, or sent to the market for sale. Before they are fit for writing on they are subjected to a second process, called madema. A smooth plank of areca-palm is tied horizontally between two trees, each ola is then damped, and a weight being attached to one end of it, it is drawn backwards and forwards across the edge of the wood till the surface becomes perfectly smooth and polished; and during the process, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... following June these two organizations formed a new party and absolutely refused to put a woman suffrage plank in their platform, although Miss Anthony addressed their convention and implored them to keep their promise, assuring them that their failure to support the amendment would be its death blow. The previous summer H. L. Loucks, president of the Farmers' Alliance, had made a special ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Heron Court. It seems that, while the east wing of that pleasant mansion was being built, a pair of robins, having successfully brought up one family in one of the unfinished rooms, actually reared a second brood in a hole made for a scaffold-pole, though the sitting bird, being immediately beneath a plank on which the plasterers stood at work, was repeatedly splashed with mortar! The egg of the robin is subject to considerable variety of type. I think it was the late Lord Lilford who, speaking on the subject of a Bill for the ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... a lofty scaffold had been erected on the bridge of Sant' Angelo, and the plank and block were placed thereon. Above the block was hung, from a large cross beam, a ponderous axe, which, guided by two grooves, fell with its whole weight at the touch of ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... true enough in a great degree. To my office, and there we sat and despatched much business. Home and dined with my wife well, and then up and made clean my closet of books, and had my chamber a third time made very clean, so that it is now in a very fine condition. Thence down to see some good plank in the river with Sir W. Batten and back again, it being a very cold day and a cold wind. Home again, and after seeing Sir W. Pen, to my office, and there till late doing of business, being mightily encouraged by every body that I meet withal upon the 'Change and every where else, that I am taken ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... part of a kitchen went sailing by. The watchers saw the upper window of a half-submerged house. There was a bed, a cradle, and a sewing-machine open and ready for use. There were pathos and tragedy sufficient for a lifetime. There was a touch of humor too, for on a long plank, at either end, sat a rat and a great black cat. They watched each other instinctively, and were unconscious of the danger ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... are lined up on the opposite side of the room before a plank. To each is given a hammer and six or eight nails. They race to see who first can drive the nails into the plank ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... while the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the skies ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... be said of it, in extenuation, that it was very human. With them all it had a rude sense of justice that did not distinguish its early builders. When the work of tearing down had begun, I watched, one day, a troop of children having fun with a seesaw they had made of a plank laid across a lime barrel. The whole Irish contingent rode the plank, all at once, with screams of delight. A ragged little girl from the despised "Dago" colony watched them from the corner with hungry eyes. Big Jane, who was the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... a little way out of the regular track to see the beautiful cascade of Chede, which is by M. Bourritt ascertained to be sixty-seven feet in height. A number of peasants attended us from a cottage, where we left our mules, and one of them carried a plank to serve as a bridge over a neighbouring stream, and levied toll on us for permission to pass over it. We returned in about a quarter of an hour to the cottage, and paid, as we thought, very liberally for ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... with the greatest zeal. The men seemed to regard these massive bars as their first trophies; and if the rails had been wreathed with roses, they could not have been got out in more holiday style. Nearly a hundred were obtained that day, besides a quantity of five-inch plank with which to barricade the very conspicuous pilot-houses of the John Adams. Still another day we were delayed, and could still keep at this work, not neglecting some foraging on the island from which horses, cattle, and agricultural implements were to be removed, and the few ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... had been intensely interesting, but the Obstacle Race proved an even greater excitement. Two thin planks of wood were placed across the bath, floating upon the water. The competitors started from the deep end, dived under the first plank, and then scrambled over the second. At the shallow end were a number of large round wash-tubs; each candidate had to seize upon one of these and seat herself in it, a most difficult feat of fine balancing, for unless she hit upon the exact center of gravity, the tub promptly overturned, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... braces and square the yards. Look sharp, now, lads. If that blackguard gets hold of us ye'll have to walk the plank, every ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... been anticipated, the pirate vessel was found lying in the pool where the former ship had anchored. Being considerably smaller, however, it had been drawn close to the rocks, so that a landing had been effected by means of a broad plank or gangway instead of a boat. Fortunately for our friends, this plank had not been removed after the pirates had left, probably because they deemed themselves in a place of absolute security. As far as they could see, only one ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... even devouring their own kindred if they should chance to be killed; but no other beast of prey will eat them, from the offensive rankness of their flesh. The den of a spotted hyaena, that was kept in the Tower about twenty years ago, required some repair. The carpenter nailed a thick oaken plank upon the floor, about seven feet long, putting at least a dozen nails into it, each longer than his middle finger. At one end of this piece of wood, there was a small projection, and not having a proper chisel with him by which he might ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... this policy in the House of Commons yesterday, Mr. Asquith has given the Liberal Party a clear lead. I hope that they will make it a principal plank in their platform. This is a just and honourable settlement, satisfactory to sentiment and to expediency. Those who adopt it unequivocally will find that they have with them the tide and a favouring wind. But no one ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... which water is evaporated, that is, the rate of drying, depends on the size and shape of the piece and on the structure of the wood. An inch board dries more than four times as fast as a four-inch plank, and more than twenty times as fast as a ten-inch timber. White pine dries faster than oak. A very moist piece of pine or oak will, during one hour, lose more than four times as much water per square inch from the cross-section, but only one half as much from the tangential as from ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... sport of the winds and the waves, and, stripped of all its rigging, ran aground on an unknown shore, and was dashed to pieces against the rocks which surrounded it. The whole crew perished. Baharkan alone was saved from shipwreck by a plank which he had had the good fortune to seize. Fortunately, he landed on the dominions of the monarch whose son had shot away his ear, and whom he ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... comfortingly to his men. When it was so hot that the wood, green though it was, began to blaze, they drew it out and thrust it into the giant's eye. Round and round they whirled the fiery pike, as a man bores a hole in a plank, until the blood gushed out, and the eye frizzled and hissed, and the flames singed and burned the eyelids, and the eye was burned out. With a great and terrible cry the giant sprang to his feet, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... decease: the receipt was in a cupboard upstairs. Madame Harteville replied that the cupboard had been thoroughly searched to no purpose. Swedenborg answered that, as he learned from the ghost, there was a secret drawer behind the side-plank within the cupboard. The drawer contained diplomatic correspondence, and the missing receipt. The whole company then went upstairs, found the secret drawer, and the receipt among the other papers. Kant adds Swedenborg's clairvoyant vision, from Gothenburg, of a great fire at Stockholm ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... which gives no hold for a wheel. For a country so damp and low-lying as Belgium, there is probably nothing to equal a paved road, but it is a pity that the paving was not made a little wider. Every now and then we met one of the huge, unwieldy carts which seem to be relics of a prehistoric age—rough plank affairs of enormous strength and a design so primitive as to be a constant source of wonder. They could only be pulled along at a slow walk and with vast effort by a couple of huge horses, and the load the cart was carrying never seemed to ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... but over all the western country. Some lay the dead body on the surface of the ground, make a crib or pen over it, and cover it with bark. Others lay the body in a grave, covering it first with bark, and then with earth. Others make a coffin out of the cloven section of trees, in the form of plank, and suspend it from the top of a tree. Nothing can be more affecting than to see a young mother hanging the coffin that contains the remains of her beloved child to the pendent branches of the flowering maple, and ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... out upon the Quay, Captain Cai lifted his gaze towards the tower of the Parish Church, visible above an alley-way that led between a gable-end of the Town Hall and the bulging plank of the "King of Prussia." Aloft there the clock began to chime out the eight notes it had chimed, at noon and at midnight, through his boyhood, and had ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... head. Instinctively he watched to see if she turned toward the speaker. No, it was toward himself that she was looking with a smile of farewell. He bowed eagerly, decidedly, for by this time the troops had all embarked, the plank was up, and he was free ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... I walk over a plank; why not as well as a man? But you will hear what the Baroness says. The worst is that I am a little ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... Alfred excelled himself. John had left early for the stream, and being in a hurry took advantage of the thin plank crossing. Now the plank is very slippery and had been placed over the spot where the stream is deepest. John crossed it carefully enough, but looking back for a second he suddenly noticed that Alfred was following him. Before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... winds whose savage blast But ill agrees with one whose hours Have past in old Anacreon's bowers, Yet think not poesy's bright charm Forsook me in this rude alarm;[1]— When close they reefed the timid sail, When, every plank complaining loud, We labored in the midnight gale; And even our haughty mainmast bowed, Even then, in that unlovely hour, The Muse still brought her soothing power, And, midst the war of waves and wind, In song's Elysium ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... entertained him and frightened him out of his wits with lugubrious tales of cemeteries and ghosts; the little Aristas continued his gymnastic exercises; he had constructed a springboard by placing a plank upon a heap of sand and there he ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... thought, if I could get a couple of those long planks across the lane as a sort of bridge. They were strong, thick planks not likely to sag in the middle if I could only get them across. Getting them across was the difficulty; for though I was strong for my age, I found the first plank very contrary. After blowing out my candles I fixed one end of the board under my heavy four-post bed, pointing the other end out through the window, slanting upwards. Straddling across it, I very gingerly edged ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... auditorium on Gary Street under the patronage of Mrs. Norman B. Randolph, Mrs. B. B. Valentine, Miss Jane Rutherford and other prominent Richmond ladies. I made several purchases, including a cane made from a plank of Libby prison and a stone paper weight from Edgar Allan Poe's ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... plank, over which they placed Bart's arms and then with Frank holding on to Bart's body and Billy guiding the plank they struck out for the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... masters of the Town for a couple of weeks back, have got into the Church at Namslau, into the Cloister; are preparing plank floors for batteries, cutting loop-holes; diligent as possible,—siege-guns now at last just coming. The Castle fires fiercely on them, makes furious sallies, steals six of our oxen,—makes insolent gestures from the walls; at least one soldier does, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... I wanted to get the fellow out, but my uncle said, 'Oh! let him in by all means.—Well, friend, what do you want to say to me about my coffin?' 'Only, sir, that I'll saw up the oak tree that your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That would be wasteful,' answered my uncle; 'I never was more than six feet and an inch in my vamps, the best day ever I saw.' 'But your honor will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... said Committee be directed to send all the Oak Plank which they may have in their Possession, to Mount Washington ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... for the real thing!" exclaimed Russ, as a goodly part of the company, including Mr. DeVere and his daughters, started for the Battery one morning. They were to board the yacht there, and one of the scenes would show the girls going up the gang-plank. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... along in them days—pirate chief, he takes a beautiful maiden captive, an' after makin' all his prisoners walk the plank but just her, he offers his hand an' fortune. An' lots of times, somehow, the beautiful maiden she married the ruthless pirate chief, an' they lived happy ever ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... of corrugated iron shanties, crude log-and-brush and rough-plank sheds, white canvas tents, ran the raw, heaped earth of the embankment. About it swarmed a thousand swarthy laborers, chattering in a tongue less easy to his ears than the harsh scoldings of the squirrels he had seen while on his way. Back behind them ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... in holes in the River banks; and you observing your time in a warm day, when the water is lowest, may take a hook tied to a strong line, or to a string about a yard long, and then into one of these holes, or between any boards about a Mill, or under any great stone or plank, or any place where you think an Eele may hide or shelter her selfe, there with the help of a short stick put in your bait, but leisurely, and as far as you may conveniently; and it is scarce to be doubted, but that if there ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... calling to her companion to stop; but perfect as was the silence of the night, and close as the figures seemed to be, I heard no sound of a voice. Next I came to a second and smaller window which had been once boarded up, but with lapse of time the plank had loosened and partly fallen, and here I paused a moment to look out. It still snowed slightly, but there was a clear moon, sufficient to throw a ghastly light upon the outside objects nearest to me. With the sleeve ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... false hunchback, "for the purpose of trading to a certain land. Having gone there, I disposed of my merchandise, and, taking another cargo, I was on my voyage home. Suddenly a great storm arose, and the vessel was wrecked, and I escaped on a plank, and after a time arrived here. But I am ashamed, since I have lost all my wealth, and I cannot show my face in this plight in my own city. My excellent father would have consoled me with his pity. But now that I have ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... a bundle of wooden labels, the rose of a watering-can, and a dozen other small objects. On the floor were piled boxes and empty cases; flowerpots stood beside a bag which bore the name of a patent fertilizer; a small hand mowing-machine blocked the entrance; and a plank, too long to lie flat on the ground, had been propped slantwise between the floor and the roof. Bunches of bass hung from nails above the shelf; and on the wall opposite, a coloured advertisement, representing phloxes of so fierce ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... depressions with his heel at all the missing hills, drops a pea therein, and covers it with the foot, the same way as at the first. Instead of making depressions with the heel, some use a long stake, an inch or two in diameter, to the lower end of which is affixed a piece of plank, fastened two inches from the end, and four or five inches long (fig. 4). This is used for punching the holes, and the piece of plank near the end prevents it from making the impression too deep. This is another of the inventions of the Virginia Peanut-planter; so true is it that "necessity is the ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... Nicois authorities will have no reason to regret their confidence. The boys do no work on Sundays, and once a year have a ten days' tramp in the country; the buildings are spacious and airy, but I was sorry to see a plank-bed used as a punishment. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... pretty picture—I wonder if any of you have ever seen it?—in which a little child is seen walking across a narrow plank which bridges a deep chasm, while behind flies a tall, beautiful angel, with a hand on either side the child, guiding it along. The child does not see the angel, and walks fearlessly; but the heavenly hands are there, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... Photographers and reporters swarmed everywhere. The confusion was tremendous, yet, promptly at the hour set for sailing, the booming siren began to sound, last farewells were shouted, and the invariable late stayer on board made his wild leap for the gang-plank ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... platform to unite the North in opposition to slavery and the planting system, the Republicans were also adroit in their selection of a candidate. The tariff plank might carry Pennsylvania, a Democratic state; but Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were equally essential to success at the polls. The southern counties of these states were filled with settlers from Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky who, even if they had no love for slavery, were no friends of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... Major Walters, was coming from England to aid her in final arrangements with the lawyers, and he was to carry her off in a day or two to Melford. At the end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place—it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator's projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet's bed—and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... Evans Plantation on Little River in Columbia County said, in describing the Quarters, "Dey look like dis street." She indicated the unpaved street with its rows of unpainted shacks. "Some of dem wus plank houses and some wus log houses, two rooms and a shed room. And we had good beds, too—high tester beds wid good corn ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... narrowly avoiding, more than once, piercing through from the hold into the outer world. But the little ship became more buoyant every day, and finally stood ready for her deck. This I prepared by planing down a bit of plank to the proper thickness—or thinness—and carefully fitted it into its place, with companionways fore and aft, covered with hatches made to slide in grooves. Next, with chisel, spoke-shave, and sand-paper, I prepared ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... to attend to him; but that don't satisfactorily account for the schooner bein' here, and dismantled as she is," rejoined Montes, with a puzzled air. "Captain Thorne wasn't the man to abandon his ship while a plank held together, and there's the Sea Eagle with as sound a hull ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... they are a shelter from neither the wind, the rain, nor the snow, and the earth is the floor. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are only exceptions; you may sometimes see puncheon floor, but never, or almost never a plank floor. The slaves are generally without beds or bedsteads; some few have cribs that they fasten up for themselves in the corner of the hut. Their bed-clothes are a nest of rags thrown upon a crib, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... he, lifting his dingy straw hat with gaudy, stained band. He came down the broad plank to the shore. "Why, what's the matter?" This in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... would be different. He thought bitterly how he had struggled with insufficient equipment and inadequate makeshifts of every kind to hold the Company system together that the pioneers might have the water, without which the work of reclamation could not be done. He knew every stake and pile and plank and crack and patch in the whole system. He had learned the tricks of the river and was familiar with the conditions peculiar to the desert country. He knew the terrible danger of the flood season that was only two months away. He had planned and prepared to meet emergencies that would be sure ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... highest turret-tops was splash'd the yellow foam. And, like a horse unbroken when first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, and toss'd his tawny mane, And burst the curb, and bounded, rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, battlement, and plank, and pier, Rush'd headlong ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... to endure the derision of the populace, and had no relation to any ducking in water. But it appears that later on the terms were synonymous, and several of these implements remain. This machine for quieting intemperate scolds was quite simple. A plank with a chair at one end was attached by an axle to a post which was fixed on the bank of a river or pond, or on wheels, so that it could be run thither; the culprit was tied to the chair, and the other end of the plank was alternately raised or lowered so ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... wouldn't think so if you'd been on your back seven months and four days in Middlesex Orspital. I was a coal heaver, and going along easy and natural over the plank from one barge to another, and there come the swell from some steamers and throwed up the plank and chucked me off, and I broke my knee against the barge. It's bad now. I'd ought to 'ad it hoff, an' so the surgeons said; but I wouldn't, an' me wife wouldn't, and the bone keeps ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... clean holes punched through the iron as though driven by a sharp pickaxe. Some hours were occupied in repairing the damage by plastering white lead upon some thick felt; this was placed over the holes, and small pieces of plank being laid over the felt, they were secured by an upright piece of timber tightened with wedges from a cross-beam. The leaks were thus ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... There was a shout of warning as the bows, caught by the current, began to swing out into the stream, and the end of the gangplank slipped along the edge of the wharf. It threatened to fall into the river, and the girl was not yet on board. Blake leaped upon the plank. Seizing her shoulder, he drove her forward until a seaman, reaching out, drew her safe on deck. Then the paddles splashed and as the boat forged out into the stream, the girl turned and thanked Blake. He could not see ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... the log walls; he then groped about till he found the plank door. His gloved hands smarted, but their sense of touch did no seem blunted. He had never known a darker night! Now that he found the hole in the door, it was curious that he could not see one star gleaming through. But perhaps clouds ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... come out and told some funny anecdotes about two Irishmen named Pat and Mike, lately landed in this country and looking for work, and imitated two cats in a backyard, and drawing a glass of soda water, and sawing a plank in two; and winding up with the announcement that he had donated a dozen bottles of the great Indian Snake Oil Remedy for man and beast that had been imparted to him in secret by old Rumpatunk, the celebrated medicine man, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the top of the hill and then returned through the fields by a foot-path which leads by a small wooden bridge, or rather a plank with a rustic rail to it, over the river to the other side of the cathedral from that at which they had started. They had thus walked round the bishop's grounds, through which the river runs, and round the cathedral and adjacent fields, and it was ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... you are ready to fight—I see by your looks you are. But that's not enough—you must make up your minds to fight well. You know that pirates give no quarter. I see the decks are swarming with men. If you don't go at them like bull-dogs you'll walk the plank before sunset, every man of you. Now, go forward, and double-shot your muskets and pistols, and stick as many of the latter into your belts as they will hold. Mr Thompson, let the gunner double-shot the four big guns, and load the little carronade with musket balls to the muzzle. If they do ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... which ran through the centre of the house from the sacred tanks. Directly below the place we occupied was a little waterfall, which conversed pleasantly day and night; and by taking-up a loose plank in the floor we could see as well as hear it. Learning that there were some ruins in the neighbourhood, supposed to have existed from before the birth of our Saviour, we started in the afternoon for a place called Bowun, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... journey lakewards, breaking into the inevitable dogtrot as the long, dark pier came in sight. At the land end, John stooped to pick up a few sun-dried minnows which lay on a plank, and a little farther on Silvey grabbed eagerly at ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... at the energy of my signal, away she flew. What a stride she had! What an elastic spring! She touched and left the earth as if her limbs were of spiral wire. When I reached the car my friend was standing in front of it, the gang-plank was ready, I leaped from the saddle and, running up the plank into the car, whistled to her; and she, timid and hesitating, yet unwilling to be separated from me, crept slowly and cautiously up the steep incline ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray

... felt a cold perspiration starting on his temples when he remembered Mlle. Lucienne's pride, and that honor has her only faith, the safety-plank to which she had desperately clung in the midst of the storms of her life. What if she should leave him, now that the name he ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... appeared to me," he tells her, "between two distinct parts of my life, as the angel of the Lord might appear to a soul wavering between life and death, between earth and heaven." To a common friend he wrote of her, "Her soul was to mine what the shore is to the plank shattered by the waves; and I still remember, after the lapse of twenty-five years, all the light and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... soul!" cried Captain Jimmie in dismay. He gave a wrench to the wheel, shouting orders to the Ancient Mariner to gee her around and go back, but he was too late. Before the gang-plank had been thrown out, or rope hitched, the Old Boys had leaped ashore. Captain Jimmie yelled at them to come back, but they paid no more heed than they would have done twenty-five years earlier and went swarming joyfully ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... advance on our particular course. What risks we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of a cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. How did he manage that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder superfluously when we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely,—we have walked a plank all our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are. My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay, while I go about the streets, and chaffer ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... was a large, comfortable room, with strings of red peppers hanging from the ceiling, and boards of sliced apples drying on upturned flour barrels near the door. The bright homespun carpet left a strip of bare plank by the stove, and on this stood two hampers of black walnuts ready for storing. A few coloured prints, culled from garden magazines, were tacked on the wall, and these, without exception, represented blossoms of a miraculous splendour and size. In ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... 1847 we were living in a large white house on the corner of Hill and Main Streets—a house that still stands, but isn't large now, although it hasn't lost a plank; I saw it a year ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months afterward. Ours was not the only family in the house, there was another—Dr. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... and they were dirtier than he had supposed. But he did not lose heart, and remembering, from the cowherd's tales, that people who cannot pay for their passage must either work it out or hide themselves on board ship, he took the easier alternative, and got on to the first vessel which had a plank to the quay, and hid himself under some tarpaulin on ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... Whitehall's visit yet. When I went back I took down the beautiful lava jug, and inside I found his card. On the back was written, "You have gone into action, sir. It may be your fate to sink or to swim, but it can never be your degradation to strike. Die on the last plank and be damned to you, or come into port ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... sort of thing, it greatly interested him. Standing by a strangely marked cask which had excited his curiosity, he found himself in the way of the deck-hand in the blue shirt, who, with red face and sparkling forehead, had just wheeled two heavy boxes up the incline of the gang-plank, and was about to roll them with easy rapidity to the other side of the deck; but Lodloe, with his back turned and directly in front of him, made it necessary for him to make a violent swerve to the right or to break the legs of a passenger. He made ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000 words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one which I finished on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was especially fond of narrating this exploit to his friend Dick Halyard, to whom he endeavored to convey the impression that he had fought his way overboard from the deck of the pirate, and for want of a boat had boldly set sail upon a plank over the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... his lead, around by the way Henry Burns and Harvey had once before entered, and, one by one, went in through the window. Then they paused, huddled on a plank, while John Ellison scratched a match and lighted a sputtering lantern, the wick of which had become dampened. Across the planking they picked their way, and entered the main room on ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... table in the middle, formed by nailing two pieces of plank on to a tree stump, and a couple of seats, one on each side, pierced with holes that had once upon a time been made by ship carpenters' augers, when the wood was built up over the ribs of some stout ship which long years after was bumped to pieces by the waves upon the rocks and then cast ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... carry the tools where they were wanted, or to rake the chips into a heap. Ivo obeyed all these directions with the zeal and devotion of a self-sacrificing patriot. Once, when he perched upon the end of a plank for the purpose of weighing it down, the motion of the saw shook his every limb, and made him laugh aloud in spite of himself; he would have fallen off but for the eagerness with which he held on to his position and endeavored to perform his task ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... glass factory. Well, sir, it was a sight worth two shillings admission, to see that hired girl get upon a step ladder to milk that goat on top of the furnace, with Pa sitting on a barrel of potatoes, bossing the job. They are going to fix a gang plank to get the goat down off the furnace. The baby kicked on the milk last night. I guess besides tasting of powder and burnt hair, the milk was too warm on account of the furnace. Pa has got to grow a new lot ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... book and rushed out into the back garden for fresh air. Even out of doors it was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myself down on the bench within the arbour and set myself to read. A plank behind me had started, and after a while the edge of it began to gall my shoulders as I leant back. I tried once or twice to push it into its place, without success, and then, in a moment of irritation, gave it a tug. It came away in my hand, and something rolled out ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... said at first, and accept with confidence the promise you make me not to torment a lady whom I love most sincerely." Thus ended a conversation from which the duke, with a less haughty disposition, might have extracted greater advantages and played a surer game. It was the last plank of safety offered in the shipwreck which menaced him. He disdained it: the opportunity of seizing it did not present itself again. I doubt not but that if he would have united himself freely and sincerely ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... oath; then made as though he would have unlocked the door and thrown it wide, to drive her, as he had so lately threatened, from his roof. But there was a noise of many feet and chattering and laughter in the passage without, which showed that some of the tourist guests had just come in. Only a plank intervened between that little knot of giddy pleasure-seekers, with their jokes and small-talk, and the father and ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... sister. We all felt that if he had been with us it wouldn't have taken us all these months of that dreadful war to get comfortably home. Peter said at the dock that he hadn't drawn a full breath since war had been declared until he got my feet off the gang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have worried quite as much as that, for we had a lovely, exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' up in Scotland while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while hearing all those Scotchmen and Englishmen talk about statesmanship and jurisprudence and international ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... a sawmill on the peninsula. Boards and plank are cut by hand or brought from California. I slept two nights in a room ceiled with red-wood and pine ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down the plank: to be gathered in at the foot by an attendant and returned to its cage all ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... was in New York for a year before he came here; that's why steps were taken to extradite him. Then he evidently got suspicious and came South. Anyhow, the plank is all greased, and if we land him in that city ...
— The Net • Rex Beach



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