"Mast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wagon unloaded and had reloaded some of the heaviest of the plunder in the front end of the wagon box, by the time our foreman and Priest returned, dragging from their pommels a thirty-foot pole as perfect as the mast of a yacht. We knocked off all the spokes not already broken at the hub of the ruined wheel, and after jacking up the hind axle, attached the "crutch." By cutting a half notch in the larger end of the pole, so that it fitted over the front axle, lashing it there securely, and allowing the other ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... breast, that sure I swear, Did I not to myself some pity bear, I were e'en now from all these thoughts away. Much do I muse on what of pleasures past This woe-worn heart has known; meanwhile, t' oppose My passage, loud the winds around me roar. I see my bliss in port, and torn my mast And sails, my pilot faint with toil, and those Fair lights, that wont to guide me, now ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... careen. But the Eagle Sloop of Barbadoes, coming near this Island, and seeing her, supposing her to be a Pirate, took the advantage of attacking her when unprepared, who immediately hoisted the St. George's Flag at her top-mast head to bid them defiance: But when they found the Eagle resolved to board them in good earnest, the Pirates cut their cable, and hawled the stern on shore, which obliged the Eagle to come to an anchor athwart ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... dreamed that he was on a raft which floated on a limitless sea of bunch grass, alkali and sagebrush, where the waves ran high and regularly, rocking the raft back and forth monotonously and as monotonously throwing him from side to side and against a mast to which he clung. Right in front of the raft, floating in the air above the waves, drifted a slender, veiled figure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which were bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths. Above this figure, which beckoned ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... up into his face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. "The time for that is past," I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. "A man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone, sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you'll thank me for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed about by wind and weather until we both go down together." There came a sharp, insistent ring at the door-bell. No answering sound came from ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... information given in the quarter whence aid was most likely to come. Mr Sharp lost no time in obtaining a writ of habeas corpus. The ship in the meantime had sailed from Gravesend, but the officer with the writ was able to board her in the Downs. There he saw the negro chained to the mast. The captain was at first furious, and determined to resist; but he knew the danger of deforcing an officer with, such a writ as a habeas corpus, and found it necessary to yield. The writ came up before Lord Mansfield. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... and all of them had on board the most approved pattern of hydrophone, with which to listen below the surface for the movements of hostile submarines. They had electric light in the cabins and for navigation, fighting and mast-head signalling purposes. A moderately powerful searchlight, fitted with a Morse signalling shutter, was ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... wet sheet and a flowing sea, A breeze that follows fast, That fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast. And bends the gallant mast, my boys, Our good ship sound and free, The hollow oak our palace ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... stiffened to a gale. The mast creaked and strained as the gathering storm tore at the mainsail. The ship reeled and pitched as the spiteful waves smote her high bow and swept hissing and gurgling along the deck. She began to jib like a horse and refused to obey her rudder. Wind and current were ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... so encouraged the Gentile leaders of the second generation that they began to concert measures and combine plans for conquest and colonization. To the Vikings of Norway the fertile Island with which they were now so familiar, whose woods were bent with the autumnal load of acorns, mast, and nuts, and filled with numerous herds of swine—their favourite food—whose pleasant meadows were well stored with beeves and oxen, whose winter was often as mild as their northern summer, and whose waters were as fruitful in fish as their own Lofoden friths; to these men, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to failure of memory or deficiency of study on the part of the player. "I haven't got my words; I must gag it," is a confession not unfrequently to be overheard in the theatre. Incledon, the singer, who had been in early life a sailor before the mast, in the royal navy, was notorious for his frequent loss of memory upon the stage. In his time the word "vamp" seems to have prevailed as the synonym of gag. A contemporary critic writes of him: "He could never vamp, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... helmsman's keen eyes had made sure, from the mast-head, that the Arabs had forded the river at a point to the south, they set fire to several places and it roared and flared up immediately. The wind swept it southwards, and with it clouds of pale grey smoke through which the rising sun shot shafts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... us! There! I can just make out the top of a mast! Frank, they will run us down!" shouted Will, while the other continued to blow his horn with renewed vim, and the advancing gulf sponger came plunging straight toward the anchored Jessamine! It was a thrilling ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... swimming in the water, or sitting and standing along the bank. They are watching and discussing the slow approach up stream of a large boat with a broad lateen-sail, and a strange flag fluttering from the mast-head. Rumor says that this boat contains a company of strangers from beyond the sea; men who do not wear turbans, whose dress is close-fitting, and covers them from head to foot,—even the legs. They come to learn wisdom and civilization from ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the soft lapping of such exquisite blue sea-water. Above the piers there is the ugly yellow-painted rail. But why alter the colour when he could keep it in such exquisite value? On the canvas it is beautiful. In the middle of the pier there is a mast and a sail which does duty for an awning; perhaps it is only a marine decoration. A few loungers are on the pier—men and women in grey clothes. Why introduce reds and blues when he was sure of being able to set the little figures in their places, to draw them so firmly, and relieve ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Being tied up short by the neck like this would daunt the arch devil himself—in time—in time, mind! I don't know but that even a real gentleman would find it difficult to keep a stiff lip to the end. Presently we went to work getting our boat ready. I was busying myself setting up the mast, when ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... shells from the Rebel guns; how manfully the garrison fought against the flames, rolling kegs of powder into the sea to prevent their exploding; how the soldiers were scorched by the heat and almost suffocated by the smoke; how the flag-staff was shot away; how the flag was nailed to the broken mast; how the brave little band held out till their powder was almost exhausted, and till there was nothing to eat but raw salt pork; how at last, after thirty-six hours' fighting, Major Anderson surrendered the fort, saluting his flag as he hauled it down, carrying ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... one day, a short time before sunset, we described a sloop approaching us, with a white flag at her mast-head, and knew, by that signal, that she was a Cartel, and from the direction in which she came supposed her to be from some of the Eastern States. She did not approach near enough to satisfy our curiosity, until we were ordered below ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... flame was quenched. The warriors marvelled, most joyous of hosts. The shelter of the day-shield moved across the heavens; God in His wisdom had covered the course of the sun with a sail, though earth-dwelling men knew not the mast-ropes, nor might behold the yards, nor understand the way in which that greatest of tents was fastened. So He showed honour and glory upon ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... in waterproof garments, become as restless as bunched cattle in a prairie blizzard. All eyes now roam from prow to stern, from deck to top mast. The lightning's blue flame plays with the steel masts, and overhead thunders drown the noise of engines and propellers. Thick black smoke and red-hot cinders shoot forth ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... having got to about one hundred fifty leagues west of Ferro, they discovered a large trunk of a tree, sufficient to have been the mast of a vessel of one hundred twenty tons, and which seemed to have been a long time in the water. At this distance from Ferro, and for somewhat farther on, the current was found to set strongly to the northeast. Next day, when they had run fifty leagues farther westward, the needle was observed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Albany basin, a large receptacle for North River craft, that is now in the bosom of the town and built on, and recognized in it the mast-head of the Wallingford. Neb was shown the place, for he was to bring the boat round to it, and join the sloop, in readiness to return in her. We rounded the Battery, then a circular stripe of grass, with an earthen and ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... lodge an army and fitly loopholed for discomfiture of the adversary. The long logs that it was our pride to cut and carry! The accuracy with which we laid them one upon another, hewn to the line and bullet-proof! The Cyclopean doors that we hung, with sliding bolts fit to be "the mast of some great admiral"! And when we had "made the pile complete" some marplot of the Regular Army came that way and chatted a few moments with our commander, and we made an earthwork away off on one side of the road (leaving the other side to take care of itself) ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... steamboat, instead of keeping in the middle of the river, presently turned toward the east shore, as if she were bent upon running down the Whitewing. Tom was now really alarmed; and as he saw that the sail was doing very little good, he hurriedly told Jim to take down the mast and get out the oars as quick as possible. Jim rapidly obeyed the order, dropping the mast on Harry's head, and catching Joe by the nose in his search for the oars. By this time Tom had begun to ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ordered, That the national flag be displayed at half-mast upon all the buildings of the Executive Departments in this city until after the funeral ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... word adhering mast commonlie with a verb with one face in al moodes, tymes, numberes and persones; as, I leve hardlie, thou leves hardlie; I did leve hardlie; I have leved hardlie; I had leved hardlie; I wil leave hardlie; leve he hardlie; God forbid he ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... on the terrace of the Capitol that April afternoon, and looked out across the Potomac to the old Lee mansion at Arlington, while all the flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a very different piece of verse ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... that month, especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights of woodcocks, which drop in the covers, and are dispersed among the bushy valleys, and even over the heathery summits of the hills. If it should happen to be a propitious year for beech-mast—the great attraction to pheasants on the Downs, as is the acorn in the weald—you may procure partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits in perhaps equal proportions, with half a dozen woodcocks ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and John Aubrey (1626-1700) says, "Most houses at the West End of London have a horseshoe on the threshold." In Monmouth Street there were seventeen in 1813 and seven so late as 1855. Even Lord Nelson had one nailed to the mast of the ship Victory. To-day we find it more conducive to "good luck" to see that they are securely nailed on the feet of the horse ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... was a stiff fight, in which many were killed and wounded, but at last the English were seen swarming like ants up the sides of their opponents' great ship, and in a few moments her brave captain was seen handing his sword to Sir John Hawkins. The flag of Spain on the mast of the Santa Ana descended, and the white flag and red cross of St. George soon floated in its place. Then arose a mighty cheer, and the triumphant hurrahs of the English proclaimed the victory to the anxious watchers ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Jerusalem, and Babylon. To these four is one common inscription. 'To exhaustion were we brought by injustice!' Turn now your eyes to the middle of the sea,—there you behold the fifth ship, tossed amidst the waves, her mast broken, her rudder gone, her sails shivered, but not yet a wreck like the rest, though she soon may be. On her deck kneels a female, clothed in mourning; mark the wo upon her countenance,—how cunningly the artist has ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... man-folk, the three-score years and ten, Long, long is the craft for the learning, and sore doth the right hand waste: Lo, lord, our spurs are bloody, and our brows besweat with haste; Our gear is stained by the sea-spray and rent by bitter gales, For we struck no mast to the tempest, and the East was in our sails; By the thorns is our raiment rended, for we rode the mirk-wood through, And our steeds were the God-bred coursers, nor day from night-tide knew: Lo, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... foreshortened and slanting, diminished in appearance till it looks like a sombre rent in the mass of large green mountains; and farther still, quite low on the black and stagnant waters, are the men-of-war, the steamboats and the junks, with flags flying from every mast. Against the dark green, which is the dominant shade everywhere, stand out these thousand scraps of bunting, emblems of the different nationalities, all displayed, all flying in honor of far-distant France. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cove, very smooth, deep, and convenient enough for careening a ship; we here hauled up and fitted our prize, which we named the Beginning. The highest part of the island of Lobos, as seen from the road, did not seem much higher than the top-mast head of a large ship. The soil is a hungry white clayish earth, mixed with sand and rocks; and there is no fresh water, nor any green thing to be seen on either of the islands. They are frequented by many vultures or carrion crows, and looked so like turkeys that one of our officers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... coast of Australia, which had never been visited before by Europeans. Dampier must have found it very difficult to keep his journal so carefully and regularly, particularly in his early voyages, when he was merely a seaman before the mast or a petty officer. He tells us that he carried about with him a long piece of hollow bamboo, in which he placed his manuscript for safe keeping, waxing the ends to keep out ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... was imposing. Sailors and Indians are fond of giving personally descriptive names to those with whom they are thrown in contact; when Tucker was a lieutenant he was called "Handsome Jack" by the men-before-the-mast, and the warriors of the savage tribes that wander about the head waters of the Amazon knew him as the "Apo," the meaning of the word ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... hedgeth no meadows to fatten his swine: He renteth no joist for his snorting kine: They rove through the forest, and browse on the mast,— Yet, he lifteth his horn, and bloweth a blast, And they come at his call, blow he high, blow he low!— Come, jollily trowl The brown round bowl, And drink to ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Harvard University yet in store. Gentlemen, I warn the English portion of this audience that these are very dangerous men. Remember that it was an undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common seaman two years before the mast, {17} and who wrote about the best sea book in the English tongue. Remember that it was one of those young American gentlemen who sailed his mite of a yacht across the Atlantic in mid-winter, and who sailed in her to sink or swim with the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... laughed. "I've seen fo'mast hands try to take advantage of that easy-goin' way 'fore now," he said, "but they never did it but once. Cap'n Eri is one of the finest fellers that ever stepped, but you can't stomp on his toes much, and he's clear grit inside. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of the fog loomed a bulky shape driving down upon him. He pulled frantically at the oars, but it was too late. A mast rocked against the sky, a stubby bowsprit shot over the dory, and the little boat, struck broadside on, heeled to the water's edge. Seth, springing frantically upward, seized the bowsprit and clung to it. The dory, pushed aside and half full of water, disappeared. From the deck behind ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... whose only concern had been for the boys, brought his hand down on his knee earnestly. "Then I'm with you, lads, till the last mast carries away. You're the pilot in these waters, Charley. What course ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... shown, was at first a spontaneous association of merchants; but, after it had been regularly organized, admission into it became extremely difficult. A candidate had to enter, as it were, "before the mast," to undergo a long probation, and to rise slowly by his merits and services. He began, at an early age, as a clerk, and served an apprenticeship of seven years, for which he received one hundred pounds ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... less than a mile away, would have been very busy, and she herself must surely have heard some of the disturbance. No, there had been no wreck, yet all about her lay the wave-sodden flotsam and jetsam of many past disasters. A broken mast stump was imbedded upright in the sand at one spot. In another, a ladder-like pair of stairs, suggesting a ship's companionway, lay half out of the water. Sundry casks and barrels dotted the beach, some empty, some still untouched. Rusty tins of canned goods, oil, and paint, often intact, intermingled ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... there was no time to do more than port helm, and so avoid the direct shock from the massive iceberg, into which at that moment they rushed with terrible force, the water pouring in torrents, and many of the men being killed by falling pieces of ice which towered several feet above the mast-head. The boats were lowered with all speed, and were hardly clear of the "Glenalpine" when she went down with a plunge head first, and not a vestige of hull, spars or masts was to be seen. A few of the men had jumped or fallen into the water; these were all picked ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... voluptuous song. But he, the much experienced man, who wished to be experienced in all, and use all to the service of wisdom, desired to hear the song that he might understand its meaning. Yet, distrusting his own power to be firm in his better purpose, he caused himself to be bound to the mast, that he might be kept secure against his own weakness. But Orpheus passed unfettered, so absorbed in singing hymns to the gods that he could not even hear ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... New Year's eve. He brought the report that wild pigeons were again roosting at the big bend of the river. It was a well-known pigeon roost, but the birds went to other winter feeding grounds, except during years when there was a plentiful sweet mast. This bend was about midway between the ranch and Shepherd's, contained about two thousand acres, and was heavily timbered with ash, pecan, and hackberry. The feeding grounds lay distant, extending from the encinal ridges on the Las Palomas lands to live-oak groves a hundred miles ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... supply and so compasses the difficulty without disturbing the calm. She is fully conscious of her reservoir of power and can concentrate all her attention upon the work in hand. The ballast in the hold keeps the mast perpendicular and the sails in position to catch the favoring breeze. We admire and applaud the graceful ship as it speeds along its course, giving little heed to the ballast in the hold that gives it poise and balance. But the ballast is there, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... forty minutes; "but there was some apology for the public's not understanding this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a mast or rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning, which few people have courage to go through. To those who have, it is one of the noblest lessons in nature." Very few people, indeed, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... not. Boys never do, but the harm comes. Now I'm going to march you two lads right up before the mast; and you're going to apologize to the widow. If you don't, why, I reckon a cat-o'-nine-tails will fit the ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... white steamer with three smoke stacks and a wireless mast. There was so much to see when they first went aboard that the six little Bunkers could not possibly observe everything with only two eyes apiece! They wanted to be down in the saloon and in the staterooms that Daddy Bunker had engaged and out on the deck all at the same time. And how ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... precipitancy of public judgment, anaesthetics have not been more generally employed on this side of the water of late.) Certainly he is no physician, they say. But, on the other hand, a conjecture that he has been before the mast is as plausible a one as that ever Herman Melville was; there is the true sailor's-roll about him; nobody less skilful than the captain of a three-decker could have run the Agra through such a gantlet of broadsides and hurricanes; the manoeuvring of the ship, when her master puts ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... jury-mast is a makeshift for a lost spar, it does not follow that a jury-woman is a make-shift for any body. In fact, the women who sit upon juries are not the sort of women who ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... works mighty fast to cover up what man at war does. True, the yellow-green meadowlands ahead of us were scuffed and scored minutely as though a myriad swine had rooted there for mast. The gouges of wheels and feet were at the roadside. Under the broken hedge-rows you saw a littering of weather-beaten French knapsacks and mired uniform coats, but that was all. New grass was springing up in ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... land, for the tempests we had experienced had so much abated my curiosity, that I gave orders to steer back to my own coast; but I perceived at the same time that my pilot knew not where we were. Upon the tenth day, a seaman being sent to look out for land from the mast head, gave notice that on starboard and larboard he could see nothing but sky and sea, but that right a-head he perceived a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron, having got his galleon into collision with two or three Spanish ships successively, had at last carried away his fore-mast close to the deck, and the wreck had fallen against his main-mast. He lay crippled and helpless, the Armada was slowly deserting him, night was coming on, the sea was running high, and the English, ever hovering near, were ready to grapple with him. In vain did Don Pedro fire signals of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... harbor ships lay at anchor, ice-bound; and on one of these a young sailor was keeping watch for thieves; but he saw not Captain Jack coming softly on board, and peering over his shoulder to see what was written on the paper he held in his hand. A lantern hung from the mast and shed a feeble light on the tear-blistered page, where the pious mother implored a blessing on her son. As he read, the young sailor also wept; but Captain Jack had no taste for tears. He breathed on ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... captured unhurt. A later Norman legend tells how Behuchet, when brought before the English king, answered some taunt by boxing the king's ears, whereupon the angry monarch hanged him forthwith from the mast of his ship.[1] But the tradition is unsupported by English authorities, and, with all his faults, Edward was not the man to deal thus with a captive knight who had fought his best. Master at last of the sea, Edward landed ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... upon which the mate and himself were engaged. The captain, aided by the passenger, was lashing the throat of the gaff down to its place, when a heavy bolt of lightning, accompanied at the same instant by a terrific peel of thunder, struck the main-royal mast-head, and leaped down the mast in a lurid current of fire. At the throat of the main-boom it was divided, part of it following the mast down into the cabin and hold, and the rest darting off on the spar, where the captain, the passenger, and three men were at work on the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... The last, last time, The last— That time is past; yet in too-golden day My heart goes from me whispering, "Where are you—you—you—you?" And comes back easeless to an easeless breast. But at night I rest Dreamless as derelict ships ride out to sea Empty, and no bird even on the snapp'd mast Pauses: into oblivion her shadow's cast; Into the empty night goes lonely she, And into sleep go—oh, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... is an extensive basin surrounded by quays, the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and long narrow pinnaces arranged ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... main-mast head I go, The wicked one is there, From place to place, from rope to rope, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... make no invasion upon the quarters forward of the four men before the mast—common seamen, and take good care that master and mate ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon brains have such a taste As more delight in mast? No! set them forth a board of dainties, full As thy best muse can cull; Whilst they the while do pine, And thirst 'midst all their wine, What greater plague can hell itself devize, Than to be ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... flag of the Canoe Club flew always (white with our paddle across C C in cipher) and another white flag on the mizen-mast had the yawl's name inscribed. Six other gay colours were used as occasion required. These all being hoisted on a fine bright day, and my voyage really begun, the 'Chichester' lads 'boyed' the rigging, and gave three ringing cheers as they ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... behind his back, threatened him with instant death if he should call for help or offer any kind of resistance. He was taken up to the quarter-deck in his nightclothes, and made to stand against the mizzen-mast with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... warriors could not easily be restrained from plundering. One day, when he had condemned several together to be hanged for piracies, one cried out, that he was of blood royal, and related to Canut. The prince answered, that to honor his extraction, he should be hanged on the top of the highest mast of his ship, which was executed. (Helmold, l. 6, c. 49) Henry, king of the Sclavi, being dead, and his two sons, St. Canut his nephew succeeded, paid homage to the emperor Lothaire II. and was crowned by him king of the Obotrites, or western Sclavi. St. Canut was ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... shy of each other, and did not amalgamate at all. Mr. P. went out to the extreme end of the bowsprit and gazed down into the deep blue sea, wondering whether its color was really due to excess of salt, or the presence of cuprate of ammonia. HORACE climbed to the top of the mast, where he sat sadly, observing the swindling waves, which came all the way from Europe, and didn't pay a cent of tax when they landed. Mr. HAGGARTY went to the stern, where he employed his time in cleaning out the sailor-man's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... shrewdness which was so apparent in them. She loved a gossip, too, with such a neighbour as Mrs. Wright; and as they both had similar anxieties when the boats were delayed by stress of weather, or when a flag was noticed at half-mast, it was no wonder that Mere Bricolin did not appear to mind the steep ascent to Mrs. Wright's dwelling. There was another reason for her activity. Was it not she who suggested that Mrs. Wright should live in that very place? She had not intended that the cave should be ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the heavens had a portentous look to those who gazed from below; and when the denser fog sometimes furled itself away from the topgallant masts, hitherto invisible, and showed them rising loftier yet, and the tricolor at the mizzen-mast-head looking down as if from the zenith, then they all seemed to appertain to something of more than human workmanship; a hundred wild tales of phantom vessels came up to the imagination, and it was as if that one gigantic structure were expanding to fill ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the bows of the boat came into view, with the towing-mast and a tall, fair-haired man standing up and trying to see over the bank. The boat bumped unexpectedly among the reeds, and the tall, fair-haired man disappeared suddenly, having apparently fallen ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fearful wind here," muttered Dick, as both swayed while holding to the stout, vibrating mast. "But you can ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... tall and stately, was now distinctly visible, riding head to wind, with a single anchor down, her three poop lanterns lighted, and a lantern glimmering under the heel of her spritsail mast and straight toward her sped the flotilla of boats, threshing through the short, choppy sea raised by the freshening breeze and throwing the spray in heavy showers over their crews. George, no longer afraid of his voice being heard, hailed the crew of the leading ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. What though the mast be now blown overboard, The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost, And half our sailors swallow'd in the flood? Yet lives our pilot still. Is 't meet that he Should leave the helm, and like a fearful lad With tearful eyes add water to the sea, And give more strength to that which hath too ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... feeds on many kinds of berries, fruits, and grasses. Beetles, tadpoles, young frogs, and lizards are sometimes found in its crop. When the Turkeys reach their destination, they disperse in flocks, devouring the mast as they proceed. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... gale. Then the sailor men, being much afraid, would have put about and run for the mouth of Cydnus again, but could not because of the wildness of the sea. All that night it blew furiously, and by dawn our mast was carried away, and we rolled helplessly in the trough of the great waves. But I sat wrapped in a cloak, little heeding; and because I showed no fear the sailors cried out that I was a wizard, and sought to cast me into the sea, but the captain ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and scrubby, hillsides bare as slate; "This land should not be called earth," remarked Cartier. "It is flint! Faith, I think this is the region God gave Cain!" If this were Cain's realm, his descendants were "men of might"; for when the Montaignais, tall and straight as mast poles, came down to the straits, Cartier's little scrub sailors thought them giants. Promptly Cartier planted the cross and took possession of Labrador for France. As the boats coasted westward the shore rock turned to sand,—huge ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... danger of falling out, for when all the hammocks were up they were packed so closely that if you did roll over, you would only roll into the next hammock on top of some fellow who would, no doubt, think the mast had fallen. There were a good number of men to whom life would have been much pleasanter the next few days if they could have stayed in their hammocks all day, as, no matter how the ship rolls, a hammock, being swung, always keeps level. Unfortunately, all hammocks had to ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swineherd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Jamaica for London, which had already doubled the southern point of the Island of Cuba, favored by the wind, when one afternoon, I suddenly observed a very suspicious-looking schooner bearing down upon us from the coast. I climbed the mast, with my spy glass, and became convinced that it was a pirate. I directed the captain, who was taking his siesta, to be awaked instantly, showed him the craft, and advised him to alter our course, that we might avoid her. The ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... that I must be avenged on some one," cried the marshal, with an accent of the most violent exasperation; "I tell you, that I mast find a living representative of these cowardly plots, that I may at once make an end of him!—They press upon me from all sides; they make my life a hell—you know it—and you do nothing to save me from these tortures, which are killing ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... gore; Now each man must resolve, to die, For here the coward cannot fly. Drums and trumpets toll the knell, And culverins the passing bell. Now, now they grapple, and now board amain; Blow up the hatches, they're off all again: Give them a broadside, the dice run at all, Down comes the mast and yard, and tacklings fall; She grows giddy now, like blind Fortune's wheel, She sinks there, she sinks, she turns up her keel. Who ever beheld so noble a sight, As this so brave, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... there the patient made the impression of being a good worker, and normal in every way, except that he had a quick temper, and that the only difficulty they had noted was on the occasion when he assaulted the man at the prison, who appeared against him at the mast, and that after this scene he was put in the brig, where he threatened to kill any —— —— man who came near him. The medical officer was impressed with the fact that the patient was ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... of these priests led very simple and innocent lives, and resided either in woods, caverns, or hollow trees. Their food consisted of acorns, berries, or other mast; and their drink was nothing but water. By this abstemious course of life, however, they procured an universal esteem, not only for their superior knowledge, but their generous contempt of all those enjoyments of life which all others ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... a boat coming now with a mast, and I don't see what they are going to do, for there is a bridge here, and it is not a draw bridge. Almost all the bridges are draw bridges, but this one is not. So I don't see how he is going to ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... sense climb is defined "to mount laboriously, especially by the use of hands and feet." Here the manner seems to be as important as the direction. When the same manner must be employed in descending, as a tree, a mast, or a steep, rocky cliff, the general term descend fails to convey the meaning, and to use slip, slide, drop, tumble, fall, would be incorrect. We are then left to choose between the short and clear, but objectionable, expression climb down ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... And they readily harkened to him and obeyed him. First they unfastened the sheets and let down the sail and lowered the mast by the forestays upon the mast-rest. Then, landing upon the beach of the sea, they hauled up the ship from the water to dry land and fixed long stays under it. Also they made an altar upon the beach of the sea, and when they had lit a fire, made an offering of white meal, and prayed ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... crowd assembled down where the extemporized pier jutted into the creek, and where the new fishing-boat, perfect in all her equipments, lolled and rolled on the heaving of the tide. Her high mast made an arc of a circle in the warm June air, as the soft, round wavelets lifted her; and many was the comment made on her by those whose eyes had never rested but on the tarred ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... cluster of houses, scarce deserving the name of a village, called Doboy. At the wharf lay two trading-vessels; the one with the harp of Ireland waving on her flag; the other with the union-jack flying at her mast. I felt vehemently stirred to hail the beloved symbol; but, upon reflection, forbore outward demonstrations of the affectionate yearnings of my heart towards the flag of England, and so we boiled by them into this vast volume of turbid waters, whose noble width, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... "To China I have been——" in a queer sing-song, as if he might have been marching in time to it round a capstan, hauling in an anchor: "To China I have been, and a many ports I've seen, near and far; I can sail before the mast or behind it just as fast, I'm a tar, I'm a tar, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... beneath their feet, was still partially veiled in a thin blue mist, pierced here and there by the tall mast of a King's ship or merchantman lying unseen at anchor; or, as the fog rolled slowly off, a swift canoe might be seen shooting out into a streak of sunshine, with the first news of the morning ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... zealous follower, who immediately set about preparing for his expedition. Drawing his canoe on shore, he put on a false keel, nailed weather-boards along the bow and stern, to prevent the sea from breaking over it; payed it with a coat of tar; furnished it with a mast and sail; and put in provisions for himself, a Spanish ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... gayety in the woman's manner, but the Virginian did not know that it was new. Eben Tollman, however, marked the contrast and was at no loss in attributing it to its fancied cause. He gave no thought to the truth that she was splendidly striving to keep flying at the mast-head of her life the colors ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... to the mast her holy flag; Set every threadbare sail; And give her to the God of Storms, ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... branches, big enough for half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees, with their limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and knotted, and all stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear trees, that shot up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were rosy-blossomed peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as pretty maids do amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle persistence. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... impatient kick at the mast near which he was standing. "It would have been more likely," said he, "that before this he would have begun a new life on the gallows with you and me alongside of him, and how do you suppose you would ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... placed crosswise upon one another, so as to form a perfect square; these were covered with a whiter and lighter wood; an enormous stake arose from the centre of the scaffold. A man clothed in red and holding a lowered torch stood near this sort of mast, which was visible from a long distance. A huge chafing-dish, covered on account of the rain, was ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... needs any lengthened demonstration to show how well suited it was for this signification, how very naturally it represented the thing signified. It was indeed the most elevated part of the castle, the main-mast, as it were, of the ship, which, since the elevation of the Davidic family to the royal dignity, had been for centuries, and was still to be, the seat of the Davidic race. Its height was a symbol of the royal dignity and authority. Its relation to ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... such an unequal combat. This our enemies attempted to prevent by a most furious cannonade, which we received and returned without flinching, making a running fight of it, till at last our fore yard and foretop-mast being shot away, we had no longer command of the vessel. Finding that, although we were crippled and could not escape, our fire continued unabated, both the vessels again made preparations for boarding us, while we on our part prepared to give them ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... much time for reflection, for my turn came next. I believe I cried or got into somebody's way, or did something to vex the tyrant; all I know is that I heard myself addressed as 'You young scoundrel,' and ordered to go to the 'mast-head.' Go to the mast-head indeed! with a freshening wind, under whose influence the ship was beginning to heel over, and an increasing sea that made her jump about like an acrobat. I had not got my sea legs, and this feat seemed an utter impossibility to me. I looked with horror up aloft; then ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... before the mast and sailed for the Japanese coast on a seal-hunting expedition, later going to Behring Sea. After sealing for seven months I came back to California and took odd jobs at coal shovelling and longshoring and also in a jute factory, where I worked ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... mirrors. Now the light, Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought Keen, irrepressible. It was a room Within the summer-house of which I spoke, Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow Clambering, the mast bent, and the revin wind In her sail roaring. From the outer day, Betwixt the closest ivies came a broad And solid beam of isolated light, Crowded with driving atomies, and fell Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of rough planks was erected during the night just abaft the fore-mast, and over this a mizen topgallant studding-sail formed an awning, between which and the mast there was a huge wind-sail, leading down into the forehatch. The fore-courser and lower studding-sails were now clewed up, and a messenger dispatched ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... tear apart a loaf of bread. Through some, solid shell had passed, leaving clean holes. Others looked as though drunken woodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashed them in crazy fury. Some shells had broken the trunks in half as a hurricane snaps a mast. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... circumference Hung on his Shoulders like the Moon, whose orb Thro Optick Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Evning, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers, or Mountains, on her spotted Globe. His Spear (to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian Hills to be the Mast Of some great Admiral, were but a wand) He walk'd with, to support uneasie Steps Over the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... owing to their small size and the great difficulty attending the extraction of the kernels, they are not ranked as being of direct importance for human food. Their principal use in this country is as a mast crop for turkeys and swine, for which they serve a most useful purpose. Crops which can be used in this manner to good advantage, thus practically obviating the problems of harvesting, storing and marketing, are certainly well ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... pigs. As there is a railway system and a hotel system, so there is also a pig system, by which this place is marked out from any other. Huge quantities of these useful animals are reared after harvest in the corn-fields of Ohio, and on the beech-mast and acorns of its gigantic forests. At a particular time of year they arrive by thousands—brought in droves and steamers to the number of 500,000—to meet their doom, when it is said that the Ohio runs red with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... contains by absorbing it in tubes with chloride of calcium, calcined sulphate of copper, or sulphuric acid. It would be easy to arrange an instrument for this purpose so that the whole work could be done under deck, the air from any stratum under the mast-top being examined at will. If I had had the means to make such an examination at the Vega's winter quarters, it would certainly have appeared that the relative humidity of the air at a height of some few metres above ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix, seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper. Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from multitudes who have no adequate ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... a scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors. One only object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding prophet of that ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the cool lawn, our spirits, which had drooped all day, like flags at half-mast, rose, and fluttered in the summer breeze, and we could not resist a caper or two as we ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... devil tempting him by the worldly suggestion of fitting out his desultory, miraculous trough with mast, sail, and rudder for swifter progression (the idea of haste has sprung from the pride of Satan), the simple old saint lent his ear to the subtle arguments of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... length rummaged out of the little receptacle of food, clothing, and dirt in the bow of the boat, and cast into the waves For a moment all flattered themselves that the experiment had been successful—the sail fluttered, swelled a little, and then flapped idly down against the mast. The party were in despair, until, after a whispered consultation together, Julian and Edwin stepped forward as messengers of mercy. In a trice they divested themselves of jacket and vest and made a proffer of their next garment to aid in raising ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... had something to get ever since?-No, not every year. One year our ship had to come home because the master had fallen from the mast-head, and I was not clear with the agent upon voyage; but I shipped again to Davis Straits, and I did clear it off before the end of ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... hollowed out, which forms the keel and kelson, and on this foundation the rest of the prahu is built with planks, and her few timbers fastened with ratans. A prahu of fifty feet long, fitted for service, with oars, mast, attops, &c., was ordered by the Panglima Rajah while we were with him, which, completed, was to cost thirty reals, or sixty Java rupees, or L6 English. During the course of the day we ascended the river to visit the settlement ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... considerable beauty in a small coral reef, when seen from a ship's mast-head, at a short distance, in clear weather. A small island with a white sand-beach and a tuft of trees, is surrounded by a symmetrically oval space of shallow water, of a bright grass-green colour, enclosed by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Finally, he selected a small tree, with a round, straight stem, and began to cut it down. The boys gathered around him, wondering what it could be for. Forester smiled, and worked on in silence, declining to answer any of their questions. Marco said it was for a mast, he knew, but when they asked him where the sail was, he seemed perplexed, and ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... can be fixed on each board at t t, each to receive the butts of two guns, while their barrels lie in hollows formed in the cushions of the seat opposite them, so that the rower can put down his paddles and take up his gun instantly; steps for a mast can be also contrived at the same points. The woodwork is to be also well painted; it can be taken out with ease, as it is nowhere connected with the tin of the boat. Care should be taken that no projections in this woodwork, such as screw-heads, etc., should chafe the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... gains a tree, scrambles up the trunk at a rapid rate. A broad trail leads to the porcupine's den, by which it is easily discovered, as also by the ordure outside the entrance. A number of these paths lead from the den to its feeding-ground: in the autumn to a beech grove, on the mast or nuts of which it revels; and in the winter-time, to some tall hemlock or spruce trees. The Indian hunter also discovers it by the marks of its claws on the bark; and should he be unfortunate in his search for larger game, he seldom fails to obtain ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... wireless apparatus which had been specially installed for her polar voyage. The aerials stretched from her main to mizzen mast and a small room, formerly a storeroom, below the raised poop containing the cabins had been fitted up for a wireless room. In this the boys had spent a good deal of time during their convalescence from sea-sickness and had managed to "pick-up" many vessels within ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... where slaves were known to fetch the highest price. This was a recognised trade, but it exposed the Phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an undying hatred. When on these distant expeditions they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. A mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to obtain help in any ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had come safely home, and in forest stretches where fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... with poisonous fang when surrounded by enemies; to a man cutting down his tree to rid it of caterpillars; or to the fool who cut off his head to rid himself of an aching tooth. The first anniversary of the embargo was observed throughout New England with tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and processions of unemployed seamen and artisans. The mayor of New York forbade riotous gatherings. When a number of men disguised as Indians retook a sloop caught by a man-of-war in forbidden trade, their action was compared to that of the patriots who threw overboard ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... have driven the niggers to work, and I have been comfortable on what they raised. I can see it's right rough down here, though. I never used to think so. All I wanted in the world was rain enough to make the cotton sure, and mast enough to make the b'ahs come. I was happy, or thought I was, until you came, though I reckon I never really knew what that word meant before. I never did see a woman I liked as well as my pack of dogs. This place was good enough for me. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... their width almost to the stern, which is square. This gives the boats a dumpy appearance, as they look as if they had been cut short. They are half-decked, with a roomy fo'castle and a well, where the fish are kept alive. They carry one mast. ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... trapper's fire, or a camp, or some other traces of humanity where that thin haze hung. He could not be baulked this time. Hope, which is verily a beauteous hydra in the young breast, revived again in strength. If he only had somewhat to eat, he wouldn't mind the long tramp before him. Beech-mast rather increased than appeased his hunger; and nothing came in view that could ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the wise Ulysses was thinking what he might best do to save himself and his companions, and the end of his thinking was this: There was a mighty pole in the cave, green wood of an olive tree, big as a ship's mast, which Polyphemus purposed to use, when the smoke should have dried it, as a walking staff. Of this he cut off a fathom's length, and his comrades sharpened it and hardened it in the fire, and then hid it away. At evening the giant ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... protected from the ice and snow, fishing gear and boat equipment to stow, and much cleaning to be done about the fish stage and cabin. Then there was Skipper Zeb's big trap boat to make ready for the voyage up the bay. A mast step had to be repaired, sails mended, and no end of tinkering before it met with Skipper ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... her numbers could furnish succour of this nature, down to the day of separation, America had her full share in the exploits of the English marine. The gentry of the colonies willingly placed their sons in the royal navy, and many a bit of square bunting has been flying at the royal mast-heads of King's ships, in the nineteenth century, as the distinguishing symbols of flag-officers, who had to look for their birth-places among ourselves. In the course of a chequered life, in which we have been brought in collision with as great a diversity of rank, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the gale The bark unfurls her snowy sail; And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast; And I must from this land be gone, Because I cannot love ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... would go off together, rambling along the river, or up the park, where everything looked so jolly and wild—the ragged oak-trees, and huge boulders, of whose presence old Godden, the coachman, had said: "I can't think but what these ha' been washed here by the Flood, Mast' Mark!" These and a thousand other memories beset his conscience now. And as the train drew closer to their station, he eagerly made ready to jump out and greet her. There was the honeysuckle full out along the paling of the platform over the waiting-room; wonderful, this year—and there was she, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... down the mast and unshipped all the rigging; hard at work splicing the yard. The men of course wished to visit their friends at Khartoum. Gave strict orders that no man should leave the boats. One of the horsekeepers absconded before daybreak; sent after him. The ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... had him all at its mercy, and showed no more than his savage master had, but swept him a wallowing lump away, and over the reef of the crossing. With both feet locked in the twisted stirrups, and right arm broken at the elbow, the rider was swung (like the mast of a wreck) and flung with his head upon his father's chain. There he was held by his great square chin—for the jar of his backbone stunned him—and the weight of the swept-away horse broke the neck which never had been known to bend. In the morning a peasant found him there, not ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... that part of his crew were leaping overboard, he cried out: 'Tie me fast; I will not survive after seeing Frenchmen desert their ship!' As a matter of fact, he went down with his ship as a brave Captain, lashed fast to the mast. Then we fished up thirty heavily wounded; three died at once. We sewed a Tricolor, (the French flag), wound them in it and buried them at sea, with seamen's honors, three salvos. That was my only sea fight. The second one I did not ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in a number of languages, and they tell the crew to carry the end of the cable high up the mast and fasten ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... evening flitted over the water, and fire-flies husbanded their light under the grass and leaves against the night. When we had pitched our tent on the hillside, a few rods from the shore, we sat looking through its triangular door in the twilight at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the swaying of the stream; the first encroachment of commerce on this land. There was our port, our Ostia. That straight geometrical line against the water ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... night a ship drove in, A ghost ship from the west, Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller, Like a mermaid drest In long green weed and barnacles: She beached and ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... side. All this was in the heart and heat of the great war, when we were struggling, like drowning men, for our very life and existence, and when our colours—the true British flag—were nailed to the mast-head. One would have thought these rips were a set of prophets, they were all so busy prophesying, and never any thing good. They kent (believe them) that we were to be smote hip and thigh; and that to oppose the vile Corsican was like men with strait-jackets ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... his company and bade them lay hands on the tackling, and they hearkened to his call. So they raised the mast of pine tree and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with twisted ropes of oxhide. And the wind filled the belly of the sail, and the dark wave seethed loudly ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... her from the arms of a usurping lover, and now made her all his own. Another man would have fainted and abandoned the contest, when rejected as he had been. But he had continued the fight, even when lying low on the dust of the arena. He had nailed his flag to the mast when all his rigging had been cut away;—and at last he had won the battle. Of course his Clara was doubly dear to him, having been made his own after such difficulties ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... there had been so many like to it since. Still—the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... cut into the shape of a boat is placed on the ground, and a mast about 12 inches high is fixed into its one and only seat by being firmly pressed into the hole cut through the seat. To the top of the mast is affixed a cocoa-nut shell which has a small hole cut into it about one third of the way up. Prior to the fixing of the mast and the ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... into which the Trafalgar, or whatever her new name may be, will tumble at no very distant time. It appears that she is not to tow out the West Wind, for Captain Sullendine cannot go to sea with only two men before the mast, and no mate." ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Three days afterwards a sailor on the look-out descried several Spanish caracks to leeward, to which they signalled, and having joined company sailed on together. All the vessels carried bombards and cannons, yet within a week the whole of them, save one, had struck their colours, and nailed to the mast of each was the flag of the capturing enemy, who belonged to the sahibs' nation. The single vessel not taken was the galleon which Jose commanded, and after it, as it fled through the waves with every stitch of canvas spread, went one ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through? These Voyages, (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Sea, which were just come out) WHO will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast, than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice, before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of Savages is like another.' BOSWELL. 'I do not think the people of Otaheite can be reckoned ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... hand, "May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray, And past desire!" a saying that anger'd her. "'May God be with thee, sweet, when thou art old, And sweet no more to me!' I need Him now. For when had Lancelot utter'd aught so gross Ev'n to the swineherd's malkin in the mast? The greater man, the greater courtesy. But thou, thro' ever harrying thy wild beasts— Save that to touch a harp, tilt with a lance Becomes thee well—art grown wild beast thyself. How darest thou, if lover, push me even In fancy from thy side, and set me far In the gray distance, half ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... cautiously, but confidently, swept towards her with muffled paddles. The Gladwyn was ready for them. Not a sound broke the silence of the night as the Indians approached the schooner; when suddenly the clang of a hammer against the mast echoed over the calm waters, the signal to the soldiers in the hold. The Indians were almost on their prey; but before they had time to utter the war-whoop, the soldiers had come up and had attacked the savages with bullets and cannon shot. Shrieks of death arose amid the ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... perfectly dark, and we knew of no place of shelter, and the only direction by which we could steer was the roar of the waves upon the neighbouring cliff's." After an hour spent in this manner, they found themselves running straight for the breakers. They pulled down their mast and got out the oars, though without much hope of escape. They rowed desperately, however, and had the satisfaction of rounding the long line of boiling surf. Three minutes after they were in smooth water, under the lee of the rocks, and soon they discovered ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... always place the Reverend Sydney Smith very near my right hand. On my left, I enjoy a variety. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is sometimes so kind as to grace that corner of my dinner table. So is a gentleman who was once two years before the mast as an uncommon sailor; and so is Sir Lainful, and a child from a neighboring college town, whose society is better than that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... first experience before the mast," apologized poor Jonah. "I've always been a passenger. ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... cry'd, Her Ivory Pillows to divide, That Love might Sail with Wind and Tide; She rais'd the Mast and sail'd by it, That Day two Tides together met, Drove him on ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... thoughtful as they returned to their vessels. The anchors were weighed, the sails unfurled, and both vessels hurried from the scene of butchery as rapidly as they were able. After the officers had retired to their cabins, the rough-featured sailors gathered before the mast, and loud and bitter were the curses they uttered against slavery and against those officers of government who had then constrained them to murder women and helpless children, merely ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... were at half-mast, minute guns were fired from 10 until 12 o'clock, and all the bells in the city were tolled. The cortege received the remains at his mother's residence and proceeded to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... The mist continued, and the darkness deepened, as we went through the Straits. The siren boomed intermittently, and Gibraltar, invisible, flashed Morse messages in long and short shafts of light on the thick, moist atmosphere. To add to the eerie effect of it all, a ship's light was hung upon the mast, and cast yellow rays over ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... fellow-sufferers; but, after our escape, it was painful to think of leaving them in jeopardy. To the American barque (which lay inshore of us, with her colors union down) we sent a boat, with sixteen Kroomen, by whose assistance she was saved. The Bremen brig had her colors at half-mast, appealing to us for aid. She was nearer to the shore than the other vessels, and lay in the midst of the breakers, which frequently covered her from stem to stern. Her escape seemed impossible; and her cargo, valued at thirty thousand dollars, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... sunny one, and several men and boys were launching small sailing-boats. Bobby stood looking on with great fascination. There was one boat which took his fancy. She was painted scarlet, and had a miniature Union Jack attached to her mast. A little boy, not much older than himself, was the owner, and he, with a young maid-servant, was watching her journey across the pond ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... thou! inspire a song for me To sing those gods of woodland, hill and glade, Without whose arts man's hunger still would be Only on mast and gathered acorns stayed. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... wind-shield. Then, standing on the running-board, he tugged at the top of his wind-shield standard. Up came a sliding inner tube. In a flash the entire mystery stood revealed to Henry. The wind-shield standard contained a collapsible mast, like the telescoping cane he held in his hand. Doubtless an aerial was now fastened to the mast. Somewhere within the car was a wireless outfit. Instead of having many secret stations, the Germans had this one ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Gregory the Great. Detached from the church is the Bell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort peculiar to Ravenna, which adds to the picturesqueness of the pile, and suggests the notion that it is a mast unshipped from its vessel, the church, which consequently stands there water-logged, with no power to catch any wind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say that the basilica was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to provide her with an up-to-date vocabulary. He used to lie awake nights thinking up new words for old Polly to conquer. Now he says the blamed old rip was deceiving him all the time. She began springing expletives on him that he'd never heard of before in all his forty years before the mast. She first began using them a couple of months ago when he undertook to reform her. He started in to teach her to say 'good gracious' and 'goodness me' and 'hoity-toity' and all such stuff, and she cursed so loud and so long that he had to throw a bucket ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... mountains as most men, and more fleets than the generality of landsmen; and, to my mind, a large convoy with a few sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as poetical a prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast of some great admiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the Alpine tarnen, and think that more poetry has been made out of it. In what does the infinite superiority of Falconer's "Shipwreck" over all other shipwrecks consist? In his admirable application ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the speaking trumpet, and hailing the poor wretches at the mast-head, told them that he was now captain, and that they must in future obey his commands. He then ordered them to unbend the sails, they readily complied; but when he ordered them to come down they hesitated, but he enforced prompt ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... exhausted. We then proceeded on our voyage; but the day after we left the island, late in the evening, and whilst we were yet amongst the Bahama keys, we were overtaken by a violent gale of wind, so that we were obliged to cut away the mast. The vessel was very near foundering; for she parted from her anchors, and struck several times on the shoals. Here we expected every minute that she would have gone to pieces, and each moment to be our last; so much so that my old captain and sickly useless mate, and several others, fainted; ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... downward into the fjord. The water is lashed into foam; an enormous wave bearing on its crest the shattered wrecks of human homes, rolls onward; the good ship Queen Anne is tossed skyward, her cable snaps and springs upward against the mast-head, shrieks of terror fill the air, and the sea flings its strong, foam-wreathed arms against the ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sail happens to be wanted, the men give up their ponchos and the women their mantillas. The slits in the ponchos are stitched up, and both ponchos and mantillas being sewn together are fixed to a pole or bar of wood, which is hoisted to a proper position on the mast. This patchwork sail can only be serviceable when the wind is fresh. At nightfall, when the boat runs into one of the creeks for shelter, the sail is lowered, and the sewing being unpicked, the ponchos and mantillas are returned to their respective owners, who wrap themselves ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... sail was drawn up to the mast, and it swelled proudly before the breeze as the ship dashed through the crested waves. And still the sun shone brightly down on the water, and the soft white clouds floated lazily in the heavens, as the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... clock at night it blew a very fierce Storm. We were then riding with our best Bower [27] a Head and though our Yards and Top-mast were down, yet we drove. This obliged us to let go our Sheet-Anchor, veering out a good scope of Cable, which stopt us till 10 or 11 a clock the next day. Then the Wind came on so fierce, that she drove again, with both Anchors a-head. The Wind was now at N. by W. and we kept driving ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... The master made every effort to guide the vessel, but it was of no use, and at last she was dashed among the breakers. Then we tried to launch the boats, but could not do it, and, as a last resource, I and one other man clung to the mast for safety. We were in that situation ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope |
