"Cleat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was shallow along this coast. That makes it more dangerous for vessels of any draught, for they're apt to go aground. Fasten the cable to that cleat, Bluff. Make it secure, for we don't want to lose the whole outfit overboard," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... showed glistening above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand stroke. It seemed an age—although the actual time was brief enough—before he reached her. She saw then that there was method in his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the launch. He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, smiling broadly ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... two coats securely together, Frank loosened one of the thwarts in the little boat. He pulled some strong string from his pocket and soon had improvised a little sail. Then tying one sleeve to a cleat on one side and another sleeve to a cleat on the other he soon had his sail bellying before the ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... carries two yawls attached to her davits. Corkey is feeling about one of these yawls. He suspects that the lines are old. He steps to the other side. He strains at a rope. He strives to unloose it from its cleat. The line is stiff ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... now," said Peter, "if you'd make that same halyard fast to the cleat on the windward side any time you might ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... he was engaged in much the most delicate of all his duties. The desperate run through the fleet of bergs, and the second attempt to get to sea, were not in certain particulars as hazardous as this. The field had been setting back and forth now, for several weeks; the margin of cleat water increasing by the attrition at each return to the rocks; and it was known by observation that these changes often occurred at very short notices. Should the wind haul round with the sun, or one of the unaccountable ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... moment he saw the boat's forward motion cease, he dropped the big anchor over. The wind caught the houseboat again and drove it backward into the cove while the anchor line ran out. When he had enough line out for safety, Rick snubbed it tight around a cleat, held the taut line between thumb and forefinger until he was sure it had none of the vibrations caused by a dragging anchor, and then hurried back along the catwalk to the cockpit. He and Scotty ran from the rainswept deck down the two ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Calthorpe, and on the left in Harborne, belonging to Theodore Price, Esq. About half a mile up this lane, on the left, at Fulford's farm, there is an interesting view over Mr. Price's paddock, of King's Norton, with its lofty spire, Cofton hills, Bromsgrove Lickey, Frankley Beeches, Cleat hills, &c. &c. Passing by a neat cottage belonging to Mr. Frears, you come again into the Harborne road, ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... Clancy had untied the ends of the halyards after whirling them through the block above, and now had the whole line piled up on the balcony. He took a couple of turns around his waist, took another turn around a cleat under the balcony rail, passed the bight of the line to me, and said, "Here, Joe, lower me. Take hold you, too, Peter. Pay out and not too careful. Oh, faster, man! If he ain't dead he'll drown, maybe—if he gets sucked in and caught under those ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... that the rescued was in no especial peril, uncle Phaeton left the air-ship to steer itself long enough for his nimble hands to take several turns of the drag-rope around the cleat provided for that express purpose, thus relieving both Bruno and Waldo of the heavy strain, which might soon begin to ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... lost its balance, and beat my face with its great wings, and I could not see for its fluttering; but the men shouted, and I heard my father's voice cry "Well done!" Then I made fast the end of the line round the main-sheet cleat, for that told me that the man had ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... held on to the rope, setting his feet against the side. The smack lifted and dropped and tossed, and each movement wrenched his arms. He could not reach a cleat. Had he moved he would ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... boat was secure, for Ned could see that the first visitor was engaged in fastening the painter to a cleat that chanced to be near by, and which he seemed to find in a remarkably able manner, as though he might be quite familiar from past associations with the lay ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... flag, forms the detail in line, takes his post in the center and marches it to the staff. The flag is then securely attached to the halyards and rapidly hoisted. The halyards are then securely fastened to the cleat on the staff and the detail marched ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... place was naturally beautiful enough; but the Ariadne was home; her every deck plank was familiar to me; I knew each cleat about her fife-rails, every belaying-pin along her sides, every friendly projection from her deck that had a sheltering lee. The shining brass-bound, teak-wood buckets ranged along the break of her poop—the crew's lime-juice was served in one of these, and they all ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... to the hatchway, cut the cleat-lashings, hauled the ladder on deck, and then put on ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... have never met since such breathless sunrises. And if the second mate happened to be there (he had generally one day in three free of fever) I would find him sitting on the skylight half senseless, as it were, and with an idiotic gaze fastened on some object near by—a rope, a cleat, a ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... thickness of 1/4 of an inch. This end was placed in the dish-pan of boiling water, and in a short time it was pliable enough to permit of bending. It was secured in the proper bent position by slipping the toe end of the shoe between the banisters on the back porch and nailing a cleat back of the heel end. When the ski was perfectly dry the toe strap was nailed on just back of the balancing point, and also another strap, to be secured about the ankle. Then a cleat was nailed onto the ski to fit against the heel ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... the waist, lifted him right up over the gunwale of the Betty, where Tommy received him rather like a man accepting a sack of coals. Then, catching hold of the tow rope, I jumped up myself, and made the dinghy fast to a convenient cleat. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... were hoisted out, and two active seamen were employed to keep them from receiving damage alongside. The floating light being very buoyant, was so quick in her motions that when those who were about to step from her gunwale into a boat, placed themselves upon a cleat or step on the ship's side, with the man or rail ropes in their hands, they had often to wait for some time till a favourable opportunity occurred for stepping into the boat. While in this situation, with the vessel rolling from side to side, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made without any particular trouble, and once Darry had secured his boat to the brass cleat in the stern of the launch he set to work throwing some of the ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... cleat near the tiller and Ralph, hauling in, brought the yawl a little up in the wind and soon ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... twig move; for I kept a gun always at hand, and an Indian appearing then within range would have been taken as a declaration of war. As it was, however, my own blood was all that was spilt—and from the trifling accident of sometimes breaking the flesh against a cleat or a pin which came in the way when I was in haste. Sea-cuts in my hands from pulling on hard, wet ropes were sometimes painful and often bled freely; but these healed when I finally got away from the strait into ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum |
