"Phosphorescence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his face upturned to the big stars which burned in the soft depths of the warm sky: the Southern Cross poised just over the crest of Apo. Below, on the black sea, the thrust of the vessel threw up a great welt which bordered the wedge of disturbed waters: phosphorescence gleamed like great wet stars. The tips of cigarettes glowed on the forward deck where members of the crew lay prone, exchanging occasional words in the hushed voices races not far from nature use in the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... me, in a splutter of phosphorescence. I tried to help him, and in an instant he had me wildly round the neck. In the end I shook him off, poor devil, to his death. And he was the last I tried to aid: have I not said already what ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... a real good fellow. We forgot the aggressive inequalities of the Mediterranean while he talked to us of 'the pizzantry.' Late the second evening he propounded a confidence. It was a lovely night; Orion overhead, and the plashing phosphorescence on the water below conspired with the hour to make him specially confidential. 'Now, Miss Cayley,' he said, leaning forward on his deck chair, and gazing earnestly into my eyes, 'there's wan question I'd like to ask ye. The ambition of me life is to get into Parlimint. And I ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... over Cleghorn's thin face set unswervingly towards the pots. They glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence—green, blue, carmine, strange purplish browns. So the glittering coils of the serpent may have bewildered our first Mother. There were other pots below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a batch ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... fears. What he had taken for ghostly figures were columns of vapor writhing and twisting as they steamed upward from the bare end of the island. What caused them, Jack did not know. He noticed, too, that the whole patch of barren land glowed with a strange phosphorescence like ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... too, about the sea on a clear night when the moon is full; or when there is no moon, and the phosphorescence in the water shows, as if mermaids' children were playing with blue-tipped matches. I like to see it when a gale is blowing, and the white caps race. Yes, and when it is a flat calm, with here and there a tiny cat's-paw ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... now only as a narrow ribbon of blue between the edges of the canon's walls. The sun was behind the wall down which they were climbing, out of sight, and throwing their side of the valley into shadow. And already they could begin to see a dim phosphorescence glowing from the rocks ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... minutes later I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner, which he was examining. We all followed his movements with our eyes, for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. We all instinctively drew back. The whole place was ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been made by ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... 1757) gave a variety of pleasing and extraordinary information to curious readers: Indians, "broods of French savages;" earthquakes, St. Helmo's fire, phosphorescence, aurora borealis, mermen and mermaids, sea-snakes, krakens, etc., were jostled ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... nearly always is here, and shallow white surf stretched seaward across the flats. The sea roared continuously without that rise and fall of the breakers which marks a deeper coast, and from the face of the water there arose a filmy mist—part foam, part phosphorescence. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the foot of the companionway when the mate shouted again; "O Kennan! Come on deck quick!" and rushing hastily up I saw for the first time, in all its glorious splendour, the phosphorescence of the sea. With almost incredible swiftness, a mantle of bluish-white fire had covered nearly all the dark water north of us, and its clearly defined edge wavered and trembled for an instant, like the arch of an aurora, within ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... eye of Pele, He onohi no Pele (verse 11), is the phosphorescence which Pele's footfall stirs ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the best we can do now," he said. "The capsule is made of zircorundum, and we shall get only a trace of the disintegrating rays before it blows up. But you'll see 'em, or, rather, you'll see the lavender phosphorescence of the air ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the fishermen with a rush. There was not a star visible, and the night was as black as though the ship were plunging into a cave. Even the phosphorescence or 'fire' at the ship's bow was not especially brilliant, and Colin tumbled over half a dozen different things in as many yards on deck, while only the fact that he had sea-boots on saved him from barking ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... like lava, to a lifeless limb, They think the phosphorescence of the bark Is morning, which the long-belated lark Is hastening to welcome with his hymn; Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark, Miasma mist to make ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... light flashed on its shimmering folds like the rippling phosphorescence on southern seas! ... as green and clear and brilliant as rays reflected from thousands and thousands of glistening emeralds! ... And that haunting, sorrowful, weird music! ... How it seemed to eat into his heart and there waken a bitter ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... woven into the shrouds and the cordage. While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... these translucent waters is also extremely interesting. Here the floating jelly-fish, called, from its phosphorescence, the glow-worm of the sea, is observed in great variety, sheltering little colonies of young fishes within its tentacles, which rush forth for a moment to capture some passing mite, and as quickly return again ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... you think this mysterious man behind the operations of the liquor runners can be?" Frank asked, as they leaned in a group apart on the rail, watching the phosphorescence in the ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... absorption-spectra were the sole methods available; a third method was introduced by Crookes, who submitted the oxides, or preferably the basic sulphates, to the action of a negative electric discharge in vacuo, and investigated the phosphorescence induced spectroscopically. By such a study in the ultra-violet region of a fraction prepared from crude yttria he detected a new element victorium, and subsequently by elaborate fractionation obtained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... there bloomed quite a collection of moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that reddened the waters with their crimson ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... first, utterly unlike real life, they said—nothing. The boy moved round and stood close to his side so that he found himself placed between them, all three leaning forward over the rails watching the phosphorescence ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... minutes later they left the deck and went downstairs to dress for dinner. That same evening they stood again at the rail watching the mysterious phosphorescence as it sparkled in the moonlight. Her thoughts travelling faster than the ship, Shirley ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... often is that light only the fugitive phosphorescence of putrefaction; wherefore as one contemplates him one soon begins to realise with bitterness and vexation and disappointment that he is but a sluggard, but a braggart, but one who is petty and weak and blinded with conceit and distorted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... we view on our travels Are marvels that fill with delight; But chief is the phosphorescence Of the ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... crest of a wave broke into a long snowy-white line which appeared to be filled with a thousand lights; this effect was caused by the infinite number of animalculae, which are struck together by the movement of the wave and give out phosphorescence. These animalculae are living creatures which cannot be seen without the help of the microscope. It is wonderful that such small things ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... may be roused even more strongly in darkness than by daylight. How living seem the smoulderings and the flashings of the tide on nights of phosphorescence!—how reptilian the subtle shifting of the tints of its chilly flame! Dive into such a night-sea;—open your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... watching me with his humorous smile. And presently, no more than a quarter beyond the zero hour, the Planetara got away. With the dome-windows battened tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing city. The phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's tail behind us as we ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... and part of the second volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, Peron wrote a number of short "memoires sur divers sujets," suggested to his mind by observations made during the voyage. One of the most valuable of these, from a scientific point of view, was an essay upon the causes of phosphorescence in the sea, frequently observed in tropical and subtropical regions, but ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... but almost concentric with it. The rocky coast, its metallic surface reflecting the glow of the dazzling luminaries, appeared literally stippled with light, whilst the sea, as though spattered with burning hailstones, shone with a phosphorescence that was perfectly splendid. So great, however, was the speed at which Gallia was receding from the sun, that this meteoric storm lasted scarcely more ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the Recording Angel, not of the Judge. What he or Thucydides thought in each case can only be guessed at. They have presented the facts without comment, and the facts tell their own tale, explain themselves, carry with them the feelings they should evoke, and shine by their own light, like the phosphorescence of the sea. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the principal agents concerned in the production of the beautiful phenomena of phosphorescence. The minute species—mere gelatinous specks—swarm at times by countless myriads in the waters of the ocean, and make its surface glow with 'vitalised fire.' The waves, as they curl and break, sparkle and flash forth light, and the track of the moving ship is marked by a lustrous line. 'In the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... in large clusters and the rich saffron color of the entire plant compels our admiration and we are reminded that "not all is gold that glitters." It will be interesting to gather a large cluster to show its phosphorescence and the heat which the plant will generate. You can show the phosphorescence by putting it in a dark room and by placing a thermometer in the cluster you can show the heat. It is frequently ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... nights made Ulysses forget the wrathful storms of its black days. In the moonlight it was an immense plane of vivid silver streaked with serpentine shadows. Its soft doughlike undulations, replete with microscopic life, illuminated the nights. The infusoria, a-tremble with love, glowed with a bluish phosphorescence. The sea was like luminous milk. The foam breaking against the prow sparkled like broken fragments of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for the purpose, because, you see, phosphorus must at intervals be placed where it can absorb the light in order to retain its brilliancy. Now as a man's watch stays most of the time in his pocket, a watch dial treated with phosphorus would have no opportunity to regain its phosphorescence. Hence the Ingersoll Company developed a sort of radium coating for their dials. It probably was not actually made from radium because there is not enough of it to be found in all the world even if a watch company ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... that last great stroke Death seemed to be resting on his laurels. When thus unpeopled it looked a very vast place like to a huge arched causeway, bordered on either side by blackness, but itself gleaming with a curious phosphorescence such as once or twice I have seen in the waters of a summer sea ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the boat into a strip of water between two barks, and they darted rapidly over the smooth surface, that kindled into bluish phosphorescent light under the strokes of the oars. Behind the boat's stern lay a winding ribbon of this phosphorescence, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... good fortune to escape so soon, no doubt he would have fallen a victim. He could not congratulate himself sufficiently upon his good fortune. The other circumstances appeared to be due to the decay of the ancient city, to the decomposition of accumulated matter, to phosphorescence and gaseous exhalations. The black rocks that crumbled at a touch were doubtless the remains of ancient buildings saturated with the dark water and vapours. Inland similar remains were white, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... but the sea became green oil. That night there were all around us fields of phosphorescence. About midnight these vanished; it was very black for all the stars, and we seemed to hear a sighing as from a giant leagues away. This passed, and the morning broke, silent and tranquil, azure sky and azure sea, and not so sharply clear as yesterday. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... German physicist Julius Plucker (1801-1868) noticed that when there was an electrical discharge through an exhausted tube at a low pressure, on the surrounding walls of the tube near the negative pole, or cathode, appeared a greenish phosphorescence. This discovery was soon being investigated by a number of other scientists, among others Hittorf, Goldstein, and Professor (now Sir William) Crookes. The explanations given of this phenomenon by Professor Crookes concern us here more particularly, inasmuch ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... marvelous delicacy of organization, which, although curiously and wonderfully adapted to live in a compressed liquid, collapsed when lifted into a lighter medium, and which, despite the assumed perpetual darkness of their profound abode, were adorned with variegated colors and furnished with organs of phosphorescence whereby they could create for themselves all ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... land that this phenomenon of phosphorescence is to be seen in living forms. Among marine animals, indeed, it is a phenomenon much more general, much more splendid, and, we may add, much more familiar to those who live on our coasts. There must be many in the British Isles who have never had the opportunity of seeing the light of the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... of the following effects are observed:—it may be transmitted through the stone, diaphaneity, as it is called; it may produce single or double refraction, or polarisation; if reflected, it may produce lustre or colour; or it may produce phosphorescence; so that light may be (1) transmitted; (2) reflected; ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... arisen in the mind of the laird a fear: might not Cosmo unwittingly have had some share in the frightful event? When first he entered the room, there was Cosmo, dressed, and with a light in his hand: the seeming phosphorescence in the snow must have been one of his PLOYS, and might not that have been the source of the shock to the dazed brain of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was when he leaned over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening, when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a beautiful sight there and ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... in while they waited for Nymani's return. There had been no further attack from the blaster wielder; perhaps he was only trying to pin them down where they were. Out over the swamp, weird patches of phosphorescence moved in small ghostly clouds, and bright dots of insects with their own built-in lighting systems flashed spark-fashion or sailed serenely on regular flight plans. At night the wonder of the place was far removed from the ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed into bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowing insects as large as a hand hummed softly ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... hope! Its magic wand With phosphorescence ting'd that Stygian pool Of chill despair, in which his soul had sank Lower and lower still. Now, at the forge A blessed vision gleam'd. Its mystery woke The romance of his nature. Every day Moved lighter on, and when ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... condition of the party was, the appearances in the forest soon changed the professor's woe into eager delight, for the phosphorescence became more and more pronounced, until every tree-stem blinked with a palish green light, and it trickled like moonlight over the ground, bringing out thick dumpy mushrooms like domes of light. Glowing caterpillars and centipedes crawled about, leaving a trail of light ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... cold, there was a phosphorescence on the water—white patches floating, dipping, riding the waves. Some of them gathered under the pier, clustering about the pilings. And the fog thinned with their coming, as if those irregular blotches absorbed and fed upon the mist. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... catch the eye, heralding the cruel bull-fight or a performance at the theatre. On Sundays a military band performs here forenoons and evenings. Under the starlight you may look not only among the low growing foliage to see the fireflies, which float there like clouds of phosphorescence, but now and again one will glow, diamond-like, in the black hair of the fair senoritas, where they are ingeniously fastened to produce this effect. It is strictly a Spanish idea, which the author has often seen in Havana. So brilliant ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... halls of the echoes, and soon came to an arched passage, at the entrance of which Penn paused and placed the torch in a niche. A projection of the rock prevented the light from shining before them, yet their way was softly illumined from beyond, as by a dim phosphorescence. They advanced, and in a moment their eyes, grown accustomed to the obscurity, came upon a scene of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... breaking the bread as on the evening of the Last Supper, in his pilgrim robe, with his blackened lips, on which the torture has left its traces, his great brown eyes soft, widely opened, and raised towards heaven, with his cold nimbus, a sort of phosphorescence around him which envelops him in an indefinable glory, and that inexplicable look of a breathing human being who certainly ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... be heard by his companions; but they could see his countenance calm as ever even amid the flashing of the lightnings; he was watching the phenomena of phosphorescence produced by the fires of St. Elmo, that were now skipping to and fro along the network ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... beneath its surface. Their grisly shapes vivid in the disturbed phosphorescence, drawing a wake of flame behind them, rushed two great sharks. Hither and thither they darted, every detail of their ugly forms discernible on the framing of the phosphorescent blaze, even the set glare of the cruel eye; and, no less nimble in swift doubling ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... hands and threw it into the air, it appeared like sparkles of fire, so long did it retain its brilliancy. The slightest movement in the water caused a flash of light. Jerry and I agreed that we had never seen anything more beautiful. The doctor told us that this phosphorescence or luminosity of the ocean is caused by a minute animal, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, though sufficient to tinge the water of a brown or reddish colour. Other marine substances are, however, luminous. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... comforter—the pipe—and edged up respectfully within hearing of our conversation. So we boys leaned on our elbows, looking out at the dimly defined water, sometimes lighted in streaks by gleams of phosphorescence where shoals of fish were jumping; or, stretched on our backs, we watched the shooting-stars hurrying with speed quick as thought from one part of the immeasurable blue to another; while our tutors talked earnestly of former times, and we heard the shrill ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... In place of the phosphorescence, electric lights had appeared, making the ground beneath perfectly visible. Dick could see a number of men grouped together at the entrance to a large building, part of which had been wrecked by a bomb, though there were no evidences of fire. Other structures had been dismantled and knocked ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood, Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs To serve a whole eternity of terms? You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove? You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave Is phosphorescence from another's grave— Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? You whip a rascal out of office?—you Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew Its smoke in six directions ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... a faint line of phosphorescence giving its pallid gleam for a few moments; then the rattle as of matches being moved about in a tin box, another scratch, a line of light, and then a very faint dull spark seemed to descend and become extinct in ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... faded swiftly to a mysterious violet glimmer in the sky, on the ground, a cold phosphorescence that seemed to emanate ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fork slowly. The din about him dwindled away into nothing. He was again leaning over the rail, watching the phosphorescence trail away, a shoulder barely touching his: one of the few women who had ever stirred him after the first glance. In God's name, why hadn't she said something? Why hadn't she told him she was Colonel Hare's daughter? How was he to know? (For Hare, queerly enough, had never ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... tall and white, and her eyes were like two blue flowers which brushed my soul when she looked at me; and when she spoke to me she entreated me and urged me toward her, and her voice was like a sweet phosphorescence with ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... one whom Tom had named Sambo glared around him. His eyes gleamed with a phosphorescence like that which one sees on the water on a lowering night. What Reade did not know was that this black man possessed eyes that were a little keener in ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... midnight and over the dark walls of the valley peered a multitude of stars, while away on the southern horizon there glowed a subdued effulgence as though from hidden fires beneath the Gold God's caldron, or as though the phosphorescence of Bering had spread upward into the skies. Although each night grew longer, it was not yet necessary to light the men at work in the cuts. There were perhaps two hours in which it was difficult to see at a distance, but the dawn came early, hence no provision had ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... between Fiesole and Florence. He was then only fifteen, but he was already distinguished as a mathematician and possessed by a savage appetite to understand. He had been particularly attracted by the mystery of phosphorescence and its apparent unrelatedness to every other source of light. He was to tell afterwards in his reminiscences how he watched the fireflies drifting and glowing among the dark trees in the garden of the villa under the warm blue night sky of Italy; how he caught and kept them in ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... slowly up and down the coast. Night after night Paul and his crew watched for an opportunity to place one of their torpedoes under the dark hull of a Chilano; but the latter were on the alert for them, having been informed that Boyton had been engaged by Peru. The phosphorescence of the water at night was also against them. The least disturbance on its surface would cause a glow of silver to flash in the darkness that could be seen ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Compare the two women, study closely the two pictures, and you will understand the difference between the two brains. Rembrandt's ideal, sought as in a dream with closed eyes, is Light: the nimbus around objects, the phosphorescence that comes against a black background. It is something fugitive and uncertain, formed of lineaments scarce perceptible, ready to disappear before the eye has fixed them, ephemeral and dazzling. To arrest the vision, to set it on the canvas, to give it its shape and moulding, to preserve ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... conceivable angle with such rapidity that the "shaling" of the water was like that of a strong rapid, while the interlacing—so to speak—of the ripples created a sort of network of miniature breakers, easily visible because of the phosphorescence set up. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the facts of photo-electricity had not been attempted. Students of this subject will notice that the views expressed are similar to those subsequently put forward by Lenard and Saeland in explanation of phosphorescence. The whole matter is of more practical importance than appears at first sight, for the photoelectric nature of the effects involved in the radiative treatment of many cruel diseases seems ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... and Summer developed in their multi-coloured glory: they burned with fiery splendour; the pine-trees glowed with a resinous phosphorescence. There was the fragrance of wormwood. Chicory, blue- bells, buttercups, milfoil, and cowslip blossomed ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... enjoyed it excessively, as it was the first time we had been on the sea. We took delight in watching the strange fish which came swimming round the ship, or which gambolled on the waves, or the birds which circled overhead; or in gazing by night at the countless stars in the clear heavens, or at the phosphorescence which at times covered the ocean, making it appear as if it had been changed into a ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... gleefully skipping forward, piloted me through the mazes of her city until we came out into the great square fronting on the palace, which rose beyond it like a white chalk cliff in the dull light. Not a taper showed anywhere round its circumference, but a mysterious kind of radiance like sea phosphorescence beamed from the palace porch. All was in such deathlike silence that the nails in my "ammunition" boots made an unpleasant clanking as they struck on the marble pavement; yet, by the uncertain starlight, I saw, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... which are duly noted. Tennyson told his son that the poem was partially suggested by Abbey Park at Torquay where it was written, and that the last lines described the scene from the hill looking over the bay. He saw he said "a star of phosphorescence made by the buoy appearing and disappearing in the dark sea," but it is curious that the line describing that was not inserted till long after the poem had been published. The poem, though a trifle, is a triumph of felicitous description and expression, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of light is the result of chemical action, such as the lime, magnesium, and electric light. A third source of light is phosphorescence, as we see it in the glow-worm ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... her to the tomb of Merlin. This tomb was constructed of a species of stone hard and resplendent like fire. The rays which beamed from the stone sufficed to light up that terrible place, where the sun's rays never penetrated; but I know not whether that light was the effect of a certain phosphorescence of the stone itself, or of the many talismans and charms with which it ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... cloud masses of them floated past; and swirls of phosphorescent fire marked the presence of larger creatures that moved among them. Large and small, each living creature was invisible until it moved; then came the greenish light, like phosphorescence and yet unlike. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... making the water flash, and the phosphorescence, like pale golden oil, sweep aside and ripple and flow upon the surface. The sky was now almost black but quite ablaze with stars, and the big lamp at the pierhead sent its cheery rays out, as if to show them the way to go, but in the transparent darkness ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... and following the line of sight which he had indicated, perceived, at a distance of about two hundred yards a faint glow, so faint indeed that I think only Hans would have noticed it. Really it might have been nothing more than the phosphorescence rising from a heap of fungus, or even ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... summer spears That soon should wear the garland; there again When burr and bine were gather'd; lastly there At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall, On whose dull sameness his full tide of youth Broke with a phosphorescence cheering even My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid No bar between them: dull and self-involved, Tall and erect, but bending from his height With half-allowing smiles for all the world, And mighty courteous in the main—his pride Lay deeper than to wear it as his ring— He, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... is shown in a 480 times magnified form in Fig. 2. They resemble fine threads of delicate structure, and where found are always discovered in great abundance. Most conspicuous by their shape and considerable size are the rhizomorph, Fig. 3a, and they are remarkable, not only for their brilliant phosphorescence, but also for the peculiar fact that they are only found in places where light does not enter. These rhizomorph, though this is not easily recognizable from their external appearance, also belong ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... the syce's matches, as he clung to the pony's bridle. Not nearly so bright as the lambent phosphorescence from the fireflies which flickered across our path, the puny light of the match was sufficient for the guide to pick up the ribbon-like path, and once more we were on our way to ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... Production. Light, Colour, Dispersion of White Light Methods of Producing the Spectrum, Glass Prism and Diffraction Grating Spectroscopes, The Spectrum, Wave Motion of Light, Recomposition of White Light, Hue, Luminosity, Purity of Colours, The Polariscope, Phosphorescence, Fluorescence, Interference.—II., Cause of Colour in Coloured Bodies. Transmitted Colours, Absorption Spectra of Colouring Matters.—III., Colour Phenomena and Theories. Mixing Colours, White Light from Coloured Lights, Effect of Coloured Light ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... guiding myself by some much ruddier star on the horizon. The pale phosphorescence on the wave, the simple sounds as of fish stirring in the water—the beauty and wonder of Night's dwelling-place ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... are, so to speak, driven away by the polar particles endowed with an equal initial velocity, till at a certain distance from the pole the mass of the gaseous molecules and their speed become so great that a luminous display begins. In an analogous manner the author explains the phenomena of phosphorescence which Crookes' elicits by the action of his radiant matter. In like manner the thermic and the mechanical effects are most simply explained, according to the expression selected by Crookes himself, as the results of a "continued molecular bombardment." The attraction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... The shore was quite dark. Here and there a stove could be seen glowing on the deck of some boat, blinking as the figure of a sailor passed in front of it. The sea was shrouded in deep gloom, marked by an occasional flash of phosphorescence. The surf was trickling in with a barely audible moan. Softened by the distance came the voices of some "cats" singing as they made their way toward the Cabanal and stirred some dog to bark along the road. A faint band of reddish light still loitered above the horizon ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... through what seemed to us like a sea of phosphorescence, every splash and ripple producing liquid gems, brought us to Penang, the most northerly sea-port of the Malacca Straits, situated at the point where they open into the Indian Ocean, and just one hundred miles from the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... must also be added that of collision. The warships and the allied transports were traveling with few lights or completely dark. The sentinels on the bridge were no longer scanning the surface of the sea with its pale phosphorescence. Their gaze explored the horizon, fearing that before the prow there might suddenly surge up an enormous, swift, black form, vomited forth ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... quaked with rage, and the glare he loosed on Lanyard made that young man wonder if he were mistaken in believing that the eyes of the prince shone in that dusky room with something nearly akin to the phosphorescence to be seen in the eyes of an animal ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... island of Saint Jago, one of the Cape de Verde Islands, for a supply. On October 29 the land of the Cape of Good Hope was made, but as the ships were unable to get in before dark, they stood off and on during the night. In the evening the phosphorescence of the sea became unusually brilliant; and to convince Mr Forster, who differed from Mr Banks and Dr Solander that it was caused by insects, some buckets of water were drawn up from alongside. On examination he found that the water was full of globular insects of the size of a pin's ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... came, dancing, swaying and spinning at a rate inconceivable, so that it looked like a gigantic wheel of fire. Yet it was not fire that clothed it but rather some phosphorescence, since from it came no heat. Yes, a phosphorescence arranged in bands of ghastly blue and lurid red, with streaks of other colours running up between, and a kind of waving ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... aura is not always in a state of calm phosphorescence, however. On the contrary, it sometimes manifests great flames, like those of a fiery furnace, which shoot forth in great tongues, and dart forth suddenly in certain directions toward the objects attracting them. Under great emotional excitement the auric flames ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... something—some such effort, perhaps, as one seeking to penetrate the darkness of life must needs show. And as she looked, the white, living breakers gradually resolved them-selves out of the dark, thin filmy phosphorescence, and the roar of the lashed sea broke like thunder upon the pebbled beach. She leaned a little more forward, carried away with her fancy—that the shrill grinding of the pebbles was indeed the scream ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... light must have been electricity; it could not be attributed to a bank of fish spawn, nor to a crowd of those animalculae that give phosphorescence to the sea, and this showed that the electrical tension ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this, Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of night birds. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered: "Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du Calvaire, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... porpoises came up at twilight, and sported round the vessel. I saw some sea-birds that seemed to be playing,—running and sliding on the green, glassy waves. In the wake of the vessel were most beautiful changing colors. Little Nelly S. sat with us to watch the phosphorescence. She said, "The stars in the sea call to me, with little fine voices, 'Nelly, Nelly, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... horizon the Southern Cross was rising, and the evening star shone in the warm night, before the moon had yet risen, with a silver gleam that threw clear light and shadow upon the deck below; while the vessel seemed to plough through a sea of phosphorescence, leaving in her wake a long trail of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... words be digested by the reason. And another way to the soul only—rare, untransferable to words, and therefore not transmittable to others or to the reason. This way causes the creature a great amazement, and is like a flooding or moving of whiteness, or an inwardly-felt phosphorescence; it is a vitalising ministration greatly enjoyed by the soul. This is not any ecstasy, and is exceedingly swift; the soul must be at high attention to receive this, yet neither anticipates nor asks for it, but is in the act of giving great and ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... steam engine, we would have had mechanical orchestras long ago. Mechanical pianos are already here. Piano-players, bound to put some value on the tortures of Czerny, affect to laugh at all such contrivances, but that is no more than a pale phosphorescence of an outraged wille zur macht. Setting aside half a dozen—perhaps a dozen—great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average mechanical piano is not as competent as ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... of its body. If we place a very irritable medusa on a pewter plate, and strike against the plate with any sort of metal, the slight vibrations of the plate are sufficient to make this animal emit light. Sometimes, in galvanising the medusa, the phosphorescence appears at the moment that the chain closes, though the exciters are not in immediate contact with the organs of the animal. The fingers with which we touch it remain luminous for two or three minutes, as is observed in breaking ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... threw a sheltering shadow; the moon was low in the west. In the blackness a phosphorescence was apparent. It rippled and rose in the dark with the pulsing beat of the jellylike mass. And through it were showing two discs. Gray at first, they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... where the cows lay often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... with me! They would be amply repaid. The phosphorescent sea shows forth its wonders now—not alone in the myriads of small stars of light, which please you in the Atlantic, but at every turn of the foam dashed from the bow and sides of the ship masses of glittering phosphorescence as large as my travelling cap. What creatures these must be which can emit light in such clusters! I leave the deck with the cheery "All's well!" ringing in my ears as the ship dances before the wind which brings to a close our long flight across the Pacific. How we have longed for this last ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... said his friend, composedly; "I could have guessed as much; but that is a fire you may warm yourself at; no eternal phosphorescence it is the leaping up of all internal fire, that only shows itself ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... broad, the stem 12—20 cm. long, and 8—12 mm. in thickness. It occurs in large clusters, several or many joined at their bases. From the rich saffron yellow color of all parts of the plant, and especially by its strong phosphorescence, so evident in the dark, it is an easy plant to recognize. Because of its phosphorescence ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... unsteadily to the rail and emptied the pail into the darkness. The splash was lost in the sound of the waves and of churned water fleeing along the sides. Fuselli leaned over the rail and looked down at the faint phosphorescence that was the only light in the whole black gulf. He had never seen such darkness before. He clutched hold of the rail with both hands, feeling lost and terrified in the blackness, in the roaring of the wind in his ears and the sound of churned water fleeing astern. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... tell, because it was unlit. Our little stream of light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently the rocky walls had vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were towards the rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that the reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... pale wreaths of stars, blotting it out with monstrous folds and convolutions of impenetrable purple-black. Along its crest fire played like swords in the sunlight, and now and again sheeted flame lightened the monstrous expanse so that it glowed with the pale phosphorescence of a ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... wavering of a pale fire. The more we examine her, the less we can grasp the subtle lineaments that serve as envelope for her uncorporeal existence. We end by seeing in her nothing but a kind of extraordinarily strange phosphorescence which is not the ordinary light of things, nor yet the ordinary brilliance of a well-regulated palette, and this adds more sorcery to the peculiarities of her countenance. Notice that in the place she occupies, one of the dark corners of the canvas, rather low in ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... neither gas nor electricity, and on such a night as this neither moon nor stars dared show their faces in so gray a sky; but a sort of all-diffused luminosity was in the air, as though the sea of atmosphere was charged with an ethereal phosphorescence. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... on, its lights fairly subdued by the splendour of the waters. Under the awnings the ship's company lounged in lazy attitudes or promenaded slowly, talking low voiced, cigars glowing in the splendid dusk. Overside, in the furrow of the disturbed waters, the phosphorescence flashed perpetually beneath the shadow of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... evening before. I reckoned then we should have eight hours to swim before sunrise, an operation quite practicable if we relieved each other. The sea, very calm, was in our favour. Sometimes I tried to pierce the intense darkness that was only dispelled by the phosphorescence caused by our movements. I watched the luminous waves that broke over my hand, whose mirror-like surface was spotted with silvery rings. One might have said that we were in a bath ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration:—reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... The silver pillars had begun to give out a faint soft glow like the silver phosphorescence that lies in sea ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... last he turned back to things of earth, he found the stars still twinkling in the sea, as though they would not let him go even though he gave up looking at them. They gleamed and glanced in the smooth-rolling waves till the deep seemed sown with phosphorescence, as on that night in Grand Greve; the night Nance came upon him so suddenly in the dark and he went on with her to get ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... to the station to get the news in Paris, promising to come back later in the evening, but Clerambault stayed in the isolated house, from which in the distance could be seen the far-off phosphorescence of the city. He had not stirred from the seat where he had fallen stupified. This time he could no longer doubt, the catastrophe was coming, was upon them already. Madame Clerambault begged him to go to bed, but he would not listen to her. His thought was in ruins; he could distinguish nothing ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... 1869 that a strange colouring was caused when an electric charge was sent through a vacuum tube—the walls of the glass tube began to glow with a greenish phosphorescence. A vacuum tube is one from which nearly all the air has been pumped, although we can never completely empty the tube. Crookes used such ingenious methods that he reduced the gas in his tubes until it was twenty million times thinner than the atmosphere. He then sent an electric ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... standing amid the crosses on the hillside staring longingly across the world toward that sun-baked Karroo of Australia and to the blue New Zealand mountains which they called "Home." It was a night never to be forgotten, for the glassy surface of the AEgean glowed with phosphorescence, the sky was like a hanging of purple velvet, and the peak of our foremast seemed almost to graze the stars. Across the Hellespont, to the southward, the sky was illumined by a ruddy glow—a village burning, so a sailor told me, on the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... water I could see the giant sea-fans waving in a moony twilight, touched eerily in those glassy depths with sudden rays of the spectral light; soft bowers of phosphorescence spread a secret radiance about dimly branching coral groves. And, all the while, the path of the moon over the sea was growing stronger—laying, it would seem, an even firmer pathway of silver stretching to the very ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... him by the time the stars were fairly out. As it got darker I began to see all manner of glowing things in the water— phosphorescence, you know. At times it made me giddy. I hardly knew which was stars and which was phosphorescence, and whether I was swimming on my head or my heels. The canoe was as black as sin, and the ripple under the bows like liquid fire. I was naturally chary of clambering up into ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the girl answered: "I can't see it now, either. Maybe I didn't see it. It was very faint—just a glow—it might have been phosphorescence." ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... candle, lantern, head-light, cresset; publicity, public notice; phosphorescence, luminescence; aureole, halo, nimbus, aureola, glory. Associated Words: photology, photologist, photophobia, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... trail of light to the still water, seeming to fasten the sky to the sea with long silver skewers; wonderful phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel |
