"Windlass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His coat was black samite, and his hat was goodly sable. His quiver was richly laced, and covered with a panther's hide for the sake of the sweet smell. He bare, also, a bow that none could draw but himself, unless with a windlass. His cloak was a lynx-skin, pied from head to foot, and embroidered over with gold on both sides. Also Balmung had he done on, whereof the edges were so sharp that it clave every helmet it touched. I ween the huntsman ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the States, each for itself—the moneymakers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it at ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... calm comes a storm, and so, after weeks of listless waiting, doing nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a very gale of bustle comes on. 'Sail ho!' comes from the lookout aloft. 'One point off our starboard bow!' 'Man the windlass and up anchor!' shouts the officer of the deck, as the strange sail bears down steadily toward us, finally showing signals which tell us she's a friend and brings a mail. The Iroquois steams out to meet her; their anchors drop, and they hold friendly confab. We, too, soon come up, and hear that ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Bristles hastened to admit, as he cast a quick glance at the almost ropeless wooden windlass; "don't you see the bucket's away down? Whoever it is, Fred, they just can't climb up again. It takes you to get on the inside track ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Women, boys, and all wished to have a hand in building it, and it remains to this day, a solid wall of masonry, the circle being thirty-four feet deep, eight feet wide at the top, and six at the bottom. I floored it over with wood above all, and fixed the windlass and bucket, and there it stands as one of the greatest material blessings which the Lord has given to Aniwa. It rises and falls with the tide, though a third of a mile distant from the sea; and when, after using it, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... overboard!' I lost no time. I bore down on the taffrail threw the cook overboard, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing our noble craft lay over abaft the wind. Then, quick as thought, I belayed the windlass and lowered a gaff. It struck something soft. I heard JEFF cry: 'Don't hit my head again.' I was careful. The gaff slid along his back, and finally settled firmly into the seat of his trousers. He was hoisted aboard. The first thing he did was to see if his tobacco ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... brother, by stumbling over the stern of the lighter when he was three years old. At the time of the accident my mother had retired to her bed, a little the worse for liquor; my father was on deck forward, leaning against the windlass, soberly smoking his evening pipe. "What was that?" exclaimed my father, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and listening; "I shouldn't wonder if that wasn't Joe." And my father put in his pipe again, and smoked ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the heaving line, and Nelson and Bowen, with life-lines about them, bent the stubborn end of it around the windlass. It was heavy work, even for two men, on the tumbling, slippery deck, and, that done, they turned, anxiously, to see how the man in the stern of the tug was making out. He was there, back to, bending the thick stubborn bight about the towing bitts with slow, heavy motions. They ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and the lower part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments covered with gold embroidery and starred with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wagon. He tried them with bridles and bits, but the buffaloes refused to work with them. With tight-fitting halters, and the exercise of much-muscle, he was able for a time to make them "gee" and "haw." But not for long. When they outgrew his ability in free-hand drawing, he rigged an upright windlass on each side of his wagon-box, and firmly attached a line to each. When the team was desired to "gee," he deftly wound up the right line on its windlass, and vice ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... with an aggrieved air. "I'd like to see you stop them, with a rawhide lasso round your neck, and a big Korak hauling like a steam windlass on the other end of it! It's all very well to cry 'stop 'em'; but when the barbarians haul you off the rear end of your sledge as if you were a wild animal, what course would your sublime wisdom suggest? I believe I've got the mark of a lasso round my neck now," and he ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... it some day." But neither of us could remember anything that was at all useful now. I could plainly see the picture of some queerly-drawn hands doing a "Spanish Windlass," but that wouldn't have done poor Greg any good at all. Jerry did remember that you ought to cut people's clothes and not try to take them off in the ordinary way, so he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of Greg's jumper and the shoulder-seam of ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... fired with cord wood purchased of the planters and delivered on the bank of the river. All boats plying on the Missouri River at that time were flat bottom with paddle wheel at the stern. Two long heavy poles were carried at the bow and worked with a windlass, being used to raise the bow of the boat when becoming fast on a sand bar. The pilot was obliged to keep a continuous lookout for these bars, as the channel ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... week. His business was to lower great packages of boxes from the upper story to the ground floor. He thought how delightful it would be to go down himself on the rope. One day he induced a small boy who worked near, pasting, to mind the windlass while he descended by hanging on above the usual pits of boxes. The sensation was novel and pleasing and it became exciting when the boy above leaned over and shouted: "The boss is coming, look out for yourself. I'll ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... stop as final. No attempt was made to put out a kedge anchor and to "haul off" with the windlass. We simply walked around the houseboat on the guard taking soundings. Finding that the boat was settling upon fairly level bottom, and feeling that the farther she went the worse she would fare, we took our chances ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... cyclone ripping up four miles of plank road and driving it through the pulsating heart of a colored camp-meeting. The calf had forgotten to remember the well, and while my respected sire was chasing the kettle to the bottom, the calf was chasing him. Half a dozen robust neighbors armed with a windlass and a two-inch rope dragged the youthful ox and his unfortunate companions from the pit, and the volunteer fire brigade was sent for to turn the hose on them. I haven't forgotten the sequel to this little story; but it would ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... exclamation, and peeped through the broken boards. Then he seized the bucket that was suspended by a windlass over the ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... vertical shafts 100 to 125 feet deep, down which everything has to pass. The laborers climb up and down a ladder, and the fresh manure is shoveled down the shaft from above, the waste stuff and mushrooms being hauled up in baskets from beneath by means of a windlass." ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... signified that she wished to go down to the beach beyond the harbor basin. Bruce accompanied her. Often he caught her staring out at the twinkling lights on board the Simla. By and by they could hear the windlass creaking. A volume of black smoke suddenly poured from the boat's slanting funnel. The ship was putting ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain Delano, be sure that man there has fouled his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in the pitch. I don't like to accost him. I will speak to this other, this old Jack here on the windlass. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... long was the discussion they had that evening around the windlass on this subject. Some held that it was absurd to blame men for not being able, "when p'raps they couldn't if they wor to try." Others thought that they might have tried first before saying that "p'raps ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a winding machine. De Loutherbourg excelled in his treatment of clouds; he secured in this way ample room and verge enough to display his knowledge and ingenuity. By regulating the action of his windlass he could control the movements of his clouds, allow them to rise slowly from the horizon and sail obliquely across the heavens, or drive them swiftly along, according to their supposed density and the power to be attributed ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the seamen were about; they appeared to be pumping, instead of heaving, at the windlass. I forced my way through the heterogeneous mixture of human beings, animals, and baggage which crowded the decks, and discovered that they were working a patent windlass, by Dobbinson—a very ingenious and superior invention. The seamen, as usual, lightened their labour with the song ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... which overlook the river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used to echo along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer. This explains the empty warehouses and the unused ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... machine for "forced feeding" which must greatly resemble Martin's. Specimens fattened by the Gaveuse Martin, all ready for the broche, used to be sold on the premises. The interior of the building was occupied by six gigantic epinettes, each holding two hundred birds. A windlass mounted upon a railroad enabled the operator (gaveur, from gaver, to cram, an inelegant term) very easily to raise himself to any story of the epinette. The latter was a cylinder turning upon its axis, and thus passing every bird in review. "An india-rubber tube introduced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... we come to a high range of rocks, which we cross, and then find ourselves near the head-waters of Fryer's Creek. Following that stream towards the Loddon, we pass the interesting neighbourhood of Golden Gully, Moonlight Flat, Windlass and Red Hill; this latter which covers about two acres of ground is so called from the colour of the soil, it was the first found, and is still considered as the richest auriferous spot near Mount Alexander. In the wet season, it was reckoned ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... to be quit of him so soon, but I noticed that, as I stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream. On this bird, I deemed, he meant to try his skill ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... which the poor creatures construed into abandonment, and the air rang with the most agonising shrieks of misery. But hope was again raised, when a boat was lowered and a rope thrown on board for the purpose of towing the junk to the ship. This intention was frustrated by the windlass breaking. At sight of this one man, in a paroxysm of despair, jumped overboard after the rope; but he missed it. Being a good swimmer, he tried to reach the boat; but his feeble power could avail him nothing in the midst of such ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... best beloved of the family, the four-years-old "baby," had slipped on the curb of the well, overbalanced himself, and fallen in; dropping a toy into the water as he did so. In a moment Mary was on her feet. Seizing the bucket, she called the elder boys to work the windlass, and, with firm, but quiet instructions and a face as white as death, consigned herself to the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... of the work was to build a rude dock. A pile-driver was towed up the river, but as this particular pile-driver had not the usual stationary steam-engine accompanying it, the great iron weight which was dropped upon the piles to drive them into the river bed was elevated by means of a windlass and mule power. The weight, once lifted, was released by means of a trigger connected by a cord with a post, where a man driving the mule around could pull it. The arrangement was primitive ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to hearty nature, and the further we go from, the artificial and conventional, the nearer do we come to truth. Truth is indeed at the bottom of this well, and not in the artificial wall that rises above it, nor the buckets that go up and down as caprice or selfishness turns the windlass. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... creatures of Brobdingnag. It is true that neat mechanical contrivances save their muscle wherever it is possible. A great plate of iron or a bundle of deck flooring is picked up, by a hand which swings down from aloft, like a visiting-card by a lady: a single man turning a windlass, it sails into the air, gets up as high as it chooses to, and drops delicately just where it is wanted along the length of the structure. Out on the wharf a double "hoister," working by steam, and able to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... was pulling a bucket of water up out of the well fur us with a windlass. The doctor says ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the frightened shrieks of women and shouts of warning. He looked back in time to see the huge stone turn part way round on the chute and rush, end first, earthward. Expectant silence fell, broken only by the vicious snarl of a flying windlass crank. But in an instant the great slab struck the earth with a thunderous sound that reverberated again and again from the barren hills about. A vast all-enveloping cloud of dust and earth filled the hollow quarry like smoke from an explosion. But there was no further outcry, and through ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face, and the veins and muscles as they stood out upon his great powerful ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... similar to American canal-boats in shape, and of a dark red-brown color. Will thought them stumpy and heavy-looking; and he did not admire the red sails with crooked gaffs, and smiled at the blue pennants, stretched out on stiff frames that turned with the wind. But when Greta showed him a tiny windlass on the deck, by means of which she easily raised and lowered the mast, he came to the conclusion that a Dutch canal-boat was not ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... there, after cutting off her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the aforesaid chamber, and wound up at the other end by a four lever windlass, worked by two men." ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... roll was therefore slipped over a vertical iron rod fastened into a circular perforated wooden foot. The upper end of this iron rod ended in a ring, in which the hook of a chain or rope could be fastened. With the aid of a windlass the roll was raised or lowered. When placed in the pan with boiling tar, it was left there until thoroughly saturated. It was then taken out, placed upon a table, and the excess of tar allowed to drip off into a vessel underneath. After partially drying, the roll was spread out in open air, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... few turns on the windlass, and as the bag came up, two terrapin of the then common diamond-back variety rolled on the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... halted in front of her house, which they were compelled to do for hours, waiting the routine of being mustered into the prison. They were not allowed to leave their ranks, and she would turn an old-fashioned windlass herself for hours, raising water from her well; for the prisoners were often twenty-four to forty-eight hours on the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of their assailants were close upon their heels. Walter glanced round; dashing across the courtyard he ran through some passages into an inner yard, in which, as he knew, was the well. The bucket hung at the windlass. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... deck with his back against the bulwark, watching the shore as they drifted slowly past it, and wondering vaguely, how it would all end. They had been anchored but half an hour when the captain ordered the men to the windlass. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... The windlass creaked protestingly and the heavy chain dropped slowly into the river. The barge steered to the center of the channel, gathering speed as it passed ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... side with a small pick to cut out nuggets, while the men drilled a hole about two inches in diameter and one foot deep, which they afterward filled with dynamite. After sending the tools up, the other man and I went up, while the man we left in the shaft lit the fuse. We all pulled at the windlass, and he was soon at the top. After taking off the bucket we ran up the hill about a hundred yards to ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with a windlass well beside the door. As we rode up the draw we skirted a big melon patch, and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay about on the sod. We found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over a washtub. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the sailor led them forwards, and as they went she noted that men were hauling on a sail, while other men, who sang a strange, wild song, worked on what seemed to be a windlass. Now they reached a cabin, and entered it, the door being shut behind them. In the cabin a man sat at a table with a lamp hanging over his head. He rose and turned towards them, bowing, and Margaret saw ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... where the cliff is only a few feet high. A windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship's figurehead of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall. 'This time ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... proved, we will now look more closely beneath the pie-crust of Northwich. The best way to do so is to get into a big tub which will just hold two people and go down the shaft of a salt mine, lowered by a windlass. First of all you pass through 32 feet of soil and drift, and then about 92 feet of what would commonly be called rock. Then below these 124 feet you come to the first bed of rock salt, which averages about 75 feet in thickness. Passing through this you come ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... fellow, we'll not," was the answer, "unless we can get him near enough to stun him with a hatchet. Even on board a big ship the men often have to attach the rope to a windlass to draw the big fellows in while they're still full of fight. Even if he were stunned, I don't think that all of us pulling together could lift his dead weight on board ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... turned the creaking old windlass and Susie descended to join Billiard in his underground explorations. Being much lighter than her cousin, it was easier to lower her down the shaft; and still easier with Inez in the bucket; but once the trio were safely at the bottom, the little group ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... heave up the anchor with a windlass, Mr. Graines," said he to the engineer. "We had better get the hang of it while we have time to do so. Ship ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... of intense excitement though for them, and as they watched they saw a windlass turn, and up came the great trawl-irons and the beam, then, dripping and sparkling in the sun, the foot-rope of the trawl-net, and foot after foot emerged ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... and way down we could hear an awful splashing. Sailor Bill yelled down, "Look out below; stand from under; bucket coming!" With that he loosed the windlass. In a few seconds a spluttering voice from the depths yelled ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but actually ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... me, my thoughts touched upon other happenings of that boyhood voyage—the long, tedious beat through the straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward to visit me one evening ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... expecting every instant to turn on the next and go. Yet he went not. Under the dusty front windows of the counting-room the street was roaring below. Just beyond a glass partition at his back a great windlass far up under the roof was rumbling with the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... to see the great raft, and I among them. They have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half a mile long. The boat ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... war-time. I tell yew, them is the craft that sails afore the wind, and does the signallin' to all the fleet. When gals is full-rigged an' tonguey, they're reg'lar press-gangs to twist young fellers round, an' make 'em sail under the right colors. Stick to the ship, Miss Sally; give a heave at the windlass now'n then, an' don't let nary one o' them fellers that comes a buzzin' round you the hull time turn his back on Yankee Doodle; an' you won't never hanker to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the crabs, keeping up a constant fusillade, and endeavouring to throw grapnels over them. If one of these should catch under an overlapping armour-plate it could be connected with the steam windlass of the Adamant, and a plate might be ripped off ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... sidewalk Rimrock Jones, the follower after big dreams, sat silent, balancing the sack of ore in a bronzed and rock-scarred hand. He was a powerful man, with the broad, square-set shoulders that come from much swinging of a double jack or cranking at a windlass. The curling beard of youth had covered his hard-bitten face and his head was unconsciously thrust forward, as if he still glimpsed his vision and was eager to follow it further. The crowd settled down and gazed at him curiously, for they knew he had a story to tell, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... suspended from a long cable, formed of two conducting wires, which winds around a windlass with metallic journals which are electrically insulated. These journals communicate, through the intermedium of two friction springs, with the conductors on the one hand and, on the other, with the poles of an automatic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... miner usually finds a ledge of quartz-rock and digs down the way the ledge goes. He puts up a windlass, worked by hand, over the well-like hole he has dug out, and hoists the ore out in buckets. But he soon finds, as the hole or shaft goes deeper, that he must timber the sides to keep them from caving ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... point in hickory propagation work consists in the employment of the Spanish windlass for fastening graft and stock together. The old time wrapping of twine or of raffia had to be released in order to allow growth at the point of union of scion and stock. When cord is used it cuts deeply into the new growth, and raffia, which is placed on flat, will be burst open. In either ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... and ahead, like a flying fish. Two more shots were fired, and, after beating the water furiously, it died. Then a harpoon was thrown into the creature, and it was towed to the wharf, where it was slung and hoisted out with a windlass. This fish measured fourteen feet from wing ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... lost!" the man replied. "I was at the windlass when they shouted up to me to go up and fetch them a bottle of rum. They had just struck it rich, and wanted a drink ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the children had fallen into the well. She ran out to the back of the house, and saw the two girls standing together with consternation on their faces. It appeared that Juliet had insisted on lowering the bucket by the windlass, and that, by some awkward mischance, she had let it fall off the hook, and there it lay at the bottom of the well, and there seemed to be no means of getting ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... draw-well, but king nor princes ever saw an opening before in the same place. When the last lady was out of sight, the men found the strength in their arms and legs again. Round the lake they ran, and never drew rein till they came to the well and windlass; and there was the silk rope rolled on the axle, and the nice white basket hanging to it. 'Let me down,' says the youngest prince. 'I'll die or recover them again.' 'No,' says the second daughter's sweetheart, 'it is ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... seemed to be at hand, and the familiars already grasped him rudely to hurl him on the rack, when, as if suddenly inspired by a superhuman strength, the young nobleman dashed the men from him; then, with lightning speed, he seized a massive iron bar that was used to move the windlass of the rack, and in another instant, before a saving arm could intervene, the deadly instrument struck down the Count of Arestino at the feet of the grand inquisitor, who started back with a cry of horror! The next moment the marquis was again ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... follow a great noise and uproar and hurry in the castle court-yard below; men shouting and calling to one another, the ringing of armor, and the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder horse and man, clattering away down the winding, stony pathway, until the great ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... he kept his cabin, pleading the effects of cramp and exhaustion, and emerged only when it was dark, to drop into a deck chair behind a windlass, and brood upon his sins, staring out ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... ascending to a considerable height, by a curious spiral stone stair case. The lantern is composed, of ninety immense reflecting lamps, which are capable of being raised or depressed with great ease by means of an iron windlass. This large lustre, is surrounded with plates of the thickest french glass, fixed in squares of iron, and discharges a prodigious light, in dark nights. A furnace of coal, was formerly used, but this has been judiciously superseded by the present invention. Round the lantern, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... entrance Jose and the traitorous Indian stood over the windlass, by means of which the rope was worked, and as I ran to their side, one of the Spanish soldiers uttered a cry of alarm. Instantly all was tumult and confusion. Shots were fired at random, men shouted wildly, "We are betrayed!" ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... near the south-easterly corner of the bay. Punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted; the schooner turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. It was a small sound, a great event; my soul went down with these moorings whence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it up; and I, and some part of my ship's company, were from that hour the bondslaves of the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vine give, as if uncoiling itself from a windlass. Down, down he fell until his feet touched the soggy earth of the island. Still the vine uncoiled; the island crashed into the boulder. Desperately Piang tried to climb the vine, but its slackness offered no resistance. Slowly the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue sea—patched with purple stains in the middle distance—webs of steamer smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... swept astern along the sides of the ship, and disappeared further on. We left behind us an undulating luminous wake, resembling a long bright snake following us, which was gradually in the distance engulfed by the ocean. This luminous track seemed to be reeled off from a windlass at the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... making his way forward about the narrow deck-space outside the cabin. Halvard was seated on a coil of rope beside the windlass and stood erect as Woolfolk approached. The sailor was smoking a short pipe, and the bowl made a crimson spark in his thick, powerful hand. John Woolfolk fingered the wood surface of the windlass bitts and found it rough and ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of murky smoke, was a beautiful little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where you perceive that red glare—the flame of a smelting furnace—there was an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse stood, on that rocky point, they have got a crane and a windlass. Now, turn to this other side. The road you saw to-day, crossed with four main lines, cut up, almost impassable between mud, rubbish, and fallen timber, with swampy excavations on one side and brick-fields ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... set him to work passing water-kegs into the hold. He had had no rest in over twenty hours and his whole body ached as the last barrel bumped through the hatch. All the crew were aboard and a knot of swaying bodies turned the windlass to the rhythm of a muttered chanty. The chain creaked and rattled over the bits till the dripping anchor came out of water and was swung inboard. The mainsail and foresail went up with a bang, as a dozen stalwart ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... easier next time," said Humphrey. "I will make a windlass as soon as I can, and we will soon hoist out another, like they turn a bucket of water up ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... she, looked wildly about him. His eyes fell on a heavy piece of iron, left on the deck by some seaman who had been repairing the windlass. Like a flash ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... again with a great creaking of windlass and chain, and Charles with his head up rode across. But his men-at-arms stood their horses squarely on the bridge so that it could not be raised, and ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... jollification to-morrow, it being his birthday. Along the rigging were white trowsers, check shirts, and all the other paraphernalia of a sailor's wardrobe, hung up to swing to the wind, and dry; and, as Jerome sat on the windlass, scraping and screwing his fiddle by way of tuning, I could plainly be made to understand that Friday, the 21st of May, was not intended to be passed over with the indifference of any ordinary day,—at least, not on board the Iris. In a few minutes, while ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... been asleep for more than two hours, when they were awakened by an uproar on deck, and rousing themselves from sleep, they heard the rattle of the chains and the crank of the windlass. As their night attire was singularly simple, and consisted largely of the dress which they wore by day, being the same, in fact, with the exception of the hat, it was not long before they were up on deck, and making ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... George"—the Briton who had guarded, a corpse at his feet. The hatches were down. The ship was in possession of the "Repudiator's" crew. They were busy in her rigging, bending her sails to carry her out of the harbor. The well-known heave of the men at the windlass woke up Kempenfelt in his state-cabin. We know, or rather do not know, the result; for who can tell by whom the lower-deck ports of the brave ship were opened, and how the haughty prisoners below ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prolonged northeast rain a bright day, and with it the setting of sail, a many-handed seesaw at the windlass, and departure. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... from all parts of the world, anchored in the stream, discharging and loading cargoes. There, just arrived, was an Italian emigrant ship with a thousand people on board, who had come to start life afresh. There was the large British steamer, with her clattering windlass, hoisting on board live bullocks from barges moored alongside. The animals are raised up by means of a strong rope tied around their horns, and as the ship rocks on the swell they dangle in mid-air. When a favorable moment arrives they are quickly ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... o'clock the next morning by the men chorussing at the windlass, and the quick clank of the pawls that showed how thoroughly Jack was putting his heart into his work, and how quickly he was walking the ship up to her anchor. I scrambled out of my bunk, and took a peep through the port in the ship's side, to see what the weather was like; it was ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... on deck, the mate stretched me out on the windlass and commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... agreement to transport passengers only—never freight! No sawmills in the Orient, but thousands of men laboriously converting logs into lumber by means of whipsaws. No pumps, even at the most used watering places, but buckets and ropes: often no windlass. No power grain-mills, but men and women, and, in some cases, asses and oxen, doing the work that the idle water-powers are given no chance ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... for sea. The carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the mainhatch battens, and, throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great deliberation, just on the stroke of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... and tranquility were perfectly restored, the admiral ordered a boat to be lowered and soundings to be taken, intending to put out the anchors ahead, and to get her off by working upon them with the windlass. It was found, however, that under the forefoot of the vessel the water deepened so rapidly that, at a distance of a few fathoms, no soundings could be obtained. This ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... by the sudden flying-out of an anchor; and a marine of the Fury suffered in a similar manner when working at the capstan; but, providentially, they all escaped with severe contusions. A more serious accident occurred in the breaking of the spindle of the Fury’s windlass, depriving her of the use of the windlass-end during the rest of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... but as much by a new idea that had entered my mind, I stepped upon the staging and glided cautiously aboard. I caught a glimpse of the sailors far off in the forward part of this ship—some seated upon the windlass, others squatted upon the deck itself, with their tin plates before them, and their jack-knives in their hands. Not one of them saw me—not one was looking in my direction: their eyes were too busy with the cook and his ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain and the carpenter, he "gets the anchors over" with the men of his own watch, whom he knows better than the others. There he sees the cable ranged, the windlass disconnected, the compressors opened; and there, after giving his own last order, "Stand clear of the cable!" he waits attentive, in a silent ship that forges slowly ahead towards her picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from aft, "Let go!" Instantly bending ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... who comforts and assures them, and says that, even if perchance they see folk coming after them who come to take them, they need have no fear for aught, for never to do them harm or injury would they come within the distance that one could shoot with a strong crossbow stretched by windlass. ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... unchanged to the modern Persian, who is really a marvellous expert—when he chooses to use his skill—at conveying water where Nature has not provided it. I watched some men making one of these kanats. They had bored a vertical hole about three feet in diameter, over which a wooden windlass had been erected. One man was working at the bottom of the shaft. By means of buckets the superfluous earth was gradually raised up to the surface, and the hole bored further. The earth removed in the excavation is then embanked ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to adopt that darling also, to which, after some slight hesitation, he consented. Another twelvemonth rolled into eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well with unwonted industry. As the bucket neared the top he reached down and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding it up, explained to the astonished matron: ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... quietly smoked his pipe, thinking of nothing either past, present, or to come; those of his comrades who were not industriously smoking under the hatches were listening with open mouths to Antony Van Corlear, who, seated on the windlass, was relating to them the marvelous history of those myriads of fireflies, that sparkled like gems and spangles upon the dusky robe of night. These, according to tradition, were originally a race of pestilent sempiternous beldames, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and shove me into the water again. As long as my secrets were my own, I had still something left within me, but now I am quite empty. There is a canvas by an Italian master, showing a scene of torture—a saint whose intestines are being torn out of him and rolled on the axle of a windlass. The martyr is watching himself grow thinner and thinner, while the roll on the axle grows thicker.—Now it seems to me as if you had swelled out since you began to dig in me; and when you leave, you'll carry ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... printed in the "Wilts Archaeological Magazine," vol. xvii., in a way that supports the hypothesis advanced. A somewhat important piece of circumstantial evidence came to light during the late restoration, namely a windlass close to the pier on the north side of the supposed original site of the altar, which was possibly intended to raise and lower a baldichino, or ciborium that hung originally over the altar, or still more probably the pyx, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... not to be seen. Neither was MacDonald. There seemed to be no one. The day shift were going back in the tunnels below. The windlass handle hung prone as a disused well. It had not flown back broken. The cable had been cut. Then, he heard a groan. It was Calamity lying on her face at the foot of the windlass, weeping and reaving her hair. Stretched on the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... fear from them, therefore, was that they would find means to break out; and this the second lieutenant provided against pretty effectually by placing a large wash-deck tub on the cover and coiling down therein the end of one of the mooring hawsers which stood on the deck near the windlass. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... weather, no attempt at forming even such miniature harbours as may be seen on the Berwickshire coast having been made. When the wind blows hard from the north, the landing on that side is useless, and the boats, having no shelter, are hauled up the steep slope with the help of a steam windlass. Under these circumstances the South Landing is used. It is similar in most respects to the northern one, but, owing to the cliffs being lower, the cove is less picturesque. At low tide a beach of very rough shingle is exposed between the ragged chalk cliffs, curiously ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... One saw him wear a coat of black and silky cloth and a hat of sable: rich enow it was. Ho, what costly bands he wore upon his quiver! A panther's skin was drawn over it for its sweet fragrance' (4) sake. He bare a bow, which any but the hero must needs draw back with a windlass, and he would bend it. His vesture was befurred with otter skin (5) from head to toe. From the bright fur shone out on both sides of the bold master of the hunt many a bar of gold. Balmung (6) he also bare, a good broad sword, that was so sharp that ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... of the bucket against the stones, the rumble of the windlass, and then Dilly came in with a brimming bright tin dipper. She offered it first to the parson, and though she refilled it scrupulously for each pair of lips, it seemed a holy loving-cup. They sat there in the darkening room, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... back to Bath—from which it will be easy for you to train to Falmouth. We will go by Monmouth and then turn back through the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitive coal mines still worked by two men and a boy with a windlass and a pail. Perhaps we will go through Cirencester. I don't know. Perhaps it is better to go straight to Bath. In the very heart of Bath you will find yourselves in just the same world you visited at Pompeii. Bath is Pompeii overlaid ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... laid on to a winch, aft, for handling cargo in the main hold, and to a forward steam-windlass. The latter was mainly used for raising the anchor and manipulating the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... did was to construct a small windlass in the garden, with which to wind up or let out the string of the kite; and when the next fit morning arrived, Mona and he went out together. The wind blowing right through the garden, they did not go to the open field, but sent up the kite from the windlass, and ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... over his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not return to that house for dinner—that he would never go back there any more. He made up his mind some twenty times. The knowledge that he had only to go up on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: "Man the windlass," and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will. Nothing easier! Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... passengers were got up to the bow, where they clustered and clung about the windlass and other points of vantage. Then it was that the true nature of their calamity was revealed, for no land was visible, nothing was to be seen around them but a hell of raging foam, which, in the ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... man wouldn't see it somehow. He wanted to keep the matter quiet. He got that notion into his head, and a steam windlass couldn't drag it out of him. He wanted as little fuss made as possible, for the sake of the ship's name and for the sake of the owners—'for the sake of all concerned,' says he, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... mine, however, had paid very well all through. The method of working in deep ground was determined by roadways running north and south. The soil was hauled up to these roadways, and taken to the sorting tables. The roadways decaying shortly after exposure to the atmosphere, a system of hand windlass was adopted, which worked very well for a time until horsewhims were adopted in 1873. The depths of the mines increasing, horsewhims had to give way to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... of the windlass letting go the anchor chain. On the deck of the schooner men ran about as the sails were lowered. The vessel swung gently until the bow headed into the current of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... quarry, thence to a stone-cutting yard. After a little while he could not conceal his impatience with the mere dressing of coping stones or the chiselling out of tombstones to a pattern. Then he saw the man killed in the quarry. He was standing quite near to him. The chain of the windlass went and the poor man had no escape. Martin Cosgrave had heard the crunch of the skull on the boulder, and some of the blood was spattered upon his boots. He was a man of tense nerves. The sight of blood sickened him. He put on his ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly |
