"Mainmast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Will shouted; "we shall finish with her before the other can come up." As he spoke a shot from the long-tom struck the cutter's mainmast, which tottered for a moment and then fell over her side towards L'Agile, and the sails and hamper entirely prevented the crew from working her guns. For another five minutes the fire was kept up; then the crew were seen to be leaping overboard, and presently a man stood up and ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... little dose of this will be better for you than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast." ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... broke up, this man was standing on the lee bulwark, holding by the shrouds of the mainmast, the lower part of which was still standing. A lady and gentleman clung to each other, and to the rigging close beside him. They were husband and wife. Both were comparatively young, and up to that ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the "Royal Sovereign," the King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. "The Emperor of Lilliput's features ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... swift talker—a rare trait in the islands. He possessed every accomplishment. He knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and design. But these were avocations, and the man's trade was war. 'When my uncle go make wa', he laugh,' said Tembinok'. He forbade the use of field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win or ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soldiers—had been so heavy and deadly that they had killed most of the marksmen in the enemy's tops, and had driven the rest below. All this time the Lass of Devon was raked by the fire of the third vessel which had come up behind her, and raked her fore and aft. At the end of the half-hour the mainmast of the vessel to windward, which had been several times struck, fell with ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... understood. The vessel—her name, the One-and-All, in white letters on her forward bulwarks, glimmered into sight as Myra passed—lay warped alongside the wall, with her foreyard braced aslant to avoid chafing the roof of Mr. Benny's office, and her mainmast and standing rigging all but entirely hiding Mr. Benny's quay-door, the approach to which she completely obstructed. A little above her forestay a small window, uncurtained and brightly lit, broke the long stretch ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the "Bonita" and "Driving-Scud" and "Mazeppa," in the great Sea-Derby, whose course lay round the world. How, one Christmas-day, off the pitch of Cape Horn, he, standing on her deck, saw her dive bodily into a sea, and all of her to the mainmast was lost in ocean,—her stately spars seemingly rising out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;—it seemed an age to him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... All personal quarrels are to be suspended while the expedition lasts, and for a month after it is completed. Neglect of this will be held as treason. Each morning at sunrise the ship-boys, according to custom, will sing 'Good Morrow' at the foot of the mainmast, and at sunset the 'Ave Maria.' Since bad weather may interrupt the communications the watchword is laid down for each day in the week: Sunday, Jesus; the days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... as he talked, had been regarding Cap'n Abernethy, who in turn was looking at the mainmast. There seemed to be something in the very way Cap'n Abernethy looked at the mainmast which jarred on Mr. Watkins. Mr. Watkins dropped his voice, indicating the Cap'n with a curved, disparaging thumb, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... rude enough to have brought forth a sharp retort at any other time; but then Vince felt its justice, and he went on again, and his hand touched the shrouds which held the mainmast in place, and a little care had to be exercised to pass round. But this was silently achieved by both; and Vince was gliding his right-hand along the top of the bulwarks once more, when it was as if an electric shock had passed through him, for he had suddenly touched something ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If it be that the people, when the war is over, shall ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before swooping down upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I could only catch an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... three hours she would have been out of sight; but just at this critical moment the writ of habeas corpus was carried on board. The officer who served it on the captain saw the miserable African chained to the mainmast, bathed in tears, and casting a last mournful look on the land of freedom, which was fast receding from his sight. The captain, on receiving the writ, became outrageous; but knowing the serious consequences ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... emptying the vessel entirely. On the 7th, the tempest increased with such violence, that the sea flowed into the ship uninterruptedly from the windward, and their speedy destruction seemed quite inevitable; so that they were now of opinion their only chance of safety was by cutting away the mainmast, which might lighten the ship. This was done therefore immediately; and a large wave fortunately carried the mast and yard clear away, by which the ship worked with considerably less strain and violence. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... sheet to windward; the small boat was launched out of the lee gangway; lines with life-buoys attached were drifted towards the boat, and in less than half an hour the crew was taken off and put aboard the Yarmouth fisherman. Succour came none too soon, as in less than an hour the brig's mainmast went by the board. She cocked her stern up and went down head first. The smack reached close across the stern of the Blake, and the shipwrecked crew exchanged salutes with her. Her speaking-trumpet was used in trying to communicate that she was making a lot of water and to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... cabin door Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they stumbled and lurched along past the mainmast, they could see aft his round, broad face with a white paper before it, and beside his shoulder the sleepy head, writh dropped eyelids, of the boy, who held, suspended at the end of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... hermaphrodite, or brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it; it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same scale, tapering away through topmast, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... said the captain, "to the mainmast, and the sailors amused themselves by drenching him with buckets of cold water, till he was almost drowned. After several days, he became so sick and exhausted, that we saw that our sport would soon be at an end. For two days he was speechless. He then suddenly recovered the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... in the very act. A war of words ensued; but the explanations given under the attendant circumstances were so unsatisfactory, that the vigilant chief of the customs clapped his broad mark on the mainmast, and seized the vessel and the unfortunate cask of rum in the name and behalf of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... him to Missolonghi; but the Septinsular government, not permitting ships bearing a Greek flag to come into its harbours, Byron was obliged to pass to Zante in a small vessel, and to join the Greek brig afterwards, which was waiting for him near Zante. Hardly was Byron on board when he kissed the mainmast, calling it "sacred wood." The ship's crew astonished at this whimsical behaviour, regarded him in silence; suddenly Byron turned towards the captain and the sailors, whom he embraced with tears, and said to them, "It is by this wood that you will consolidate your independence." At these words ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... the "Pilgrim's Progress." By her build she was a foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered, and the paint peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside, half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not look without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her, so often handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where they had passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my native country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... quarter-deck, the captain calls to me, for he never stirred from us, "What the devil is friend William a-doing yonder?" says the captain; "has he any business upon, deck?" I stepped forward, and there was friend William, with two or three stout fellows, lashing the ship's bowsprit fast to our mainmast, for fear they should get away from us; and every now and then he pulled a bottle out of his pocket, and gave the men a dram to encourage them. The shot flew about his ears as thick as may be supposed in such an action, where the Portuguese, to give them their due, fought very briskly, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... of the funeral procession, of which we formed the mainmast, almost entirely disappeared from our mind, to be succeeded by the spirit of revolt against this impious persecution as these things came before us. What have our people done to these colonists, we ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... words which have resounded through the world, "Neen nimmer," "No, never." The fleets of Spain heard it, and understood it fully, when they saw the sinking Dutch ships with the flags nailed to the shattered mainmast, crying, "Neen nimmer," which indicated that they would ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... towards the kitchen, intending to look for matches and a lantern. Although the sea was very rough, he noticed that the ship did not move, a fact which astonished him very much. But when he came to the mainmast, he was even more astonished to find himself walking on a parqueted floor, partly covered by a strip of carpet of a small blue and white checked pattern. He walked and walked, but still the carpet stretched before him, and still he came no nearer to the kitchen. It was certainly ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... when in the Bermuda channel, a storm separated the convoy from the other ships, sent her mainmast overboard, broke her rudder, and the ship sprang a leak. In this condition, after a consultation among the officers, it was decided to repair the damage as well as possible and steer for Puerto Rico, which they reached on the 9th of April. The treasure was placed in security ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof—"house" they call ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... quickly, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour we found ourselves within easy range of the chase—a fact which was brought home to us by a shot from her passing within a foot of our hammock rail and whizzing between our fore and mainmast. ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Dutch had the advantage. Blake himself was wounded. The Garland and Bonaventure were taken. Two ships were burned, and one sunk; and night came opportunely to save the English fleet. After this victory, Tromp, in a bravado fixed a broom to his mainmast; as if he were resolved to sweep the sea entirely of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... tell Peter how matters stood betwixt the prophets, or most likely he wouldn't have said that. It hit Beriah like a snowslide off a barn roof. I found out afterwards that the widder had more'n half promised to go with HIM. He slumped down in his chair as if his mainmast was carried away, and he didn't even rise to blow for the rest of the time we was in the shanty. Just set there, looking ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... The three men, (constructed of lines for limbs and a dot for the head,) looking through telescopes, were taking observations in different quarters; but perhaps this may be allowed—two men formed the crew. There were no sails, and the mainmast had one yard-arm, the rest had none. Up in the air, near the ship's masts, were two Arabs on horseback carrying spears; the whole tableau was coloured, as such works in the East always are, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... nicely laid band of white ran sheer from stem to stern; her bows swelled to meet the seas in a gentle curve that hinted the swift lines of our clippers of more recent years. From mainmast heel to truck, from ensign halyard to tip of flying jib-boom, her well-proportioned masts and spars and taut rigging stood up so trimly in one splendidly cooerdinating structure, that the veriest lubber must have acknowledged her ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... us, and so near it was impossible the ships could clear each other. It therefore became necessary to adopt the measure which would soften the first blow as much as possible, and I ordered the helm to be put down. When the ship came head to wind she struck the Revolutionnaire just before the mainmast, slewed our cut-water right across, carried away the jib-boom, spritsail yard, &c., and then backed clear of her. A lad fell overboard from the Revolutionnaire and made a great noise, which enabled us to send a boat and pick him up, he having got upon one of our life-buoys. Got the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... the breeze was blowing strong. The sails had been taken off the mainmast, but that on the foremast was dragging the Lido through the water at a good rate of speed, and before night they were off Cape Spartivento. The wind held till next morning, when they were abreast of the Gulf of Taranto. Then came a long spell of calms or baffling winds, and it was a fortnight ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... going to the lanyard at the mainmast, hauled down the black flag. Then they both set to work cleaning up the deck. The three dead men were given sea burial—slipped overboard without other ceremony than the short prayer for each which Jeremy repeated. The gunner who ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... soul is man's God still, What wind soever waft his will Across the waves of day and night To port or shipwreck, left or right, By shores and shoals of good and ill; And still its flame at mainmast height Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill Sustains the indomitable light Whence only man hath strength to steer Or ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was done. No! There was a report like a crack of thunder over our heads, a shout, a shriek, as the mainmast of the wreck gave way with a crash, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... moment in the action at which the mainmast of the Guerriere, shattered by the terrific fire of the American frigate, fell overside, transforming the former vessel into a floating wreck and terminating the action. The picture represents accurately the surprisingly slight damage done the Constitution: ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... type not seen to-day made up the greater part of the New England fleet. The ketch, often referred to in early annals, was a two-master, sometimes rigged with lanteen sails, but more often with the foremast square-rigged, like a ship's foremast, and the mainmast like the mizzen of a modern bark, with a square topsail surmounting a fore-and-aft mainsail. The foremast was set very much aft—often nearly amidships. The snow was practically a brig, carrying a fore-and-aft ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green. In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone. By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... heavy thunderstorm on the 12th, a Dutch East Indiaman, about two cables away from the Endeavour, had mainmast "split all to shivers." The ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... 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 waters, Reuben ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and took three or four steps, in obedience to the order—and then returned and made his best bow—inquired of Captain Wilson whether he wished him to go to the fore or to the mainmast head. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... from the mainmast told that it might fall at any moment. Passengers and crew redoubled their shouts to Poseidon and to Zeus of AEgina. A fat passenger staggered from his cabin, a huge money-bag bound to his belt,—as if gold were the safest spar to cling to in that boiling deep. Others, less frantic, gave commissions ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... dancing away to leeward. The next shot struck the merchantman on the quarter. A moment later the vessel was brought up into the wind and a broadside of eight guns fired. Two of them struck the hull of the privateer, another wounded the mainmast, while the rest cut holes through the sails and struck the water a quarter of a mile to windward. With an oath the captain of the privateer brought his vessel up into the wind, and then payed off on ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... used as a brewery in Hotbath Meadows—and, possessed of the ecclesiastic idea, had given the Camel a transept; but, finding this impeded her passage through the water, he had it removed. This weakened the vessel amidships. The mainmast was something like a steeple. It had a weathercock. From this spire the eye commanded one of the finest ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... When one dire shot, the last they could supply, Close by the board the prince's mainmast bore: All three now helpless by each other lie, And this offends not, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Philip, "can that refer to—?" and Philip walked a step or two forward, so as to conceal himself behind the mainmast, hoping to obtain some information, should they continue the conversation. In ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... turn was almost foul of us. In less than five minutes the clipper sank. One man alone reappeared on the surface. He was so close, that from where I was holding on and crouching under the lee of the mainmast I could see the expression of his face. He was a splendidly built man, and his strength and activity must have been prodigious. He clung to the cable of the merchantman, which he had managed to clasp. As the vessel reared between the seas ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... perpendicular wall of the wreck, sending the mizzentopmast overside along in the general crash. The Francis Spaight righted, and it was well that she was lumber laden, else she would have sunk, for she was already water-logged. The mainmast, still fast by the shrouds, beat like a thunderous sledge-hammer against the ship's side, every stroke ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... all times be regarded as a place of parade, and no sitting or lounging will be permitted thereon. For the purposes of this order all the spar deck abaft the mainmast will be regarded as ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... watching the Comte de Guiche, who was conversing with Raoul. This was a fresh misfortune for Buckingham, who fancied he perceived in Madame Henrietta's look a deeper feeling than that of curiosity. He withdrew, almost tottering in his gait, and nearly stumbled against the mainmast of the ship. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... now were, the Maria Dolorosa, was by this time a spouting fountain of flame, from her bows as far aft as her mainmast. Her guns were exploding one after another as the fire reached them, and added their thunder to the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the compass, the middle of which is dead ahead. They are screened so as not to be visible across the bow and they must be intense enough to be visible two miles ahead. The masthead light is carried on the foremast and the range-light on the mainmast, at an elevation fifteen feet higher than the former. The range-light emits light toward all points of the compass and must be intense enough to be seen at a distance of three miles. The stern light is ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... to get the ship's head round on the starboard tack, which could only be done by wearing, it was certain that much ground would be lost by that evolution. The anchors were got ready, long ranges of cables were hauled on deck, and the ends were clinched to the mainmast below; this being done, the axes were at hand to ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... who had spoken us asked our gallant leader in what latitude we were, and hearing that we were sailing to Alexandria, requested that a lantern should be hung at the mainmast-head, at which he might ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a merry journey, but the sailors were of a different opinion. The ship strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and spars. One moment it was so dark that ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... solitary sail stood out as a dark speck against the great sheet of flame left by the setting sun. I shuddered as I looked at it. It was grand but appalling. A single star was twinkling faintly above our mainmast, but a thousand seemed to gleam in the water below with every stroke of our propeller. The only blot in the fair scene was the great trail of smoke which stretched away behind us like a black slash ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to explain the strangeness of affairs; nothing heard. No sailor on the fore-deck, nor officer on the quarter! Only the two queer creatures that had shown themselves on the shrouds. These are still visible, one of them standing by the mainmast, the other crouching near the caboose. Both again give out their jabbering speech, accompanying ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... we go to sea to-morrow? The crew don't know the mainmast from a handspike. They couldn't do anything with the ship now; ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... anchor at eight A.M., passing for a time through shoal water, the bottom having been evidently stirred up. The adjacent land seemed eroded in a remarkable manner. It has its floods, which excavate these valleys and ravines, and leave those singular ridges behind. Towards evening I climbed the mainmast, and, standing on the cross-trees, saw the sun set amid a blaze of fiery clouds. The wind was strong and bitterly cold, and I was glad to slide back to the deck along a rope, which stretched from the mast-head to the ship's side. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... added uncle Hapgood. "If he hadn't been as cool as cowcumber, and as stiff as the mainmast of a frigate, we should have been taken, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... deep and hold on while the boarders poured up and over her side. In addition to this formidable weapon, each carried four guns right forward, besides a heavier piece which was worked on a circular platform amidships, and when not required for service was stowed by the mainmast for ballast. Each galley had two masts, though they were next to useless, for it is easy to see that vessels so laden and open at the decks were fit only for the lightest breezes, and in foul weather must run to ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... panegyric, no fulsome praise; and Englishmen, I think, were right in supposing that the simple name of their hero was enough for fame. This sarcophagus was made by Cardinal Wolsey; and here Nelson was placed, in a coffin made out of the mainmast of the French ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... I was told to go and 'grease the saddle.' Not knowing that this was a block of wood spiked to the mainmast to support the main boom, and thinking this a trick too, I refused to go, and came again near getting my head broken by the red-faced mate. I did not believe there was anything like a ...
— 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
... this subject. "There are none," observes he, "that beg in this country, but there be witches too many—bottle-bellied witches and others, that produce many strange apparitions, if you will believe report, of a shallop at sea manned with women—and of a ship and great red horse standing by the mainmast; the ship being in a small cove to the eastward vanished of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... lofty perch a sailor swung spider-like among the network of sheets and halyards that clung about the mainmast, its meshes clearly defined against the pure blue of the sky, while below there, on the bridge, the big brass nautical instruments gleamed, and the caps of the Captain and his lieutenants showed white in the sun. As Blythe glanced down ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... rear of the extreme left of the line, while the larger galleys pressed the attack in front. The Venetian flagship was rushed by a boarding-party of Janissaries, and her decks cleared as far as the mainmast. Barbarigo, fighting with his visor open, was mortally wounded with an arrow in his face, and was carried below. But his nephew Contarini restored the fight, and with the help of reinforcements from the next galley drove the boarders from the decks of the flagship. Contarini was mortally wounded ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real masts, yards, and sails—mainmast seventy feet high. At the word of command from the Skipper of this ship—a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all wonderfully complete—the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Greek verb keiro, which signifies 'to clip,' or 'cut short.' 'Nisus,' too, resembles the Hebrew word 'Netz,' which means a bird resembling the osprey, or sea eagle. Apollodorus says, that Minos ordered Scylla to be thrown into the sea; and Zenodotus, that he caused her to be hanged at the mainmast of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... another of the enemy's ships, making room for the ships in his rear to come up to the attack of our centre, where the engagement was hottest. At three the 'Monmouth' had her mizzen-mast shot away, and in a few minutes her mainmast, and bore out of the line to leeward (C, c); and at forty minutes past three the wind unexpectedly continuing far northerly without any sea-breeze, and being careful not to entangle our ships with the land, I made signal to wear and haul by the wind in a line-of-battle ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... hitherto so prosperous, has been marred to-day by a sad accident. Mr. Wilkins, the mate, was standing almost directly under the mainmast at about 4.30 this afternoon, when Railton, who was aloft, let slip a block, which descended on the mate's head, striking it with fearful force and killing him instantly. He was an honest, kindly man, to ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Horatio, schooner (Eden's tender), arrived this afternoon with only her foremast standing, having lost her mainmast in a tornado. Mr. Craig has just opened his general store, which, with Captain Smith's, forms the second mercantile ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... and was silent thereafter. He observed a bo'sun and his mates staggering in the waist under loads of cutlasses and small arms which they stacked in a rack about the mainmast. Then the gunner, a swarthy, massive fellow, stark to the waist with a faded scarf tied turban-wise about his head, leapt up the companion to the brass carronade on the larboard quarter, followed by a couple of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... her spars. The watchers stood up against the wind, battling with it to fling lines in the vain hope of saving some sailor who was being churned to death in that dreadful creaming of the sea below. Yes, and there were forms of men visible on board; two had climbed the mainmast, which crashed before they could clutch at the ropes that were being flung to them from land, crashed and carried them down shrieking into the surge. Mark found it hard to believe that last summer ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... other 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
... of the Englishmen who saw the first part of the engagement from shore, the Emden was cut off rapidly. Her forward smokestack lay across the ship. She went over to circular fighting and to torpedo firing, but already burned fiercely aft. Behind the mainmast several shells struck home; we saw the high flame. Whether circular fighting or a running fight now followed, I don't know, because I again had to look to my land defenses. Later I looked on from the roof of a house. Now the Emden again stood out to sea about 4,000 to 5,000 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the first I had ever witnessed, and was undoubtedly a more formidable one than I have ever since encountered in eighteen passages across the Atlantic. I was told, after it was over, that the vessel had sprung its mainmast—a very serious injury to a sailing ship, I suppose, by the mode in which it was spoken of; and for three days we were unable to carry any sail whatever for the fury of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... weren't rusted to pieces. He read the catalog. Then he telegraphed to me to wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of ship-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. He sold it ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... immediately went with his family on board of the vessel commanded by the Adelantado, and, sending back the damaged ship to port, continued on his course. Throughout the voyage he experienced the most tempestuous weather. In one storm the mainmast was sprung in four places. He was confined to his bed at the time by the gout; by his advice, however, and the activity of the Adelantado, the damage was skillfully repaired; the mast was shortened; the weak parts were ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the remaining holds. For this purpose three powerful pumps, with the necessary boilers, were obtained from Halifax, sent by rail to Annapolis, and then shipped on board a tug, from which they were hoisted into the Ulunda by means of the derricks on the mainmast. These were centrifugal pumps, capable of discharging 2,000 gallons a minute each. One was placed in the engine room, another with its suction in No. 3 hold, and when these two compartments were pumped dry, it was found that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... fun-loving Rover, and launched the baseball high into the air. Just then the steam yacht gave a lurch, the ball hit the mainmast, and down it bounced squarely upon Asa Carey's head, knocking the mate's cap over his eyes and ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does it often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cut down in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant seas a new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart mainmast, or a home is to be builded that needs the fiber of strong and steadfast timber. So, I think, with men and women, there would not be so much unsightly growing old, with waning power and wasted faculties, if we attended more strictly ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the ladder to see what had happened. It appeared that as the Stella was crossing the bows of the Arrow, the latter had, as a last chance thrown up in the wind, and discharged her whole broadside into us: two shots had struck our mainmast, which had fallen by the board. I perceived at once that the Stella's chance was over—nothing could save her; she might resist the schooner but could not escape ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... from the shore we could see the mainmast of the barque floating upon the waves, disappearing at times in the trough of the sea, and then shooting up towards Heaven like a giant javelin, shining and dripping as the rollers tossed it about. Other smaller pieces of wreckage ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as possible, which he accordingly did. The batteries of the Dardanelles were now, however, prepared for him. A most destructive fire was opened upon the ill-fated fleet: two corvettes were sunk off Gallipoli; the Admiral's flag-ship, the Royal George, lost her mainmast; a huge marble ball, weighing eight hundred pounds, swept away a quantity of hands from the lower deck of the Standard, while many officers and seamen wore severely wounded. It must be here observed, that the batteries of the Dardanelles owed much of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the mainmast still hangs to the ship and the head rests on a rock," he said; "what is beyond I cannot tell, it may be water or it may be land, but the sea does not break over it; it is our only chance if we can ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... across the enemy's stern, and the well-aimed broadside that raked the Desespere from aft to fore, almost completely placed her at the mercy of the British frigate. The wheel was shot away, the rudder a wreck, the mainmast went by the board, and both dead and ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... "nothing handsomer will ever be seen than an East India-man in the northeast trades with the captain on the quarter-deck in a cocked hat and sword, the shoals of flying fish and albacore skittering about a transom as high and carved and gilded as a church, the royal pennant at the mainmast head. Maybe it would be the Earl of Balcarras with her cannons shining and the midshipmen ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... certificate; that her starboard shaft is partially fractured, and that to reduce the strain upon it the floats of her starboard wheel have been shortened five inches, the strain being further reduced by giving her a decided list to port; that her crank is "bandaged," that she is leaky; that her mainmast is sprung, and that with only four hours' steaming many of her boiler tubes, even some of those put in at Auckland, had already given way. I cannot testify concerning the mainmast, though it certainly does comport itself like no ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the well-loved land prince Long did rule them. The ring-stemmed vessel, Bark of the atheling, lay there at anchor, Icy in glimmer and eager for sailing; The beloved leader laid they down there, Giver of rings, on the breast of the vessel, The famed by the mainmast. A many of jewels, Of fretted embossings, from far-lands brought over, Was placed near at hand then; and heard I not ever That a folk ever furnished a float more superbly With weapons of warfare, weeds for the battle, Bills and burnies; on his bosom ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a creek where one of the Ebba's boats awaited them. The schooner was anchored two cable lengths from the shore, her sails neatly rolled upon her yards, which were squared as neatly as those of a pleasure yacht or of a man-of-war. At the peak of the mainmast a narrow red pennant was gently swayed by the wind, which came in fitful ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... made up their minds to remain during the night. Having collected all the stores which such a raft as they intended to build could carry, they at once commenced forming one. The mizzen and part of the mainmast still remained standing; Tom proposed forming shears and trying to hoist out the former; but as this was found impracticable, they cut both the masts away, to serve as the main beams of their raft. Several more spars were got up, and they then began cutting ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... And she gaed down, and farther down, Her love's ship for to see, And the topmast and the mainmast Shone like ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... under the very guns of two men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away, only that having to put on sail, their mainmast went by the board, whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... were again released, Ledscha was standing, in the dusk of evening, at the foot of the mainmast, pressing her brow against the wood as if she needed some support ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on board the Polynesia, the moon had barely cleared the horizon, as we have stated, and the top of the mainmast just reached the uppermost portion of the periphery, while spars, rigging and hull were marked against the yellow disk as distinctly as if ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... all the pomp of exquisite distress; Then, too severely taught by cruel fate, To share in all the perils I relate, Then might I, with unrivall'd strains, deplore The impervious horrors of a leeward shore. As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung, Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung: Some on a broken crag were struggling cast, 660 And there by oozy tangles grappled fast; Awhile they bore the o'erwhelming billows' rage, Unequal combat with their fate to wage Till all benumb'd and feeble they forego Their slippery ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... rigged with square sails on her mainmast, a fore and aft main-sail, a gaff mizzen and mizzen gaff top-sails, and a high bowsprit. Her sails are sometimes white, sometimes tanned. If the reader has ever chanced to enter the port of Rotterdam, he will have encountered plenty of examples of the craft we are ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... solemnity which was gone through in as orderly a manner as circumstances would admit. When the weather permitted, the flags of the ship were hung up as an awning or screen, forming the quarter-deck into a distinct compartment; the pendant was also hoisted at the mainmast, and a large ensign flag was displayed over the stern; and lastly, the ship's companion, or top of the staircase, was covered with the FLAG PROPER of the Lighthouse Service, on which the Bible was laid. A particular ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands at the water's edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour. Now and then ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... at this time, in all the excitement of action, pacing the quarter-deck. A shot through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, "It is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment:"—and then stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion—"But mark you! I would not be elsewhere ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... upon the mainmast, and this morning, after breakfast, Mr. Whitney, three Esquimos, and myself started in Mr. Whitney's motor-boat to hunt walrus. The motor gave out very shortly after the start, and the oars had to be used. We were fortunate in getting ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... that dumbly droop from the gaff o' the mainmast tall? The black of the Kaiser's iron cross, the red of the Empire's fall! Come down, come down, ye pirate flags. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... ship, as usually applied, has reference to a vessel furnished with a bowsprit and three masts—a mainmast, a foremast and a mizzenmast; and these three masts are each composed of three parts, namely, a lowermast, a topmast, and a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Captain Kirby proved a coward at last, And he played at bo-peep behind the mainmast, And there they did stand, boys, and shiver and shake, For fear that that terror their lives ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly calculated, at least three thousand pounds. And then came the foremast, larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds. Where ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... daintily, Captain Ratlin," said he who was evidently an officer, and who had been standing by the mainmast, but now walked aft. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... that he will be satisfied if you apologise to him. As the conduct of which you have been guilty was public, so also must be your punishment. Go up, each of you, to one of the mast-heads, and remain there till I call you down. Adair, do you go to the mizen-mast; Rogers, take the mainmast; and Murray, the foremast. I have settled that matter, I hope, to your satisfaction, Mr Spry," observed the captain, with a freezing manner, which somewhat damped the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... him!" cried the rival theorist joyfully. He was mistaken: the smoke cleared, and there was the pirate captain leaning wounded against the mainmast with a Yankee bullet in his shoulder, and his crew uttering yells of dismay and vengeance. They jumped, and raged, and brandished their knives, and made horrid gesticulations of revenge; and the white eyeballs of the Malays and Papuans glittered fiendishly; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... days of our wrecking, Captain Selover had omitted his daily visit. The fact made me uneasy, so that at my first opportunity I sculled myself out to the schooner. I found him, moist-eyed as usual, leaning against the mainmast ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... soared nearer they perceived that the vessel was a small steamer—a craft of perhaps 2,000 tons, painted black with a yellow funnel. Except that no smoke curled upward from her stack and there was not a sign of life about her, she looked as if she might have just set out on a voyage. From her mainmast a flag hung, wrapped about the spar in the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 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 fleet, 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 was said to the purpose ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... evening of the second day's voyage, a sudden and violent thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the raging of which our mainmast was struck ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... The ship has her sails furled, and is anchored by her port anchor as her starboard anchor is fished (i.e. made fast with its shank horizontal) to the ship's side by her cable. An empty boat is alongside. At the top of the mainmast is a fighting top from which ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... it did not take my sailor instinct long to guess what was amiss. Those in front shot side to side, those behind tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long and as thick as the mainmast of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... words which have resounded through the world, "Neen nimmer," "No, never." The fleets of Spain heard it, and understood it fully, when they saw the sinking Dutch ships with the flags nailed to the shattered mainmast, crying "Neen nimmer," which indicated that ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... other than superstitious or religious? The hamper of ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... twenty-five years before by blowing a bugle in the 52nd, and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to—filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From a hencoop abaft the mainmast (the Bute was a brig, by the way) I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war's great historian, that the English are a bellicose rather than a martial race, and by consequence sometimes find themselves ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gets quite absorbed in thinking over this; his own tastes run in a gory direction, but perhaps Ethel, being a girl, may not care for battles or desperate duels. A compromise strikes him; he will draw a pirate ship: that will be first rate, with the black flag flying on the mainmast, and the pirate captain on the poop scouring the ocean with a big glass in search of merchantmen; all about the deck and rigging he can put the crew, with red caps, and belts stuck full ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... again got up and we expected every moment that the boat would founder, we felt too much afraid and too wretched to talk. The captain was the only person who kept up his spirits. Once more he rose from his seat, and stepped on to the after-thwart, holding on by the mainmast. I watched his eye as he cast it round the horizon. I saw it suddenly light up. "A sail! my lads, a sail!" he exclaimed, pointing to the westward. Not another word was spoken for some time. We kept on our course, and we were soon able to ascertain ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp. I remember being on the wharf, with some naval officers, when he came down from his first trip. The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck's wings were seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck trousers. The naval heroes, mindful of their own short rations, and taking high views ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... he replied. "I can't make out what nation it's from. It's flying no flag. But I'll swear it's a warship, because there's a long pennant streaming from the peak of its mainmast." ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... or fourteen, the corsairs believing that four muskets did more execution than one cannon.[108] The buccaneers sometimes used brigantines, vessels with two masts, the fore or mizzenmast being square-rigged with two sails and the mainmast rigged like that of a barque. The corsair at Martinique of whom Labat speaks was captain of a corvette, a boat like a brigantine, except that all the sails were square-rigged. At the beginning of a voyage the freebooters were generally so crowded in their small vessels ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... with not a star in sight, and in no condition to take any reckonings, we made up our minds that we must somehow fight our way through one more night before giving up. The mainmast was a wreck; the shrouds on the port side having been torn from the gunwale the second day of the storm, and the entire deck was one ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition. He is like a ship at sea with a "sprung" mainmast. A side breeze may arise at any moment which throws him all aback and upon his beam-ends. He runs illegitimate risks, which are things much given to dragging at a man's ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... off Emden, she still had her colours up at mainmast head. I inquired by signal, International Code, "Will you surrender?" and received a reply in Morse, "What signal? No signal books." I then made in Morse, "Do you surrender?" and subsequently, "Have you received my signal?" ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... "Bonadventure" reached the gulf, and as at that moment the tide turned, it was impossible to enter. They were therefore compelled to stand off, for even if he had wished to do so, Pencroft could not have gained the mouth of the Mercy. Hoisting the jib to the mainmast by way of a storm-sail, he hove to, putting the head of the vessel ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar. 'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure enough, on the far side of Dean Pont they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with half a dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother's son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... immediately,—everything on deck was swept away; and, as our only chance of safety, we took to the main-rigging. This was about seven o'clock in the evening. Towards morning, by reason of the continual thumping, the mainmast began to work through the vessel, and to settle in the sand, so that it became necessary for us to make our way to the fore-rigging; which we did, not without danger, as one of the men was ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... placed on board, under John Hampton, a guard ordered to allow no one to come on the ship without a warrant from the lieutenant general.[7] Then was published, and as the records seem to show, fixed on the vessel's mainmast ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... sharply again, or I should have been disposed to remain on deck for a while and improve my acquaintance with this genial-looking sailor; as it was, I merely paused beside him long enough to note that the deck between the foremast and the mainmast seemed to be crowded with rough, round-backed, awkward-looking men, having the appearance of navvies or something of that kind; also that the main hatch was partially closed by a grating through an aperture in which, at the after port angle of the hatchway, other men of a like sort were passing ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... Lord guided them to a port, where a ship was never known to have entered. There they anchored, and fearing that the wind with which they entered might shift to that which generally prevails in that season and with greater fury, they determined to run the said ship into the mud, and to cut away the mainmast, in order to render them less liable to drag, and to leave the port again and encounter the enemy. Accordingly, all possible haste was displayed in disembarking the men, and the silver and reals of your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... of this strange incident of the coffin is this: After the battle of the Nile a portion of the Orient's mainmast was drifting about, and was picked up by order of Captain Hallowell of the Swiftsure, who had it made into a coffin. It was handsomely finished, and sent to Admiral ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... crane was smashed to bits by a Japanese explosive shell just as it was raising a launch, the same shot carrying off the third funnel just behind it. When Togo's last ship had left the Connecticut behind, only one funnel full of gaping holes and half of the mainmast were left standing on the deck of the admiral's flag-ship, which presented a wild chaos of bent and broken ironwork. Through the ruins of the deck structures rose the flames and thick smoke from ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... shadow of his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. In such a calm, we should in nature, if we had looked for the reflection, have seen it clear from the water-line to the flag on the mainmast; but in so doing, we should have appeared to ourselves to be looking under the water, and should have lost all feeling of surface. When we looked at the surface of the sea,—as we naturally should,—we should have ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... cheeks faded On shores invaded, When shorewards waded The lords of fight; When churl and craven Saw hard on haven The wide-winged raven At mainmast height; When monks affrighted To windward sighted The birds full-flighted Of swift sea-kings; So earth turns paler When Storm the sailor Steers in with a roar in the ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rapidly becoming as riddled as a sieve, while men were falling fast in every direction. The ship's funnel was as full of holes as a cullender, the shrouds of the foremast were cut to pieces on both sides, the mainmast had long since been shot away, and the wooden deck-houses were mere heaps of splintered wood, while the bulwarks were in a perfectly ruinous condition. Clearly something must be done, and done quickly, or the Su-chen would ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... this assailant, the galley found herself close to the Dutch admiral in the Half-moon, who, with all sail set, bore straight down upon her, struck her amidships with a mighty crash, carrying off her mainmast and her poop, and then, extricating himself with difficulty from the wreck, sent a tremendous volley of cannon-shot and lesser missiles straight into the waist where sat the chain-gang. A howl of pain and terror rang through the air, while oars and benches, arms, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... empty in a corner, when it happened—whether on the passage out or home the bottle could not tell, for it had never been ashore—that a storm arose; great waves came careering along, darkly and heavily, and lifted and tossed the ship to and fro. The mainmast was shivered, and a wave started one of the planks, and the pumps became useless. It was black night. The ship sank; but at the last moment the young mate wrote on a leaf of paper, "God's will be done! ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... 10th, there was a dreadful storm of thunder, lightning, and rain, during which the mainmast of one of the Dutch East Indiamen was split, and carried away by the deck; and the maintop-mast and topgallant-mast were shivered to pieces. The stroke was probably directed by an iron spindle, which was at the maintop gallantmast ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... bowsprit was carried away close to the gammoning, and the foremast and main-topmast immediately followed it over the side. The wreck was quickly cleared; and, by the greatest activity and energy on the part of the officers and men, the mainyard and mainmast were saved, the latter having been endangered by the foremast falling across the stay, and the former by the wreck of the main-topmast and top-sail-yard lying upon it. Notwithstanding the continuance of the gale, and the uneasy motion of the ship for the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry |
