"Bilge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sewing with cocoa-nut fibre cord laces a straw rope against the inside of the seam, and this apparently swells when wet and gives elasticity and play, and keeps out a considerable amount of water. But I see there's a good deal of baling done, and the baggage, with the water in bilge and spray over all, must get wet outside at least—Fixed up about cabins for Rangoon, lunched at our hotel, the Connemara, then hired a gharry or victoria—I'm not sure which the conveyance we hired by the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... forbidding as they rested upon the renegade. I know—from Lord Henry's own pen—that no word had passed between them during those brief moments before Sakr-el-Bahr was hurried away by his guards to be flung into those dark, cramped quarters reeking of tar and bilge. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... up one of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. A man with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilge in ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... massy weight of earth stood firm With now concreted body, when (as 'twere) All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross, Had run together and settled at the bottom, Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air, Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all Left with their liquid bodies pure and free, And each more lighter than the next below; And ether, most light and liquid of the three, Floats on above the long ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... for very long. I struck my watch at three in the morning. And the air was so unworthy of that name,—it was such a thick paste, seeming to me more like a mixture of tar and oil and fresh fish and decayed fish and bilge-water than air itself,—that I voted three morning, and crawled up into the clear starlight,—how wonderful it was, and the fresh wet breeze that washed my face so cheerily!—and I bade Battista take his turn below, while I would lie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... know a thing till you do do it, though I thought I had a tidy fancy about some things beforehand. It's better not to be quite sure that all your seams are caulked, and so to keep a look-out on the bilge-pump; isn't it, sir?" ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... live five minutes, sir! We are cut down from rail to bilge; there is a hole in our side big enough to drive a coach and six through, and the water is pouring into ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the mallet, and sounded upon the head of each cask. They were all empty; and it was clear enough that there was not a drop of fresh water in the hold, except that which was already mingled with the foul bilge-water under the ballast. The ship was going to sea, and both clouds and barometer indicated heavy weather. The steward was troubled, and immediately hastened to the principal with the alarming intelligence. He found Mr. Lowington in the main cabin, and announced ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... containing the gun cotton being attached to the jackstay immediately in front of the battered sides, and 30 feet from the hulk, and sunk to a distance of 20 feet below the water line, which would bring it about opposite the bend of the bilge. By 3 p.m. everything was ready for the explosion of the charge—everybody had cleared out of the ship while the surrounding small craft drew off to a distance of 300 feet. The charge was electrically fired from a pinnace. The burst was terrific and the reverberation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... lose about a dozen pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson's drives, perhaps they'll stick on less side about things in general in future. Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing's, if I ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat so it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out the bilge and make her a ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... varied as required. All the shafting is forged of Siemens-Martin mild steel of the best quality, each of the three separate cranks being built up. The condensers are placed at the outsides of the engine room, and the air, feed, and bilge pumps are between the engines and the condensers and worked by levers from the low-pressure engine crosshead. There are two centrifugal pumps, each worked by a separate engine for circulating water through the condenser, and these are so arranged that they ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... as clear as bilge-water. Sir George, has Mr. Dodge mentioned to you the manner in which these Arabs enjoy life? The gentlemen, by way of saving; dish-water, eat half-a-dozen at a time out of the same plate. Quite republican, and altogether without pride, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Psmith courteously. "For, speaking as man to man, I must confess that for sheer, concentrated bilge she gets away with the biscuit with almost insolent ease. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... up the beach and safe among rocks, but the revenue people got the keg. By that time the cutter was alongside us, and so they wouldn't get the little Christmas keg I had tucked away for John Rose I pulled the plug out of it in no time and let it drain into her bilge. And that was an awful waste of good liquor, and I knew John Rose would grieve when I ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... them pretty tight. The Crown Preserve Co. sent us a quantity of patent fuel which stowed beautifully as a flooring to the lower hold, and all our provision cases were thus kept well up out of the bilge water which was bound to scend to and fro if we made any quantity of water, as old wooden ships usually do. The day before sailing the Royal Geographical Society entertained Scott and his party at luncheon in the King's Hall, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the plates are 4 inches wide, and riveted with 3/4 inch rivets, spaced 2-1/4 inch apart center to center. The keel and stem are both in one piece, as shown, and to this the garboard strake is to be fastened. The bilge pieces are riveted on to the bilge, and made of 9 inches by 4-1/2 inches by 9/16 inch T-iron. A wooden fender, 4 inches by 4 inches wood, is fitted on both sides of hull, running from stern to stern, by 3 inches by 3-1/2 inches by 7/16 inch L-iron top and bottom with the sheer as shown. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... the smell here was searching to a very painful degree: for the room was narrow, and every inch of it contested by two puissant essences, the one of raw wood, the other of bilge water. With wool the place was pil'd: but also I notic'd, not far from the ladder, several casks set on their ends; and to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... sick, too," said Jack. "The smell of this vile bilge-water breeds a nausea, and, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... tight little bark called The Sieve, and when I'm aboard I'll close all the shutters, and lock up the parrot that sneezes and stutters, and wake all the skippers, and put on my slippers, and get into bed while the mates overhead are swabbing the decks and heaving the lead and baling the bilge-water up with their dippers; and when they have gotten the vessel to going, and settled all down to their knitting and sewing, and the twenty-third mate, who is always so late, has learned what is meant by a third and last warning, I'll turn up the gas, take a look at the glass, and ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... a sensibly constant speed, and without change in its running; the production of waves capable of injuring the banks of canals will be avoided; the propeller will be capable of being utilized as a bilge pump; all vibration will be suppressed; the boat will be able to run at any speed under good conditions, while the helix works well only when the speed of the vessel corresponds to its pitch; it will be possible to put the propelling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... beside him the dark aspiring bulwarks of the little but brave adventurers, their seams gazing to the heat, their carvel timbers striped by the ooze and brine of many oceans and the scum of ports. Upon their poops their den-fire chimneys breathe a faint blue reek; the iron of bilge-pump and pin is rust red; the companions are portals to smelling depths where the bunks are in a perpetual gloom and the seamen lie at night or in the heat of the day discontent with this period of no roaming ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... having it introduced upon a small steamer, which we will call the Water Witch; and when everything was ready, the ship started upon a trial trip. Soon after she got to sea, Bradley, who was aboard, said he would like to try the pump upon the bilge-water ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... Upwards of two hundred human beings were found stowed away in the hold of the craft, which could not have measured more than a hundred tons. On a bamboo deck, scarcely raised high enough above the keel to be free of the abominably-smelling bilge-water which occupied her lowest depths, lay some eighty or ninety men, doubled up, and packed so closely together that it was utterly impossible for them to stretch their legs; while there was not room enough for them to raise ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... wanderlust was again at work; California was calling—the land of miracle—and printer's ink began to pall. Henry George was a sailor; every part of a sailing ship was to him familiar—from bilge- water to pennant, from bowsprit to sternpost. He could swab the mainmast, reef the topsail in a squall, preside in the cook's-galley, or if the mate were drunk and the captain ashore he could take charge ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... to be stove in, or suffer serious injury in the bilge, which is the bottom part of ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... hour the number of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick, and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the saeva Mephitis of the bilge- water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied passengers, one of whom observed not inaptly, that Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside, than by placing ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vices, and sodden immorality, and utter heathenism, which are found down amongst the foundations of every civic community are as indispensable to progress as the noise of the wheels of a train is to its advancement, or as the bilge-water in a wooden ship is to keep its seams tight. So we prate about 'civilisation,' which means turning men into cities. If agglomerating people into these great communities, which makes so awful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Dorset, or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians—a thing of its delicate texture—the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's purpose!) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... her. At midnight, the larboard watch, to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the shaking up the bilge-water, from the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and his two classes the next morning, one at nine and the other at ten o'clock; in fact, it was nearly eleven when he awoke. His head was splitting with pain, his tongue was furry, and his mouth tasted like bilge-water. He made wry faces, passed his thick tongue around his dry mouth—oh, so damnably dry!—and pressed the palms of his hands to his pounding temples. He craved a drink of cold water, but he was afraid to get out of bed. He felt ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... in here?" he said. "There's only the usual bilge in the sheet, nothing to telephone the fat slob about. ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... course, sea sick; and were continually groping and tumbling about in the dark prison of a ship's hold. They suffered a double portion of misery compared with the sailors, to whom the rolling of the ship in a gale of wind, and the stench of bilge-water, were matters of no grievance; but were serious evils to these landsmen, who were constantly treading upon, or running against, and tumbling over each other. Many of them were weary of their lives; and some layed down dejected in despair, hoping never to rise again. Disheartened, and of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... England on 23rd October, and anchored off the Nore in very heavy weather on 11th November. It was soon found that the anchors would not hold, and at length one parted and the ship "trailed into shallow water, striking hard." After a while she again struck heavily, and "lay down on her larboard bilge." As there seemed no prospect of the gale moderating, everything was made as snug as time would allow, and, putting his crew into the boats, Cook made for Sheerness. The weather at length improved, so obtaining assistance he returned and found that fortunately his ship had sustained ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... my friend at the gangplank of the steamer on the wharf at the foot of Broadway. To reach the car on East Street (now the Embarcadero), we very likely skirt gaping holes in the planked wharf, exposing the dark water lapping the supporting piles, and are assailed by bilge-like odors that escape. Two dejected horses await us. Entering the car we find two lengthwise seats upholstered in red plush. If it be winter, the floor is liberally covered by straw, to mitigate the mud. If it be summer, the trade winds are liberally charged with ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... "Bilge," he interrupted sharply. "I didn't fetch boundaries back in the Two Capes, did I?" He thrust the offending volume into a crevice of his chair. "Laurel," he added, "what is the outport of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... one of the life-buoys, which was instantly let go, the others managed to roll the boat over and right her, full of water. All were eventually picked up by the leeward quarter-boat; the weather one, from the shortness of the davits, would not clear the ship's side, but turned over on her bilge, dipping in the water, and was rendered ineffective when most wanted. This defect in the davits was afterwards remedied by the substitution of other and longer ones, which had formerly belonged to H.M. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Brutus, moored astern, and boarded the little vessel. He struck another match and looked into the cabin to make certain that no member of the barge-crew slept there. Finding no one, he went into the engine-room and opened the sea-cock. Then he lifted up a floor-board, looked into the bilge, saw that the water therein was rising, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... sun. With staggering feet, but undaunted heart, the girl Sera was led down. Only once she turned her head and looked back. Perhaps Loloku would try again. Then, as they came to the boat, a young girl, at a sign from O'Shea, took off the loose blouse, and they placed her, face downwards, across the bilge of the boat, and two pair of small, eager, brown hands each seized one of hers and dragged the white, rounded arms well over the keel of the boat. O'Shea walked round to that side, drawing through his hands the long, ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... big centrifugal bilge-pump. "I had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I've used you for that more than once. I forget the precise number, in thousands, of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you, my complaining friends, that there is not the least ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the ancker & Cable, untill the Storm was over, the waves Dashed over her windward Side and She must have filled with water if the Lockers which is covered with Tarpoling & Threw of the water & prevented any quantity Getting into Bilge of the Boat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... with its coarseness and drudgery, its inadequate pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the hideous stench of the bilge-water—all this could in one sense be no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... proprietors of this kiln say about one-half the lower part of the well might have been lined with a first quality of common brick and saved some expense and been just as good. The form of the well shown in Fig. 3 is 7 feet in diameter in the bilge, exclusive of the lining of brick and ashes. Experiments in this vicinity have proved this to be the best, this contraction toward the top being absolutely necessary, the expansion of the stone by the heat is so great that the lime cannot be drawn from perpendicular ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... there was no bilge-water found in the forepeak, so those seven shivering men could not have made the excuse that the vessel was damp in that portion. To cut a long story short, the lugger was eventually taken into Harwich, having been ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... backwards and forwards as if they were a couple of pendulums, rendering it very difficult to hook on the cutter, especially as she was lifted up one moment by a wave passing under the keel to the main deck ports, and lowered the next down to the ship's bilge. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his companion were sufficiently miserable. Their boat constantly shipped water, and they had to use the hand force pump, which, fortunately, was in the craft. A pump was connected with the cylinder cooling apparatus, designed to free the cockpit of bilge water, but ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... when they heard the rattling of the cables weighing anchor. Soon the soft slap of the water around the bow and the regular heaving motion told that the Bozra was under way. The sea-mouse creaked and groaned through all her timbers and her lading. The foul bilge-water made the hold stifling as a charnel-house. Lampaxo, Hib being absent, began to howl ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... bursts of a second out of nowhere. It gathers up all the loose snow an' ice crystals an' drives 'em in a whirlwind. Presently the wind starts the ice to buckin' an' tremblin' like a jelly under you, splitting inter lanes. You lose yore direction even when you got eyes. I'm left in it by that bilge-blooded skunk, blind on the rockin', breakin' floe, while he scuds back to the schooner with his men. That's Honest Simms! Jim Lund's left behind but Honest Simms has the position ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... plants and crusting barnacles which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from rudder-post ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... marsh. We did the same to make the wine go further, and at last we drank. It was the vilest wine the chemists of Hamburg ever made, though German education favours chemistry; and the water tasted like the bilge of Charon's boat. But it was liquid, and when we had drained the tins—I will not say to the dregs, for Hamburg wine has no dregs—M. Jacques lay back with a sigh and said, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Consuls, smiling superior, allow them to amuse themselves with the routine of business. But let trouble come, and the farce is suspended. At the whistle of a squall these heaven-born mariners seize the tiller, and the L2,200 amateurs are knocked sprawling on the bilge. At the first beat of the drum, the treaty officials are sent below, gently protesting, like a pair of old ladies, and behold! the indomitable Consuls ready to clear the wreck and make the deadly cutlass shine. And their method, studied under the light of a new example, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... treachery. He is seized sometimes at the hospitable board, and assassinated, or perhaps cruelly poisoned. But what skill can ensure safety, where confidence is so shamefully abused? He is a capital sailor, even bilge-water don't make him squeamish, and he is so good a judge of the sea-worthiness of a ship, that he leaves her at the first port if he finds she is leaky or weak. Few architects, on the other hand, have such a knowledge of the stability of a house as he has. He examines its foundations ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... stop to admire 'em. I give one look around. Nobody was in sight. Then I ran down the pier and jumped aboard. Almost the first thing I put my hand on was what I was looking for—the bilge-pump. 'Twas a small affair, that you could lug around in one hand, but mighty handy for keeping a ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... water. Indeed, so much was he taken up with this pump, that he could not be prevailed on to return on shore, but sent a canoe to fetch his favourite stool, on which he seated himself, and spent the remainder of the day in pumping the bilge-water out of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... was what I read the style of Adrian Boldero? This vivid, virile opening? This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously meeting on the old tramp steamer? This cunning, evocation of smells, jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room? This expert knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship? How had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his life, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and near them Mr. Bedwell found a canoe; which, being hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, was of very different construction to any we had before seen; its length was twenty-one feet, but its greatest breadth in the bilge did not exceed fifteen inches, whilst at the gunwale the opening was only from six to eight and a half inches wide; an outrigger, projecting about two feet, was neatly attached to one side, which prevented its liability to overset, and at each end was a projection, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... have the hose led from the bilge-cock, the cock turned, and, if the forcing-pump or engine is worked below the gun-deck, will see it manned and worked by some of the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... passin' on it,—but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as Lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years—ain't it?" and he looked at Jane for confirmation—"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten—especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... himself. He knew better, but, neglecting to take ordinary precautions, he had allowed the boat to be left high and dry by the falling tide. Upon returning to the cove the lads had found the heavy craft lying on its bilge in the stiff bluish clay, with a ridge of jagged rocks cutting ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... of Ducks alight never again to emerge until their dead bodies drift to the shore. It was on November 27, 1912, that the naval tank ship Arethusa steamed into the harbour of Providence, Rhode Island, with a cargo of crude oil. For several days following her bilge pumps sent overboard a continuous stream of water and oil seepage. On December 3d the following news-item appeared in the Providence Daily Bulletin, "The east shore of the lower harbour and upper bay, from Wilkesbarre ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... to port, thus presenting its stern, which was almost hidden in heavy clouds of smoke, to the enemy, who immediately raked and tore it with shells. The Minnesota was drifting in a helpless condition with her starboard-railing deep under water, while thick streams of water poured from her bilge-pumps on the port side. She gradually fell behind, whereupon the last ship of the line, the New Hampshire, passed her on the fire side, covering her riddled hull for a moment, but then steamed on to join the only two ships in ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward. Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all—compared to which an aged egg is a ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the strength of wrought-iron beams of large dimensions. When this vessel was being launched, the cleet on the bow gave way, in consequence of the bolts breaking, and let the vessel down so that the bilge came in contact with the wharf, and she remained suspended between the water and the wharf for a length of about 110 feet, but without any injury to the plates of the ship; satisfactorily proving the great strength of this form of construction. Thus, Mr. Stephenson became gradually ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... to search for them, got himself embayed in the mouth of a small river, swollen by recent rains, and upon the sudden subsidence of the water coincident with the ebb of the tide, his ship took ground, fell over on her bilge and was completely wrecked. The men on board barely escaped with their lives to the shore. They had saved nothing except what they wore, the few arms they carried ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms and awaiting the arrival ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of the bowsprit like the point of the in-turned thumb, a faint soul-killing rock of kerosene filled it, intensifying, after the fashion of ambergris, all the other perfumes, without losing in power. Bilge, tobacco and humanity, you cannot know what these things are till they are married with the reek of kerosene, with the grunts and snores of weary men, with lamplight dimmed with smoke haze; with the heave and fall of the sea; the groaning of timbers and the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the lunch basket with a firm hand. In the struggle Frenchy came near going overboard, but he fell into the bilge in the bottom of ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... again—spittoon—table rigged for supper. Table—glass. (Drinks heeltap.) Brandy and water; and not enough of it to wet your eye; damn all greediness, I say. Pot (drinks), small beer—a drink that I ab'or like bilge! What I want is rum. (Calling and rapping with stick on table.) Halloa, there! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blasphemy man meant? Oh, I don't know; some bilge, just as he used to about the masters. You know the man talked some rubbish about how the State couldn't have it both ways—couldn't blaspheme against God by flatly denying that all men were equal and basing all its legislation ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... doing their duty." Then closing a little signal book he always carried, he continued to those around him, "Now, gentlemen, no more book, no more signals. I look to you to do the duty of the Queen Charlotte in engaging the flag-ship. I don't want the ships to be bilge to bilge, but if you can lock the yardarms, so much the better; the battle will be the quicker decided." His purpose was to go through the French line, and fight the Montagne on the far side. Some doubted their succeeding, but Howe ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... man who had lost one arm, earnestly pumping bilge-music out of an accordion with the other, holding it to his body with the stump. There was a woman, pale with hunger and gin, three match-boxes in one extended hand, and the other holding a baby to her breast. As we looked, the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the hold of this forgotten bark was discovered a forgotten case of champagne. It had been sunk in mud and ooze for years. When the bottles were opened the corks refused to pop, and nobody dared to touch the "bilge" that was within. All this was on the happy hem of Happy Valley—and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the close CL-to-CL frame spacing created a hull having frames touching one another, at least to above the turn of the bilge, so the vessel was almost solid timber, before being planked and ceiled, from keel to about the loadline. The sides are not only heavily planked but, after the frames were ceiled with extraordinarily heavy, square timbering, a supplementary solid, vertical framing was introduced inboard ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... lay over on her bilge, with her deck partly turned towards the shore, the sea, after she ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... way," answered Nasmyth. "She has knocked all one bilge in. They'll probably send the Tillicum's gig ashore for ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass from one compartment ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... break down and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them Chivalry folks—ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind—was jes the kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o' Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the light leaning figure of the pretty schooner, which seemed to skate along upon her bilge and make white shavings of all the sea that touched her. She at first imagined that this might be the yacht Neigh had arrived in at the end of the previous week, for she knew that he came as one of a yachting party, and she had noticed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Engine Pump-Link Brasses Fill Up Main Engine Feed Pump and Bilge Rams Open and Scale After Port Boiler Main Circulator Impeller to Examine Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Switzerland, Luxemburg, Montenegro and the Netherlands. Under this instrument the practice is broadly as follows, though the procedure varies a good deal in different countries:—Ships arriving from infected ports are inspected, and if healthy are not detained, but bilge-water and drinking-water are evacuated, and persons landing may be placed under medical supervision without detention; infected ships are detained only for purposes of disinfection; persons suffering from cholera are removed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... her on her proper course. When asked, why there was not steam on, the fireman said that a deal of water had been finding its way into the vessel all day, and that sometime before she got into the strait, the bilge-pumps were choked. The water in the hold then overflowed the coals; so that, in renewing the fires, a deal of water went in with the coals, and made it impossible to keep the steam up. It was the duty of the fireman to give notice ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... took shelter from the intense light. Some hung motionless in the water; others nibbled daintily the green and lazy slime on the batten at the bilge, their gently waving shadows being barely perceptible, for their delicate, semi-transparent bodies absorbed but the merest particle ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... windward against the tide toward what should be but an hour's sail: the sea is high and the spray cold; there are sunken rocks, and food there is none; chill gray evening draws dangerously near, and there is a foot of water in the bilge. You have swallowed your tongue twenty times on the alkali; and the sun is melting hot, and the dust dry and pervasive, and there is no water, and for all your effort the relative distances seem to remain the same for days. You have ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and snow, rock and jungle, mud and marsh—anywhere indeed that a horse could go. The frame was elevated in front, so as to allow the horse's head some room under the boat's keel. Two girth-straps kept the canoe firmly in position above, and carpets were used as cushions under its bilge. A boy led the horse, and a strong man was told off to hold fast to the canoe in every difficulty. It will be seen, that in the event of a fall, the corners of the framework would receive the shock, not ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the Primrose Path leads to, my pippin, I'm cocksure can't 'ave a wus smell. Like bad eggs, salt, and tenpenny nails biled in bilge water. Eugh! Old Pump Well? Wy then let well alone, is my motter, or leastways, it would be, I'm sure, But for BLACK—local doctor, a stunner!—who's got me in 'and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... dreary hours of schooling was the clammy air of street and close; in Germanie it was worse, a moist weakening windiness full of foreign smells, and I've seen me that I could gaily march a handful of leagues to get a sniff of the salt sea. Not that I was one who craved for wrack and bilge at my nose all the time. What I think best is a stance inland from the salt water, where the mountain air, brushing over gall and heather, takes the sting from the sea air, and the two blended give a notion ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... was out of earshot and out of sight. An empty passage smelling of bilge-water and pent-up gases opened suddenly on to the larger dock. Damp flooring with wide cracks stretched off to the left; on the right the solid planking terminated suddenly in huge piles, against which the water, capped with scum and weeds, splashed fitfully. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Richard, 'I have been doing what will, I fear, give pain to our cousin Montferrat. I have been breaking the back of the Count of Saint-Pol.' At this the Marquess, suffused with dark blood till he was colour of lead, broke out, pointing his finger as well as his words. As the bilge-water jets from a ketch when the hold is surcharged, so did the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... for the leak, and some of each of their companies to aid our men in pumping. Some were set to rummage the hold in search of the leak, and others to stick our sprit-sail full of oakum, with which we made several trials under the ship's bilge, but could not find the leak. We at length found, by divers trials within board, that the leak was before the main-mast; and we, next morning, fitted the sprit-sail again, letting it down at the stern, and brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... his shirt the steward drew a brace, and to it fitted a half- inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the deck and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight. When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams running to waste. His ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... large floe-piece, which was still alongside of her, seemed alone to support her below water, and to prevent her falling over still more considerably. The ship had been forced much further up the beach than before, and she had now in her bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly visible, we found that she ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... says he, "but then bilge-water never is, you'll mind. But you'll grow used to it in time, shipmate, unless, instead o' swallowing this unholy reek you'll swallow your pride ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... entangling in their interstices a considerable quantity of molasses, which impairs the color of the product, and escaping slowly, and with difficulty, is, to a considerable extent, lost on the homeward voyage by drainage into the hold, occasioning much positive loss to the owner, and giving the bilge-water a most offensive odor. He therefore recommends the use of deep vessels, and avoidance of all agitation in this part of the process, so as to enable the crystallisable portion of the syrup to effect a more ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... unlocked his desk and took out two very dirty wine glasses, and then displayed, with a solemn flourish, a black bottle partly filled with a dark liquid which he called wine; but I would have sworn, without tasting that it was bilge water. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... at Godar-i-Chah is like without having the trouble of going there. "Take the first nasty-looking water you can find. Mix salt with it until it tastes as nasty as it looks, then impregnate it with gas from a London street lamp, and add a little bilge-water, shake vigorously and it is ready for use." Major McMahon also testifies to the accuracy of the above receipt, but, he adds, "it was not nearly so bad ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... now reduced to a small daily allowance of calavances, which not being sufficient to keep us alive, we had recourse to the remainder of our smoked congers which had been neglected for some months, and had been soaking and rotting in the bilge-water, so that they were now as disgusting food as could be. Under these calamitous circumstances, we again met the Success near port Angels, in lat. 15 deg. 50' N. long. 96 deg. 25' W. Having exchanged signals, we stood so near each other that a biscuit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... through a stage of sea-sickness, but, except in the case of two or three, it soon passed off. Seas deluged all parts of the ship. A quantity of ashes was carried down into the bilge-water pump and obstructed the steam-pump. Whilst this was being cleared, the emergency deck pumps had to be requisitioned. The latter were available for working either by hand-power or by chain-gearing ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the fruit of Aladdin's garden clustering thick in her hold, With rubies awash in her scuppers and her bilge ablaze with gold, A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home, The Golden Hynde drove onward ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... itself was shelled by the celebrated 420 m.m. Skoda howitzer. The enemy drenched the area with the old lachrymatory gas shells, as well as a new gas he had lately introduced known as "Yellow Cross" or "Mustard" gas. Bilge Trench came in for special attention, and on one day it was estimated that 1,200 heavy shells ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... the fog-horn bluff was safe enough, where all was weed and weft, And the conger-eels were a-making meals, and the pick of the tackle left Was a binnacle-lid and a leak in the bilge and the chip of a cracked sheerstrake And the corporal's belt and the moke's cool pelt and a portrait of ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... at full speed toward the warships, four of which had by this time been sent to destruction—one of which had appeared to vanish utterly in the space of a single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second or two the shape of its bilge, the bulge of its keel, was visible in the face of the deep—and openly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... or spray which may beat against the chimney from being poured down within the casing upon the top of the boiler. The pipe for conducting away the waste water from the top of the safety valve should lead overboard, and not into the bilge of the ship, as inconvenience arises from the steam occasionally passing through it, if it has its termination in ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... the boat to the southward and westward, careening gunwale-to, and sending the spray flying in such drenching showers over the weather bow, that presently the water rose above the bottom boards and splashed like a miniature sea in the lee bilge, compelling Dick to abandon the mainsheet to Stukely while he took a bucket and proceeded to bale. But the wind showed a disposition to freshen, careening the boat so steeply that, despite Stukely's ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to pity my miserable condition, gravely assured me that exercise was a capital thing as a preventive or cure for seasickness, and advised me to try the pump. I followed his advice: a few strokes brought up the bilge water, than which nothing at that time could have been more insufferably nauseous! I left the pump in disgust, and retiring to the after part of the quarter-deck, threw myself down on a coil of rope, unable longer to struggle ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... prevailing infection, and similar scenes to that related, prevailed as long as there was any thing left to drink or pick up; however, a considerable part of the cargo was safely stowed, though there were few of the rum casks that did not afterwards turn out impregnated with bilge water. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... has been too monotonous to afford a single noticeable incident. The weather has been cold, damp, and foggy, with light head winds and a heavy swell; we have been confined closely to our seven-by-nine after-cabin; and its close, stifling atmosphere, redolent of bilge-water, lamp oil, and tobacco smoke, has had a most depressing influence upon our spirits. I am glad to see, however, that all our party are up today, and that there is a faint interest manifested in the prospect of dinner; ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... this sort of philosophy is that it starts off with an appeal to justice and logic (I'm quoting myself), but it quickly gets dangerous. Start knocking off the bilge-scum. Then when the lowest strata of society is gone, start on the next. Carry this line of reasoning out to straight Aristotelian Logic and you come up with parties like you and me, who may have been quite acceptable when compared to the whole cross-section of humanity, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... the bilge. These fellows never clean out their boats from one year's end to another," said Mr. Smellie, positively. Yet he, too, eyed the cask with momentary suspicion. In shape, in colour, it resembled the tubs in which Guernsey ordinarily exported its eau-de-vie. It was slung, too, ready for carriage, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for operations. He drove his chisel through the sheathing as close to the cabin floor as he could. Remembering that the schooner was upside down and that the floor was over his head, the aperture he was starting work on would bring him nearest the bilge. When he had chiseled a hole big enough for a start, he secured the saw from the mate and sawed a square opening. He lifted himself up and worked his way through the hole and found himself on lumber and out of water. It was what he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dirty cabin, into which no one is admitted save by the companion-door and a small sky-light that cannot be opened in rough weather—let them imagine, if they can, the "villanous compound of smells," produced by confined air, the flavour of bilge water, agitated in the hold of the ship, and diffused through every creaking crevice, and pitch, and effluvia of rancid salt meat and broth, and the products of universal sea-sickness, altogether inevitable in such circumstances—let them figure such a confined ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... your note and bill for supplying some of my household with some rotten cheese-cloth out of your store, which you have the infernal impertinence to call muslin; also, five bottles of stinking bilge-water, labelled musk. I don't know who you are, but you can tell your employers from me, that I will see them roasted before I will give my good money for their filthy and disgusting Sydney trade goods, and when I drop across you, you will get a head put on you that will teach you not to again ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... for mutiny if you do, you bilge-wallering pirate!" roared the trussed captain. "Take that gun away from him, d'ye hear!" he yelled at the crew. "I'm captain of this ship, an' I'll hang every last one of you if you don't obey orders! ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... for such was her name, kept up her war-footing as long as we knew her, and the dignity invested in her hulk, which had a strong predisposition toward bilge, was, to say the least, extraordinary. Never was better craft for the purpose; and during a long cruise among the small keys that form the extreme end of the Florida peninsula, she always showed a dogged determination, as indicated by her name, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... water awash in the cockpit; therefore the shallow hold must have been full. And I knew there was plenty slopping about in the cabin, ruining everything. I rigged the little pump amidships and the pipe threw a full stream of bilge across the deck. And it wasn't bilge long, but came clear. Inboard came another wave—but not a large one this time—and I pumped ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... to come and have a good time here. I can't think why Irish people want to be Irish. It seems so damn silly. Gilbert's writing a play. He has done about a page and a half of it, and it's most awful bilge. He keeps on reading it out to me. He read some of it to me last night when I was brushing my teeth which is a damn dangerous thing to do, and I had to clout his head severely for him. He is a chap. He got poor Mary into a row on Sunday. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... taken her in a bit too near, my son. The bilge chocks is both pulled off; look you, they're gone away astern." And, sure enough, two long planks drifted away behind the boat. They had been torn off by the force with which she rushed upon the outlying rock. Tommy said, "Let's have another reef ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... on deck at a time, after sunset, which occasioned much filth to run into the hold, and mingle with the bilge water, which was not pumped out while he was aboard, notwithstanding the decks were leaky, and the prisoners begged permission to let in water and pump ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... The taste of some of the officers had peopled this with golden fish; whilst on the bason's brim were placed stands for exotics, whose fragrance charmed our sea-worn traveller, so lately emancipated from those sad drawbacks to a voyage, the odours of tar and bilge water. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... agreed the veteran. "Overhaul ship from bilge ter royals, and if not found, then take a cruise ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... delirium, and he dropped the aching lids and fell away into slumber again; for he had thought himself vexed with the creak of cordage and noise of feet, stived in his dark and narrow cabin, on a filthy bed in a foul air, if any air at all were in that noisome place, reeking with heat and the ferment of bilge-water and fever-smell; and here, unless a new delirium chained him, a mattress lay upon the deck with the awning of an old sail stretched above it and making soft shadow out of searching sun, a gentle wind was blowing over him, a land-breeze full of sweet scents ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... that's about it. Some of these here land-sharks had trimmed me from top-gallant mast to bilge keel. They cleaned me out and left me high and dry. So when I see that 'ad' I says to myself, says, I, there's just the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... open and, because of the quality of her attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... and had been lifted up and hurled far over to starboard. Although almost on her beam ends, her decks inclining landward, the strongly-built ship held steady in spite of the tremendous onslaughts of the seas along her bilge. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was compelled to draw it on my head down to my eyes. My beard, by good luck, did not disgrace my unshaved messmates, and in order that the colour of my hands might not betray me, I washed them in the bilge-water which stagnated beneath the flooring of our boat. More remained to be done: our "feuille de bord" stated that our crew consisted of six men: we were seven. It therefore, became necessary to hide one[32]. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... floe continued its inroads on the inner, breaking up the margins of both, until the channel was so nearly closed as to bring the field from which the danger was most apprehended in absolute contact with the side of the schooner. When the margin of the outer floe first touched the bilge of the schooner, it was at the precise spot where the vessel had just been fortified within. Fenders had also been provided without, and there was just a quarter of a minute, during which the two captains hoped that these united means of defence might enable the craft to withstand ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... before—well, while I can, I want to ask you something about Lloyd Searight. You've known her all your life, and you saw her later than I did before we left. You remember I had to come to the ship two days before you, about the bilge pumps." ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris |
