"Mainsail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drawing of the tide marked long, curved lines and illusive circles on the oily sea. The Spindrift was poised motionless on the surface of the water, borne slowly, almost imperceptibly, forward by the sweep of the tide. Her mainsail, boomed out, hung in loose folds. The sheet, freed from all strain, was borne down by its own weight, until the slack of it dipped in the water. Terns and gulls, at lazy rest, floated close to the yacht's side. Long rows of dark cormorants, perched on rocky points, strained their necks ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... gale in the evening at S.W. by W., which, being fair for the Portugal fleet, and the weather pleasant and agreeable, we heard the signal given to unmoor, and running in under the island of Si—-, we hauled our mainsail and foresail up in the brails, lowered the topsails upon the cap, and clewed them up, that we might lie as snug as we could, expecting their coming out, and the next morning saw the whole fleet come out accordingly, but not at all to our satisfaction, for they consisted ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... Captain Pomery found plenty of Water in the winding channel, every curve of which he knew to a hair, and steered for at its due moment, winking cheerfully at Billy and me, who stood ready to correct his pilotage. He had taken in his mainsail, and carried steerage way with mizzen and jib only; and thus, for close upon a mile, we rode up on the tide, scaring the herons and curlews before us, until drawing within sight of a grass-grown quay he let run down his remaining canvas and laid the ketch alongside, so ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and he hastened on board to put on his uniform and obey this order. He received his despatches from the captain of the frigate, with orders to proceed to sea immediately. Mr Vanslyperken, under the eye of his superior officer, could not dally or delay: he hove short, hoisted his mainsail, and fired a gun as a signal for sailing; anxiously looking out for Ramsay's boat with his letters, and afraid to go without them; but no boat made its appearance, and Mr Vanslyperken was forced to heave up ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Spanish prizes, one was sighted, bound from Antwerp to Cadiz. Cobham gave chase, easily captured her in the Bay of Biscay, and discovered there were forty Inquisition prisoners aboard. After rescuing the prisoners, the captain and crew of the Spanish vessel were then sewn up in their own mainsail and tossed into the sea, no doubt with such sententious expressions of godliness as was thought befitting to sacred occasions of that period. This ceremony having been performed, the vessel was scuttled, so that she might nevermore be used in trading with ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... take the bonnet off the jib, and put a reef in her," came the strong swift sentences. "Brail up the foresail, and double reef the mainsail." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... smallest vessels, as cutters: and of those kept for pleasure, and therefore built for the purpose of sailing as fast as possible, without reference to freight or load, there are many the hull of which might be entirely wrapt up in the mainsail. It is of course very rarely, if ever, that a vessel carries at one time all the sail she is capable of; the different sails being usually employed according to the circumstances of direction of wind and course. The sails of a ship, when complete, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... put the Reindeer about on the other tack, ran up under the lee of a junk, shivered the mainsail into the wind and lost headway, and forged past the stern of the junk so slowly and so near that one of the patrolmen stepped lightly aboard. Then I kept off, filled the mainsail, and bore away ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... Latitude 42 deg. 68'. Distance reckoned to be 136 miles. The English ship which had remained in company until now, left us. It began to blow so hard in the evening that we had to reef the topsails and take in the mainsail, and proceed ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... three weeks before - I am not sure it was more than a fortnight - we had been nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo (or Moorea, next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head sea: she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off with the mainsail - you can imagine what an ungodly show of kites we carried - and yet the mast stood. The very day after that, in the southern bight of Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sped by the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:— "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we'll out to the seas again— Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... wind and her sails lay "a-back" as the mariners say. This gave us time to come up under the stern of his vessel, and firing continually into the vessel we killed as many as came to the helm, and cut in two his mainsail and brace. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... despite a new hole in the old boiler, to steam out of hospitable Sinafir at 6:30 a.m. on the auspicious Wednesday, February 13. The appearance of the Mukhbir must have been originale enough: her canvas had been fished out of the hold, but in the place of a mainsail she had hoisted a topsail. We passed as close as possible to the islet-line of Secondary formation, beginning with Shu'shu', the wedge bluff-faced to south: the Palinurus anchored here in a small bight on the north-east side, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... would have been dealt with on the spot. Cobham chased her down into the Bay of Biscay, took her, scuttled her, and rescued the captives. But that was not enough. The captain and crew he sewed up in their own mainsail and flung them overboard. They were washed ashore dead, wrapped in their extraordinary winding-sheet. Cobham was called to account for this exploit, but he does not seem to have been actually punished. In a very short time he was out and away again at the old work. There were plenty ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... her at or near the water-line. None of it did so, but the next exclamation of Senor Zuroaga was one of utter dismay, for the foremast of the bark had been cut off at the cap and there was a vast rent in her mainsail. Down tumbled a mass of spars and rigging, forward, and the ship could no ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... the lugger touched our weather side, at the same time lowering down her foresail and mainsail with no little noise and confusion; in a second or two there were thirty of their men on our decks, flourishing their cutlasses, and looking round with their pistols ready cocked in their left hands for somebody to let fly at. At last they came aft. "Pilot!" cried ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... announced Lionel, directly he had recovered his feet, "and it's fallen in the water and is dragging the sails with it—and—look out!" This as a gust of wind filled the mainsail and caused the boat to careen over on to her side in ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... wild, lonely reaches of the river, followed by a delicious little supper of broiled birds, done to a turn by Aunt Cynthia. There were, too, moonlight sails in Peggy's little half-rater, which she handled with a master hand. As a rule, one of the boys accompanied her, for the mainsail and centerboard were pretty heavy for her to handle unaided, but with Daddy Neil on board—well, not much was left to be desired. During that month Peggy learned "how lightly falls the foot of time which only treads on flowers," and was appalled ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Before the Mast"] is a classic because it took no thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails—mainsail, main royal, foresail—play the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the lee of Comfort Island!" sputtered Andy through the spray, as he and Jamie sprang for the mainsail to reef it. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... near shore as possible, in some well sheltered bay. Here soundings wouid be taken, and the vicinity thoroughly inspected. When the bay gave promise of shells and coral, a camp was made on the silver-like beach under the shade of the towering cocoanut trees. The mainsail was detached and carried ashore to serve as an awning. The large sheet-iron boilers were also landed. While two of the crew gathered wood and decayed vegetation for fuel, the others were busy erecting a crude fire- place with rocks, over which the boilers were set. The shore camp being ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... bell in the first dog-watch; the weather was fine, the water smooth, the breeze light; and the brig, with little more than bare steerage-way upon her, was laying her course, with squared yards, both clews of her mainsail hauled up, and studding-sails set on both sides, her topsails occasionally collapsing and flapping to the masts for lack of wind to keep them "asleep." Miss Trevor was, as usual, on deck, seated in a deck-chair, with a book on her lap and the fingers of one hand playing abstractedly with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... same expedient was likewise adopted, in part, by Captain Price, of the Volcano; and in order to give to his ship a still greater resemblance than it already had to a merchantman, he displayed an old faded scarlet ensign, and drew up his fore and mainsail in what sailors term ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... At 12h. 30m. P.M. up mainsail and in royals; at 2h. made the signal for the squadron to prepare for battle, and, anchoring, bent the sheet cable through the larboard gun-room port to the sheet anchor; at 4h. set steering-sails,—fresh breezes and fair; at 8h. moderate breezes,—Cape Moulinau E.N.E. seven or eight ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... breath to my heart bring healing! Let Death now follow, his booty seeking: The moves are many before the checkmate! Awhile I'll harass thy love of plunder, As on I scud 'neath thy angry eyebrows; Thou only fillest my swelling mainsail, Though Death ride fast on thy howling tempest; Thy billows raging shall bear the faster My little vessel ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... preceding days this was dizzy speed. Two ridges of foam streamed from the ship's bows; the wind sang in a strenuous note which under other circumstances would have expressed to me all the joy of life. Whenever the hauled-up mainsail started trying to slat and bang itself to pieces in its gear, Mr. Burns would ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long, however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight we ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some feet further aft, a sliding hatch was fitted, so that in reality their boat was half decked over. They lastly gave her a thick coat of tar outside, and two coats of paint all over inside. She was rigged with a mainsail, a mizen, and a foresail, to which they added a sliding bowsprit, so that a jib could be set in light winds, with a flying gaff topsail. Having plenty of canvas and spars, they also fitted a square sail; some sand-bags served for ballast, although the stores they ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... his first murder. Right ahead is the sharp point of the Diamante, beyond that low shore where the cane brake grows to within fifty yards of the sea. Now you have run past the little cape, and are abreast of the beach. Down mainsail—down jib—down foresail. Let go the anchor while she forges, eight to nine lengths from the land, and let her swing round, stern to the sand. Clear away the dingy and launch her from amidships, and send a line ashore. Overboard ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... that night was one of those inefficients against whom the capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients increase expenses and reduce dividends. My crew did both. What of his carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally destroyed it. There weren't any dividends that night, and the Chinese fishermen were richer by the nets and ropes we did not get. I was bankrupt, unable just then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new mainsail. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... because she scudded before the sea very well, and we knew that the topmast being aloft, the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way through the sea, seeing we had sea-room. When the storm was over, we set foresail and mainsail, and brought the ship to. Then we set the mizzen, maintopsail, and the foretopsail. Our course was east- northeast, the wind was at southwest. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather braces ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the receipt of the letter from the Nantucket lady, Captain Eri was busy at his fish shanty, putting his lines in order and sewing a patch on the mainsail of his catboat. These necessary repairs had prevented his taking the usual trip to the fishing grounds. Looking up from his work, he saw, through the open door, Ralph Hazeltine just stepping out of the cable-station skiff. He tucked his sail needle ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... consumed in the fire at Grimross. He had fortunately saved two of the compasses from the flames. After days of toil he managed to get the vessel in fair working order. The old half-burnt blankets were patched together and a mainsail and jib were completed. On the 30th of May, 1771, he set sail ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... passed without making ten miles; the boat was kept under the jib, as they dared not hoist the mainsail, and the wind was so variable that much time was lost ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... like very much to go there," said I, and the captain, without comment, changed his course a little more to the eastward and let the reef out of his mainsail. ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim craft with easy grace ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it; land and destruction on this—the attempt, the hope, the failure; then the stout-hearted, skillful captain would try one rare maneuver to save the ship, cargo, and crew. He would club-haul her, "and if that fails, my lads, there is nothing but up mainsail, up helm, run her slap ashore, and lay her bones on the softest bit of rock we ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... have been correct) that the Association for building the Pilgrim Monument at Plymouth should issue a pamphlet giving a picture of the "Landing of the Pilgrims, December 21, 1620," in which women are pictured, and in which the shallop is shown with a large fore-and-aft mainsail, while on the same page is another picture entitled, "The Shallop of the MAY-FLOWER," having a large yard and square-sail, and a "Cuddy" (which last the MAY-FLOWER'S shallop we know did not have). The printed description of the picture, however, says: "The cut is copied ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... of the wind that whistled in the rigging, and the full curve of the great sails was a fine sight; but it was evident that the sails and ropes were in a very rotten condition, and soon, with anxious looks, we followed the growth of a tear in the mainsail, wondering whether the mast would stand the strain. A heavy sea broke the rudder, and altogether it was high time to land when we entered Port Olry ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... observed by those employed on the water that when it ceased blowing half a gale the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather or rain. This may all seem common enough to most people; but to those accustomed to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail or foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last few summers has been remarkable—alternating at times with equally ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... hauling at the halliards of the after-mainsail and went to his assistance, while Coristine, doffing his coat, lent a hand to The Crew, when, by their combined efforts, the sails were all hoisted and the schooner floated away from the pier. The lawyer walked ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... no answer, but their eyes met and Philippa looked hurriedly away. There was a moment's queer, strained silence. Before them loomed up the outline of Mainsail Haul. ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... honey. There might be vinegar-pots to be found in her larder, but they were kept behind closed doors and sampled only when she was alone. As she sat looking out to sea, Max's brain still at work on the problem of her unusual mood, a schooner shifted her mainsail in the light breeze and set ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... taken aboard to go to sea. And that was attended to next morning, and she was out for her trial trip the same afternoon. Everybody said she looked as handsome as a photograph going out, though all the old sharks, when they saw her mainsail hoisted for the first time, said she'd certainly have need of her quarter and draught to ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... finally succeeded in stopping the leak, this was not accomplished until the mainsail had been carried away by the heavy sea, and other injuries sustained. It was a terrible time for all, and the crew, exhausted and overworked on insufficient food, were only held to their tasks by the captain and mates standing ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... once to unfurl the jib. With a little canvas on her I believed the sloop could be wore 'round and headed into the wind before the waves sprang up. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have given her a hand's breath of the mainsail. However, before the bit of canvas bellied out and I had dashed back to the helm, the first wave broke over the stern of ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... the s'uth'ard," said the skipper, anxiously, while they put a double reef in the mainsail. "'Twill ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... too strong. The dimensions of the sail as we made it are given in the drawing (Fig. 15). The top of the sail was lashed to a spar, which was connected by a short stick to another spar tied to the mainsail about eighteen inches lower down. The sail was strengthened with an extra strip of cloth along the lower spar, and the tie strings were applied in the usual way. The connecting stick, or topmast we may call it, was hinged to the lower spar by means of a short piece of leather strap, which was ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... summer's evening that a beautiful English built craft, after having beat up the Black Sea all day against the ever prevailing a north-cast wind, now gathered in her light sails and barely kept steerageway by still spreading her jib and mainsail. With the setting sun the breeze had lulled also to rest, and there was but a cap full now coming from off the mountains of the Caucasus, just enough to keep the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns, all at play On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars, And I knew we should have foul weather to-day. Cheerily, my hearties! yo heave ho! Brail up the mainsail, and let her go As the winds ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and the river damp by night, without protection.'[2] Still more used the Durham boat for the river journey. This famous craft was a large, flat-bottomed barge, with round bow and square stern. With centre-board down and mainsail and topsail set on its fixed mast, it made fair progress in the wider stretches. But on the up trip it was for the most part poled or 'set' along. Each of the crew took his stand at the bow end of one of the narrow gangways ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... run up, followed by the answering pennant, the mainsail was lowered, the foresail backed, and the yacht was brought to, while the Italian ship, which was made out to be the Cigno, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... opening his eyes; "there's a squall coming, lad! Look alive, boy! Clew up the foresail! Drop the mainsail peak! Them squalls ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lake of truth— Mayest thou sail upon it with a fair wind; May thy mainsail not fly loose. May there not be lamentation in thy cabin; May not misfortune come after thee. May not thy mainstays be snapped; Mayest thou not run aground. May not the wave seize thee; Mayest thou not taste the impurities of the river; Mayest thou not see ...
— Egyptian Literature
... a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... clanking of the dismal bell on Norman's Woe as we went by; and the reef where the schooner Hesperus struck I passed close aboard. The "bones" of a wreck tossed up lay bleaching on the shore abreast. The wind still freshening, I settled the throat of the mainsail to ease the sloop's helm, for I could hardly hold her before it with the whole mainsail set. A schooner ahead of me lowered all sail and ran into port under bare poles, the wind being fair. As the Spray brushed by the stranger, I saw that some of his ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... jumped aboard, and Coombs, with something like a grin at his partner, shoved the boat's head off. He had got the jib and mainsail up, and they caught what little breeze there was stirring. The Flyaway drew away from the landing. To Bangs's embarrassment, however, the boom suddenly swung inboard, swiped across the stern, causing him to duck hastily, and almost knocking the bonnet off the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... their thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary robin sings near. I sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay-window on the indolent scene—the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance—off on the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound soften'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and enthusiastic reception instituted in the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake hands with the conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind the pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosened the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and occasionally there were guilty approaches and rencontres, she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and all ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... orders the boys set sail, hoisting both the jib topsails and club topsails; in fact, cracking on every stitch. Hans grew weary again before the mainsail was up. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... and the lad steered their boats towards the shore side by side, the former hauling in his mainsail somewhat to lessen the speed of his boat. They parted to the northward of the promontory described, Dermot steering for the little cove in which stood the solitary hut already spoken of, while his uncle continued along the shore a little further to ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... topsails flutter, the jibs collapse And belly and tug at the groaning cleats, The spanker slats, and the mainsail flaps, And thunders the order, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... nonadjustment of the trumpet, she reached under the seat and brought out the pile of Blazeton weeklies. With her feet upon the pile to keep it from blowing away, she proceeded to unfold one of the papers. It crackled and snapped in the wind like a loose mainsail. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... answered Harriet. "How do I know? Never mind. You will find that you are." She had seen a man hauling in on the main sheets—the ropes that led from the mainsail back toward the cockpit. From that she knew the boat was preparing to change its course. This it did a few moments later, heading in toward the shore, but pointed at a spot a full half mile below the camp, as nearly as the girls ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay full of shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... had been educated in the college de propaganda fide at Naples, was not quite so composed as his countryman the pilot. The poor fellow, indeed, had nearly been thrown overboard by the boom of the mainsail, in the first, which was the most rapid, whirl of the ship; the same blow striking a sailor tossed his hat overboard; and it afforded some amusement, in our supposed perilous situation, to hear the different ejaculations of these two persons ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... cross beams fastened to the masts to which the sails are fixed. The "main-yard" is the largest. The mainsail is ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne
... ship in the Bay of Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew and every Spaniard aboard—whether in arms or not—to sew them up in the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead bodies in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Boston, and to tell Anne that her Aunt Martha knows the truth. You just run up and tell Mrs. Stoddard all about it, Amanda," he answered; and, having sent his boat into deep water, the captain drew in his oars and began hoisting the big mainsail. ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... which all believed to be the sweat of the land, and thought no more of; though none wished to enter it, for that is a coast where foul airs rise, and through which the gulls and land-birds refuse to fly. Well, here we lay, the mainsail in the brails, the top-sails beating the mast-heads, like a maiden fanning herself when she sees her lover, and nothing full but the upper duck, with the sun fairly below the water in the western board. I was then young, and quick of eye, as of foot, and therefore ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... not enter here into a discussion as to the comparative merits of sloops and cutters and smacks. It is enough if we state that when it was realised that a vessel of say 100 tons, sloop-rigged, with her one mast, mainsail, and two headsails and square topsail (set forward of the mast on a yard) could be handled with fewer men and therefore less expense than a lugger of similar size; was also more suitable for manoeuvring in narrow channels, and for entering and leaving ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... as we stood in for the Old Head of Kinsale pilot boat breasting the foaming surge like a sea gull—"Carrol Cove" in her tiny mainsail—pilot jumped into the main channel a bottle of rum swung by the lead line ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter—the racing rig par excellence—is of an appearance the most imposing, from the fact that practically all her canvas is in one piece. The enormous mainsail of a cutter, as she draws slowly past a point of land or the end of a jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her with an air of lofty and silent majesty. At anchor a schooner looks better; she has an aspect of greater efficiency ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... cutter of about thirty tons, very swift by the rake of her masts and the lines of her bow. She was coming up from the south under jib, foresail, and mainsail; but even as we watched her all her white canvas shut suddenly in, like a kittiwake closing her wings, and we saw the splash of her anchor just under her bowsprit. She may have been rather less than a quarter of a mile from the ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suffocation were far advanced, they brought in the table-cloths; but oh, so brown, so dirty, and so coarse; they seemed like sacks that had been worn out in agriculture and come down to this, or like shreads from the mainsail of some worn-out ship. The Hollander, who had never seen such linen even in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the wind 'twas worse than ever. The way Phil see-sawed that piece of pie back and forth over the river was a sin and shame. He could have slacked off his mainsail and headed dead for the buoy, but no, he jiggled around like an old woman crossing the road ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... feet long, and her breadth of beam—that is, the distance across her from one side to the other—was great compared with her length. She was rigged like Frank's boat, having one mast and carrying a mainsail and jib; but as her sails were considerably larger than those of the Speedwell, and as she was a much lighter boat, the boys all expected that she would reach the island, which the young skippers always regarded as "home" in their races, long before the Speedwell. The Champion was ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... canvass, letting it fall as it would at last. With a few words and many dramatic gestures, he made known how the trader, roused from a two-day stupor by the pitching of the vessel and the banging of the boom sticks, had staggered up out of the cabin, and been struck by the heavily swinging boom of the mainsail. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... The mainsail was first hoisted, its size greatly surprising the boys; then the foresail and jib were got up, and lastly the mizzen. Then the capstan was manned, and the anchor slowly brought on board, and the sails being sheeted home, the craft began to steal through ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... our anchor and helped to snug down the mainsail, I went below in the very worst of tempers, to find the cabin floor littered with the contents of a writing-case and a box of mixed biscuits, which had broken loose in company. As I stooped to collect the debris, this appeal ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... order to shove clear of the dock the mainsail was hoisted. Then each crew captain kept one eye on the watch for the signals of the instructor, who was aboard a ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... forming a kind of bridges or causeways, on one of which we crossed without difficulty. The men had hoisted one sail upon the cart at first setting off; but the wind being now, as they expressed it, "on the larboard quarter," a second blanket was rigged as a mainsail, to their great ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... to the tug. He stepped aft to take the wheel himself. The mainsail was going up smartly. The old boatswain and the Portygees swung upon the lines with vehemence. There was not more than a capful of wind; but once let the canvas fill, and the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... was impossible for any one on deck to lower the bunting. Bang! went another gun; and before the smoke cleared away, a third, which, truer in its aim than the rest, went clean through the lower part of our mainsail. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was my good luck to spy, lying directly in a line with the ship's head. It was formed of a great steep of ice jutting a long way slantingly into the sea, the width between the point and the main being about a third of a mile. I seized the helm, and shouted to the men to hoist the head of the mainsail that she might round to when I put the helm down. But the fellows were in a panic terror and stood gaping at what they regarded as their doom, calling upon the Virgin and all the saints for help and mercy. Into this bay did we rush ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... disappointed at the result of the conference, for I was interested in the chase. I ordered the jib and mainsail to be taken in, and the helm to be put down. The fog had lifted to the northward and westward of us, so that I could see St. Augustine light and the pilot-boat. We took up one of the pilots, and in less than half an hour we ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... said Lingard, slowly, raising the long glass to his eye. "Haul the mainsail up, Mr. Shaw," he went on while he took a steady look at the yacht. "We will have to work ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... wore the toga. Yes, and a pretty affair that "toga" was. Just figure to yourself, reader, the picture of a hardworking man, with horny hands like our hedgers, ditchers, weavers, porters, &c., setting to work on the highroad in that vast sweeping toga, filling with a strong gale like the mainsail of a frigate. Conceive the roars with which this magnificent figure would be received into the bosom of a poor-house detachment sent out to attack the stones on some new line of road, or a fatigue party of dustmen sent upon secret service. Had there been ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... saw a few of the other vessels hoisting their sails; and then Captain Truck, Oliver, and I pulled and hauled until we got our mainsail set. The men then washed down the decks, though really there was no dirt to wash away, and we tried, as we had promised, to ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... we have done well until a week ago, when, after a series of very fine runs, and during as fair a breeze as one would wish to see, we were some of us astonished to see the captain giving orders to reef topsails. The royals were stowed, so were the top-gallant-sails, topsails close reefed, mainsail reefed, and just at 10.45 p.m., as I was going to bed, I heard the captain give the order to take a reef in the foresail and furl the mainsail; but before I was in bed a quarter of an hour afterwards, a blast ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the middle, an' if it do rain, there then,— my boy, we'll ha' a pool big enough to swim ye in. Hurrah! it's sure to rain. See yonder. It be comin' nearer every minute. Let's be ready for it. Down wi' the mainsail. Let go the sheets,—an' instead o' spreadin' our canvas to the wind, as the song says, we'll stretch it out to the rain. Come, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... serve now to carry the ship a point or two towards the north, and this was the sole avenue of escape which remained. Here, again, was one of those trivial circumstances which are so potent in the shaping of events. Had either of the sails blown out, or had the mainsail been set at the same time as the foresail, the course followed during the next few hours must have been deviated from to some extent, and the alteration of a cable's length in direction could not fail to exercise the most momentous result on ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... gave this order in disgust at last; for the tide was against her, with a heavy pitch of sea, and the mainsail scarcely drew the sheet. What little wind there was came off the land, and would have been fair if it had been firm; but often it dropped altogether where the cliffs, or the clouds that lay upon them, held ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of half an hour an empty oil-keg was moored over the spot where our boat lay upon the sandy bar, and we were sailing as fast as such an unwieldy vessel, with her mainsail permanently reefed above the roof of her grocery store, could be expected to sail. Our tacks were long and numerous, and although Walkirk and I lent a hand whenever there was occasion for it, and although there was a fair wind, the distant point ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... bright—the breeze is fair, "And the mainsail flowing, full and free— "Our farewell word is woman's prayer, "And the hope before us—Liberty! "Farewell, farewell. "To Greece we give our shining blades, "And our hearts to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sight of the V.A.D.'s pale face, I took to wandering about the decks and came suddenly on a man whom I had last seen at the tiller of a small boat in Clew Bay. I was beating windward across the steep waves of a tideway. His boat was running free with her mainsail boomed out; and he waved a hand to me as he passed. Once again we met at sea; but we were much less cheerful. He was returning to France after leave, to spend the remainder of a second winter in the trenches. He gave it to me as his opinion that ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... bank to the Cove below. How they scamper along, eager to walk the deck of that trim little craft, the Falcon, anchored in the stream, and sitting like a bird on the bosom of the famed river. Wait a minute and you will see the mainsail flutter in the breeze. Now our rollicking young friends have marched past ruins of "chapel, convent, hospital," &c., on the beach; you surely did not expect them to look glum and melancholy. Of course they knew all about "Monsieur Puiseaux," "le Chevalier de Sillery," "the house where dwelt ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... their rig is that they have no boom to their mainsail, which in shape somewhat resembles a barge-sail, and, like it, can in a moment be brailed completely up. They carry a lofty topmast and large topsails, and these they seldom lower, even when obliged to have ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... and let raise the mast and hoist the mainsail, and the wind filled the sail, and they made taut the ropes all round. But anon strange matters appeared to them: first there flowed through all the swift black ship a sweet and fragrant wine, and the ambrosial fragrance arose, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... a splendid sea-boat. The Bermudian rig had been evolved to meet local conditions. Imagine a cutter with one single long spar in the place of a mast and topmast; this spar is stepped rather farther aft than it would be in an ordinary cutter, and there is one huge mainsail, "leg-of-mutton" shaped, with a boom but no gaff, and a very large jib. Owing to their big head-sails, and to their heavy keels, these Bermudian craft fore-reach like a steamer, and hardly ever miss stays. For the same reason they are very wet, as they bury themselves in the water. A handsome ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... and drove in within half-a-mile of the rocks. Then, while I waited to see the end of her, she suddenly wore round, and after staggering a moment while the sea broke over her, hauled up to the wind, and careening over, with her mainsail sweeping the water, started gaily on ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... the north-east, accompanied by a drizzle, and he stood off to the northward and westward, knowing that the coast of New York lay in the opposite direction. At half-past one he stowed the flying-jib, reefed the mainsail, and took the bonnet off the jib. At two he was compelled to get a second reef aft; and by half-past two he had put a balance-reef in the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... of our letters, which reached us yesterday, shortly before the play began. A hundred thousand thanks for your delightful mainsail of that gallant little packet. I read it again and again; and had it all over again at breakfast-time this morning. I heard also, by the same ship, from Talfourd, Miss Coutts, Brougham, Rogers, and others. A delicious letter from Mac too, as good as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... now at west-north-west a very brisk gale. About 12 o'clock at night we had a pale whitish glare in the north-west which was another sign, and intimated the storm be near at hand; and, the wind increasing upon it, we presently handed our topsails, furled the mainsail, and went away only with our foresail. Before 2 in the morning it came on very fierce, and we kept right before wind and sea, the wind still increasing: but the ship was very governable, and steered incomparably well. At 8 ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... between squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That's how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where the Frenchman had hit us—and the Channel crawling with short-handed British cruisers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it next time you grumble ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... the friend of liberty. Hearing a noise in front, I looked up and discerned the light spar of a mast peeping over an intervening barrier of rock; we wound round it, and on the other side found a cutter-rigged boat of about eighteen tons hauled close to the natural quay, with her mainsail set and flapping heavily in the night wind. Here we met another seaman. In ten minutes we were under way; the smooth groundswell running free and silent from our quarter, and the boat laying herself out with an easy ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... difficulty, to reach the deck, by climbing up that part which was not actually burning, and was followed by one of the sailors. The main-mast was on fire, and the flakes of burning canvas from the boom mainsail fell on us like a snow-storm; the end of the tiller was burnt to charcoal, but on the midship part of it I passed a rope, and, assisted by the sailor, moved the helm, and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were a face, head and neck shaped not unlike an old-fashioned water-pitcher, and a form suggestive of an obese lobster balancing on an upright horse-shoe. His nose was too high up; his mouth and chin bulged too tremendously; his neck inside a whole mainsail of shirt-collar was too much fluted, and his eyes were as much too small and oyster-like as his ears ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... reputation in Plattsburgh, and he had his doubts about going across the lake in her. He could see the white-caps down Cumberland Bay, and he decided to put a reef in the mainsail. Pearl Hawlinshed was not disposed to leave. He had obtained no satisfaction from the purchaser of the Goldwing, and he evidently believed there was some trickery by which he had been prevented from purchasing the boat at his ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... construction, and by the occasional aid of George was bringing the hull to a completed state. While this was being done, George was at work with the loom, slowly weaving out the fabric for the sails. As the mast had been stepped back over six feet from the prow, it was concluded to make a mainsail and a jib, a small triangular sail which is attached to the forwardly projecting jib-boom. The two sails would afford greater speed than a single sail, and that was one consideration. The other was, that with two sails ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... "Mainsail h-a-u-aul!" bellowed the captain in a prolonged shout. Round went the great sail under the swift and strong pulls of ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Moderate weather till 4 A.M., when we hauled down our mainsail to get clear of the keys & brought to under our ballast mainsail, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... routed Doc Bird from under the mainsail boom where the steward sat peeling potatoes. Dinshaw kept moving about, repeating the orders of the mate, or ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... as soon as it likes," was the cheerful reply; "we shall want a breeze to help us out of the creek presently. But we may as well get the canvas on her whilst the calm lasts, if possible; so run your knife along the lashing of that mainsail, whilst I overhaul the sheet and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... up in the morning and went on deck, the island of Hoy lay far to windward like a bank of mist upon the sea. We were far out on the broad Pentland Firth, plunging about on the rough water, with our mainsail double-reefed, and the flying jib pulling away like to split itself in the wind. I enjoyed it all for a time; but when I went below to help Jerry to get ready some breakfast for the skipper, the smell of the coffee and the frying bacon overcame me, and I was forced to go ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... bounding through it—without a sound, you understand—something a shade solider than the smoke and big as a cow, it looked to me. It passed from the weather side to the lee and ducked behind the sweep of the mainsail like that—" McCord snapped his thumb and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... to use a fixed rudder instead of a huge oar! Not a bolt or rope or pulley or eyelet-hole has been fixed in our vessel save through the bitter experience of centuries; one might write a volume about that mainsail, showing how its rigid, slanting beauty and its tremendous power were gradually attained by evolution from the ugly square lump of matting which swung from the masthead of Mediterranean craft. But we must not philosophise; we must ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... overcome by watching, I slept, but was soon awoke by the stir and bustle around me. The breeze had freshened, and we were running under a reefed mainsail and foresail; and as the little craft bounded above the blue water, the white foam crested above her prow, and ran in boiling rivulets along towards the after-deck. The tramp of the seamen, the hoarse voice of the captain, the shrill cry of the sea-birds, betokened, however, nothing of dread ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... anything to any one of his intention, he left the hotel, and embarked in the Rosabel, with no dread of the rain, or a squall. There was wind enough to take him down as far as the ledges, and then it suddenly subsided. Leopold furled his mainsail, for the calm indicated a coming squall. It wanted an hour of high tide, and he anchored the Rosabel at a considerable distance from the shore, paying out the cable till the stern of the boat was ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... my soul!' said he, wiping his brow with a huge coloured handkerchief as big as a mainsail, 'one night in such a furnace as that would have ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer feather-white an' skatting in over the bows." New words are eagerly seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of, without appreciation of their cause. Obsolete has come hereto from the Navy, through sons ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... task of reefing the mainsail, which the boys accomplished successfully, though not without a hard struggle, for the wind increased in violence every moment. Holding the boat, which now carried only a few square yards of canvas, well up into the wind, they pounded along with the gunwale under the rushing ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... surely, the sloop drew nearer. She was a fair-sized craft, and carried a crew of three. The men seemed to be nice fellows, and not at all of the Captain Langless class. Soon the sloop dropped anchor close in shore and the mainsail came down ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... cast loose the sails, and together they manned the halyards, and hoisted the mainsail. It was large, and the fresh breeze caused it to flap and beat with a fearful noise, which added not a little to ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... seen in any direction. At length, however, when the yacht had arrived within about two miles of Piedras Point, a small pirogue under sail suddenly shot out from behind the point, heading to the southward close-hauled; she carried a sprit-mainsail and a jib, and at the top end of the sprit there fluttered a diminutive replica of the red-and-yellow flag which was flying from the fore ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the Straits of Gibraltar I verily thought she'd have sunk, For the wind began so for to alter, She yaw'd just as tho' she was drunk. The squall tore the mainsail to shivers, Helm a-weather, the hoarse boatswain cries; Brace the foresail athwart, see she quivers, As through the rough tempest she flies. But sailors were born for all weathers, Great guns let it blow, high ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... wane, When in the bay all shining the fishers set the seine; The fishers cast the seine, and 'tis "Heva!" in the town, And from the watch-rock on the hill the huers are shouting down; And ye hoist the mainsail brown, As over the deep-sea roll The lurker follows the shoal; To follow and to follow, in the moonshine silver-clear, When the halyards creek to thy dipping sail, Pentruan ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... of the two ships—the NASSAU and the DAGGET—the newcomer backs her foreyard and hauls up her mainsail. A cheer rises from the ships. She wants to "gam," I.E. to gossip. With eager hands four boats are lowered from the two ships, and the captains and second mates of each are ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... warm welcome when I go to them. The island lies some seventeen miles from the coast We started on our homeward sail with a fresh westerly wind. Shortly after midday it backed round to the north and grew lighter. At five o'clock we were stealing along very gently through calm water with our mainsail boom out against the shroud. The jib and foresail were drooping in limp folds. An hour later the mainsheet was hanging in the water and the boat drifted with the tide. Peter, crouching in the fore part of the cockpit, hissed ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... visible, so close was she now, from the reef points on the great mainsail, luminous with the sunlight, and white as the wing of a gull, to the rail of the bulwarks. A crowd of men were hanging over the port bulwarks gazing at the island and the figures on the reef. Browned by the sun and sea-breeze, Emmeline's hair blowing on the wind, and the point of Dick's javelin ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... to enter the tropics, everything grew warm and bright. Flannels were doffed, and an awning spread over the after-deck. The wind, though it still blew strongly, was now in their favor; and foretopsail and mainsail, jib and spanker, were set to catch it, till the ship staggered under her press of canvas, and careened as if about ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... make out the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came up on it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a very solid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood on his feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of the mainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers. In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our very vertebrae. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolled on her keel, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... fishing-boat. There were two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and sometimes an avalanche of books descended upon me from the shelf overhead. Yet I slept pretty soundly. Once I was awakened by a tremendous noise outside—something like a gun going off. I afterwards found it had been occasioned by the mainsail being blown away to sea, right out of the bolt-ropes, the fastenings of which were immediately outside my ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... sun. Two points west of north to starboard I saw the chalky cliffs of the Isle of Wight faint through the haze, but away ahead the Channel opened out as an unbroken sea. The yacht lay without life in her sails, the flow of the swell beating lazily upon her, and the great mainsail rocking on the boom. We had been out twenty-four hours, and had not made a couple of hundred miles. The delay angered every man aboard the Celsis, since every man aboard knew that it was a matter of concern to me to overtake the American yacht, La France, and that a ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... this vessel, our men called out to me that there was another close on our lee-bow, which I had not observed on account of our mainsail. Luckily, however, it proved to be a Ning-po wood-junk, like ourselves, which the pirates had taken a short time before, but which, although manned by these rascals, could do us no harm, having no guns. The poor Ning-po crew, whom I could plainly ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... at this time extremely wet, and the gale in the highest degree violent, they clung so fast to the masts and rigging, that it was scarcely possible to get them either up or down; yet by the dexterous activity of our people, we got the mainsail up, clewed up the main top-sail, and got the ship's head round without receiving much damage. The violence of the wind continued several hours, but before morning it veered again to the N.W. and continued in that quarter till the afternoon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Neptune!" gasped Captain Jerry. "Got a real, generwine crew, aint I? All right, my hearties, I'll set ye to work fast enough." And then followed a string of orders in true nautical style, and the Rover boys flew in one direction and another to execute them. Up went the mainsail and the jib, and the top-sail followed, and soon the Old Glory was standing off into Santa Barbara Channel, with Mrs. Stanhope in the carriage waving them an adieu, and the girls and the boys waving their ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... instead thereof, one builds him a new bark, and one caulks the sides of that which hath made many a voyage; one hammers at the prow, and one at the stern; another makes oars, and another twists the cordage; and one the foresail and the mainsail patches,—so, not by fire, but by divine art, a thick pitch was boiling there below, which belimed the bank on every side. I saw it, but saw not in it aught but the bubbles which the boiling raised, and all of it swelling ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... Kiukiang I possessed a teak-built four-oared gig which, being heavy and strong, I rigged with a jib and mainsail, besides adding six inches to her keel, when she proved to be a handy and seaworthy little craft. An iron framework could be erected over the stern-sheets and covered with a canvas hood, thus forming ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... thunder and Of hurricane.—'Tis on us now! Awake! [Shouting in Dimsdell's ear. My friend, awake! Dost thou not hear the storm? Oh! how it shrieks and whistles through the shrouds! The awful guns of heaven boom in our ears— Nay, that was the mainsail gone by the board, Flapping with cannon roar. You do not follow me. O, come, I say! This is no sermon. You cannot be asleep, Yet feign you are to cheat me of my story. Wake up, my friend. You carry the jest ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... full of islands, and Little Bobtail concluded to get under the lee of one of them, and wait for better weather. He took in his jib and mainsail, and the old boat went along very well, taking in very little water. The sun went down, and it was dark before he had made a harbor. He was approaching Blank Island, where he knew a good place to anchor for the night, when he discovered a large sail-boat, drifting ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... used aboard deepwater-men as Ho—hissa! instead of Ho—hoist away! What ho, mate! is also known afloat, though dying out. Y-howe! taylia! is Yo—ho! tally! or Tally and belay! which means hauling aft and making fast the sheet of a mainsail or foresail. What ho! no nearer! is What ho! no higher now. But old salts remember no nearer! and it may be still extant. Seasickness seems to have been the same as ever—so was the desperate effort to pretend one was not really ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... point of land, now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella turned inside out. I saw the Whim, greenish white in a greenish foam, heeled over till her masts were all but on the waves and her mainsail, half torn from its boom, snapping in the wind. In this fashion she was being driven at breakneck speed across the Gulf. I thought—I tried to think—that I had seen a small boat being dragged behind. Surely my men ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... 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 utmost care, the water began to slop in over the lee gunwale, as well as over the bows; and at length they decided to take a reef in the mainsail, for Dick had no fancy for spending the rest of the cruise in an ineffectual endeavour to free the boat of water that came in faster than he could throw it out. This was done, and the boat resumed her headlong rush to the southward, until by the time that the sun sank, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... made on a mainsail, the yard being seventy-one feet long, and reefyard sixty-six feet long, eleven inches diameter at center and nine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... his wife, and their child. About eight A.M., in the midst of the lagoon, their cutter had capsized in jibbing. They got her righted, and though she was still full of water put the child on board. The mainsail had been carried away, but the jib still drew her sluggishly along, and Francois and the woman swam astern and worked the rudder with their hands. The cold was cruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear haunted them. Again and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jas. L. Parker, remarked to me that he thought it looked a little squally to windward. I immediately passed over to the weather side, and as it looked a little darker than it had done, I ordered him to haul up the mainsail, and brail up the spanker, and directed the helm to be put up. These orders were promptly obeyed. Lieut. Parker took the mainsail off her, and had got the spanker about half brailed up, when the squall struck ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... out a weather-thinned mainsail, black with mildew, and bent it; and by the time that was on the spars, he had completed his barter, and had been put on board ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... was at the eye; and I constantly heard their grumblings and disapprovals, as some luckless turn of the helm exposed the lugger to the cruiser's fire. "She will be raked; she will lose her masts," was the general groan. As they neared the shore, the effect of every shot was visible. "There goes the mainsail all to ribands; the yards are shot in the slings." Then public opinion would change. "Fine fellow that! The Shark's main-top shakes like a whip." In this way all went on for nearly an hour, which, however, I scarcely felt to be more than a few minutes. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... very anxious night indeed for me; by far the most anxious that I had thus far spent since the destruction of the Saturn, for the wind steadily increased, compelling me to haul down a first and then a second reef in the mainsail, while—the wind and sea being now square abeam—I was continually exposed to the danger of being swamped by a sea breaking aboard. By constant watchfulness, however, I contrived to escape this danger, and my eighth ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... astir early. It was the Queen's Cup day. Eight yachts were entered: three schooners—the Rhodope, the Isobel, and the Mayflower; four cutters—the Pearl, the Chrysalis, the Alacrity, and the Phantom; and the Osprey, which was the only yawl. It was half-past eight, and all were under way under mainsail ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty |
