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More "Abaft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is fitted abaft the engine and the pilot's seat is aft of the observer. The observer, who is also the wireless operator, has the wireless apparatus fitted about his seat. This consists of a receiver and transmitter fitted ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... not catch; for, abruptly, away aft, my rather sleepy gaze had lighted on something altogether extraordinary and outrageous. It was nothing less than the form of a man stepping inboard over the starboard rail, a little abaft the main rigging. I stood up, and caught at the handrail, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... understood the fool to say. However, Father Rout swears he went in there only to get a clean pocket-handkerchief. Anyhow, I made one jump into my trousers and flew on deck aft. There was certainly a good deal of noise going on forward of the bridge. Four of the hands with the boss'n were at work abaft. I passed up to them some of the rifles all the ships on the China coast carry in the cabin, and led them on the bridge. On the way I ran against Old Sol, looking startled and sucking at ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... shortly after noon on a scorching summer day, we cast off our moorings and, leaving quarrel-torn Fiume abaft, turned the nose of the Sirio sou' by sou'-west, down the coast of Dalmatia. The sun-kissed waters of the Bay of Quarnero looked for all the world like a vast azure carpet strewn with a million sparkling diamonds; on our starboard quarter stretched the green-clad slopes of Istria, with the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... engines strained and worked unsteadily, while the sea at intervals made a breach of the deck. At two o'clock a more gloomy spectacle presented itself; and despondency seemed to have seized all on board, as a sharp, cone-like sea boarded the ship abaft, carried away the quarter-boats from the starboard davys, and started several stancheons. Scarcely was the work of destruction complete, when the condenser of the larboard engine gave out, rendering the machine useless, and spreading dismay among the passengers. Thus, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... January, 1608, both vessels were under sail, and by six p.m. were ten leagues west-southerly[159] from the south point of the bay of Saldanha. The 19th we shipped much sea at the helm port, and at the hole abaft in my gallery, about two hours after midnight, which wet some of our bales of cloth. We were then in lat. 35 deg. 22' S. [I allow thirteen leagues S.S.E. wind E.N.E. and N.E. six leagues drift S. and three leagues ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... on of twilight, As we stood abaft the skylight, Scampering round to please the baby, (Old Bill Benson held him, maybe,) When the youngster stretched his fingers Towards the spot where sunset lingers, And with strong and sudden motion Leaped into the weltering ocean! "What did Don do?" Can't ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the fore and stern cabins. They furnish something akin to tolerable accommodations for the officers and a favored fraction of the crew. Above the forecastle rises a carved proudly curing prow, and just abaft it are high bulwarks to guard the javelin men when at close quarters with the foe. There is also on either side of the prow a huge red or orange "eye" painted around the hawse holes for the anchors. Above the stern cabin ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... shot. This quantity of metal alone (for the carriages had been previously taken on board and fixed at Woolwich) brought the ship bodily down in the water four inches, drawing, when on board, 15 feet 2 inches forward, and 15 feet 6 inches abaft. We also received, on the day after, as much powder as could be put in the magazines. On Monday, the 9th, we left our moorings, and proceeded down the Thames, anchoring for the night. On the following day we arrived in the Downs, where we remained for about six-and-forty hours, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... was a vessel with three masts resembling the main and foremast of a ship with a third and small mast just abaft the mainmast, carrying a sail nearly similar to a ship's mizzen. The foot of this mast was fixed in a block of wood or step but on deck. The head was attached to the afterpart of the maintop. The sail was called a trysail, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... old man-of-war's man, who had served in many a well-fought action, declared that he would kill every Turkish prisoner taken in the prizes at Volo; and he attempted one night to break into the cabin abaft the larboard paddle-box, in which some of these Turks were confined. Armed with a large knife, he proclaimed that he was determined to kill the prisoners, and he called on the other sailors to assist him. He argued, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... will, shipmate," he sighed, "as you will. Pride and bilge-water go well together!" which said he brought me to a dark unlovely hole abaft the mizzen. "'Tis none too clean, Martin," says he, casting the light round the dingy place, "but that shall be remedied and Godby shall bring ye bedding and the like, so although 'tis plaguy dark and wi' ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... which means alone he was brought in sight of us. Not to dwell on the unexpected, but not unimportant facts of the flames having been mercifully prevented, for eleven hours, from either communicating with the magazine forward, or the great spirit room abaft, or even coming into contact with the tiller ropes—any of which circumstances would evidently have been fatal,—I would remark that, until the Cambria hove in sight, we had not discovered any vessel whatever for several days previous; nor did we afterwards see another until ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... three-quarters of a mile, quite close to the shore, at length struck the ground forcibly several times in the space of a hundred yards, and being then brought up by it remained immovable, the depth of water under her keel abaft being sixteen feet, or about a foot less than she drew. The Fury continuing to drive was now irresistibly carried past us, and we escaped, only by a few feet, the damage invariably occasioned ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... furiously against the poop-deck. Suddenly, that terrible cry, 'A man overboard!' I lost no time. I bore down on the taffrail threw the cook overboard, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing our noble craft lay over abaft the wind. Then, quick as thought, I belayed the windlass and lowered a gaff. It struck something soft. I heard JEFF cry: 'Don't hit my head again.' I was careful. The gaff slid along his back, and finally ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... Finn had leaped to his feet at sound of the scream. The Master followed on the instant, and reached the ship's side within a second or two of Finn's arrival there. Finn's muzzle was thrust out between the white rails, and he saw the tiny figure of Tim in the smoothly eddying water a little abaft of the ship's beam. The Master saw it, too, and, turning, with one urgent hand on ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... for 1776, p. 382, this hulk seems to be mentioned:—'The felons sentenced under the new convict-act began to work in clearing the bed of the Thames about two miles below Barking Creek. In the vessel wherein they work there is a room abaft in which they are to sleep, and in the forecastle a kind of cabin for the overseer.' Ib. p. 254, there is an admirable paper, very likely by Bentham, on the punishment of convicts, which Johnson ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... wooden rail above the beach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which the waggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingle against time, to land one more load yet while the ebb allowed it. They could hear the yeo-yeo! of the sail-hoisters at work on the big mainsail abaft, and wondered how on earth she was going to be got clear with so little sea-way and the wind dead in shore. But they were reassured by the ancient mariner with the striped shirt, whose mission in life seemed to be to stand about and enlighten land-minds about sea-facts. The master of yander craft ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... which was followed presently by the whistling of shot over their heads. Great rents were seen in the canvas, pieces of running gear fell to the deck, there was a crashing, rending sound, and a part of the rail, left standing abaft the mizzen shrouds, smashed into splinters and drove inboard under the ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... September, in the afternoon, the frigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that time recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried unto us in the Hinde so often as we did approach within hearing, 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land,' reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... fine vessel they had fairly taken possession of—but there was much to be done yet. There was, of course, a number of men in the ship, and moreover they were not a mile from a battery of ten guns. Mesty, who was foremost in everything, left four men abaft, and went forward on the forecastle, examined the cable, which was coir rope, and therefore easily divided, and then directed the two men forward to coil a hawser upon the fore-grating, the weight of which would make all safe in that quarter, and afterwards ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... said. "'I haven't spoke to Professor Grayling. He don't know Abe Silt from the jib-boom. Why should he? I am a foremast hand and he lives abaft. But he is a fine man. Everybody says so. We've had some ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Jack. "Split me to the chin like a cod! Stood I not abaft of you all day long, packed like a herring in a pickle! 'Twas a pretty kettle of fish in your Noah's ark to-day! 'Tis all along o' goodness gone stale from too much ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... I was relieved by Thomson, who at daylight apprized me that the maintopmast was sprung, and that the gale was increasing. Scarcely had I gone on deck, when a tremendous sea struck us a little "abaft the beam," carrying every thing before it, and washing overboard hencoops, cables, water-casks, and indeed every movable article on the deck. Thomson, almost by miracle, escaped being lost; but having, in common ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... and Martin's education, went forward. "Chips" plied his cunning hand outside his workshop door; "Sails" spread his work upon the deck abaft ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a pulley was a 'block'; a post was a 'stancheon'; to fall down was to 'heel over'; to climb up was to 'go aloft'; and to walk straight, and keep one's balance when the ship was pitching over the waves, was to 'get your sea legs on.' I found out, too, that everything behind you was 'abaft,' and everything ahead was 'forwards,' or for'ad as the sailors say; that a large rope was a 'hawser,' and that every other rope was a 'line'; to make anything temporarily secure was to 'belay' it; to make one ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... moon hung high in the heavens, and a flood of silver poured in a dazzling stream across the level surface of the sea. The quarter-deck, the white boats amidships, and all the brass work abaft the funnels reflected ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... somewhat slightly from a brig. It had two masts similar to the fore and mainmasts of a brig or ship, and, close abaft the mainmast, ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... wore two immense gold earrings. His dress consisted of short cotton drawers, that did not reach within two inches of his knee, leaving his thin cucumber shanks (on which the small bullet-like calf appeared to have been stuck before, through mistake, in place of abaft) naked to the shoe; a check shirt, and an enormously large Panama hat, made of a sort of cane, split small, and worn shovel-fashion. Notwithstanding, he made his bow by no means ungracefully, and offered his services in choice Spanish, but spoke English ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... night in the Channel. Stars and moon shone brightly, and a streak of light stretched away across the smooth water until it touched the sky Hue far out in the darkness. For a long time I stood on deck, abaft the funnel, smoking a cigar, and thinking deeply. I had turned for a moment, for no particular reason, when I thought I saw a shadow pass across the deck, then vanish. I saw it again; and then again. Stepping away from where I stood, hidden by a life-boat, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Abaft the funnel in these ships there is an upright oval tube rising some seventeen feet above the level of the main deck, plated with iron. The upper plate is pierced with several small horizontal slits, from which the tube has received the name of the "conning-house," ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... up for Oliver and me, and he himself had a state cabin abaft the forecastle. There were besides four open berths in which beds could be made up on both sides of the main cabin. The forecastle was large and airy, with room for the men to swing their hammocks, and it also held a brightly polished ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... as they lay at anchor, according to the plan previously developed. His idea, in this disposition of his force was, first, to secure the victory; and, then, to make the most of it, as circumstances might permit. A bower cable of each ship was immediately got out abaft, and bent forward. They continued carrying sail; and standing in for the enemy's fleet, in close line of battle. As all the officers of the squadron were totally unacquainted with Aboukir Bay, each ship kept sounding as ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... which ran eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and demolition parties were to land. The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Hallahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The word for the assault had not yet been given when both ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... me to report that there's a little trickle of water coming in between two plates about twelve feet abaft of the bow, sir. But Mr. Somers believes that, even without pumping, we could run forty ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... which crossed the room from wall to wall. Not much imagination was needed to realise the joy and ecstasy of losing yourself on that squab on a winter afternoon, with the range fire roaring in your face, and the curtain drawn abaft. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Minnes by coach to White Hall, and there attended the King and the Duke of York in the Duke of York's lodgings, with the rest of the Officers and many of the Commanders of the fleete, and some of our master shipwrights, to discourse the business of having the topmasts of ships made to lower abaft of the mainmast; a business I understand not, and so can give no good account; but I do see that by how much greater the Council, and the number of Counsellors is, the more confused the issue is of their councils; so that little ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... smoking in a sheltered corner, some walking up and down, two or three trying to play quoits, one looking at the poultry, one standing abaft the purser's cabin with hands in the pockets of his long ragged overcoat, watching the engines, and two more—carpenters—were discussing a big cedar log, about five feet in diameter, which was lashed on deck alongside ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... large, swinging motion of our bark bounding over the waves, with the gale abaft the beam, driving her forward till she fairly leaps from billow to billow, as if trying to rival her companions, the very flying-fish. Thwarted now by a sea, she strikes it with her handsome bows, sending into the light countless ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... deck, held from rolling down it only by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung, jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... wayed ancre, and bare further off into the sea, where they ancred in seuen fathom water, the ship being very leake, and so rotten abaft the maine mast, that a man with his nailes might scrape ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... be very much decayed, from the great quantity of water she had let in on her passage round Cape Horn, and ever since, in the tempestuous weather she had experienced on the coast of Patagonia; that her upper decks were rotten abaft; that she was extremely leaky; that her fore-beam was broken; and, in short, that, in his opinion, it was impossible to proceed with her to sea, unless she were thoroughly repaired. He therefore requested of the commodore, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... th' loot says to Andy Rohan,—he's a sergeant now, be hivins!—he says, 'Go out,' he says, 'an' fetch in Mike McGool, th' safe robber,' he says. 'Here's his description,' he says: 'eyelashes, eight killomethres long; eyes, blue an' assymethrical; jaw, bituminous; measuremint fr'm abaft th' left ear to base iv maxillory glan's, four hectograms; a r-red scar runnin' fr'm th' noomo-gasthric narve to th' sicond dorsal verteebree,' he says. 'Tis so. I have th' description at home in th' cash dhrawer. Well, Andy come in about six o'clock that night, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... standing at the end of the promenade deck, which extended twenty feet abaft the smoking-room, and took the whole beam; above the latter, as in most modern ships, there was the boat deck, to the after-part of which passengers had access. Standing below, it was easy to see and talk with any one who looked over ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... I'll surely have, the same as Egypt's Queen, And it will be the finest barge that ever you have seen; With polished mast of stout pitch pine, tipped with a ball of gold, And two green trees in two white tubs placed just abaft the hold. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... England, and his transference from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland. The latter vessel was in great confusion from the short notice at which she had sailed, and for the two first days the crew was employed in restoring order. The space abaft the mizenmast contained a dining-room about ten feet broad, and extending the whole width of the ship, a saloon, and two cabins. The Emperor occupied the cabin on the left; in which his camp-bedstead had been put up; that on the right ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of Tripolis unto that place which was two hundred and forty leagues thence; but we were chained three and three to an oar, and we rowed naked above the girdle, and the boatswain of the galley walked abaft the mast, and his mate afore the mast, and each of them a whip in their hands, and when their devilish choler rose they would strike the Christians for no cause, and they allowed us but half a pound of bread a man in a day, without any other ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... of saltness and freedom one feels on the deck of a good ship running through a lively sea. She put out her face to catch the fine salt spray on her cheek. Just then a little water broke over the side abaft the gangway, and the vessel rose and fell to the sweep of a big wave. The water ran along over the flush deck, as if hunting for the scuppers, and came swashing down to the lee where the party were standing, wetting the ladies' feet to the ankle. The men merely ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the glow of the lanterns. A glance up the hatchway showed the giant that the arms he had planned to seize were defended by ten firelocks, and that, behind the open doors of the partition which ran abaft the mizenmast, the remainder of the detachment stood to their arms. Even his dull intellect comprehended that the desperate project had failed, and that he had been betrayed. With the roar of despair which ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... possible occasions by Captain Simms, was offset by the pendulum of lead that made up her keel, and she could slide through the seas at twelve knots on her best point of sailing—reaching—the wind abaft her beam. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... come within seven leagues of the land. I purpose to stand off and on twenty-four hours; and if I don't see the commodore, or any of the squadron in that time, we will go for Juan Ferdinandez. To this I said, Sir, the ship is a perfect wreck; our mizen-mast gone, with our standing rigging afore and abaft, and all our people down; therefore I can't see what we can do in with the land. The captain's answer was, It does not signify, I am obliged and determin'd to go ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... perfect command of the situation, his pleasant speech and laugh, reassured them. When the yacht had passed North-east Point the course was changed to the north-east, and the sheets hauled in, so that the Skylark had the wind a little abaft the beam. This was her best point in sailing, and she soon exhibited her best speed. She heeled over so that her scuppers often went under. Bobtail kept her just far enough from the land to get the full force of the wind, but not far enough to be shaken up by ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... interest. The lugger broached to as had been anticipated, and she had scarcely shipped the strange boat's crew, when the galley pitching bows under was close in her wake. But it was too late. The lugger had no sooner paid off, so as to get the wind again abaft the beam, than she rapidly got way on her, and the wind continuing to freshen, in half an hour she was all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... plainly enough, just abaft the main-mast, and he seemed to have stopped there and to be looking over the bulwark—I merely guessed as much, for the sound had stopped, and of course ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... bowsprit. Another one must go. It was a clear case of holding back. I was near the mate, but sprang past several, threw the downhaul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while John and I got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot-ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off the boom. For some time we could do ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... forty feet long by about eight feet high; the sides and the ceiling were panelled, and painted in cream, light blue, and gold; and it was furnished with three tables—one on either side of the cabin, running fore-and-aft, with a good wide gangway between, and one athwartships and abaft the other two, with seats on the after side of it only, so that no one was called upon to turn his or her back upon those sitting at the other two tables. The tables were gleaming with snow-white napery, crystal, and silver; and were further adorned with handsome flowering ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... rail, faces from the shadow of the hurricane' deck; a line of faces and all looking down upon the little Island tug that had fallen alongside and drifted close under the liner's flank, a short way abaft her red port-light. A murmur of talk went with the faces, as it were a stream rippling by, and mingled with the splash of water pouring over-side from the pumps. It sounded cheerfully, and from the voices on ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... schnapps alone. Be did not sense what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard, gamming with the boat's crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to the yam sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a glance behind him. Near him stood a harmless Mary, middle-aged, fat, squat, asymmetrical, unlovely, a sucking child of two years astride her hip and taking nourishment. Surely no harm was to ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the second deck. In here are the prisoners of the Algonquin and the Gloucester. In the compartment below are perhaps two hundred other prisoners. Abaft this compartment is the strong room in which are the small arms and ammunition. Lieutenant Blum carries the keys. In there, too, ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... accident away, I saw the dim, provocative faces of girls in white jerseys and woolen caps peering from without through the dark double windows of the lounge. And I was glad when somebody suggested that it was time to take a turn. And outside, in the strong wind, abaft the four funnels of the Lusitania, a star seemed to be dancing capriciously around and about the masthead light. And it was difficult to believe that the masthead and its light, and ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... never see anything worse than this." I went on deck, obliged to hold firmly to the rails or some part of the rigging, for the wind was such as to have carried me overboard if I had attempted to stand alone on the quarter-deck. We were running with the wind dead abaft, under a reefed fore-topsail and a storm jib, everything else having been taken in the night before. The studding-sail boom of the foreyard, which had been carelessly left out, had been broken off ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... windows in the pilot-house unglazed, so as to serve as ventilators for the lamp. The top of the cabin overlaps the sides one-eighth of an inch all around. Cut a hatch in the cabin roof abaft the steam-drum; this is intended to oil the engine through, and try the steam-taps, without taking off the whole of the cabin. The cabin is kept in place by the funnel, which slips off just above the roof. The slit in the cabin top just back of the hatch ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... chart house and heard some one cry out, 'Torpedo.' I jumped at once to the bridge and on the way up saw the torpedo about eight hundred yards from the ship approaching from about one point abaft the starboard beam headed for a point about amidships, making a perfectly straight surface run (alternately broaching and submerging to approximately four or five feet), at an estimated speed of at least forty knots. No periscope was sighted. When ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... in succession after their leaders, (t, t), the immediate result was that both were now standing on the starboard tack,—to the eastward,—the British having a slight advantage of the wind, but well abaft the beam of the French (bb, bb). The result, had the wind held, would have been a trial of speed and weatherliness. "His Majesty's fleet," wrote Rodney, "by this manoeuvre had gained the wind, and would have forced the enemy to battle, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... shore-line,—a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over; with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Helwyse thought he would find some snug place and sit down. The cabin of the "Empire State" was built on the main deck, abaft the funnel, like a long, low house. Between the stern end of this house and the taffrail was a small space, thickly grown with camp-stools. Helwyse groped his way thither, got hold of a couple of the camp-stools, and arranged himself comfortably with his back against the cabin wall. The ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... was my watch on deck from eight to twelve. At breakfast the captain observed, 'It's wonderful how that smell hangs about the cabin.' About ten, the mate being on the poop, I stepped down on the main-deck for a moment. The carpenter's bench stood abaft the mainmast: I leaned against it sucking at my pipe, and the carpenter, a young chap, came to talk to me. He remarked, 'I think we have done very well, haven't we?' and then I perceived with annoyance the fool was trying to tilt the bench. ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... the hull ship from now on. You'll git yer pay jest the same as if ye done the cookin'. It's a big job but I guess ye're ekal to it. I'll agree that they won't nobody try to grab it. Ye may have a little help afore the mast but none abaft." ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... shop-window, on the sill of which he had laid a carefully rolled-up newspaper. By his feet was a neat leather brief-case, plumply filled with contents not discernible. There he stood (a sort of unsuccessful Cyrus Curtis), very diminutive, his gray hair rather long abaft his neck, his yellowish straw hat (with curly brim) tilted backward as though in perplexity, his timid and absorbed blue eyes poring over his memorandum-book which was full of pencilled notes. He had a slightly unkempt, brief beard and whiskers, his ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... abaft the galley, enriched his vocabulary and broadened his point of view. There is no leveler like a ship's fo'c'sle, no better school of philosophy than that of men upon their "beam ends." There were many such—Poles, Slovaks, Roumanians, an Armenian or two, refugees, adventurers from America, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the helm?"—"No," answered Hatchway; "I must confess you did not steer; but, howsomever, you cunned all the way, and so, as you could not see how the land lay, being blind of your larboard eye, we were fast ashore before you knew anything of the matter, Pipes, who stood abaft, can testify the truth of what I say."—"D— my limbs!" resumed the commodore, "I don't value what you or Pipes say a rope-yarn. You're a couple of mutinous—I'll say no more; but you shan't run your rig upon me, d— ye, I am the man that learnt ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... light undertaking for a foremast hand to trespass abaft the main mast in the Golden Bough. There was risk in it, risk of a beating, or worse. A man might lay aft in that ship to work, or in obedience to orders, but for no other reason. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... I determined not to be caught napping again, so I descended, and swung myself in on deck out of the main rigging, just as Mr. Treenail was mustering the crew at eight bells. When I landed on the quarterdeck, there he stood abaft the binnacle, with the light shining on his face, his glazed hat glancing, and the rain-drop sparkling at the brim of it. He had noticed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... heavy surge running. This proved fortunate, for the better testing of the efficacy of the system. In the first trial, a boat was lowered from the steamer by one man, with several persons on board, and alighted on the water, abaft of the larboard paddle-box, with the utmost safety and apparent comfort, the tackle being released momentarily by the weight of the boat's descent, the vessel at the time steaming at the rate of 12-1/2 knots per hour. It was afterwards hoisted up again by two men. At the second ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... to see that personage appear on the scene every moment; and my impression of his being one in authority was confirmed a moment later, when, from his giving some order or command, Mr Mackay left him hastily, and coming further aft took up a position nearer me, close to Adams, just abaft the binnacle. The oilskin man, however, remained on the weather side of the poop at the head of the ladder, whence he had a good look-out ahead, clear of all intervening obstacles, and from which post he proceeded to direct the steering of the ship by waving his arms this way ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... more like the torpor of lethargy than natural slumber, fell on me at once. I neither stirred nor heard any thing till near two o'clock, when a piercing shriek from the deck aroused me. The moon had set, but there was light enough to show the decks abaft filled with men, though I could distinguish neither their persons nor movements. Cries of appeal, and moans as of wounded or dying, constantly reached me. I roused myself as well and quickly as I could from the oppression of my deathlike sleep, and tried to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... where at least I should have a table at command. The advice was excellent; but to understand the choice, and what I gained, some outline of the internal disposition of the ship will first be necessary. In her very nose is Steerage No. 1, down two pair of stairs. A little abaft, another companion, labelled Steerage No. 2 and 3, gives admission to three galleries, two running forward towards Steerage No. 1, and the third aft towards the engines. The starboard forward gallery is the second cabin. Away ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lounging about the heel of the bowsprit on the forecastle, one or two were busy in the waist coiling cable; an officer of second or third caste a quiet, but decided character, to judge from his features, stood with folded arms just abaft the mizzen-mast, and a youthful figure, almost too young seemingly for so responsible a post, leaned idly against the monkey-rail, near the sage old tar who was at the helm. At first you might have supposed him a supercargo, an owner's son as passenger, or something of that ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... that I would tell him of times when he was a wee boy, and would come in from play with a dirty face; how his mother would order him to wash, and how he would painstakingly mop off just enough of his features to leave a dark ring abaft his cheeks, and above his eyes, ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... of a fore-and-after in it. But the germ was never evolved into a strong type fit for tacking; and no one before Fletcher ever seems to have thought it possible to lay a course at all unless the wind was somewhere abaft the beam. So England can fairly claim this one epoch-making nautical invention, which might be taken as the most convenient dividing-line between the sailing craft of ancient ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... by the ship-keeper, who at once led the way into the cabin. This proved to be an exceedingly snug and comfortable apartment, not very large, yet roomy enough, and very tastefully fitted up. Abaft this they found the captain's cabin, a room some twelve feet long, and the entire width of the ship, well lighted—there being both a skylight and stern-ports—and fitted up in a style which gave unmistakable evidence of the refined taste ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the priests, the pious crowd and all Who deprecating heard her doom. This done, Dian' by such a sacrifice appeas'd As Dian' best became; and sooth'd her ire, The angry aspect of the seas was smooth'd; And all the thousand vessels felt the breeze Abaft, and bore the long impatient crowd To Phrygia's shores. A spot there lies, whose seat Midst of created space, 'twixt earth, and sea, And heavenly regions, on the confines rests Of the three-sever'd world; whence ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Fr. Taillefer, the iron cleaver, and Henry II.'s yacht captain was Alan Trenchemer, the sea cleaver. He had a contemporary named Ventados, wind abaft. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... see you again," said Miss Allison, smiling sunshine up into his face, "and I've brought your cap. It's in one of those trunks now," she concluded, indicating the pile of luggage on the deck abaft the wheel. Hubbard and other admirers, who had besieged her on the steamer, were no longer in attendance. In their stead was a well-groomed, sedate, prosperous-looking man referred to as "my father" when Mr. Forrest was presented a moment later, and with ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... ago there was trouble at Fort o' God. "Out of this place we get betwixt the suns," said Gyng the Factor. "No help that falls abaft tomorrow could save us. Food dwindles, and ammunition's nearly gone, and they'll have the cold steel in our scalp-locks if we stay. We'll creep along the Devil's Causeway, then through the Red Horn Woods, and so across the plains to Rupert House. Whip in the dogs, Baptiste, and be ready ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nettings. At the same time several canoes, well manned, were making towards the ship's bow, having probably taken notice that no shot had been fired from this part: I therefore ordered some guns forward, to be well pointed and fired at these canoes; at the same time running out two guns abaft, and pointing them well at the canoes that were making the attack. Among the canoes that were coming toward the bow, there was one which appeared to have some chief on board, as it was by signals made from her that the others had been called together: ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... He sat "abaft the mainmast" at a table that was splotched already with abundant perspiration, and the acting engineer who stood in front of him shifted from foot to foot in attitudes expressive of increasing agony of mind. It grew obvious at last ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... took their meals; and from it opened the state-rooms of the first and second officers on the starboard-side, with one for the chief engineer on the port-side, and another for his two assistants next abaft it. ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... the palm o' my hand under the abaft oar, so as with each stroke to throw a part of my weight agin it, and our boat leapt for'a'd across the water, spring arter spring, like a tiger,—her length and twice her length afore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... respect. 15. While he was in England the British had given him very honorable positions in America in order to have his help if they had any trouble with the colonies. 16. Up and down the engines pounded. It is a good twenty-one knots now, and the upper deck abaft the chart-house began rapidly to fill. 17. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln regret that a previous engagement, will prevent them from accepting Mrs. Black's kind invitation for Thursday. 18. Mr. Rockwell will accept with pleasure the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... snaky Zone Demanding Sip of Lip in poisonous Tone While back Abaft I cower, for well I wot A Face like ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... his friend, Comanche, lowered one of the ship's boats on the starboard side, where it was sheltered from the sight of the enemy by the deck cabins just abaft the midships. In this boat were two rifles, heavily loaded and ready for action. What the boy's scheme was I did not foresee but it was to develop a ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... and cling, and command. The canoe obeyed even his thought, obeyed the turn of his smallest finger, obeyed, steadied itself, stood motionless for a second, then lifted its nose and plunged forward. The spray split in two, showering the gunwales, then roared abaft, and—they were in ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... hailed, at once recognised the necromancer. Without farther hesitation, he sprang across the street, and, collaring Albumazar, exclaimed, "Aha! old boy, is the wind in that corner? I thought we should grapple one day—now will I bring you up by the head, though all the devils in hell were blowing abaft the beam." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... issued was to let all the rest of the men know that if they continued quiet and offered not to meddle with any of their affairs, they should receive no hurt, but chiefly forbade any man to set a foot abaft the main mast, except they were called to the helm, upon pain of being immediately cut to pieces, keeping for that purpose one man at the steerage door, and one upon the quarter deck with drawn cutlasses in their hands. But there was no need for it, for the men were so terrified with the bloody ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... mainyard called then by sailors "Castor and Pollux," and now "St. Elmo's Fire"; yet they had but one of these at a time, and this is thought a sign of tempest. On September 9, in the afternoon, "the general," as they called him, Sir Humphrey, was sitting abaft with a book in his hand, and cried out more than once to those in the other vessel, "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land." And that same night about twelve o'clock, the frigate being ahead of the Golden Hind, the lights of the smaller vessel suddenly disappeared, and they knew that she ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of Africa was fading away in the distance as the two consorts with their natural history seekers rode over the dazzling silver sea. The lads were abaft the schooner's wheel, quite inseparable now, looking down through the eddying water at the fish, which seemed to have taken the swift vessel for some mighty companion of their own nature, in whose wake they could swim along in peace ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... had three compartments, the middle one being about four feet long, about one-fifth the length of the boat, which was twenty-two feet over the top. Two places were left for the rowers, before and abaft the middle compartment, while the steersman with his long oar thrust behind was to sit on the deck of the after-cabin, all the decks being flush with the gunwale, except that of the forward cabin the deck of which was carried back in a straighter line than the sheer of the boat and thus ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... dretful long, and dash up dretful high, bearin' us along with 'em every time, up and down, down and up, and part of the time our furniture and our stomachs would foller 'em and sway, too, and act. The wind would soar along, chasin' after us, but never quite ketchin' us; sometimes abaft, sometimes in the fo'castle, whatever ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Shetlands were on their starboard beam now, the dun Orkneys off the port bow. Sumburgh Head dropped away, and they headed due west.... The waves were laughing, the sun rose in a great explosion abaft of them.... The world was a very small place.... The universe so large.... At dawn the gulls chattered and whined, and screamed until they felt immense loneliness.... One seemed to be intruding in a world of white feathers and cold ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... only know, as I have said already, that Tom knocked Jack down with a marlinspike." "Here," said the counsel, "is a pretty witness, who does not know the plaintiff from the defendant!" Proceeding in his cross examination, the counsel asked where the affray happened? The answer was, "Abaft the binnacle." "Abaft the binnacle! where's that?" "Here," said the witness, "is a pretty counsel for you, that does not know abaft the binnacle!" The counsel, not yet abashed, asked, "And pray, my witty friend, how far were ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... wide between each two widths. Instead of reefing in a strong wind, a width is unlaced, so as to reduce the canvas vertically, not horizontally. Two blue spheres commonly adorn the sail. The mast is placed well abaft, and to tack or veer it is only necessary to reverse the sheet. When on a wind the long bow and nose serve as a head-sail. The high, square, piled-up stern, with its antique carving, and the sides with ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... felt his way into the deeper gloom he heard a movement close at hand, and stopped, leaning against the bulkhead, just abaft of the galley. He saw that the light from outside marked the cabin door as a great rectangle in which a moving form could easily be ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... smugglers had become alarmed. The longboat gun, which worked on a slide abaft all, was cleared, and the two little cohorns, or hand-swivel guns, which pointed over the sides, were trained and loaded. A man swarmed up the mainmast to look around. "The cutter's bearing up to close," he called out. "I see ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... speed, for even the seconds were precious now, the hatch was battened down, and a hole large enough to admit of the nozzle of the hose, bored just abaft the hatch-way. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... he sprang across the street, and, collaring Albumazar, exclaimed, "Aha! old boy, is the wind in that corner? I thought we should grapple one day—now will I bring you up by the head, though all the devils in hell were blowing abaft the beam." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... and through the intricate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of the twenty-sixth, the San Pelayo struck three times on the shoals; "but," says the chaplain, "inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for the sake of Christ and His blessed Mother, two heavy seas struck her abaft, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... struck the Baltimore in the starboard waist, just abaft one of the six-inch guns. It passed through the hammock nettings, exploded a couple of three-pounder shells, wounding six men, then across the deck, striking the cylinder of a gun, making it temporarily useless, then running around the shield it spent itself between ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... on, still better Q dodges had to be invented. One day an old Q tramp, loaded chock-a-block with light-weight lumber, quietly let herself be torpedoed, just giving the wheel a knowing touch to take the torpedo well abaft the engine-room, where it would do least harm. The "panic-party" then left the ship quite crewless so far as anybody outside of her could see. But the "sub" was taking no risks that day. She circled the Q, almost ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... western man, are you?" she continued, as Hollister took her by the arm and led her toward a cabin abaft the wheelhouse on the boat deck, a roomy lounging place unoccupied save by a fat woman taking a midday nap in one corner, her double chin sunk ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... all this 24 Hours, which in the P.M. gave us an Opportunity to carry out the 2 Bower Anchors, one on the Starboard Quarter, and the other right a Stern, got Blocks and Tackles upon the Cables, brought the falls in abaft and hove taught. By this time it was 5 o'Clock p.m.; the tide we observed now begun to rise, and the leak increased upon us, which obliged us to set the 3rd Pump to work, as we should have done the 4th also, but could not make it work. At 9 the Ship righted, and the Leak gain'd upon the Pumps considerably. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... forward, messed abaft the galley, enriched his vocabulary and broadened his point of view. There is no leveler like a ship's fo'c'sle, no better school of philosophy than that of men upon their "beam ends." There were many such—Poles, Slovaks, Roumanians, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... stays!" cried Polwhele, under orders from Charron. "Down helm! Helm's alee! Steady so. Let draw! Easy! easy! There she fills!" And after a few more rapid orders the handy little craft was dashing away, with the wind abaft the beam, and her head about two points north of east. "Uncommon quick in stays!" cried Polwhele, who had taken to the helm, and now stood there. "Wonder what ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... perfect night in the Channel. Stars and moon shone brightly, and a streak of light stretched away across the smooth water until it touched the sky Hue far out in the darkness. For a long time I stood on deck, abaft the funnel, smoking a cigar, and thinking deeply. I had turned for a moment, for no particular reason, when I thought I saw a shadow pass across the deck, then vanish. I saw it again; and then again. Stepping away from where I stood, hidden ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... then perceived that the ship was aground. Mr. Bell instantly sprang into the main-chains, and dropped the hand lead over. Only eighteen feet water was on the rock, the ship drawing nineteen and a half feet abaft. There were twelve and fourteen fathoms under the how and stern, consequently she hung completely in the centre. Sir Edward, whose judgment in moments of danger was always so correct and decisive as never to have occasion to ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the men were smoking in a sheltered corner, some walking up and down, two or three trying to play quoits, one looking at the poultry, one standing abaft the purser's cabin with hands in the pockets of his long ragged overcoat, watching the engines, and two more—carpenters—were discussing a big cedar log, about five feet in diameter, which was lashed on deck ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... discernible as it swam close to the bottom in a preoccupied manner, the boat was easily manoeuvred to be within almost touching distance whensoever the head emerged. In quick succession three out of the four bullets the magazine contained penetrated its body just abaft the pectoral fins. A brief flurry followed each shot, and then the shark, with passive fixity of purpose, resumed the mangling of the ray, which with extended, backward strained eyes, seemed to implore ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... jeoparded thy life in labour of war. Now all is clean forgotten and out of mind. Thou who hast multiplied words void of sense, Hast thou no faintest memory of the time When who but Aias came and rescued you Already locked within the toils,—all lost, The rout began: when close abaft the ships The torches flared, and o'er the bootless trench Hector was bounding high to board our fleet? Who stayed that onset? Was not Aias he? Whom thou deny'st to have once set foot by thine. Find ye no merit there? And once again When he met Hector ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... undertaking for a foremast hand to trespass abaft the main mast in the Golden Bough. There was risk in it, risk of a beating, or worse. A man might lay aft in that ship to work, or in obedience to orders, but for no other ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... was done; and now broad awake, I determined not to be caught napping again, so I descended, and swung myself in on deck out of the main rigging, just as Mr. Treenail was mustering the crew at eight bells. When I landed on the quarterdeck, there he stood abaft the binnacle, with the light shining on his face, his glazed hat glancing, and the rain-drop sparkling at the brim of it. He had noticed me the moment ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... anticipated, and she had scarcely shipped the strange boat's crew, when the galley pitching bows under was close in her wake. But it was too late. The lugger had no sooner paid off, so as to get the wind again abaft the beam, than she rapidly got way on her, and the wind continuing to freshen, in half an hour she was all but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... rear; hind, hinder, hindmost, hindermost^; postern, posterior; dorsal, after; caudal, lumbar; mizzen, tergal^. Adv. behind; in the rear, in the background; behind one's back; at the heels of, at the tail of, at the back of; back to back. after, aft, abaft, astern, sternmost^, aback, rearward. Phr. ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio [It]; the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rail above the beach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which the waggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingle against time, to land one more load yet while the ebb allowed it. They could hear the yeo-yeo! of the sail-hoisters at work on the big mainsail abaft, and wondered how on earth she was going to be got clear with so little sea-way and the wind dead in shore. But they were reassured by the ancient mariner with the striped shirt, whose mission in life seemed to be to stand ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... honour, or the fear of her contempt. Be it what it may, I was helped by Heaven that night to be a man, and with a mighty effort to shake off the spell that was on me. So I rose to my feet and walked abaft. Many a time I paced to and fro cooling my fevered brow ere I ventured to return. But when at last I did, I was safe. She stood there motionless, radiant with the first beams of the royal sun as he leapt ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... six bells in the middle watch, or three o'clock in the morning; the heavens were clear and unclouded; the stars shone with great brilliancy; there was a pleasant breeze from the south-east, and the ship was gliding quietly along, with the wind abaft the beam, at the rate of five or six knots. Suddenly Mr. Fairfield, whose nose was not remarkable for size, but might with propriety be classed among the SNUBS, ceased to play upon it its accustomed tune in the night watches, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Comanche, lowered one of the ship's boats on the starboard side, where it was sheltered from the sight of the enemy by the deck cabins just abaft the midships. In this boat were two rifles, heavily loaded and ready for action. What the boy's scheme was I did not foresee but it was to develop a short ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... that respect. 15. While he was in England the British had given him very honorable positions in America in order to have his help if they had any trouble with the colonies. 16. Up and down the engines pounded. It is a good twenty-one knots now, and the upper deck abaft the chart-house began rapidly to fill. 17. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln regret that a previous engagement, will prevent them from accepting Mrs. Black's kind invitation for Thursday. 18. Mr. Rockwell will ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... sea-breeze, the Sampson (sixty-four) ran on board of us. She came with such force that she, by the shock, carried away her fore-mast, bowsprit, main-top mast and figure-head. She fortunately struck us abaft the main channels; had she done so amidships, it would have meant the destruction of both ships and of about a thousand lives. Her larboard bumpkin dismounted the eighteen-pounder in the foremost lieutenant's ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the ice, in all about three-quarters of a mile, quite close to the shore, at length struck the ground forcibly several times in the space of a hundred yards, and being then brought up by it remained immovable, the depth of water under her keel abaft being sixteen feet, or about a foot less than she drew. The Fury continuing to drive was now irresistibly carried past us, and we escaped, only by a few feet, the damage invariably occasioned by ships coming in contact under such circumstances. ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the accommodation of these people. The Tonquin was a small ship; its forecastle was destined for the crew performing duty before the mast. The room allotted for the accommodation of the twenty men destined for the establishment, was abaft the forecastle; a bulk-head had been let across, and a door led from the forecastle into a dark, unventilated, unwholesome place, where they were all heaped together, without means of locomotion, and consequently deprived of that exercise of the body so necessary to health. Add to ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... canvas, spread to the limit on all possible occasions by Captain Simms, was offset by the pendulum of lead that made up her keel, and she could slide through the seas at twelve knots on her best point of sailing—reaching—the wind abaft her beam. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... the ship, and some forty feet long by about eight feet high; the sides and the ceiling were panelled, and painted in cream, light blue, and gold; and it was furnished with three tables—one on either side of the cabin, running fore-and-aft, with a good wide gangway between, and one athwartships and abaft the other two, with seats on the after side of it only, so that no one was called upon to turn his or her back upon those sitting at the other two tables. The tables were gleaming with snow-white napery, crystal, and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... time the aeroplane was moving slowly in circles over the vessel, being still careful to keep on the windward side for fear of sparks. When Smith's instructions had been carried out, he selected a landing place just abaft the mizzen and, warping his planes alternately, brought the aeroplane gently to the deck. Fortunately the bulwarks were sufficiently low not to catch the planes ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... understanding this, greatly approved of it, and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was quite abaft. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... about that, shortly after noon on a scorching summer day, we cast off our moorings and, leaving quarrel-torn Fiume abaft, turned the nose of the Sirio sou' by sou'-west, down the coast of Dalmatia. The sun-kissed waters of the Bay of Quarnero looked for all the world like a vast azure carpet strewn with a million sparkling diamonds; on our starboard quarter ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... had defended himself with the monkey tail of his gun. Whatever the cause, although there was fighting to prevent the "Chesapeake" from being lashed to the "Shannon", no combined resistance was offered abaft the mainmast. There the marines made a stand, but were overpowered and driven forward. The negro bugler of the ship, who should have echoed Lawrence's summons, was too frightened to sound a note, and the voices of the aids, who shouted the message to the gun deck, were imperfectly heard; but, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to regret doing so; for, to her huge delight, she found herself moved into a charming deck-cabin on the starboard side of the vessel, some little way abaft the engine-room. It was evidently an officer's cabin, for there, over the head of the bed, was the picture of a young lady he adored, and also some neatly fitted shelves of books, a rack of telescopes, and ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... (for the carriages had been previously taken on board and fixed at Woolwich) brought the ship bodily down in the water four inches, drawing, when on board, 15 feet 2 inches forward, and 15 feet 6 inches abaft. We also received, on the day after, as much powder as could be put in the magazines. On Monday, the 9th, we left our moorings, and proceeded down the Thames, anchoring for the night. On the following day we arrived in the Downs, where we remained for about six-and-forty hours, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the scorching heat one afternoon when the flood tide began to run, they hauled the hulk and tug abaft the wreck's engine-room and made the great ropes fast. If Lister's calculations were accurate, the pump had thrown out enough water, and the buoyancy of the other craft would lift the wreck's stern. If not—but he refused to think ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... periscope, with the result that a small portion of the view was greatly magnified upon the object card. It revealed a tramp of about nine hundred tons. She had a single funnel painted black, with two broad red bands; two stumpy masts, with derricks, and a lofty bridge and chart-house abaft the funnel. She was wall-sided. Her rusty hull was originally painted black. Here and there were squares of red lead, showing that her crew had been engaged in trying to smarten her up before she reached port. Aft, frayed and dirty with the smoke ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... and appointments as any steamer that ever floated. She was a side-wheel boat, sixty feet in length, by twelve feet beam. Forward there were a regular wheel-house, a small kitchen, and other rooms usually found in a steamer. Abaft the wheels there were a saloon and two staterooms. Of course all these apartments, as well as the cabin below, were very contracted in their dimensions; but they were fitted up in ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... the Water; the Beams or Bamboes here are fasten'd traverse-wise to the Outlayers on each side, and touch not the Water like Boats, but 1, 3 or 4 Foot above the Water, and serve for the Barge Men to sit and Row and paddle on; the inside of the Vessel, except only just afore and abaft, being taken up with the apartments for the Passengers. There run a-cross the Outlayers two tire of Beams for the Padlers to sit on, on each side the Vessel. The lower tire of these Beams is not above a Foot from the Water: so that upon any the least ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Scandinavia a custom, alluded to in the sagas, of burying the viking in his ship, drawn up on land, and raising a barrow over it, is exemplified by the ship-burials discovered in Norway. The ship found in the Gokstad mound was 78 ft. long, and had a mast and sixteen pairs of oars. In a chamber abaft the mast the viking had been laid, with his weapons, and together with him were [v.03 p.0442] buried twelve horses, six dogs and a peacock. An interesting example of the great timber-chambered barrow is that at Jelling in Jutland, known as the barrow of Thyre Danebod, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... shipmate," he sighed, "as you will. Pride and bilge-water go well together!" which said he brought me to a dark unlovely hole abaft the mizzen. "'Tis none too clean, Martin," says he, casting the light round the dingy place, "but that shall be remedied and Godby shall bring ye bedding and the like, so although 'tis plaguy dark and wi' rats a-plenty still, despite the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines waited on the false deck just abaft of the bridge. Captain Halahan, who commanded the blue-jackets, was amidships. The gangways were lowered, and they scraped and rebounded upon the high parapet of the mole as the Vindictive ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... roomy ship inside, with a raised poop standing some three feet higher than the deck, and a small forward house, for the men's bunks and the galley, just abaft the foremast. There was one boat on the house, and another and larger one, in beds on deck, on either hand of it. She had been painted white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops of the scuttle-butt, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time I had paid little heed, and I thought I began to get the clue. I looked at my watch and found it half-past twelve. Every one, save those on duty, was abed, and the steamer ploughed steadily through the trough, a column of smoke swept abaft by the wind and black against the starlight. I sought my cabin, poured myself out a stiff glass of grog, and sat ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... sailors displayed the feelings of savages. One old man-of-war's man, who had served in many a well-fought action, declared that he would kill every Turkish prisoner taken in the prizes at Volo; and he attempted one night to break into the cabin abaft the larboard paddle-box, in which some of these Turks were confined. Armed with a large knife, he proclaimed that he was determined to kill the prisoners, and he called on the other sailors to assist him. He argued, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and demolition parties were to land. The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Hallahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The word for the assault had not yet been given ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... growled the captain; "there's three pair of eyes here as good as yourn, and I hope with more sense abaft 'em." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the beginning of it—all the romance and adventure was ahead of us. Before noon I was not sorry to be aboard of the bigger craft and looked with equanimity upon my own bonny sloop stowed amidships. The wind had wheeled again and coming abaft, the bark shot on into the southward, trying to outrun the gale. Had I not been picked up as I was I might have ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... reflection rested, when I was exactly in a proper line abaft the steamer, I was enabled to steer altogether by the shadowy image, although I could not see the object itself to which I was directing the bow of my boat. The captain and crew of the steamer were very much astonished with ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... stern-gun ports," said the British sea-captain. "So keep the ship abaft, and on th' port quarter, where we can let loose our bow-guns and ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... mast, which listed forward; her lugsail was stretched upon dozens of bamboo yards; she drew hardly any water. Two enormous red eyes were painted upon either side of her high, blunt bow, while just abaft the waist projected an enormous oar, or sweep, full forty feet in length—longer, in fact, than the vessel herself. It acted partly as a ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... board), who belonged on the forecastle, sprang out upon the bowsprit. Another one must go. It was a clear case of holding back. I was near the mate, but sprang past several, threw the downhaul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while John and I got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot-ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... cabin, where at least I should have a table at command. The advice was excellent; but to understand the choice, and what I gained, some outline of the internal disposition of the ship will first be necessary. In her very nose is Steerage No. 1, down two pair of stairs. A little abaft, another companion, labelled Steerage No. 2 and 3, gives admission to three galleries, two running forward towards Steerage No. 1, and the third aft towards the engines. The starboard forward gallery is the second cabin. Away abaft the engines and below the officers' cabins, to complete ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accompaniment of cracks and groans, and some of the men who had been in the berths hurried on deck. The pressure eased a little later in the day, when the ice on the port side broke away from the ship to just abaft the main rigging. The 'Endurance' was still held aft and at the rudder, and a large mass of ice could be seen adhering to the port bow, rising to within three feet of the surface. I wondered if this ice had got its grip by ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... a cabin twelve feet long, whose broad divans could be changed into berths for the four principal personages on board of her. Abaft this apartment was a standing-room with seating accommodations for eight persons, or twelve with a little crowding, with luxurious cushions and an ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... answered Hatchway; "I must confess you did not steer; but, howsomever, you cunned all the way, and so, as you could not see how the land lay, being blind of your larboard eye, we were fast ashore before you knew anything of the matter, Pipes, who stood abaft, can testify the truth of what I say."—"D— my limbs!" resumed the commodore, "I don't value what you or Pipes say a rope-yarn. You're a couple of mutinous—I'll say no more; but you shan't run your rig upon me, d— ye, I am the man that learnt you, Jack Hatchway, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... on board of the Bellevite. In this apartment the officers next in rank below the commander took their meals; and from it opened the state-rooms of the first and second officers on the starboard-side, with one for the chief engineer on the port-side, and another for his two assistants next abaft it. ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... a second sailed into Plymouth with the news that the other two had sunk in an Atlantic storm on the 8th or 9th of that month. The last thing known of the gallant admiral before his ship went down was that 'sitting abaft with a book in his hand,' he had called out 'Be of good heart, my friends! We are as near to heaven by ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Africa was fading away in the distance as the two consorts with their natural history seekers rode over the dazzling silver sea. The lads were abaft the schooner's wheel, quite inseparable now, looking down through the eddying water at the fish, which seemed to have taken the swift vessel for some mighty companion of their own nature, in whose wake they could swim along in peace without ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... like the torpor of lethargy than natural slumber, fell on me at once. I neither stirred nor heard any thing till near two o'clock, when a piercing shriek from the deck aroused me. The moon had set, but there was light enough to show the decks abaft filled with men, though I could distinguish neither their persons nor movements. Cries of appeal, and moans as of wounded or dying, constantly reached me. I roused myself as well and quickly as I could from the oppression of my deathlike sleep, and tried to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... twice when they stood to windward the smell of the slaves being wafted abaft and reaching the fine gilded poop where the Infanta and her attendants travelled, the helmsmen were ordered to put about, and for long weary hours the slaves would hold the galley in position, backing her up gently against the wind so as not ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... approached it from the starboard and slightly abaft the beam. From that angle, in particular, it ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to steer the true course, guiding the Good Hope among the formidable billows. To their empty terrors, as to their dishonourable threats, between drink and dignity he scorned to make reply. The malcontents drew together a little abaft the mast, and it was plain they were like barnyard cocks, "crowing for courage." Presently they would be fit for any extremity of injustice or ingratitude. Dick began to mount by the ladder, eager to interpose; but one of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... completed the trench within ten or twelve feet of the stern, the ship suddenly disengaged herself from the ice, to which she had before been firmly adhering on the larboard side, and rose in the water about ten inches abaft, and nearly eighteen inches forward, with a considerable surge. This circumstance it was not difficult to explain. In the course of the winter, the strong eddy-winds about the ships had formed round them a drift of snow seven or ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... has been largely used for deck covering, instead of wood as it is much lighter. On the boat deck which extends over the greater part of the centre of the ship are located several of the beautiful en suite cabins. Abaft these at the forward end are the grand Entrance Hall, the Library, the Music-Room and the Lounging-Room and Smoking-Room for the first ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... of square saloon-tables and were laying the cloth for the mid-day meal. Charlotte opened her door guardedly, as one fearing to face prying eyes, and finding the coast clear, slipped out to rejoin her aunt under the awning abaft the paddle-box. Miss Gilman shut her finger into the magazine to keep her place and looked ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Molly seems to be breaking up fast; as well as I can see, she has broke in two just abaft the fore-chains, and cannot hold together in any shape ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... almost like the nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. The chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft the middle. The passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... sewn together, but laced vertically, leaving a decorative lacing six inches wide between each two widths. Instead of reefing in a strong wind, a width is unlaced, so as to reduce the canvas vertically, not horizontally. Two blue spheres commonly adorn the sail. The mast is placed well abaft, and to tack or veer it is only necessary to reverse the sheet. When on a wind the long bow and nose serve as a head-sail. The high, square, piled-up stern, with its antique carving, and the sides ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... let my wings hang. Early next morning I went to a private place to have some practice. I got up on a pretty high rock, and got a good start, and went swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three hundred yards off; but I couldn't seem to calculate for the wind, which was about two points abaft my beam. I could see I was going considerable to looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead strong on the port one, but it wouldn't answer; I could see I was going to broach to, so I slowed down on ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... fore-top-gallant-mast fidded abaft, a double martingale, and a standing gaft;" observed the methodical and technical mariner, as another would have recounted the peculiarities of complexion, or of feature, in some individual who was the subject of a personal description. "The rogue has no need of showing his brazen-faced ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... showers, and the squalls which followed some time afterwards, changed the wind, which turned to the west. They had the wind thus abaft, and he sailed thus during five hours with the foresail only, having always the troubled sea, and made at once two leagues and a half towards the northeast. He had lowered the main topmast lest a ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... fitted abaft the engine and the pilot's seat is aft of the observer. The observer, who is also the wireless operator, has the wireless apparatus fitted about his seat. This consists of a receiver and transmitter fitted ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... petararoes or swivel-pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffs and booms were in their places, and the sails furled upon them. The figuration of the main hatch showed a small square, and there was a companion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmast. There was no trace of a boat. She had a flush or level deck from the well in the bows to a fathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was then broken by a short poop-deck, which went in a great spring ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... being inducted into a sumptuous barrel [Footnote: The cask in question was bought in order to be rigged up eventually into a crow's-nest, as soon as we should again find ourselves among the ice.] which I have had fitted up for her reception abaft the binnacle. A spacious meadow of sweet-scented hay has been laid down in a neighbouring corner for her further accommodation; and the Doctor is tuning up his flageolet, in order to complete the bucolic character of the scene. The only personage amongst us at all disconcerted by these ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the end of the promenade deck, which extended twenty feet abaft the smoking-room, and took the whole beam; above the latter, as in most modern ships, there was the boat deck, to the after-part of which passengers had access. Standing below, it was easy to see and talk with any one who looked over ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Not to dwell on the unexpected, but not unimportant facts of the flames having been mercifully prevented, for eleven hours, from either communicating with the magazine forward, or the great spirit room abaft, or even coming into contact with the tiller ropes—any of which circumstances would evidently have been fatal,—I would remark that, until the Cambria hove in sight, we had not discovered any vessel whatever for several days previous; nor did we ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... off Start Point in Devonshire, was hit abaft the engine room by a German torpedo on the morning of April 2, 1915, and though she went down almost immediately, her crew was able to get off in small boats and were picked ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... chase of May, 1780. Chance permitted a different issue on this occasion. The wind at the moment of first collision, shortly before 8 A.M., was east, and so continued till five minutes past nine, when it shifted suddenly to the southeastward, ahead for the French, abaft for the British. The former, being already close to the wind, could keep their sails full only by bearing away, which broke up their line ahead, the order of battle as ranged for mutual support; while the British being able to luff could stand into the enemy's line. Rodney's flag-ship, the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes. I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker. His face was twisted in frenzy, and he growled and barked like a dog, occasionally breaking into a horrible, rat-like squeal. But he didn't bite me; he simply squeezed me in both arms, and in that effort lost his hold on the back-rope and fell, taking me with him. We struck ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... harbor. They lay still, one of them holding the boat up to the waves with the oars, while the other struggled with something—a bit of sail as big as a sack. Yes, yes, of course! Now if they took in the oars and left themselves at the mercy of the weather—with wind and waves abaft and beam!—they would fill with water ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... said Lewis, "let's have a true-blue nautical word of command—hoist yer main tops'l sky-scrapers abaft the cleat o' the spanker boom, heave the main deck overboard and let go the ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... arrived in port with a cargo of wine, the prerogative of prise was enforced, whereby the King was entitled to "a tun before and one abaft the mast," or ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... was excited, and he went softly down the ladder to see what the sound really was. But that was not so easy, for it proved to be below decks; but he saw a light glimmering through a small scuttle abaft the mate's cabin, and the sounds were in the neighborhood of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... stating, that he had reason to apprehend the bottom of the Anna to be very much decayed, from the great quantity of water she had let in on her passage round Cape Horn, and ever since, in the tempestuous weather she had experienced on the coast of Patagonia; that her upper decks were rotten abaft; that she was extremely leaky; that her fore-beam was broken; and, in short, that, in his opinion, it was impossible to proceed with her to sea, unless she were thoroughly repaired. He therefore requested of the commodore, that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... isn't it, Don?" said Uncle. Don laughed. The uncle laughed, though not so cheerily as Don, and even Jack chuckled softly to himself to think that "all was well again abaft." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... on hard terms; I wish that I had never seen land; I wish I were a-chasing sperms Abaft the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... ninth of September, in the afternoon, the frigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that time recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto us in the 'Hinde' so often as we did approach within hearing, 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land,' reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... making it break in a far more dangerous way than it had done on the previous day. I found, when I came on deck after my watch below, all hands looking out at an object which had just been discovered a little abaft the lee-bow. Some said it was a dead whale; one or two declared that it was a rock; but the officers, after examining it with their glasses, pronounced it to be a vessel bottom uppermost! The question was, whether the wreck was deserted, or whether any people still ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... his way into the deeper gloom he heard a movement close at hand, and stopped, leaning against the bulkhead, just abaft of the galley. He saw that the light from outside marked the cabin door as a great rectangle in which a moving form could easily be seen ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... object on the deck?" asked "Stump," pointing to a long brass cylinder lying abaft the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... drawl with which he uttered his sentences, and every remark he made was preceded by a single long-drawn hacking cough, which might have been caused by the force of habit or the incipient workings of disease. He was seated in the galley, abaft the foremast of the brig, and when the passenger showed himself at the door of the galley, he had been engaged in writing in a square record-book, which he closed the instant the visitor darkened the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... puffing sound; and if you stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine that you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing from her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft her wheels. The smell of sulphur is strong, but not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the water like a gull with its wings spread. In the low light Madeira was nothing but a blot on the sky-line. The crew were forward, with the solitary exception of the man steering the vessel from his elevated position on the bridge; and sitting as they were, abaft the deck-cabin, the two were utterly alone between the great silence of the stars and of the sea. She looked into his face, and it was tender towards her—that night was made for lovers—and tears of happiness stood in her eyes. She took his ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... could do them little harm. By shooting a piece from our forecastle, we set fire to a mat at the beak head of the enemy, which kindled more and more, communicating from the mat to the boltsprit, and thence to the top-sail-yard; by which fire the Portuguese abaft were much alarmed, and began to make show of a parley: But their officers encouraged them, alleging that the fire could be easily extinguished, on which they again stood stiffly to their defence; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... day they wayed ancre, and bare further off into the sea, where they ancred in seuen fathom water, the ship being very leake, and so rotten abaft the maine mast, that a man with his nailes might ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... space abaft the cabin, was eight feet long, with cushioned seats on three sides. Forward of the cabin there was a "stow-hold," four feet long, in which the fuel and furnaces used for cooking were kept. Under the cabin ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... coming on of twilight, As we stood abaft the skylight, Scampering round to please the baby, (Old Bill Benson held him, maybe,) When the youngster stretched his fingers Towards the spot where sunset lingers, And with strong and sudden motion Leaped into the weltering ocean! ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... it heartily, and the grimy hands cried 'Bravo, missus!' and Liosha, turning and catching sight of me just a bit abaft the funnel beneath the bridge, for the first time, swung up the deck towards me, as ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 40 feet a bright white light so constructed as to show an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 20 points of the compass, so fixed as to throw the light 10 points on each side of the vessel—namely, from right ahead to 2 points abaft the beam on either side—and of such a character as to be visible at a distance ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... is sad talk for the day before Christmas! Come away from books and trouble, out on deck, where there is a breeze. The mighty Norseman is ready to cut my hair, and is waiting abaft ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door in its midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being ceaselessly worked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung flat into the furnace one after another. These did more ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... obliged to hold firmly to the rails or some part of the rigging, for the wind was such as to have carried me overboard if I had attempted to stand alone on the quarter-deck. We were running with the wind dead abaft, under a reefed fore-topsail and a storm jib, everything else having been taken in the night before. The studding-sail boom of the foreyard, which had been carelessly left out, had been broken off short in the earing, from the pressure of the wind on the bare spar. The roaring ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... was going t' unharness his steeds, When the ferry-boat brasking her sides 'gainst the weeds, Came in as good time as good time could be, To give us a cast o'er an arm of the sea; And bestowing our horses before and abaft, O'er god Neptune's wide cod-piece gave us a waft; Where scurvily landing at foot of the fort, Within very few paces we entered the port, Where another King's Head invited me down, For indeed I have ever ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... about wot he called Royson's own interests, but I knew better'n that. It don't suit his book for our dandy second mate to be sparkin' the owner's granddaughter abaft the lantern. You take my tip, Tagg, that other woman, Mrs. Haxton, is as mean as, sin, an' she blew the gaff to-night when she dropped on ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... "Abaft there!" hurriedly and loudly shouted the man on the look-out at the bows, "there's a tree lying across the river, and we're just ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... joints. Each boat had three compartments, the middle one being about four feet long, about one-fifth the length of the boat, which was twenty-two feet over the top. Two places were left for the rowers, before and abaft the middle compartment, while the steersman with his long oar thrust behind was to sit on the deck of the after-cabin, all the decks being flush with the gunwale, except that of the forward cabin the deck of which was carried ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... to second Captain Sawkins. She ran close in, "under Peralta's side," and poured in a blasting full volley through her after gun-ports. A scrap of blazing wad fell among the red-clay powder jars in the after magazine. Before she could fire a shot in answer, she blew up abaft. Ringrose from the canoa "saw his men blown up, that were abaft the mast, some of them falling on the deck, and others into the sea." But even this disaster did not daunt old Peralta. Like a gallant sea-captain, he slung a bowline round his waist, and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the two detained Greek vessels. We experienced very bad weather, but had the satisfaction to learn that the bombs and gunboats had arrived safe at Syracuse, the 15th instant, without accident. Each of the Tripoline gunboats which we have captured has two brass howitzers abaft, and a handsome copper gun in the bow, which carries a twenty-nine pound shot, is eleven and a half feet long, and weighs ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... palm o' my hand under the abaft oar, so as with each stroke to throw a part of my weight agin it, and our boat leapt for'a'd across the water, spring arter spring, like a tiger,—her length and twice her length afore the others in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... of them without moving from the cock-pit. Beginning forward, there was the chain locker, which contained all the extra cordage the schooner was likely to need during a cruise, and also served as a place of storage for the ground tackle when not in use. Abaft of that was a forecastle, with bunks for two hands, and then came a small but convenient galley, with cupboards and dishes in plenty, from which a door gave entrance into a neatly furnished cabin. It was all there, too, no space being taken up with state-rooms. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
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