"Windlass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mechanical equipment of this era we are largely indebted to Agricola. He classifies hauling machines into four types; the ordinary bucket windlass, the piston (suction) pump, the chain of dippers, and the rag and chain pump. Although the first three had been known in antiquity, and the last perhaps a century before his time,[6] their use in mining would appear to date from ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf
... box factory at the princely salary of fifty cents a week. His business was to lower great packages of boxes from the upper story to the ground floor. He thought how delightful it would be to go down himself on the rope. One day he induced a small boy who worked near, pasting, to mind the windlass while he descended by hanging on above the usual pits of boxes. The sensation was novel and pleasing and it became exciting when the boy above leaned over and shouted: "The boss is coming, look out for yourself. I'll have to go." An instant later Paul and ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... bolted to the hind axle and main frame. The front axle has a set of blocks bolted together and of sufficient height to support the front end of the frame. Into the top timbers, three-by-six inches, hollows are cut at the proper distances to receive the ends of two locust rollers. A windlass or winch is put at each end of the frame, by which trees can easily and steadily be lifted and lowered, the large double ropes passing over the rollers to the windlasses. A locust boom is put across the machine under the frame ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... through the opening which I made, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinary number in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one point in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered myself down a 'cut'—a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the mainhatch battens, and, throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great deliberation, just on the stroke of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... unsuccessful, it would be necessary to bring the ship back to her present moorings. Two more anchors were next carried outside the passage, which was not more than two hundred feet in length. The chains were attached to the windlass, the sailors worked at the hand-spikes, and at four o'clock in the afternoon the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... pressed together again. The loose roll was therefore slipped over a vertical iron rod fastened into a circular perforated wooden foot. The upper end of this iron rod ended in a ring, in which the hook of a chain or rope could be fastened. With the aid of a windlass the roll was raised or lowered. When placed in the pan with boiling tar, it was left there until thoroughly saturated. It was then taken out, placed upon a table, and the excess of tar allowed to drip off ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... to which, after some slight hesitation, he consented. Another twelvemonth rolled into eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well with unwonted industry. As the bucket neared the top he reached down and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding it up, explained to the astonished matron: "Look at this, now; did you ever see such a sweet young one go a-campaignin' ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... yet finished; masons and stone-cutters were engaged in covering the strong walls with dark serpentine and black marble. The huge windlass stood ready to raise a masterpiece of Alexandrian art. This was intended for the pediment, and represented Venus Victrix with helmet, shield, and lance, leading a band of winged gods of love, little archers at whose head Eros ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats and chimney- pot hats?' I would tell him to go to the docks of a great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. I have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been graceful at some moment of his labour; it is only the loafer and the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the artist as he is to himself. I would ask the sculptor to go with ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... nuggets, while the men drilled a hole about two inches in diameter and one foot deep, which they afterward filled with dynamite. After sending the tools up, the other man and I went up, while the man we left in the shaft lit the fuse. We all pulled at the windlass, and he was soon at the top. After taking off the bucket we ran up the hill about a hundred yards to watch ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... he has been bleeding, perhaps, the distance of several blocks, and arrives almost faint. In the most of such cases they have something tied around their wounds, but hardly ever in any manner so as to be equal to stop the bleeding. In exceptional cases you find a tourniquet or the Spanish windlass applied. This, when applied by a surgeon, may answer very well, but when applied by a non-professional person it is invariably screwed up so tight that the pain produced thereby is so great and intolerable that the patient prefers rather ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... point in hickory propagation work consists in the employment of the Spanish windlass for fastening graft and stock together. The old time wrapping of twine or of raffia had to be released in order to allow growth at the point of union of scion and stock. When cord is used it cuts deeply into the new growth, and raffia, which is placed on flat, will be burst open. In either case ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Aurelius Victor XV had arranged—a great Prince but too fond of pleasure—and which I am told is a perfect wonder of licentious elegance. It is painted with the story of Bacchus and Ariadne, and the table works in and out of the room by means of a windlass, so that the company was served without any intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy during her son's glorious ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought I read, at the bottom of the water, characters of fire traced upon the letter the queen had touched. Then, scarcely knowing what I was about, and urged on by one of those instinctive impulses which drive men to destruction, I lowered the cord from the windlass of the well to within about three feet of the water, leaving the bucket dangling, at the same time taking infinite pains not to disturb that coveted letter, which was beginning to change its white tint for the hue of chrysoprase,—proof ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and way down we could hear an awful splashing. Sailor Bill yelled down, "Look out below; stand from under; bucket coming!" With that he loosed the windlass. In a few seconds a spluttering voice from the depths yelled up ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... a storm, and so, after weeks of listless waiting, doing nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a very gale of bustle comes on. 'Sail ho!' comes from the lookout aloft. 'One point off our starboard bow!' 'Man the windlass and up anchor!' shouts the officer of the deck, as the strange sail bears down steadily toward us, finally showing signals which tell us she's a friend and brings a mail. The Iroquois steams out to meet her; their anchors drop, and they hold friendly confab. We, too, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... very loudly of lines, spars, windlass and davits. To be sure, he did not know one from the other, but then he knew that the little girls did not know, and he ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... drawbridge again with a great creaking of windlass and chain, and Charles with his head up rode across. But his men-at-arms stood their horses squarely on the bridge so that it could not be raised, and Philip smiled ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Colonel L. upon a foraging expedition. We passed a small house, in front of which a fat little negro-girl was drawing a bucket of water from the well, the girl puffing and the windlass creaking. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... stars. There is a gloom around as one gets nearer and nearer the bays and cliffs of this lonely island; and now one hears the sound of breakers on the rocks. Hamish and his men are on the alert. The topsail has been lowered. The heavy cable of the anchor lies ready by the windlass. And then, as the Umpire glides into smooth water, and her head is brought round to the light breeze, away goes the anchor with a rattle that awakes a thousand echoes; and all the startled birds among ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... looked at his watch, at the tide, and gave the word to man the windlasses. Then with a glance towards the cliff he started the working chant—"Ayee-ho, Ayee-ho!" The two gangs—twenty men to each windlass—took it up with one voice, and to the deep intoned chant the chains tautened, shuddered for a moment, and began ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... moment's hesitation, the second mate and Jack Reeves started on this mission of mercy, and were soon followed by nearly all the crew. Upon reaching the forecastle we found the body of a man lying across the heel of the bowsprit, jammed against the windlass pawl. The insensible form was lifted from its resting place, and, by the captain's order, finally deposited in the cabin on the transom. The skipper, steward, and myself, remained below to try and ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a rope, and fixes it round his neck, with a slip knot, fastens it to the windlass, and dragged him in as they do an anchor, and tied him by his bridle to the boom; and then shoved off, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... alas! our own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this first ladder ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the Vallee," bellowed the latter, as his eye fell upon Wilbur the Transformed. "Clap on to that starboard windlass ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... Windlass for the damage his pesky goats have done, so I will, for the hateful things have eaten up all ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... a sturdy Welshman—Jonas Evans by name—a Methodist of the Lady Huntingdon connexion. The other, Jim Larkins, was Canadian born, the son of a neighbouring farmer. About four o'clock in the morning they emerged from their spruce booth and began hauling with their rude windlass upon the seine, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... then they carr'd our Fan all roun', 'Ithin a mawn, till zome girt stump Upset en over on the groun', An' drow'd her out along-straight, plump. An' in the cider-house we zot Upon the windlass Poll an' Nan, An' spun 'em roun' till they wer got So giddy that ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... long voyage, invited his nephew to visit him on board of the ship. The young gentleman went on board, and was highly pleased with everything he saw. Wishing to give his uncle an idea of his superior knowledge, he tapped him on the shoulder, and pointing to the windlass, asked, "Quid est hoc?" His uncle, being a man who despised such vanity, took a chew of tobacco from his mouth, and throwing it in his nephew's ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... decrepit old men "heaved," as he called turning the handle of the windlass, until ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... 25, 1805] 25th of February Monday 1805 we fixed a Windlass and Drew up the two Perogues on the upper bank and attempted the Boat, but the Roap which we bade made of Elk Skins proved too weak & broke Several times night Comeing on obliged us to leave her in a Situation but little advanced- we were Visited by the Black mockerson Chief of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... be first officer of the Flyaway, as well as pilot, summoned them to the windlass to heave up the anchor; and in a few minutes the yacht was standing down the harbor under all sail. The Teneans gave three rousing cheers, and then distributed themselves in various parts of the deck to ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half a mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... timbered room, with one large bull's eye window,—an overgrown lens. The thing is a sort of Cyclops. There are ropes, and chains, and a windlass. There is a bell by which the engineer of the first engine can signal the plowman, and a cord whereby the plowman can talk back. There are two sweeps, or arms, worked by machinery, on the sides. You ask their use, and the superintendent replies, "When, in a violent shock, there is danger ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... course of the gale nearly the whole length of the hempen cable, of 120 fathoms, was veered out, besides the chain-moorings, and, for its preservation, the cable was carefully "served", or wattled, with pieces of canvas round the windlass, and with leather well greased in the hawse-hole, where ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Importance of Humility 6 The Eureka: or Journal of the National Association of Inventors 7 ADVERTISEMENTS 7 The Ball of the Bears 7 All is not Gold that Glitters 7 Painting In Imitation of Rose-Wood 8 India Rubber 8 Communication on Atmospheric Resistance 8 The Conical Windlass* 8 Requisite Strength of Steam Boilers 8 Bagley's Gold Pens ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... room. The cross battens, shown between the rails, are for the purpose of horse traffic, when horses are used for hauling the trucks, or for ordinary carts or wagons. The plan below deck shows the arrangement of the bulkheads, with a small windlass at each end for lifting the anchors, and a small hatch at each side for entrance to these compartments. The central compartment contains the machinery, which consists of a pair of compound surface condensing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... lanterns and an ominous-looking bundle, leads the way out of the Schachtmeister's office to another portion of the same building. Here are heaps of dark grey "macadamised" stones;—silver and lead ores just raised from the pit; over whose very mouth we are unknowingly standing. A windlass is in the centre of the chasm; and it is by means of this windlass that the metalliferous substance is raised to the surface in square wooden boxes. Here the dressing of the ores commences; boys ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... was polishing his broad face with the towel, she seized a heavy iron tea-kettle, and carried it to the well, which, surrounded by plantain and dock leaves, was near a corner of the house. She had some little difficulty in managing the windlass, and when the old mossy bucket fell with a dash into the water twenty feet below, it made her start and shiver all over as if ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... given up the promised berth to another, and it was only with difficulty that I secured a seat by the cabin table, where I dozed half the night with my head on my arms. It grew at last too close and wearisome; I went up on deck and lay down on the windlass, taking care to balance myself well before going to sleep. The earliest light of dawn awoke me to a consciousness of damp clothes and bruised limbs. We were in sight of the low shore the whole day, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... made ways of soft timbers, squaring and smoothing them; we cut down many trees for rollers; we dug and graded the beach. Then, having altogether unloaded her and built a high cache of poles and a platform for her stuff, and having chopped the ice from all around her, we rigged a Spanish windlass and wound that boat out of the water with the half-inch cable she carried, and up on the ways and well into the mouth of the little creek. Then we levelled her up and thoroughly braced her and put her canvas cover all over her, and she lay there until spring and took ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... mansion, never occupied after the ill-starred family left it, was destroyed by fire a few years before the time of the picnic excursion. Near the low foundation walls of blackened stone stood the wooden curb surrounding the mouth of a deep well. The old windlass, below which a leaky bucket still swung, was kept in repair by unknown hands. Upon looking for the man whom Eva had discovered, Mrs. Arlington saw leaning upon the curb, in a posture of meditation, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the Duke a look of sympathy and a smile of cheer as he took his place on the windlass again, and Featherstone looked down from the cairn at both his old friends with actual tears ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... building it, and it remains to this day, a solid wall of masonry, the circle being thirty-four feet deep, eight feet wide at the top, and six at the bottom. I floored it over with wood above all, and fixed the windlass and bucket, and there it stands as one of the greatest material blessings which the Lord has given to Aniwa. It rises and falls with the tide, though a third of a mile distant from the sea; and when, after using it, we ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... family, the four-years-old "baby," had slipped on the curb of the well, overbalanced himself, and fallen in; dropping a toy into the water as he did so. In a moment Mary was on her feet. Seizing the bucket, she called the elder boys to work the windlass, and, with firm, but quiet instructions and a face as white as death, consigned herself to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was a triangular frame, on which the prisoner was stretched and bound, so that he could not move. Cords were attached to his arms and legs, and then connected with a windlass, which, when turned, dislocated the joints of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... through without much trouble, I reckon," Perk was assured by the confident one. "I think if you investigate you'll find they've got some sort of winch, a bit like the old-fashioned windlass we used to wind up whenever we pulled the old oaken bucket up from the country well. Let's take ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the aforesaid chamber, and wound up at the other end by a four lever windlass, ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... only reopened by the smugglers' treachery. One of the Badger's mariners named William Cullum, was in consequence shot dead by a musket aimed at him by one of the smugglers. Cullum was standing by the windlass at the ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... up by the sliding frame, and the frame is raised by long screws turned round by a winch purchase on deck. A chain or rope, however, is better for the purpose of raising this frame, than long screws; but the frame should in such case be provided with pall catches like those of a windlass, which, if the rope should break, will prevent ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... fore-taupsle," before any of the other sails were adrift. "Loose the to-gantsle and staysles" came up from below in a voice like thunder, and I bounded up higher to my task. On deck I could see a crowd at the windlass heaving up anchor. I said to myself, "They don't waste any time getting this packet away." Evidently they were not anxious to test any of the crew's swimming powers. They were wise, for had she remained at ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... what the seamen were about; they appeared to be pumping, instead of heaving, at the windlass. I forced my way through the heterogeneous mixture of human beings, animals, and baggage which crowded the decks, and discovered that they were working a patent windlass, by Dobbinson—a very ingenious and superior ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... right, Joe, there will not," answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... furiously against the poop-deck. Suddenly, that terrible cry, 'A man overboard!' I lost no time. I bore down on the taffrail threw the cook overboard, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing our noble craft lay over abaft the wind. Then, quick as thought, I belayed the windlass and lowered a gaff. It struck something soft. I heard JEFF cry: 'Don't hit my head again.' I was careful. The gaff slid along his back, and finally settled firmly into the seat of his trousers. He was hoisted ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... Spring Market used to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used to echo along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer. This explains the empty warehouses and the unused wharves. Portsmouth ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sleepy, and woke up when he heard footsteps near him. The magicians asked him if he could show them to the lowest part of the castle. "All right," said he; "this way;" and he led them to where there was a great black hole, with a windlass over it. "Get in the bucket," said he, "and I will ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... snakes that came this morning in a 'tramp' from South America. One of them, a boa constrictor, got loose and coiled around a windlass. The cook was passing and it caught him. He fainted with fright and the beast squeezed him to death. It's a fine story—lots of amusing and dramatic details. I wrote it for a column and I think they won't cut it. I hope not, anyhow. I ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... gold had been cooled suddenly by being cast into the "pickle," and was now subjected to another severe hammering, after which it was drawn, by means of a gigantic pair of tongs fixed to the windlass of a bench by a long leather strap through graduated holes in a strong steel plate. Next, it was branded, by means of certain steel punches, with the goldsmith's private marks, and afterwards it was bent with pliers ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I took hold of the handle of the windlass, swung off the great oaken bucket, and watched it descend its often-traveled course, bumping against the wet, slippery rocks with which the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... had been provided for by a fit of the measles; and the second, my elder brother, by stumbling over the stern of the lighter when he was three years old. At the time of the accident my mother had retired to her bed, a little the worse for liquor; my father was on deck forward, leaning against the windlass, soberly smoking his evening pipe. "What was that?" exclaimed my father, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and listening; "I shouldn't wonder if that wasn't Joe." And my father put in his pipe again, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... derrick, which was provided with a rude windlass, constructed by Ethan, the stone post was hoisted up, and then dropped down on the skids. The sinker had been rigged with slings, and the hogshead was attached to it by a contrivance of Lawry, upon which the success of the operation wholly depended, and ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... there be any wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain Delano, be sure that man there has fouled his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in the pitch. I don't like to accost him. I will speak to this other, this old Jack here on the windlass. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... angular attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue sea—patched with purple stains in the middle distance—webs of steamer smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not the posturing cormorants ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... kneeling around a newly opened well. I asked a man who was digging beside the dusty path what this might mean. He straightened himself for a moment, wiping the sweat from his brow, and answered, sullenly, "They are worshipping the windlass: how else should they bring water into their fields?" Then he fell furiously to digging again, and I passed ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... "Still twelve feet shy." There was a scramble for the buckets, but no one offered to man the windlass and hoist them up the air shaft. Grant was only a carpenters' boss. The men around the buckets were miners. But he called: "Get out of there, Hughey and Mike—none of that. We must make that ladder ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... accompany them had been already deposited in the Projectile. The three travellers approached the mouth of the enormous cannon, seated themselves in the flying car, and once more took leave for the last time of the vast throng standing in silence around them. The windlass creaked, the car started, and the three daring men disappeared ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... well up to his work though taking it easily, in so light a boat that the Rogue remarked: 'A little less on you, and you'd a'most ha' been a Wagerbut'; then went to work at his windlass handles and sluices, to let the sculler in. As the latter stood in his boat, holding on by the boat-hook to the woodwork at the lock side, waiting for the gates to open, Rogue Riderhood recognized his 'T'other governor,' Mr Eugene Wrayburn; ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... rigging; ropes and blocks flying, orders given and answered amid the confused noises of men singing out at the ropes. The topsails came to the mastheads with "Cheerly, men!" and in a few minutes every sail was set, for the wind was light. The head sails were backed, the windlass came round "slip—slap" to the cry of the sailors;—"Hove short, sir," said the mate; "Up with him!"—"Ay, ay, sir." A few hearty and long heaves, and the anchor showed its head. "Hook cat!" The fall was stretched along the decks; all hands laid hold;—"Hurrah, for the last time," said the mate; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 100 to 125 feet deep, down which everything has to pass. The laborers climb up and down a ladder, and the fresh manure is shoveled down the shaft from above, the waste stuff and mushrooms being hauled up in baskets from beneath by means of a windlass." ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... he felt the vine give, as if uncoiling itself from a windlass. Down, down he fell until his feet touched the soggy earth of the island. Still the vine uncoiled; the island crashed into the boulder. Desperately Piang tried to climb the vine, but its slackness offered no resistance. Slowly the island began to tip, to slide over the falls, and Piang ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Truth delights to dwell (Strange mansion!) in the bottom of a well: Questions are then the windlass and the rope That pull the grave old Gentlewoman up, Birthday Ode. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... sheets hang down from the other side with which the sail is turned to this or that side, according to the direction of the wind. The sail is half the width of the ship, and the mast is large and high. The sail is raised by means of a windlass, which contrivance is used also for a capstan. The rigging is made of reeds and grass, which grow wild. The mast is stepped about two-thirds of the length of the ship nearer the prow, in order that the ship may pitch forward. The ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... torture, consisted in fastening the sufferer, stripped naked, and his hands tied behind his back, by the wrists to one end of a rope passed round a pulley bolted into the vaulted ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by turning which he could be hoisted into the air, and dropped again, either slowly or with a jerk, as ordered by the judge. The suspension generally lasted during the recital of a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria, or a Miserere; if the accused persisted in his denial, ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their feet actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been for the windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its monotonous dead level. And, when they descended a ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... any romantic speculations of the kind. The pilot at the helm quietly smoked his pipe, thinking of nothing either past, present, or to come; those of his comrades who were not industriously smoking under the hatches were listening with open mouths to Antony Van Corlear, who, seated on the windlass, was relating to them the marvelous history of those myriads of fireflies, that sparkled like gems and spangles upon the dusky robe of night. These, according to tradition, were originally a race of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... on the top step leading down to the water; stand tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... The tapers which are lighted down there, flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass slowly removes the front of the altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man: the pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... expert—when he chooses to use his skill—at conveying water where Nature has not provided it. I watched some men making one of these kanats. They had bored a vertical hole about three feet in diameter, over which a wooden windlass had been erected. One man was working at the bottom of the shaft. By means of buckets the superfluous earth was gradually raised up to the surface, and the hole bored further. The earth removed in the excavation is then embanked all round the aperture of the shaft. When the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... medicine. It paid him better than his salts and rhubarb. That was before the hotels opened, and while all the grog was sold on the sly. They marched in, dressed up as if they'd been in George Street, though everybody knew one of 'em had been at the windlass all day with the wages man, and the other two below, working up to their knees in water; for they'd come on a drift in their claim, and were puddling back. However, that says nothing; we were all ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... the cut, A is a reservoir of mercury with flexible tube C connected to a tube at its bottom, and raised and lowered by a windlass b, the cord from which passes over a pulley a. When raised the mercury tends to enter the chamber B, through the tube T. An arrangement of stopcocks surmounts this chamber, which arrangement is shown on a larger scale in the three figures X, Y and Z. To fill the bulb B, the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... here this morning to ask whether you wish the windlass to be left in the yard, and whether you will want him and his mate any more, and, if so, when? Of course he says (rolling something in the form of a fillet in at one broken tooth all the while, and rolling it out at ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the mate stretched me out on the windlass and commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on the windlass, I might have been taken for a sailor with the gout. While this was going on, someone ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... might have lived. The ferrying was done with what was really a raft of logs, rather than a boat. It was sustained against the current by means of a tackle attached to a block, rove on a large rope that was drawn taut, from bank to bank, and was propelled by a windlass on each bank. When a wagon had been taken aboard this cable ferry, the windlass on the farther side was turned by one of the men, drawing the raft across. After unloading, the raft was drawn back, by operation of the windlass on ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... the sloop. Quickly battening down the prisoners, I had the sails spread, the windlass going, and the anchor apeak quickly, and we soon were moving down upon the schooner, which was now all confusion, commands ringing out on the quiet air. But when, laying alongside, we gave her a dose, and then another, from all our ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... color. Will thought them stumpy and heavy-looking; and he did not admire the red sails with crooked gaffs, and smiled at the blue pennants, stretched out on stiff frames that turned with the wind. But when Greta showed him a tiny windlass on the deck, by means of which she easily raised and lowered the mast, he came to the conclusion that a Dutch canal-boat was not to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of this noble tower is a windlass for lowering the bells in case of repairs becoming necessary, with a trap-door in the floor opening into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... do it easier next time," said Humphrey. "I will make a windlass as soon as I can, and we will soon hoist out another, like they turn a bucket of water up from ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... over her brick floors as she likes. Then the clear, swift current begins to diminish, and scarcely have you had time to notice the change than it is altogether gone! The women must go back to the well and let the bucket down, and laboriously turn and turn the handle of the windlass till it mounts to the top again. The pretty moist, green herbage, the graceful grasses, quickly wither away; dust and straws and rubbish from the road lie in the dry channel, and by and by it is filled ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... has its well. Sometimes there are only two or three to a block. Sometimes the well is merely a shallow hole, uncemented, to catch the seepage of the upper strata. Sometimes it is a very deep stone-walled cavity. Rarely is there a pump or a windlass or any other fixed aid for raising ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... twanging up into the frontal sinuses. What was the use of losing his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor before the windlass of his rack had taken ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the vessel, with all the other parts that make up the ends, cannot be more than mentioned here. Then come the decks, which are quite complex in themselves, and still more complex by reason of the mast-holes and hatchways cut out of them all, and the windlass, bitts, and capstan built into the one that is exposed to the storm. To make sure that whatever strength is taken out by cutting is restored in some other way, and that the exposed deck which has to resist the strains put upon the structures ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... mooring swivel (fig. 2), which prevents a "foul hawse", i.e. the cables being entwined round each other. When mooring, unmooring, and as may be necessary, cables are temporarily secured by "slips" shackled to eye or ring bolts in the deck (see ANCHOR). The cable is hove up by either a capstan or windlass (see CAPSTAN) actuated by steam, electricity or manual power. Ships in the British navy usually ride by the compressor, the cable holder being used for checking the cable running out. When a ship has been given the necessary cable, the cable holder is eased up and the compressor ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... invited to get into a rough square bucket, in which there was just room for himself and another to stand; he was specially cautioned to keep his head straight, and his hands and elbows from protruding, and then the windlass began to turn, and the upper world, the sunlight, and all humanity receded ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... yielded, and sulkily gave the order, the windlass was manned, and the kedge drawn up. Fenders were lowered, and the sloop slid gently to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... tones like the grating of metal edges, to a loutish youth in a ragged shirt and bare legs. The cabin, partly covered, was filled with bagged bales; a small space had been left for the steersman, and forward the deck was littered with untidy ropes and swab, windlass ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... valley. In the olden days the approach to these caverns was not through the house, but through the side of a deep well sunk in the court yard, which communicates through a subterranean passage with this well. Those seeking entrance were let down by a windlass into the well in the court yard, and drawn up by a windlass into this cavern. There was no such accommodation at present, but we were told some enterprising tourists had explored the lower caverns. Pleasant kind of times those old days must have been, when houses ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... before me, my thoughts touched upon other happenings of that boyhood voyage—the long, tedious beat through the straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward to visit me ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... success. He saved his ship on one occasion, when she was becalmed and practically surrounded by a powerful British fleet, by "kedging"—in other words, sending a row-boat out with an anchor, which was dropped as far ahead as the boat could take it, and the ship pulled up to it by means of the windlass. As soon as the British saw him doing this, they tried it too, but Hull managed to get away from them by almost superhuman exertions. He served in the navy for many years after his memorable victory over the Guerriere, but never achieved another ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... did it, I'll bet you a month's pay," said Peter Grim, as he sat on the end of the windlass refilling his pipe, which he ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... patent anchors on the Retriever. With a hammer he knocked out the stopper; the starboard anchor dropped and the red rust flew from her hawsepipe as the anchor chain screamed through it. With his hand on the compressor of the windlass, Matt Peasley snubbed her gently to the forty-five fathom shackle, cast off his jib halyards to let the jib slide down the stay by its own weight, raced aft, and gently lowered the spanker as the American barkentine Retriever, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... followed the heaving line, and Nelson and Bowen, with life-lines about them, bent the stubborn end of it around the windlass. It was heavy work, even for two men, on the tumbling, slippery deck, and, that done, they turned, anxiously, to see how the man in the stern of the tug was making out. He was there, back to, bending ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... his soul, Dud went; his countenance enlivened at one and the same time with a blush of boyish bashfulness and a malicious grin. As he drew near, and saw Vinnie embarrassed with the windlass, which seemed determined to let the bucket down too fast (as if animated with a genuine Peakslow spite toward her), the grin predominated; but when she turned upon him a troubled, smiling face, the grin subsided, and the blush became ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... who dwelt near the harbor heard the clank of a windlass as the crew of the Royal James hove the cable short, and the melodious, deep-throated refrain of a farewell chantey floated across the quiet water. With the flood of the tide and a landward breeze, the brig stole out across the bar while the topsails were ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... quaintly carved goods and long wooden pipes in other windows. Marine stores jostle one another, shoulder to shoulder, and there is a rich smell of tar, bilge-water, and the hold of a cargo tramp. Almost you expect to hear the rattle of the windlass, as you stand in the badly lighted establishment of Johann Dvensk, surrounded by ropes, old ship's iron, bloodthirsty blades, canvas, blocks, and pulleys. Something in this narrow space seizes you, and you feel that you must "Luff her!" or "Starrrrrb'd yer Helllllllm!" or "Ease ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Adelaide Creek, till we come to a high range of rocks, which we cross, and then find ourselves near the head-waters of Fryer's Creek. Following that stream towards the Loddon, we pass the interesting neighbourhood of Golden Gully, Moonlight Flat, Windlass and Red Hill; this latter which covers about two acres of ground is so called from the colour of the soil, it was the first found, and is still considered as the richest auriferous spot near Mount Alexander. ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... side, Te Ava Malu stood out upon the sand and watched the whaler loosen her canvas and heave up anchor. Only when the quick click, click of the windlass pauls reached their listening ears, as the anchor came up to the song of the sailors and the ship's head swung round, did the girls begin to weep. But the mother, pressing them to her side, chid them, and said ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... about four minutes, when the crowding vapor had at last completely come to rest at the top of the dome like a deposit of opaque jelly. He stepped to the windlass that raised the bell, and turned ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... did. Within fifteen minutes the Maggie was fast to her prize. "Now we'll cockbill the anchor," quoth Captain Scraggs, so McGuffey reporting sufficient steam in the donkey to turn over the windlass, the anchor was raised and cockbilled, and the Maggie hauled away on the hawser the instant Captain Scraggs signalled his new navigating officer that the hook was free of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... elms, mallows, and silkworm oaks, whose tender shoots and new twigs, of every hue, were allowed to bend and to intertwine in such a way as to form two rows of green fence. Beyond this fence and below the white mound, was a well, by the side of which stood a well-sweep, windlass and such like articles; the ground further down being divided into parcels, and apportioned into fields, which, with the fine vegetables and cabbages in flower, presented, at the first glance, the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... my boy. We shall soon have furnaces at work and be smelting our ore and converting some of it into silver. There'll be more to see then. You don't care to go down?" he said, leaning his hand upon a windlass over ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... after four and ferried across the Ohio in two places in consequence of an island; the ferry impelled across by means of a windlass letting down frame work into the water, and altering the position of the boat. When arrived at Wheeling hotel could hear of no boat till evening. Went again to bed; got up at nine, felt a little earache and not much appetite for breakfast, ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... could run, and Jack was mad with pain, when he stumbled, half-blinded, over the brickwork of a well. Jack could not stop his pitching into the well, but he seized the iron chain as it struck him across the face. Down went Jack, and round went the windlass, and after a rapid descent of forty feet our hero found himself under water, and no longer troubled with the bees, who, whether they had lost scent of their prey from his rapid descent, or being notoriously clever insects, acknowledged the truth of the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... of the windlass letting go the anchor chain. On the deck of the schooner men ran about as the sails were lowered. The vessel swung gently until the bow headed into the current of the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... so," Bristles hastened to admit, as he cast a quick glance at the almost ropeless wooden windlass; "don't you see the bucket's away down? Whoever it is, Fred, they just can't climb up again. It takes you to get on the inside ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... dripping candles. The walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and the lower part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments covered with gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems. The decaying head ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where you perceive that red glare—the flame of a smelting furnace—there was an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse stood, on that rocky point, they have got a crane and a windlass. Now, turn to this other side. The road you saw to-day, crossed with four main lines, cut up, almost impassable between mud, rubbish, and fallen timber, with swampy excavations on one side and brick-fields on the other, led—ay, and not four years ago—along the margin of the sea, with a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the man replied. "I was at the windlass when they shouted up to me to go up and fetch them a bottle of rum. They had just struck it rich, and wanted a drink on the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... gate. A crowd of their assailants were close upon their heels. Walter glanced round; dashing across the courtyard he ran through some passages into an inner yard, in which, as he knew, was the well. The bucket hung at the windlass. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... cut away a lot of the running gear, and the halliards had been severed and lay on the deck, ready to be taken on shore with the other loot littered about, though the sail itself had not been damaged. The jib and staysail, also, I could not hoist: they were lying in a heap on the windlass with a dead nigger on top, and, further aft, were another two of the gentry, one dead and one with a smashed thigh bone. I slung the wounded man overboard to the sharks, and then began to consider what was best to do. The niggers, I felt ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... picked up the rope's-end that he had dropped when he took out his revolver, and was evidently about to lay it on my poor trembling back again, when another groan came from the men forward, who still hung about the windlass bitts, instead of going below after squaring the yards. Tom Bullover's voice, I could hear, again taking the lead, as they advanced in a body aft, in a much more demonstrative ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the deck of the Swan, the boat was hoisted in, and the men began to heave round the windlass. As soon as the anchor was up, the sails were sheeted home; and the Swan, yielding to the light breeze off the land, began to make her way through the water. Roger, from the poop, waved his cap in reply to the signals of farewell from ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty |
