"Becalmed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us—in less than two the sky was entirely overcast—and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... present amused over the coming into port of the German converted cruiser Eitel, with the captain and the crew of the American bark, William P. Frye, on board. The calm gall of the thing really appeals to the American sense of humor. Here is a German captain, who captured a becalmed sailing ship, loaded with wheat, and blows her up; sails through fifteen thousand miles of sea, in danger every day of being sunk by an English cruiser, and then calmly comes in to an American port for coal and repairs. The cheek of the thing is so monumental as to fairly captivate the American ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Gomera is a town and good road-stead, in lat. 28 deg. N. Teneriffe is a mountainous island, with a great high peak like a sugar-loaf, on which there is snow all the year, and by that peak it may be known from all other islands. On the 20th November we were there becalmed from six in the morning till four in the afternoon. On the 22d November, being then under the tropic of Cancer, the sun set W. and by S. On the coast of Barbary, 25 leagues N. of Cape Blanco, at 3 leagues from shore, we had 15 fathoms water on a good shelly bottom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... master, by not taking due observation of the south star, we missed these islands, falling to the southward of them, within sight of the islands of Gomes Polo,[18] immediately off the great island of Sumatra, it being then the 1st of June; and we lay two or three days becalmed at the north-east side of these islands, hoping to have procured a pilot from the island of Sumatra, which was in sight, within two leagues of us. Winter now coming on, with much tempestuous weather, we directed our course for the islands of Pulo Pinao:[19] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... ship becalmed in the doldrums" Frontispiece. 18 "Harry had obtained a map of Australia" 56 A visit to the Zoological Garden 147 "There they go!" shouted ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... sound fell on the ear Of "Square the main yards! Sailors, do you hear?" A hearty "Aye, Sir!" was the loud response, And she had glided into sea at once! With haste they for the Northern passage make, But that good breeze did them too soon forsake. Awhile they lay becalmed, and then return, And reach the Southern passage just at morn. Soon, soon they lose the truly precious sight Of English shores, bathed in the morning light! A few more hours, and land has disappeared; They see no more Old Albion's cliffs upreared. Let us suppose that then this poor ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the ship "nine fathom deep" to make sure that vengeance was meted out to the guilty man. As a sign of the Mariner's guilt the sailors fastened about his neck the dead bird. The vessel was now in the Pacific Ocean. On nearing the equator she was becalmed, and before long all the sailors were dying of thirst. Suddenly a skeleton ship appeared in sight, having on board Death and Life-in-Death. The two spectres were throwing dice to see which should possess the doomed Mariner. Life-in-Death ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... favourable, they entered, June 29th, between Guadaloupe and Dominica, and, on July 6th, saw the highland of Santa Martha; then continuing their course, after having been becalmed for some time, they arrived at port Pheasant, so named by Drake, in a former voyage to the east of Nombre de Dios. Here he proposed to build his pinnaces, which he had brought in pieces ready framed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... from under an old straw hat, as its owner trod, barefooted, the deck of his craft. He had started, with the raft in tow, from his mill at the head of Choctawhatchee Bay, bound for the great lumber port of Pensacola, but being several times becalmed, was now out of provisions. We gave him and his men all we could spare from our store, and then inquired whether it would be possible for us to find a team and driver to haul our boats from the end of the watercourse ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... to our disasters, after all. I sighted her for six days' sail from the American coast: but ere we could lay her aboard it fell dead calm. Never a boat had I on board—they were all lost in a gale of wind—and the other ships were becalmed two leagues astern of me. There was no use lying there and pounding her till she sank; so I called the carpenter, got up all the old chests, and with them and some spars we floated ourselves alongside, and only just in time. For the last of us had hardly scrambled ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... We lay becalmed opposite Sheerness the whole of the second day. At dusk a sudden squall came up, which drove us foaming towards the North Foreland. When I went on deck in the morning, we had passed Dover and Brighton, and the Isle of Wight was rising dim ahead of us. The low English coast on ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... darkest hour of a very dark night, in the year 1883, a large brig lay becalmed on the Indian Ocean, not far from that region of the Eastern world which is associated in some minds with spices, volcanoes, coffee, and piratical junks, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... lurid; but whether this was the breaking out into flame, or from the rays of the sun pouring down upon the smoke, it was impossible to say, as we were then several miles off. During the whole of the following night we were becalmed, and during that time impelled, by a strong current, towards the volcanic island. Strange noises were heard, and large columns of smoke ascended from the crater, which, from there not being a breath of air, soon enveloped it from our sight. On the following day we again landed upon an ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... The following is the account of the voyage, "big with adventures," as given by the latter in a letter to his friend Illingworth:—"At first we had very little foul weather, and indeed were for several days becalmed amongst the islands, which was so far fortunate, for a few degrees further north the most tremendous gales were blowing, and they appear (from our future information) to have wrecked every vessel ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... We saw a man, Heavy with sickness in the bog of Allen, Whom you had bid buy cattle. Near Fair Head We saw your grain ships lying all becalmed In the dark night; and not less still than they, Burned all their mirrored lanthorns in ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... the Greenland village was indeed interesting. There was the blue sea before it, dotted with "pond-lilies." Off the mouth of the harbor, the icebergs went sailing by, so white, so stately, so slow, like a fleet almost becalmed. Back of the village swelled the rocky cliffs bare of snow now, and many rivulets went flashing down their sides from ponds and pools nestling in granite recesses. Away off, towered the mountains, their still snowy tops suggesting ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... and Hooping Harbour.—After being becalmed all night, a light breeze sprung up in our favour at four o'clock A.M. (being then just off Little Cat Arm), which sufficed to carry us into Hooping Harbour (about thirty-five miles) by three o'clock P.M. Here are two families ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... two days almost totally becalmed, when, a brisk gale rising as we were in sight in Dunkirk, we saw a vessel making full sail towards us. The captain of the privateer was so strong that he apprehended no danger but from a man-of-war, which the sailors discerned this not to be. He therefore struck his colours, and ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... stormy voyage, although we set sail so fairly; and I thought that we never should round Cape Horn in the teeth of the furious northeast winds; and after that we lay becalmed, I have no idea in what latitude, though the passengers now talked quite like seamen, at least till the sea got up again. However, at last we made the English Channel, in the dreary days of November, and after more peril there than any ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... two it blew very hard, and the sea ran so high that their sail was becalmed between the waves; they did not dare to set it when on the top of the sea, for the water rushed in over the stern of the boat, and they were obliged to bale with all ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... any way, and for several hours before and after noon they lay almost becalmed upon the ocean. This period was passed in silence and inaction. There was nothing for them to talk about but their forlorn situation, and this topic had been exhausted. There was nothing for them to do. Their only occupation was to watch the sun, until, ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... John Talbot, 'who,' records Ralegh, 'had lived with me eleven years in the Tower, an excellent general scholar, and a faithful true man as lived.' The ship left Bravo on October 4. On the 12th they were becalmed. At one time a thick and fearful darkness enveloped them. Then the horizon became over-shot with gloomy discolorations. Off Trinidad fifteen rainbows in a day were seen. Ralegh caught a cold, which turned to a burning fever. For twenty-eight days he lay unable to take solid food. He could ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... following morning confirmed the intelligence of father Gilbert—the name by which the priest, who succeeded Father Ambrose, had announced himself at the fort. They had eluded the enemy by night, and reported that several vessels lay becalmed in the Bay of Fundy; and, though they had not been near enough to ascertain with certainty, no doubt was entertained, that it was the little fleet of M. la Tour, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... about, becalmed in the doldrums. There was little to interest him in town except a helpless espionage on Irene's loyalty to Drury Boldin. Her troth defied both time and space. She went every day to the post-office to mail a heavy letter ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... currents and calms around the equator in July, he conducted his three ships into such a strong northern ocean current that he had to change his course before ever they reached the equator. Next they lay becalmed for eight days in the most cruel heat imaginable. The provisions were spoiling; the men's tempers were spoiling, too; and so, on the last day of July, judging that they must be south of the Caribbean Islands, Columbus ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... giving them a salute of five guns at parting, we set sail, and arrived at the bay of All Saints in the Brazils in about twenty-two days, meeting nothing remarkable in our passage but this: that about three days after we had sailed, being becalmed, and the current setting strong to the ENE., running, as it were, into a bay or gulf on the land side, we were driven something out of our course, and once or twice our men cried out, "Land to the eastward!" but whether it was the continent ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... for a ship to come from New York, and she has now overhauled us.[141] We have a very light breeze now, but have at last got all our fleet together. We have thirteen Ships, two Brigs, one Frigate belonging to our fleet. The Frigate is our Commodore's. It is now three o'clock, we are becalmed and the men are out fishing for Mackerel. Mr. Miles ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... and autumn months, when the wind and weather would permit, I went to school in my sail-boat. My course lay along the shore, and if I was becalmed and likely to be tardy, I had only to moor my craft, and take to the road. At the noon intermission, therefore, my boat was available for use, and I always ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... in August, but the afternoon was unusually close and warm, and argosies of frail creamy clouds with saffron shadows seemed becalmed in the still upper air, which was of that peculiar blue that betokens turbid ether, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... They were reflected to a preternatural length in the glassy floor. Our boat appeared to leave no wake; those strange waters closed up foamlessly behind her. But our black smoke hung, away back on the trail, in a thick, clearly-bounded cloud, becalmed in the hot, windless air, very close over the water, like an evil soul after death that cannot win dissolution. Behind us and to the right lay the low, woody shores of Southern Ontario and Prince Edward Peninsula, long dark lines of green, stretching thinner and thinner, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... little past twelve we were steering out of the bay of Gibraltar; the wind was in the right quarter, but for some time we did not make much progress, lying almost becalmed beneath the lee of the hill; by degrees, however, our progress became brisker, and in about an hour we found ourselves careering ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and of waters in whose depths the oyster containing the pale, gleaming pearl is found; of the quiet nights spent at sea, where the stars shine as they never seem to shine on land; of the strange hush that falls upon the heaving waters before a storm. He told of long days when they were becalmed upon the green deep, when the ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... advanced the wind continued to abate, and when morning broke, the broad breast of the Mediterranean undulated like a sheet of clear glass, on which was gradually revealed the form of a strange vessel becalmed ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... delight to see river.' We came suddenly upon Brother Tigris, basking in beautiful sunlight, becalmed in bays beneath lofty bluffs. In this dreadful land water meant everything; we had had experiences of thirst, not to be effaced in a lifetime. Away from the river men grew uneasy. The river meant abundance to drink, and bathing; ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... becalmed for the rest of that day, but a light easterly breeze springing up towards morning, we clapped on all sail and worked steadily along the coast. I examined the chart very carefully for likely anchorages, and used my perspective glass constantly; but we saw no sign of the pirate, nor ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... ceased; and all that Anne could hear was a faint murmur of voices, and the ripple of the water against the side of the boat. These sounds gradually ceased, and the frightened child realized that the wind had died away, and that the boats were becalmed. She peered out of the little cabin window and saw that the English boat was very near. The tide sent the sloop close to the schooner, and now Anne could hear ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... had told himself, and Gilbert had just said, things seemed to be coming to a head. At that moment Tootles was strung up to play her last card, Joan was being driven back by Harry from the cottage of "Mrs. Gray" and Martin, becalmed on the water, with an empty pipe between his ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... During the first hour or two of this engagement the gunboats had an immense advantage; being propelled both by sails and oars, they were enabled to choose their own position. While the ship lay becalmed and unmanageable they poured grape and canister shot into her stern and bows like hailstones. At this time the ship's crew could not bring a single gun to bear upon them, and all they could do was to use their small ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... sheet before him, unconscious of any observers. The vessel lay becalmed, scarcely moving on the quiet waters, and the men had been stretched lazily about, or leisurely mending sails, or washing their clothing in true sailors' fashion. Drawn on by Brimstone's beckoning finger, a group had silently gathered round Blair, ready ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of adventure in the Eastern seas, where a lad shares the perils of his father, the captain of the merchant ship The Petrel. After touching at Singapore, they are becalmed off one of the tropic isles, where the ship is attacked and, after a desperate fight, set on fire by Malay pirates. They escape in a boat and drift ashore upon a beautiful volcanic island, where, after sundry adventures, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... come up before long and save you the trouble. But the sea is white and motionless. Far in the offing a Sicilian schooner and a couple of clumsy "martinganes"—there is no proper English name for the craft—are lying becalmed, with hanging sails. The men on board the felucca watch them and the sea. There is a shadow on the white, hazy horizon, then a streak, then a broad dark blue band. The schooner braces her top-sail yard and gets her main sheet aft. The martinganes flatten in their jibs along ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... was held between the heads, and failing observations, it was decided that it would be better to make for the island off which the ship had been becalmed; but even that desperate resolve had now to be given up, for the strength of all seemed gone, and the current set in, as far as they ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... through my mind as I stood peering through the tube at the becalmed barque; it did not need a very prolonged scrutiny to enable me to learn all that was possible of her at that distance, and presently I replaced the glass in its beckets, and proceeded to saunter fore and aft the deck, from the wake of the main rigging ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... much happier. For, on the morning of August 23rd, when in the vicinity of Cape Clear, the Richard sent three boats, and afterwards a fourth, to take a brig that was becalmed in the northwest quarter—just out of gun-shot. It proved to be the Fortune, of Bristol, bound from Newfoundland for her home-port with whale-oil, salt fish, and barrel staves. Manned by a prize-crew of two warrant ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... this object, she was cruizing on the 27th of August, off the Colorados Roads, at the western extremity of the Island. The day had been extremely sultry, and towards the evening the schooner lay becalmed, awaiting the springing up of the land breeze, a blessing which only those can appreciate who have enjoyed its refreshing coolness after passing many hours beneath the burning rays of ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... the cutter was becalmed nearly abreast of Pentecost Island, and was rapidly drifting in a direction towards the west shore, on which course we soon shoaled the water from twenty-eight to ten fathoms. The vessel being quite ungovernable, the boat was sent ahead to tow her round, which ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to a word from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in very good part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed with each other and the devil. I don't set up to be pious myself, but I'm not a fool, and I know that if we'd had so much as one officer aboard who feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the better men for it. It's very much with ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... its limits but very near the shore, and gradually extends itself farther to sea, as the day advances; probably taking the longer or shorter course as the day is more or less hot. I have frequently observed the sails of ships at the distance of four, six, or eight miles, quite becalmed, whilst a fresh sea-breeze was at the time blowing upon the shore. In an hour afterwards ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... our officers and seamen. This country is the most favourable possible for skill with an inferior fleet; for the winds are so variable that some one time in the 24 hours you must be able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other will be becalmed, or have ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... Tuesday the fleet was still in sight of the land from which they took their departure, and remained becalmed all that day and the next. On Wednesday night, a gentle breeze sprung up from the eastward, on which the fleet stood off to seaward, but on Thursday morning, on again making the land, they were four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... when, at dawn, he had found himself the sole survivor, as he supposed, of the catastrophe; and of the alternations of hope and despair that had been his throughout the day when the brig appeared in sight, drifted up to within three short miles of him, and there lay becalmed. The most distressing part of his experience, perhaps, consisted in the fact that, although an excellent swimmer, and quite capable of covering the distance between himself and the brig, he had found himself beset by a school of sharks, and therefore ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... control conduct and character. Modern machinery has thrown light upon the problems of the soul. The engineer finds that his locomotive will not run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston. The great ships also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon the sails. Informed by these physical facts, we now see a noble thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine. Some of earth's greatest ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... people, the little frigate Squirrel weighted down by artillery stores but under command of Gilbert himself, because the smaller ship can run close ashore to explore. To keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship Delight, where the trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... remember nothing except that he had outlived ambition, was a good listener, and that my father explained his gaunt appearance by his descent from Pocahontas. If all these men were a little like becalmed ships, there was certainly one man whose sails were full. Three or four doors off, on our side of the road, lived a decorative artist in all the naive confidence of popular ideals and the public approval. He was our daily comedy. 'I myself and Sir Frederick Leighton are the greatest ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... wit, sported in hot weather. I am becalmed, the sail sticks to the mast; that is, my shirt sticks to my back. His prad is becalmed; ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to see a yacht by Castle Island. A random breeze just sprung up had borne her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be Kilronan Abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Christophers they took an English Sloop becalmed, with their Boats; they took out of her a couple of Puncheons of Rum, and half a dozen Hogsheads of Sugar (she was a New England Sloop, bound for Boston) and without offering the least Violence to the Men, ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce long leagues ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... tedious night on board, owing to our being becalmed within the Needles, I stepped upon the same landing stone from which I first embarked for a country, where, in the centre of proscriptions, instability and desolation, those arts which are said to flourish only in the regions of repose, have, by their vigour and unrivalled bloom, excited ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... whistling softly for wind, and glancing expectantly around the horizon. Whistle as he might, there was no wisp of stirring cloud, no ruffling of the water, to meet his gaze, and already the sea was glassing over, deserted by the wind. Soon what airs there were died away, leaving us flat becalmed, all signs of movement vanished from the face of the ocean, and we lay, mirrored sharply in the windless, silent sea, under the broad glare of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... away on their right, And made Clapham Common the following night, Then lay on their oars for a fortnight or two, Becalmed ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... large horn full, and from that time they should be M'Leods. The captain informed us, he had named his ship the Bonnetta, out of gratitude to Providence; for once, when he was sailing to America with a good number of passengers, the ship in which he then sailed was becalmed for five weeks, and during all that time, numbers of the fish bonnetta swam close to her, and were caught for food; he resolved therefore, that the ship he should next get, should ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... calm surface of the water. The sails flapped idly against the mast. The sailors lay about the decks, trying to keep cool, and lazily watching the distant shore. Far off in the distance a white sail glimmered on the horizon. It showed no sign of motion, and was clearly becalmed. After some deliberation, Capt. Jones determined to attempt to capture the stranger by means of boats. The two largest boats, manned with crews of picked men, were sent out to hail the vessel, and, if she proved to be an enemy, to capture her. In this they were successful, and returned ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... by the other's pain, half ashamed of her own apparent generosity which was to mean no loss to her, no gain to Molly. In the sudden becalmed stillness of the hot afternoon their bright, blown hair fell about their faces in ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 13th, we started again, and just after the pilot left us, we were becalmed on the bar, just opposite the terrible breakers I had seen while riding. Here we anchored. The sea was rough and disagreeable, and our captain longed for a stiff breeze to take us out; for it was not a very safe place to be in. Early in the night, ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... water-lilies, the fairy bark of a spiritual life. Each lake hath its hanging terraces of immortal green, that along her shores run glimmering far down beneath the superficial sunshine, where the poet in his becalmed canoe, among the lustre, could fondly swear by all that is most beautiful on earth, and air, and water, that these three are one, blended as they are by the interfusing ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... us right across the Bay of Biscay and down to the Western Islands; and, we were only becalmed for a day or so, with light, variable breezes between the Azores and Madeira, when we picked up the nor'-east trades, which rattled us onward past the Canaries ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Greeks were about to set sail for Troy, Artemis, being angry with their commander King Agamemnon, becalmed their ships at Aulis. The seer Calchas thereupon declared that the goddess could be propitiated only by the death of Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon. This legend forms the theme of tragedies ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... were forced to stand to the northwards, the Hopewel and the Swallow not coming in all this while to ayde us, as they might easily have done. Two of their great ships and one of their small followed us. They having a loom gale (we being altogether becalmed) with both their great ships came up faire by us, shot at us, and on the sudden furled their sprit sailes and mainsailes, thinking that we could not escape them. Then falling to prayer, we shipped our oars that we might rowe to shore, and anker in shallow water, where their great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... motionless trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling crates of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... alternated from a dead calm to a light breeze: the wind frequently shifted, but I had no strength left to attend to the sail—the boat was abandoned to its own guidance, or rather to that of the wind. When becalmed we lay still—when the breeze sprang up we pursued our course till the sail no longer felt ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... "Now the Dreadnought's becalmed on the banks of Newfoundland, Where the water's all green and the bottom's all sand. Says the fish of the ocean that swim to and fro: 'She's the Liverpool packet, good ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... up with the latitude of the Cape, we stood southward to give it a wide berth, and while so doing were becalmed; ay, becalmed off Cape Horn, which is worse, far worse, than being ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Andrea from Lissa ten miles, and Lissa from another Iland called Lezina, which standeth betweene the maine of Dalmatia and Lissa, tenne miles. This Iland is inhabited and hath great plentie of wine and frutes and hereagainst we were becalmed. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... brig was becalmed in a sea like glass, An' it gev' us all the creeps, O, Wen the sun went down like a ball o' brass, An' ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the evening we passed round Cape Brabant, and the pilot then kept north-eastward, close along the reefs under the high land; although by so doing we were frequently becalmed, and sometimes had strong flurries which made it necessary to take in all sail; but it appeared that he was afraid of being driven off the island. At eight in the morning [SATURDAY 17 DECEMBER 1803], the mast heads of the vessels in Port Louis ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... we. And for so much of this land as we haue sayled alongst, comparing their Carde with the coast, we finde it very agreeable. [Sidenote: An easie kind of Fishing.] This coast seemeth to haue good fishing, for we lying becalmed let falle a hooke without any bayte and presently caught a great fish called a Hollibut, who serued the whole companie for a dayes meate, and is dangerous meate for surfetting. [Sidenote: White ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... expedition must have started from Fort Niagara, Major Gladwyn despatched the schooner that bore his name down the lake, to intercept, warn, and hasten it. The Gladwyn narrowly escaped capture by a great fleet of canoes, as she lay becalmed at the mouth of the river, and was only saved by the springing up of a timely breeze. She failed to discover the object of her search, and finally reached the Niagara without having delivered ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Europe was the shore of Spain. Since we got into the Mediterranean, we have been becalmed for some days within easy view of it. All along are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a bloom on them at sunset like that of a ripe plum. Here and there at their feet little white towns are sprinkled along the edge of the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n,' said the Captain, impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr Toots's knee, 'old Sol, mind you—with your own eyes—as you sit there—you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astern, to a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why can't you see Sol Gills?' said the Captain, apprised by the face of Mr Toots that he was making a profound impression on that gentleman's ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sayings of Daggett, uttered during his homeward-bound passage, and transmitted by the master of the brig to him of the sloop in the course of conferences that wore away a long summer's afternoon, as the two vessels lay becalmed within a hundred fathoms of each other. These sayings, however, had been frequent and intelligible. All men like to deal in that which makes them of importance; and the possession of his secrets had just the effect on Daggett's mind that was ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to watch the stately white cloud lying becalmed over the woods, and waiting in a rapture of rest for a wind to come and float it on? Yet we might not have cared to see the cloud take her rest, but for the sweetness of rest to ourselves. The plough turned over on one side ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... everybody flocked thither to shake hands with the conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind the pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosened the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The fleet was nearly becalmed whilst the mind of Felipe de Carrizales was actuated by these reflections. The wind soon after rose and became so boisterous that Carrizales had enough to do to keep on his legs, and was obliged to leave off his meditations, and concern himself only with the affairs ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... smile? No, you will not smile if I say I have had my brief moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand, stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned musingly over the boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to me, when I had no more my own fortunes to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was a rough night, and blew so stiffly yet, That the sail was becalmed between the seas,[117] Though on the wave's high top too much to set, They dared not take it in for all the breeze: Each sea curled o'er the stern, and kept them wet, And made them bale without a moment's ease,[118] So that themselves as well as hopes were damped, And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... becalmed in the Bahama Channel, slumbering on the dead and glassy sea, torpid with the heats of a West-Indian August. Menendez called a council of the commanders. There was doubt and indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had already ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... be the best, sir; for a puff that one thinks nothing of, one way or the other, when a craft has way; will take her over wonderfully when it catches her becalmed." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... a South Atlantic road Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat; "Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her hull To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet, Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships That carry trade for us on the high sea And warped out of each harbor ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... sea, very little thought was wasted on other matters. The captain of the vessel, said that there was "no sea on," or some such gibberish, and talked as if we were becalmed, at the very time that his tipsy old boat was bobbing about like a green rider on a trotting horse. It is a matter of indifference, what sort of metal encased the hearts of those who first tempted the fury of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Highlands the "Half Moon" was becalmed near Stony Point and the "people of the Mountains" came on board and marvelled at the ship and its equipment. One canoe kept hanging under the stern and an Indian pilfered a pillow and two shirts from the cabin windows. The mate shot ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... saw him in the garden, leaning pensively on his hoe—a becalmed and striking figure in a ragged snuff-colored coat, and a hat marked by numerous small orifices, through which, here and there, strands from his silvery fringe of hair strayed and waved in ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... events which we shall now narrate. It was on the third morning after they sailed, that Vanslyperken walked the deck: there was no one but the man at the helm abaft. The weather was extremely sultry, for the cutter had run with a fair wind for the first eight-and-forty hours, and had then been becalmed for the last twenty-four, and had drifted to the back of the Isle of Wight, when she was not three leagues from St Helen's. The consequence was, that the ebb-tide had now drifted her down very nearly opposite to that part of the island where the cave was ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... twenty years old when he returned from England. The ship was beaten back by headwinds and blown out of her course by blizzards, and becalmed at times, so it took eighty-two days to make the voyage. A worthy old clergyman tells me this was so ordained and ordered that Benjamin might have time to meditate on the follies of youth and shape ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... astounding stories of plunderings and burnings upon the high seas. He dwelt upon them with peculiar relish, heightening the frightful particulars in proportion to their effect on his peaceful auditors. He gave a long swaggering detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman. She was laying becalmed during a long summer's day, just off from an island which was one of the lurking places of the pirates. They had reconnoitred her with their spy-glasses from the shore, and ascertained her character and force. At night a picked crew ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of that year a ship sailed from the South Isles to traffic, and fell becalmed inside Snowfellness. The winds had speeded her; she was the first comer of the year; and the fishers drew alongside to hear the news of the south, and eager folk put out in boats to see the merchandise and make prices. ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a sudden squall the sail may be hauled up the usual way. The buntlines will draw the part of the sail below the reef well up on the part above the reefyard, and remain becalmed, while the weight of the reefspar will prevent any slatting or danger of losing the sail any more than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... spite of them. He might possibly have been able to carry out his plan; but the huge San Philip, an immense vessel of 1500 tons, coming towards him as he was engaging other ships of the fleet, becalmed his sails and then boarded him. Whilst thus entangled with the San Philip, four other ships ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... to time we landed at various islands, where we sold or exchanged our merchandise, and one day, when the wind dropped suddenly, we found ourselves becalmed close to a small island like a green meadow, which only rose slightly above the surface of the water. Our sails were furled, and the captain gave permission to all who wished to land for a while and amuse themselves. I was among the number, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... the light winds run with glimmering feet: Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 110 As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... less familiar; ships, barques, brigs and topsail schooners, the skillful work of Salmon, Anton Roux and Chinnery. There was the Celestina becalmed off Marseilles, her sails hanging idly from the yards and stays, her hull with painted ports and carved bow and stern mirrored in the level sea. There was the Albacore running through the northeast trades with royals and all her weather ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... heaven's name could they be going? Suddenly the answer came to us. Beyond them in the farthest offing were the tiny sails of the almost becalmed junk. They were rowing toward it. Eight mariners ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... famous in the annals of piracy for his idea of a pleasant entertainment. One afternoon, when his ship was lying becalmed, the pirates found the time pass heavily. They had polished their weapons till they shone like silver. They had gambled until one-half of the company was swollen with plunder and the other half, penniless and savage. They had fought until there was ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... before by his uncle, who was mate of a ship that traded to the North Sea. "The ship," said he, "was the John and Thomas, named after the owner's two brothers, and bound to Stockholm for flax and iron. One day they were becalmed near the Island of Oland, and let go the anchor in twelve-fathoms water, when soon afterwards they saw, as they supposed, two men swimming towards the ship. They soon after came alongside, and made signs for a rope to be thrown to them. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... was an absent, yet, of late years, a placid one. She might have been dwelling upon far-off islands which excited in her no desire to be there. She was too cognisant of the infinite riches of time that may be supposed to make up eternity. If she was becalmed here in Addington, some far-off day a wind would fill her sails and she might seek the farther seas. And, like ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... and sing standing in water to his arm-pits. And what is better, he possessed the happy faculty of imparting his exuberance to his long-faced, homesick, and downcast fellow-privates. His temper was as smooth as a becalmed sea, and seldom was it that a ripple passed over the smooth surface. There was just one word in the soldier's vocabulary that would disturb him, but this word never failed to bring on a typhoon. This innocent yet magic word was "carabao," ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... but as we were in a deep bay, I had resolved to anchor, with a view to endeavour to get some water, of which, by this time, we were in great want. At length, as we advanced, the existence of the inlet was no longer doubtful. At five o'clock we reached the west point of it, where we were becalmed for some time. While in this situation, I ordered all the boats to be hoisted out to tow the ships in. But this was hardly done, before a fresh breeze sprung up again at N.W. with which we were enabled ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the Racehorse and the Carcass until they neared the Polar regions. Then they were becalmed, surrounded with ice, and wedged in so that they could ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden |
