"Hawser" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... edge with the effort to tie up and get away first. Up in the pilot-house the great man of the wheel took shrewd advantage of every eddy and back current; out on the guards the humblest roustabout stood ready for a life-risking leap to get the hawser to the dock at the earliest instant. All the operations of the boat had been reduced to an exact science, so that when the crack packets were pitted against each other in a long race, their maneuvers would ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the deeply-laden barge, "SIMEON WINTHROP," at anchor in the outer harbor of Provincetown, Mass. It is ten o'clock at night. Dense fog shrouds the barge on all sides, and she floats motionless on a calm. A lantern set up on an immense coil of thick hawser sheds a dull, filtering light on objects near it—the heavy steel bits for making fast the tow lines, etc. In the rear is the cabin, its misty windows glowing wanly with the light of a lamp inside. The chimney of the cabin stove rises a ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... deeply into the earth. Thus the boats lay close beside a short dock that was called a landing stage. As the current of the Bushkill was always pretty strong there must be more or less of a strain on that hawser; but since it was comparatively new, the boys felt that there could not be the slightest danger of its breaking, unless some outside influence were brought to bear on it, such as ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... begs of his former mistresses," haunted the Baroness all night. Like sick men given over by the physicians, who have recourse to quacks, like men who have fallen into the lowest Dantesque circle of despair, or drowning creatures who mistake a floating stick for a hawser, she ended by believing in the baseness of which the mere idea had horrified her; and it occurred to her that she might apply for help to one of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as we raised the pole towards the perpendicular, with two men. I was with four men in the boat. We dropped an anchor out a good bit, then tied a cord to the pole, took a turn round the sternmost thwart with it, and pulled on the anchor line. As the great, big, wet hawser came in it soaked you to the skin: I was the sternest (used, by way of variety, for sternmost) of the lot, and had to coil it—a work which involved, from its being so stiff and your being busy pulling with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as we got the anchor on board; and by the time O.P. and I had done sluicing the hawser clean of the mud it brought up, we were working down the Hamoaze with a light and baffling wind, but carrying a strong tide under us. Evening fell with a warm yellow haze: the banks slipping past us grew dim and dimmer: here and there a light shone among the long-shore ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flotilla was sunk or scattered, and a pontoon or raft, carrying sixty men of the Guards, pushed out from the British bank. A strong French picket held the other shore; but, bewildered and ill led, they made no opposition. A hawser was dragged across the stream, and pontoons, each carrying fifteen men, were in quick succession pulled across. When about a thousand men had in this way reached the French bank, some French battalions made their appearance. Colonel Stopford, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... swim when about seven years old, and was trained as a sailor on board the Conway training-ship in the Mersey, where he saved the life of a fellow seaman. In 1870 he dived under his ship in the Suez Canal and cleared a foul hawser; and, on April 23, 1873, when serving on board the Cunard steamer Russia, he jumped overboard to save the life of a hand who had fallen from aloft, but failed, and it was an hour before he was picked up almost exhausted. For this he received a gold and other medals. He became captain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a ropemaker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... interest in our arrival was his hope that we might spare him quinine. I think we gave away as many grains of quinine as we received logs of wood. Empty-handed we would turn from the wood post and steam a mile or so farther up the river, where we would run into a bank, and a boy with a steel hawser would leap overboard and tie up the boat to the roots of a tree. Then all the boys would disappear into the jungle and attack the primeval forest. Each was supplied with a machete and was expected to furnish a bras of wood. A bras is a number of sticks about as long and as thick as your arm, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... world, I knew quite well what I was "up against," and deliberately decided that in the conduct of my fight I would use such strategy as I believed proper to outwit so strong and so unscrupulous an adversary. One can hang a dog as well with a cord as with a hawser, and in proving my assertions I am quite willing that the insurance companies should believe each play is my best card. I decline, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... round and angular, polished or rough, cracked all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus sabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallised like a hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf: look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... communicating with a stranded vessel is by firing rockets with a line attached to them, by which means a hawser may be drawn from the ship and fastened to the shore. Mortars are likewise used for the same purpose; the latter plan having been invented by Sergeant Bell, and first tried in 1792. Bell's plan was very greatly improved by Captain Manby; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... arrive till about one o'clock, by which time the gale had so increased, and the swells were so high and terrific, that it was impossible to make any use of it. A mortar was also brought for the purpose of firing a line over the vessel, to stretch a hawser between it and the shore. The mortar was stationed on the lee of a hillock, about a hundred and fifty rods from the wreck, that the powder might be kept dry. It was fired five times, but failed to carry a line more than half the necessary distance. Just before ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... very small light, and it was difficult to see above a yard or so ahead or around. I turned my face aft, and crawled over the casks and came to under the main-hatch, where lay coils of hawser, buckets, blocks, and the like, but there was no pinnace, though here she had been stowed, as a sailor would have promptly seen. A little way beyond, under the great cabin, was the powder-magazine, a small bulkheaded compartment ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Cap'n Bill, in reply. "We're anchored here and can't move till you find a way to cut the hawser." ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in the Philadelphia's watch by the answer to their hail that she had lost her anchors in a gale and would like to run a line to the war-ship and to ride by it through the night. So completely were the Tripolitans deceived that they lowered a boat and sent it with a hawser, while at the same time some of the Intrepid's crew leisurely ran a fast to the frigate's fore-chains. As these returned they met the enemy's boat, took its rope, and passed it into their own vessel. Slowly, but firmly, it was hauled upon by the men on board, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... is the way, Jack, the only true way. Tapering off is not what it is cracked up to be. It is very hazardous; for it keeps up excitement, and the taste of the liquor hangs about the palate. Don't you remember Ben Hawser, one of the best maintopmen of the Alert—he who saved the first Luff from drowning at Port Mahon, when he fell ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... my companions, left behind on the shore of Black Rock Creek. One of them, I knew, was wounded; perhaps the others were also. Having seen me dragged overboard by the hawser, could they possibly suppose that I had been rescued by the "Terror?" Surely not! Doubtless the news of my death had already been telegraphed to Mr. Ward from Toledo. And now who would dare to undertake a new campaign against this ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... the flames are shooting out. The gunpowder left on the deck is covered only with canvas. Life is in peril. They find that the stern rope has not been cast off. Up rush Decatur and his {167} officers, and cut the hawser with their swords. The boat swings clear, and the men row ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... the next morning they rowed away from that place, "rowing in the eddy" along the banks, where the current helped them. Where the eddy failed, as in swift and shallow places, they hauled the boats up with great labour by making a hawser fast to a tree ahead, and hauling up to it, as on a guess-warp. The work of rowing, or warping, was done by spells, watch and watch, "each company their half-hour glass," till about three in the afternoon, by which time they had come some fifteen miles. They passed two Indians who sat ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... an Austrian brig drifting in the current, the whiff of her flag indicating distress. Her rudder was entirely gone, and she was floating helplessly towards the Thracian coast. A boat was immediately lowered and a hawser carried to her bows, by which we towed her a short distance; but our steam engine did not like this drudgery, and snapped the rope repeatedly, so that at last we were obliged to leave her to her fate. The lift we gave, however, had its effect, and by dexterous ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... that the old spider of Market Street had been weaving all these years, was at its strongest but a rope of sand compared with the steel links of the chain that was wrapped about the town, with one end in the Judge's hand, but with the chain reaching out into some distant, mysterious hawser that moved it with a power of which even the Judge ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... merchantmen, in which there was apparently no guard, so that under the shadow of the hulls of these they might escape all observation from the more watchful vessels of war without. They had cleared all but one, when the head of the canoe suddenly came foul of the hawser of the latter, and was by the checked motion brought round, with her broadside completely under her stern, in the cabin windows of which, much to the annoyance of our adventurer, a light was plainly visible. Rising as gently as he could to clear the bow of the light skiff, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... before me like a blot of something yet blacker than darkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the next moment, as it seemed (for the further I went the brisker grew the current of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stirred. Captain Hull called away his boats, and the sailors tugged at the oars, towing the Constitution very slowly ahead. Captain Broke of the Shannon promptly followed suit and signaled for all the boats of the squadron. In a long column they trailed at the end of the hawser; and the Shannon crept closer. Catspaws of wind ruffled the water, and first one ship and then the other gained a few hundred yards as upper tiers of canvas caught the faint impulse. The Shannon was a crack ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... in hand, they hauled it in with ease. A hawser had been made fast to the rope. That in the same way was got in, and the end secured to the poles. A traveller had been wisely placed on the hawser. The first man securing himself to it worked his way along, carrying a line ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... are making of the steamer-ropes! They'll have that four-inch hawser chafed through in a minute. I told you so—there she goes! White foam on green water, and the steamer slewing round. How good that looks! I'll sketch it. No, I can't. I'm afflicted with ophthalmia. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... for sea, and this mariner's spirit was ever uneasy and restless till the anchor was on deck and the hawser stowed. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the side and looked over. True enough, the Eagle was some distance from the wharf. The tug was straining on the big hawser. The ship had begun her ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... 100 feet from her starboard side, she laying with her head to the N.E., were 7, 8, and 10 fathom. Carried out the stream anchor and two hawsers on the starboard bow and the coasting anchor and cable upon the starboard quarters, got down yards and topmasts, and hove taught upon the hawser and cable; but as we had gone ashore about high water, the ship by this time was quite fast. Turned all hands to lighten the ship, and in order to do this we not only started water, but hove overboard guns, iron and stone ballast, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... the Clifton just before dusk. She let go both her heavy anchors, to prevent any dragging from the great strain that must naturally result from an effort to haul off the grounded steamer. A nine-inch hawser was sent to her, one end of the hawser being made fast to the Sachem. The tide had begun to rise by this time, and fortunately at the first strain on the hawser the Clifton floated, and was quickly drawn ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Keltie the master, Mr. Brooks the boatswain, and Mr. Donovan a midshipman of the Sirius, who ventured off to the ship in one of the island boats through a very dangerous surf, and brought on shore the end of the hawser, to which was slung the grating that saved the lives of the officers and people. They likewise somewhat blunted the edge of this calamity, by assurances that it was highly probable, from the favourable appearance of the weather when the Supply left Norfolk Island, that all or at least ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... cried, selecting him because after Milo his eyes were keenest of them all. "Keep thy eyes open for Milo's flares, and mark well the direction. Hanglip, thou surly dog! Take ten men and lay me out a good anchor astern, with a stout hawser. Be brisk! Come aboard in ten minutes, or thy ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... has secured passage by a ship bound for some far-off foreign land, and delayed by some trifling affair, comes upon the pier to see the hawser cast off, the plank drawn ashore, the sails ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Richard Hardie; and there his reawakened mind stopped dead short. Being asked if he knew William Thompson, he said, "Yes, perfectly. He was a foretopman on board the Agra, and rather a smart hand. The ship was aground and breaking up: he went out to sea on a piano: but we cut the hawser as he drifted under, and he got safe ashore." David's recovered reason rejected with contempt as an idle dream all that had happened while that reason was in defect The last phenomena I have to record were bodily: one was noted by Mr. Georgie White in these ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... two-hundred tonner, used to call every morning of the season at the little pier outside my house to take me to business, and brought me back again every evening. By the pier rests an old, old man whose only duty in life it is to catch the hawser as it is thrown from the incoming liner. Twice a day for four months that hawser was thrown for the old man to catch, and twice a day for four months he missed it. I spoke to him about this on the last day, and he showed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Smeaton had been sent from Arbroath with a cargo of stones one morning, and reached the rock about half-past six o'clock A.M. The mate and one of the men, James Scott, a youth of eighteen years of age, got into the sloop's boat to make fast the hawser to the floating buoy of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... coils of rope from the lockers, he put a clove-hitch on the standing part of the sea-anchor hawser, and carried the new running-line aft, making it fast to the stern bitts. Then he cast off from the forward bitts. The Dazzler swung off into the trough, completed the evolution, and pointed her nose toward shore. A couple of spare oars from below, and as many ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... throw off, Hank," called Captain Tom, as he raced out onto the dock and made a plunge for the bow hawser. With this in ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... trouble in passing these settlements. Presently a snake-like war canoe with hawser-holes like eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream. We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the general was to speak. Here the crowd groaned against a bulwark of stout policemen. Philadelphia cops, bless them, are the best tempered in the world. (How Boston must envy us.) Genially two gigantic bluecoats made room against the straining hawser for young John Fisher, aged eleven, of 332 Greenwich Street. John is a small, freckle-faced urchin. It was amusing to see him thrusting his eager little beezer between the vast, soft, plushy flanks of two patrolmen. He had been there over two hours waiting for just this adventure. Then, to assert ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... vantage to which he nimbly mounted on top of the knightheads, giving orders to a number of men on the wharf, who had gathered about the ship in the meantime, and directing them to pass along the end of the fore hawser round a bollard on the jetty, near the end of the lock-gates by which entrance was gained from the adjacent river to the basin in ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... haulyards! Blood and thunder! Will. Bower a peer of this realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger! a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ordered to the gun, for stealing eggs out of the hen-coops! and I, Hawser Trunnion, who commanded a ship before he could keep a reckoning, am laid aside, d'ye see, and forgotten! If so be as this be the case, there is a rotten plank in our constitution, which ought to be hove down and repaired, d— my eyes! For my own part, d'ye see, I was ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... "line portage," that is, the boats were worked along the edge of the rapid, one at a time, in and out among the boulders with three or four men clinging to them to fend them off the rocks and several more holding on to the hundred-foot hawser, so that there was no possibility of one getting loose and smashing up, or leaving us altogether. It was then noon and a camp was made for the remainder of the day on the left bank in a very comfortable spot. We had accomplished ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was the ordinary type of North Sea trawler, and so far as Ken and Roy could see, her fellow, whose name Gill told them was the 'Swan of Avon,' was her double. They were moving exactly parallel, at a distance of about a cable (220 yards) apart. Between them towed a thin steel hawser set to a depth just sufficient to catch the mooring cables of the mines which were ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... The hawser ran out into five fathoms of water. We had lost our boat: but Billy Priske had spent his afternoon in fashioning a raft out of four empty casks and a dozen broken lengths of deck-planking; and on this, leaving the seamen on board, the rest of us pushed off for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... black cloud was upon him and our voices were hushed to whispers lest the vibration should cause it to break in fury on our own heads—then he would flog the crew with a wire hawser, and his language would cause the paint to blister on the deck. At other times the memory of his "mother" would steal over his spirit and in a sweet tenor he would croon the old-time hymns and the old ship would creak its loving accompaniment, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... Luneville, twenty miles from Nancy. No local man could make the repairs. Through our American army headquarters at Nancy we applied to this French repair station. At eight o'clock next morning I was on hand to pilot a heavy wrecking truck to our car. A towing hawser was attached; their second pilot took charge of our truck, load and all; and before noon we were safely landed at the repair station. A hasty examination by a Renault expert revealed the fact that ten ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... trust the man he left, and wanted to see what was happening. It was a moment or two before he could satisfy his curiosity, and then a bright beam illuminated the tug and angry water. Brown was burning a blue-light while Terrier crept up to the hulk. He meant to pass the fresh hawser, but could not launch a boat, and Lister doubted if the men on the hulk could heave the heavy wire rope on board. Although one must get near to throw a line, it looked as if Brown were ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the larboard hand to look for anchorage. This he found, and signified the same by signal. We then followed with the ship, and anchored in 50 fathoms water, so near the shore as to reach it with an hawser. This was on Friday the 26th of March, at three in the afternoon, after having been 117 days at sea; in which time we had sailed 3600 leagues, without having ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... bought at the place of departure in the south of Russia and resold at the destination, usually Nishny-Novgorod, at a fair profit, the capstan boat carrying fodder and provender for the attendants. The capstan is accompanied by a steam launch which carries the anchor and hawser forward in advance of the capstan. The latter has a diameter of as much as 5 in., and is two to three miles in length. The anchor is dropped by the tug and the hawser carried back to the capstan, where it is attached to one of the rope drums, and the boat with the barges attached ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... much that I desired Gabriel to lend me his anker, because our owne ankers were too big for our skiffe to lay out, who sent me his owne, and borrowed another also and sent it vs. Then we layd out one of those ankers, with a hawser which he had of 140 fadom long, thinking to haue warpt in, but it would not be: for as we shorted vpon the said warpe the anker came home, so that we were faine to beare the end of the warpe, that we rushed in vpon the other small anker that Gabriel sent aboord, and layd that anker to seawards: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... comin' from Pompey, an' going dead slow on account of the dark, short-circuited that connection. 'M'rover,' I says to him, 'our orders is explicit; Stiletto's reported broke down somewhere off the Start, an' we've been tryin' to coil down a new stiff wire hawser all the evenin', so it looks like towin' 'er back, don't it?' I says. That more than ever jams his turrets, an' makes him keen to get rid of us. 'E even hinted that Mr. Carteret-Jones passin' hawsers ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... with his calculations. For a few minutes he felt uncommonly irritated. He had not started for San Francisco. He did not want to go to San Francisco. Still—what was the odds? San Francisco was as good as any other town. He shrugged his shoulders, and feeling his way to a coiled hawser sat down in the bight of it to contend with the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lifebelts on, sat on the thwarts of the lifeboat, and the coxswain stood on a raised platform in her stern, with the tiller-ropes in his hands. The masts were up, and the sails ready to hoist. Pike made fast the huge hawser that was passed to them over the stern of the steam-tug, and away they went, rushing out right in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... minute the pilot rope was passed through the block and the men ran off with it towards the railway, while George remained to guide the hawser into its place when ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Ark" slowly drifted in through the nursery window, Captain Noah ran forward with a hawser, ready to make fast to the book case near ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... "Run a hawser from the anchor in aft here on the quarter. We'll club-haul the ship. See the cable clear ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... sails in the store got very wet. Banks notes that they caught two birds in the rigging that had evidently been blown off the coast of Spain. On 13th September they anchored in Funchal Roads, and during the night "the Bend of the Hawser of the stream anchor slip'd owing to the carelessness of the person who made it fast." The anchor was hauled up into a boat in the morning, and carried further out, but, unfortunately, in heaving it into the water, a Master's mate, named ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... bung up and bilge free—and that's why he's chief kicker now. The hawser's fast for'd, Mr. Murphy. Cast off ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... were seized with violent hysteria. Their shrill screams were so distressing that the skipper ordered them to be lugged below and shut in their cabins. Mr. Peter Forbes had plumped himself down upon a coil of hawser, as if utterly disgusted, but he implored the captain to blaze away at the besotted scoundrels as long as two planks held together. The Honorable Secretary of the Council had been too outspoken in his opinions of pirates to expect kindness ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the winded man. He stumbled after Kirkwood, groaning with exhaustion. Only the tolerance of the pier employees gained them their end; the steamer was held some seconds for them; as Calendar staggered to its deck, the gangway was jerked in, the last hawser cast off. The boat sheered wide out on the river, then shot in, arrow-like, to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... on board; six, the child among them, were still on the low platform of the cliff. A movement of departure was made in the vessel: the captain seized the helm, a sailor took up an axe to cut the hawser—to cut is an evidence of haste; when there ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Waller, who was dreadfully sea-sick. On 15th we were caught by a hurricane which whirled the 'Ariel' right round. Her sails, quickly put to rights, were again backed so that the ship was driven backward and a hawser wound itself round her screw, so as to stop the engines. By this time she was turned so as to be looking right across 'Lady Nyassa,' and the wind alone propelling her as if to go over the little vessel. I saw no hope of escape except by catching a rope's-end of the big ship as she passed ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... had been made of the prisoners they were marched off the Gaspee onto a barge, which was towed out to a merchantman lying in the bay. Four rowboats were engaged to tow the barge, and just as they started the hawser broke and the ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... they surged forward, and the affair became a reception, during which I shook hands with every sailor of my congregation. The next day my hand was swollen out of shape, for the sailors had gripped it as if they were hauling on a hawser; but the experience was worth the discomfort. The best moment of the morning came, however, when the pastor of the ship faced me, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... exact moment—foreknown to a second—the gates are opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt the pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their masts cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two lines of masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and puzzle the eye to separate their weaving motion and to assign the rigging ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Handy Solomon clung desperately to the wheel, jamming his weight to port in the hope she might pay up: Thrackles, too, his eye squinted along some bearing of his own, was waiting for her to drag. Presently it became evident that she was doing so, whereupon he drew his knife across our hawser. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is east Sumner's Islands seems to tug at its moorings like a cruiser swinging at a short hawser in the shelter of Stony beach. If you will stand on the tip of its gray rock prow and face the sea it is hard not to feel the rise and fall of surges under you, and in fancy you have one ear cocked for the boatswain's whistle and the call to the watch ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Stacey, a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lost, everybody being picked up by the giassas or managing to scramble ashore. As soon as possible afterwards operations were commenced to recover part of the cargo. The ship was secured from drifting by a hawser being passed around her standing gear, and made fast to stout trees ashore. Then some of the natives dived and several of the Maxims and boxes of ammunition were salved. As for the craft there was nothing to be done under the circumstances ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... banks hundreds or thousands of miles distant. I took the money, and with a portion of it purchased a barrel of flour, a keg of sugar, a quantity of ground coffee, and some other supplies needed at the Castle. The steamer hauled in her plank, and casting off her hawser, renewed her long voyage up the river. Mounting Cracker, I rode back to the Castle, and harnessed both horses to the wagon, in order to haul up ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... recommend a strong greenheart bamboo pole, like those used in pole-jumping, about eighteen feet in length, and about three hundred yards of wire hawser, with a Strathspey foursome reel sufficiently large to hold it. Do not be afraid of the size of the hook. The stoot-fisher cannot afford to take any risks. I do not wish to dogmatise, but it must be big enough to cover ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... while the naval-looking personage with grizzled whiskers who seemed to command was the same Lieutenant Coste who transferred the revenue-cutter Aiken from the service of the United States to that of South Carolina. The Aid took hold of us, broke a large new hawser after a brief struggle, and then went up to the city ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... made another voyage, and now, having plundered the ship of what was portable and fit to hand out, I began with the cables. Cutting the great cable into pieces, such as I could move, I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the ironwork I could get; and having cut down the spritsail-yard, and the mizzen- yard, and everything I could, to make a large raft, I loaded it with all these heavy goods, and came away. But my good luck began now ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... if he would assume the command. By four in the afternoon of the 29th they got the ship afloat, and cut away their small bower anchor, but ran aground again in ten minutes. At nine they carried out the kedge-anchor, but the hawser broke in heaving. They now carried out another hawser, having a lower-deck gun fixed to it, as they had now lost all their anchors, and were still aground. At two in the morning of the 30th the enemy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Monsieur Jean Bull again. We must brazen it out, now we have put on the mask. Monsieur Lieutenant, clap on the hawser, and run the lugger ahead, over her anchor, and see everything clear for spreading our pocket-handkerchiefs. No one knows when le Feu-Follet may have occasion to wipe her face. Ah!—now, Etooell, we can make out his broadside fairly, he is ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... aboard. These were got over into the comparatively quiet sea, water and an emergency ration-cask put aboard each, and Mr. MacMasters brought his instruments and papers, taking his place in the stern of the boat. The latter had a small engine, and there was a hawser with which ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... dropped a hawser over her side as buffer. The boy was up it in a moment, and on to the deck, his heart ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... out, sir, till it is too late," continued Ready. "Well, sir, I was little more than nine years old, when, on a very windy day, and the water rough, a hawser, by which a vessel was fast to the wharf, was carried away with a violent jerk, and the broken part, as it flew out, struck a person who was at the edge of the wharf, and knocked him into the sea. I heard the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Japanese in business matters. As a matter of fact the alliance had fulfilled its object as soon as Japan had fought England's war with Russia for her. But the cabinet of St. James adhered to the treaty, because they feared that if they let go of the hawser, a word from Tokio would incite India to revolt. The soil there had for years been prepared for this very contingency, and London, therefore, turned a deaf ear to the indignation expressed by the rest of the world at Japan's treacherous violation ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... watch below, when I was woke by a most tremenjous bangin' and hullabaloo. We tumbles up mighty sharp, and well we did, for there was one of these country fellows board and board with us, and another foulin' our hawser. Their grapnels came whizzin' aboard; but the first lot couldn't take a hold nohow, and she dropped downstream. That gave us a chance to be ready for the other. She got a grip of us and held on like ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... arrived at the winning-post. He had brought with him the bo'sun and the carpenter, his own mate, the bo'sun's mate and the carpenter's mate, four P.O.'s, the sergeant of Marines, a few leading stokers and half-a-dozen hands; fifty fathoms of hawser-laid four-inch white rope; six stout stakes (ash); bags, canvas, twelve (one to collect the tickets earned by each division); and one thousand eight hundred tickets, numbered from one to one thousand eight hundred. (There were only six hundred and fifty runners, but it is well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... how to speak of the hurricane unchained— The Union's strands parted in the hawser over-strained; Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether— The dashed fleet o' States in Secession's ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... ketch up where he intended to anchor and called to the stooping white-clad figure in the bow: "Let go!" There was an answering splash, a sudden rasp of hawser, the booms swung idle, and the yacht imperceptibly settled into her berth. The wheel turned impotently; and, absent-minded, John Woolfolk locked it. He dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved about with a noiseless and ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the steering chains showed that the helm was put hard a-port. When the Aphrodite moved slowly astern, her bow swung towards the mouth of the dock. The indicator rang again, twice, and the yacht, after a pause, began to forge ahead. Another splash, and the second hawser was cast loose. The mole, the neighboring ships, the landward quays and the warehouses thereon, seemed to diminish in size without any perceptible cause, and, in a space of time that might have been measured by seconds rather ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... usual—had something of this damn thrill you talk about ashore and don't know what it is until you've been at the firing front or in one of these blessed ocean brooms. That chap across the way found a mine in his kite, and we had to cut the hawser in double-quick time, and get far enough away from it before we pegged a bullet in ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... them play-actors, be you? Land sakes! And tryin' to look like a fisherman, too! I don't s'pose you know a grommet from the bight of a hawser." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... he asked the reason. Upon learning it, he left his carriage and hurried to the scene. When he arrived, he recognized, by the confusion on board, by the way the ship was laboring, by the poverty of the means that had been contrived for landing the imperilled souls,—only a single hawser having been run to the shore,—that the loss of nearly all on board was imminent. Night, too, was falling, as well as the destruction of the vessel impending. After vainly offering rewards to the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... fish were abundant, and the hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before sunset, and sent a boy ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... light of their burning navy and arsenal. The battery in the upper angle of the town, which, was too high to fire upon, kept up a galling fire, and another further to the eastward was still at work. To bring our broadside to bear upon it, a hawser was run out to the Severn, on our larboard bow, the ship was swung to the proper bearing, and we soon checked them. At 45 minutes past nine, the squadron began to haul out, some making sail, and taking advantage of a light air off the land, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... by the loss of the steamer, the entire rebel fleet came to a standstill, involuntarily brought to an anchor by the sunken launch, which rested on the river bottom, still attached to the hawser by which the squadron was being towed. And as the hawser happened to consist of chain cable instead of rope, and as it had been made fast with a complicated system of hitches, that it might not slip, it was likely to be some time before it could be cast off and ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... taut as a ship’s hawser or the spring of a watch, and as soon as he came within reach of me I had him by the ankle, plucked the feet right out from under him, laid him out, and was upon the top of him, broken leg and all, before he breathed. His Winchester had gone the same road as my shot-gun; ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down across the waters from the tug. There was a loud splash beneath the bows, while shadowy figures that howled a weird ditty as they hove the hawser in, rose and fell black against the foam-flecked sea on the dripping forecastle. Nobody had missed Black, who now sat astride the yard watching the tug, as the ship, listing over further and commencing to hurl the spray in clouds about her plunging bows, gathered way. The steamboat would ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... particular section. Their depth was usually about 50 feet, and they were laid in lengths varying from a few hundred yards to two miles. Weights at the lower end and invisible glass floats along the top held them suspended vertically from the surface. The floats were kept in place by a wire hawser running along the top of the nets, and to this were attached, at intervals, wooden buoys containing tin cases filled with a chemical compound which, when brought into contact with sea-water, emitted dense smoke by day and flame ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... left behind on the Servian bank crossed over the same night in ferry-boats to the Hungarian side with their severed hawser, spreading everywhere the news that the tow-rope had parted of itself at the dangerous Perigrada Island, and the ship had gone down with every soul on board. In the morning there was no longer a sign of the "St. Barbara" in the harbor of Orsova. If by chance the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... week passed, and the new hand revealed no temperamental proclivities, no "kid-glove" inclinations, seemingly content with washing down decks, lassooing pier bitts with the bight of a hawser at a distance of ten feet, and hauling ash-buckets from the fireroom when the blower was out of order—both of which last were made possible by his mighty shoulders—the Captain began to take a different sort ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... leaving the baronet in charge of the engines and the steering-gear, summoned Mildmay and the colonel to follow him. The trio hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser— made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum—which, having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... marrow-bone, and it may be interesting to politicians to know that Repeaters and Rings have occasionally been found in the maws of these monsters. They bite readily at "Salt horse," and, when hooked with a rattan in throat, may be yanked on board with the bight of a hawser. An enormous specimen sometimes gets caught in a forecastle yarn. In this case, never interfere with the thread of the narrative by asking impertinent questions, however difficult it may be to hoist ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... burden. The bell was clanging its final summons, and the slowly revolving paddle-wheels were taking the strain from the mooring lines. Being near the bow line Griswold was one of the two who sprang ashore at the mate's bidding to cast off. He was backing the hawser out of the last of its half-hitches when a carriage was driven rapidly down to the stage and two tardy passengers hurried aboard. The mate bawled from his ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... heroes. So he bade the helmsman steer straight in, for the sea was deep below the rock, and there they all saw a man lying asleep in golden armour. They whispered together, laughing silently, and then sprang ashore, taking with them a rope of twisted ox-hide, a hawser of the ship, and a strong cable of byblus, the papyrus plant. On these ropes they cast a loop and a running knot, a lasso for throwing, so that they might capture the man in safety from a distance. With these ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... was surprised to find the most swaggering, swearing bullies in fine weather, now the most pitiful wretches on earth, when death appeared before them. However, two got safe; by which means, with a line, we got a hawser on shore, and made fast to the rocks, upon which many ventured and arrived safe. There were some sick and wounded on board, who could not avail themselves of this method; we, therefore, got a spare top-sail-yard from the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous |
