"Mast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice mast-high came floating by, As ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... same colour, and had the little finger of a drowned man on his parlour mantelshelf, with other maritime and natural curiosities. He displayed also a brass knocker, a brass plate, and a brass bell-handle, all very bright and shining; and had a mast, with a vane on the top of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... come, he said, but to the second bend of this waterway, when a seaman, who had climbed the mast on the chance of spying an outlet, called out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, but two miles off, and running down the channel before the wind, even as they. At first he found no credit for this tale, and even when those on deck spied ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... carry their width almost to the stern, which is square. This gives the boats a dumpy appearance, as they look as if they had been cut short. They are half-decked, with a roomy fo'castle and a well, where the fish are kept alive. They carry one mast. ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... moonlight. So they sped between the rocks, and came upon a purple sea, dark-blue overhead, with large stars leaning to the waves. There was a soft whisperingness in the breath of the breezes that swung there, and many sails of charmed ships were seen in momentary gleams, flapping the mast idly far away. Warm as new milk from the full udders were the waters of that sea, and figures of fair women stretched lengthwise with the current, and lifted a head as they rushed rolling by. Truly it was enchanted even to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his sail, and unstepped his mast in two fathom water; but he was not such a fool as to risk his six nets; he devoted one to his experiment, and did it well; he let out his bladder line a fathom, so that one half his net would literally be higgledy-piggledy ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... morning. The deck of our ship presents a curious appearance just now; Between the main and mizzen masts is an immense coil of one hundred and thirty miles of the cable, the rest is in larger coils below decks. Abaft the mizzen mast is a ponderous mass of machinery for regulating the paying out of the cable, a steam-engine and boiler complete, and they have just been testing it to see if all is right, and it is found right. We have the prospect of a fine moon ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... went on deck, I found the carpenter preparing a flour barrel for the despatches. A quantity of sand was put in the bottom to make it stand up straight in the water. A pole was set up in the barrel, like the mast of a vessel, to the top of which a blue-light was attached, to be ignited when it was thrown overboard, in order to enable the despatch steamer to find it readily. In the daytime a red rag is sometimes attached to it, I was told by the carpenter. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... Dick. They had slung the cutter on board some days ago when they found she could not keep up. Shard could not ride but he sent for Spanish Dick and told him he must take him as a passenger. So Spanish Dick slung him in front of the saddle "before the mast" as Shard called it, for they still carried a mast on the front of the saddle, and away they galloped together. "Rough weather," said Shard, but he surveyed the forest as he went and the long and short of it was he found a place where the forest was less than half a mile thick ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... wild-plunging o'er the crimson field, The ship that, disregarding in her pride Star-set and star-rise, meets disastrous gales:— Such gales as pile the billows mountain-high, E'en at their own wild will, round stem or stern: Dash o'er the hold, the timbers rive in twain, Till mast and tackle dangle in mid-air Shivered like toys, and, as the night wears on, The rain of heaven falls fast, and, lashed by wind And iron hail, broad ocean rings again. Then can they draw from out the nether abyss Both craft and crew, each deeming he must die: Lo the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... of the squares, or blocks of buildings, as they are termed here, is erected a very high mast, with a cap of liberty upon the top. The only idea we have of the cap of liberty is, the bonnet rouge of the French; but the Americans will not copy the French, although they will the English; so they have a cap of their own, which (begging their pardon), with its gaudy colours ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... streaked with tears, shoes white with dust, playfrock torn at the gathers, something bundled up in her apron, and one shoe down at the heel as if it hurt her. Sancho lapped eagerly, with his eyes shut; all his ruffles were gray with dust, and his tail hung wearily down, the tassel at half mast, as if in mourning for the master whom he had come to find. Bab still held the strap, intent on keeping her charge safe, though she lost herself; but her courage seemed to be giving out, as she looked anxiously up and down the road, seeing no sign of the three ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... once, and toss them into his hat, which is carefully secured on his head, so low as to cover his eyes, and so tight as nearly to shave off both his ears. The lay-brother thinks, with great truth, that he would sooner take five yoke of oxen, and tail a mast for a frigate through the solid forest to the river, than snake his way through the streets of a garrison-town. After re-adjusting his hat, he resumes his pious gait, and Juno also goes her way, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... on one of these a young sailor was keeping watch for thieves; but he saw not Captain Jack coming softly on board, and peering over his shoulder to see what was written on the paper he held in his hand. A lantern hung from the mast and shed a feeble light on the tear-blistered page, where the pious mother implored a blessing on her son. As he read, the young sailor also wept; but Captain Jack had no taste for tears. He breathed on ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... appeared only to intensify his characteristics: his face became more lugubrious and melancholy; his manner more ceremonious and dignified; and, erect and stiff in his saddle from the waist upwards, but leaning from side to side with the motion of his horse, like the tall mast of some laboring sloop, he "loped" away towards the House of the Lost Mission. Once or twice he broke into sentimental song. Strangely enough, his ditty was a popular Spanish refrain of ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... fleet of the foemen past Ahead of the Victory, A four-decked ship, with a flagless mast, An Anak of the sea. His gaze on the ship Lord Nelson cast: "Oh, oh! my old friend!" quoth he. "Since again we have met, we must all be glad To pay our respects to the Trinidad." So, full on the bow of the giant foe, Our gallant ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... railway system and a hotel system, so there is also a pig system, by which this place is marked out from any other. Huge quantities of these useful animals are reared after harvest in the corn-fields of Ohio, and on the beech-mast and acorns of its gigantic forests. At a particular time of year they arrive by thousands—brought in droves and steamers to the number of 500,000—to meet their doom, when it is said that the Ohio runs red with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... lips and kiss me again, we have but a moment more, Before we set the sail to the mast, before we loosen the oar. Good-bye to you, and my thanks to you, for the rest you let me share, While this night drifted away to the Past, to join the Nights ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... could see she was neither cruiser nor destroyer nor submarine, but a sort of compound of all three. She did not appear to be a steamer because she had no funnels. She was not exactly a submarine because she had a signal-mast forward and carried five long, ugly-looking guns, three ahead and two astern, of a type that he had never seen before. Forward of the mast there was a conning-tower of oval shape, with the lesser curves fore and aft. The breech-ends of the guns were covered ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... college—that Russell Lowell who sang of Birdofredum Sawin, and whose Biglow Papers were edited with such an ardor of love by our Tom Brown, Birdofredum is worthy of all the ardor. Mr. Dana is also a Cambridge man—he who was "two years before the mast," and who since that has written to us of Cuba. But Mr. Dana, though residing at Cambridge, is not of Cambridge; and, though a literary man, he does not belong to literature. He is—could he help it?—a ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... difficulty: no such difficulty in spiritual things, as to prevail with one's own heart. With these cords, therefore, of well bottomed resolutions, be oft binding yourselves to your covenant, as once Ulysses did himself to his mast, that you may not be bewitched by any Syrenian song of the flesh, world, or the devil, to violate your holy covenant, and drown yourselves in a sea of perdition. And to that end, it would not be altogether useless, to fix your covenant in some place of your houses, or bed-chamber, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... was consulting Travers about a carpenter, when, to his astonishment, he saw young Davy, the boy he had brought from Duff Harbour, and whom he understood to have gone back with Blue Peter, gazing at him from before the mast. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... been shipwreck'd, Twenty-two years at sea, But never saw a gang of thieves Before that very day; Had it not been for Captain Thomas, And his loyal Preventive crew, They'd have stolen the cargo and the deck, The mast and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... This vessel appears to have been made of planks. It was long, and comparatively narrow. It had a flattish bottom, and was rounded off towards the stem and stern, much as boats are rounded off towards the bows at the present day. It did not possess either mast or sail, but was propelled wholly by oars, which were of the same shape as those used anciently by the rowers in the round boats. In the steersman's hand is seen an oar of a different kind. It is much longer than the rowing oars, and terminates ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... water Macivor and his old townsman, Robert Hossack, stood together at the binnacle. An immense wave came rolling behind, and they had but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, when it broke over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all before it, in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... fellow glanced down across the wall where a hull and mast gleamed indistinctly through the falling night, swinging at the side of the quay. "That's mine, yonder," he said, nodding toward it. And then, with the graceful, engaging frankness that I already knew as his, "I shall be very ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... on the Welsh Church Bill, in indignant protest against the allegation that the majority of Welshmen now belonged to the Established Church. He said, "It is a lie, sir; and it is high time that we nailed this lie to the mast." But a confusion of metaphors is not ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... Your greatest want is, you want much of meat: Why should you want? Behold, the Earth hath Rootes: Within this Mile breake forth a hundred Springs: The Oakes beare Mast, the Briars Scarlet Heps, The bounteous Huswife Nature, on each bush, Layes her full Messe before you. Want? why Want? 1 We cannot liue on Grasse, on Berries, Water, As Beasts, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Frugality, took in this country as one of its provinces; and histories tell us, that, in Saturn's time, the Frugonian princes gave laws to all this part of the world, and had their palace there; and that their country was called Fagonia, from the simplicity of their diet, which consisted only in beech-mast. But that yoke has been long ago shaken off; their manners are wholly changed, and, from the universality of their food, they have obtained, in their own country ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... as practical and ingenious as he was brave. He fastened weatherboards along the rim of the canoe to prevent shipping water; he fitted it with a mast and sail, and coated it with tar; and while he was doing it the Admiral wrote a brief, businesslike letter to Ovando, telling of the sad plight they were in; he also wrote a long, rambling letter, full of evidence ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal was before me, with great gates of massive steel with bars of the thickness of a mast, rising to the very clouds, and so close that between them was just a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose shining walls were figured many white-clad forms with faces radiant with joy. When I stood before the gate my heart and my soul ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... dispelled many illusions, and we need no better proof of which ship is sinking than that Mr. Caleb Cushing should have made such haste to come over to the old Constitution, with the stars and stripes at her mast-head. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Your side was stripped of oarage in the blast? Swift Africus has weakened, too, your mast; The sailyards groan. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... the Vanguard shook through all her timbers oaken; It was like the shock of Doomsday,—not a tar but shuddered hard. All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... also were their furnaces, boilers, and engines on the same deck, sharing it with the cargo. But all their gay upper works, so toplofty and frail, showed a gleaming white front to the western sun. You marked each one's jack-staff, that rose mast high from the unseen prow, and behind it the boiler deck, high over the boilers. Over the boiler deck was the hurricane roof, above that the officers' rooms, called the "texas." Above the texas was the pilot-house, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... younger brethren; Lacroix, Micaiah Hill, and Gogerly, the London Missionary Society. Corrie and Dealtry do not seem to have reached the spot in time. The Danish Governor, his wife, and the members of council were there, and the flag drooped half-mast high as on the occasion of a Governor's death. The road was lined by the poor, Hindoo and Mohammedan, for whom he had done so much. When all, walking in the rain, had reached the open grave, the sun shone out, and Leechman ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... forget and neglect the immense concession and privilege we have afforded us in secret prayer. Our sloth and stupidity in prayer is surely the last proof of our fall and of the misery of our fallen state. Our sloth with a gold mine open at our feet; a little more sleep on the top of a mast with a gulf under us that hath no bottom,—no language of this life can adequately describe the besottedness of that man who lies with irons on his heels between Simple ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... they sailed on their course, which was west, and made 20 leagues and more. They saw a large piece of the mast of a ship of 120 tons, but were unable to get it. In the night they made nearly 20 leagues, but only counted 16, for the reason ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, when he was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... get loaded up before dark, and then it'll be like pitch. Let's cut some poles for punting and a mast to make a bit of sail if we like, and then I think we may say that we have got our job well done, ready for loading up and starting in ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... Harris, Hopkinson, and Fraser, of course, made up the crews. The boats were loaded in the evening of Jan. 6th, as it had been necessary to give the paint a little time to dry. On the 4th, I had sent Clayton and Mulholland to the nearest cypress range for a mast and spar, and on the evening of that day some blacks had visited us; but they sat on the bank of the river, preserving a most determined silence; and, at length, left us abruptly, and apparently in great ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... his lifetime? Hardly think he could have been overwhelmed with applications for the one opposite. (He regards an enormous canvas, representing a brawny and gigantic Achilles perforating a brown Trojan with a small mast.) Not a dining-room picture. Still, I like his independence—work up rather well in a sonnet. Let me see. (He takes out note-book and scribbles.) "He scorned to ply his sombre brush for hire." Now if I read that to PODBURY, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... laborers, mostly Indians or poor Chinamen, who are employed in the work of digging, carrying and loading the guano into the ships. When a vessel is ready to take in cargo, she is moored alongside of the rocks almost mast head high, from the top of which the guano is sent down through a canvass shute directly into the hold of the ship. Thus several hundred tons can be put on board in a day. The trimming of the cargo is a very unpleasant part of the labor. The dust and odor is almost overpowering; so the men are ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... returning from a seven months' voyage before the mast, and just turned eighteen, I took it into my head to go tramping. On rods and blind baggages I fought my way from the open West where men bucked big and the job hunted the man, to the congested ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... has its application to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross. But as regards other than material welfare, although perfection is not yet in sight—even from the mast-head—it is surely true that things are much better than ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... again. It was a strange account, and one filled with surprising adventures. In most of the vessels in which she had served, Jack had acted in the steward's department, though she had frequently done duty as a fore-mast hand. In strength and skill she admitted that she had often failed; but in courage, never. Having been given reason to think her husband was reduced to serving in a vessel of war, she had shipped on board a frigate bound to the Mediterranean, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fierce labor of the wind and waves. Their frail precarious craft was in ceaseless peril. His left arm held her like a vice, but for greater safety he had bound a rope round their two bodies and the small mast of their craft. With his right arm he clasped the mast low down, and his right hand came round to grip her shaking knees. In this close hold she lay a long while without speaking. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... a plan. By the sheepfold there lay a huge club of green olive wood that Polyphemus had cut and was keeping until it should be dry enough to use as a staff. So huge was it that Odysseus and his men likened it to the mast of a great merchant vessel. From this club Odysseus cut a large piece and gave it to his men to fine down and make even. While they did this, Odysseus himself sharpened it to a point and hardened the point in the fire. When it was ready, they hid ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... endless line of docks, mast overspiring mast, and bowsprit overlapping bowsprit, till the eye was bewildered, as if by the confusion of branches in a leafless forest. In the distance the mass of rigging resolved itself into a solid gray blur against the sky. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... lines. The 'Gamma' was a larger vessel, however, produced in 1912, with flat, controlling fins and rudder at the rear end of the envelope, and with the conventional long car suspended at some distance beneath the gas bag. By this time, the mooring mast, carrying a cap of which the concave side fitted over the convex nose of the airship, had been originated. The cap was swivelled, and, when attached to it, an airship was held nose on to the wind, thus reducing ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward safe at school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an aunt; that her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... mutiny they had been flying a signal of distress, and when Frank saw it fluttering at the mast-head, through his bitter, blinding tears, he wondered if it would bring assistance to him, or must he float on and on over this wide, silent sea till he, too, died? The thought was an appalling one, and he threw himself on the deck in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... told me this tale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose like he had not before seen. For each little craft was a corpse, stiffly "marlined,'' or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners do use to treat plug tobacco: also ballasted, and with a fair mast and sail stepped through his midriff. These self-sufficing ships knew no divided authority: no pilot ever took the helm from the captain's hands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of the provisions. In a certain ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... star sparkled in the soft pink sky, the air was mild and fresh, and the sea as calm as a millpond. A big three-masted ship lay close by with only a single sail set, for there was not a breath of wind, and the sailors were sitting about the rigging, on the cross-trees, and at the mast-heads. There was music and singing on board, and as the evening closed in hundreds of gaily coloured lanterns were lighted—they looked like the flags of all nations waving in the air. The little mermaid swam right up ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... but strong enough To handle the tallest mast; From the royal barque to the slaver dark, He buries them ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... made use of to any of them to stay with them; and, at the bottom of the letter, they very humbly besought him that, for their defence, and for the safety of their lives, he would be pleased to send them a barrel of powder and some ammunition, and give them leave to keep the mast and sail of the boat, that if it was possible for them to make themselves a boat of any kind, they might shift off to sea, to save themselves in such part of the world as their fate should direct ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... O Ship of State! Tho pirates with fierce hate May cross thy sea:— Fear not; at thy mast head We've nailed the blue, white, red Old Flag! Our fathers bled, And ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... part, I was not suffered to do any thing; the captain ordered that I should be bound to the mast; and, when at last the flames were extinguished, the passengers, with one accord, besought him to keep me bound hand and foot, lest I should be the cause of some new disaster. All that had happened was, indeed, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... answer. Her eyes were fixed on the lugger which had now got to its anchorage and looked strange and unnatural shorn of its lesser mast. She saw the moorings dragged up; and a few minutes later the boat, which had rolled and tumbled at them all night, was baled. Thereupon men took their seats in her and began to row toward the harbor. It seemed that Gray Michael was steering, and his crew clearly pulled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... it would be cruel for me to go with Butt'n-Bright an' leave you at home," said the sailor. "When I were younger—which is ancient history—an' afore I had a wooden leg, I could climb a ship's ropes with the best of 'em, an' walk out on a boom or stand atop a mast. So you know very well I ain't skeered ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... our hap—I value 'em not a rotten ratline; but as for sailing in the wind's eye, brother, you must give me leave—no offence, I hope—I pretend to be a thoroughbred seaman, d'ye see—and I'll be d—ned if you, or e'er an arrant that broke biscuit, ever sailed in a three-mast vessel within five points of the wind, allowing for variation and lee-way. No, no, brother, none of your tricks upon travellers—I an't now to learn my compass." "Tricks!" cried the knight, starting up, and laying his hand on the pummel of his ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... : vendejo, foiro, komercejo. marl : kalkargilo. marrow : ostocerbo, "(vegetable—)" kukurbeto. marry : edz (in) -igi, -igxi. marsh : marcxo. martyr : martiro, suferanto. mask : masko. mason : masonisto. "free—," framosono. mass : amaso, (church) meso. mast : masto. master : mastro, majstro. mastiff : korthundo, dogo, mat : mato. match : alumeto; parigi. matchmaker : svatist'o, -ino. material : sxtofo, materialo. mattress : matraco. mayor : urbestro. meadow : herbejo. meal : faruno; "(a—)" mangxo. mean : celi diri; signifi; malnobla. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... evening star Were hanging in the shrouds; Every mast, as it passed, Seemed to rake ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... loaned her mourning bonnet and veil, which was adjusted at half mast. They appeared in direct contradiction to the skirt of bilious green she wore, but the Jenkinses were as unconventional in attire as they were ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... got the lady inboard. Waiting another opportunity, floundering about below the black wall of the ship, presently it came, and we shoved over just anyhow the helpless bulk of the man. He disappeared within the ship like a shapeless sack, and bumped like one. When I got over, I saw the Mona's mast, which was thrusting and falling by the side of the ketch, making wild oscillations and eccentrics, suddenly vanish; and then appeared Yeo, who carried a tow-line aft and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... lives of ruth or love. Boon were those nights of dusted gold And glint of fireflies! Boon the cold And witching frost! All's one, all's one To thee, whose nights and days go on Now in one span of changeless dusk On one earth, crackling like the husk Of the dropt mast in winter wood: Remember'd joy—'tis all thy food, Hypsipyle, to whose fond sprite I vow my praise while I ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... of a wife)—Ver. 220. "Capiundos crines." Literally, "the hair mast be assumed." Festus says that it was usual on the occasion of the marriage ceremony, to add six rows of curls to the hair of the bride, in imitation of the Vestal virgins, who were patterns of purity, and were dressed in that manner. Hence the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... number of its passengers encumbered the oarsmen. After a while a light off land breeze sprang up, as here it often does towards morning; and the officer, Thompson, determined to risk hoisting the sail. Accordingly this was done—with some difficulty, for the mast had to be drawn out and shipped—although the women screamed as the weight of the air bent their frail craft over till the gunwale was almost ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... charge as a present to the colonists of Tasmania. The ladies of Victoria graced the ceremony of presentation. In giving this beautiful emblem of Australian re-union, "Gentlemen," said the mayor, "I pray you to receive it in the name of the people of Port Phillip, and may it remain nailed to the mast until these colonies are emancipated from convictism." "We accept it, with gratitude," they replied,—"May the flag which adorns it ever float above it in mild sovereignty: the noble nation from which we sprung will applaud ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... has been unworthy —my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart, my soul on you—that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithaeron!" Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cluster under the Sausalito shore at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue from the crawling sand. She was embedded most deeply at the stem, and forward of the sand-heaped cockpit the roof of the small cabin was ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... mate and himself were engaged. The captain, aided by the passenger, was lashing the throat of the gaff down to its place, when a heavy bolt of lightning, accompanied at the same instant by a terrific peel of thunder, struck the main-royal mast-head, and leaped down the mast in a lurid current of fire. At the throat of the main-boom it was divided, part of it following the mast down into the cabin and hold, and the rest darting off on the spar, where the captain, the passenger, ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... "hoisted St. George's ensign." "We gave her a broadside which she returned, tacked and came up on our lee quarter and gave the "Raleigh" a broadside," which carried away its foretopmast and mizzentop gallant mast, which, to "the unspeakable grief" of Captain Barry, caused him, "in a great measure, to lose command" of the "Raleigh," "determined to victory" as he was. "The enemy plied his broadsides briskly, which was returned as brisk," though the "Raleigh" "bore away ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... a stray, lolling mast of steel, here or yonder, thrusting up from the desolation, like a mute appealing hand raised to a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... was once in the southern ocean, in a small frigate, looking out for a seventy-four we were to join company with, when a man at the mast-head sung out that he saw her on the larboard bow. Well, we thought it was all right enough, and made away that quarter, when what do you think ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... American steamships, however, provided they followed a certain defined route to Falmouth and nowhere else, and provided there were marked "on ship's hull and superstructure three vertical stripes one meter wide, to be painted alternately white and red. Each mast should show a large flag checkered white and red, and the stern the American national flag. Care should be taken that during dark, national flag and painted marks are easily recognizable from a distance, and that the boats are well lighted throughout." Other conditions ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... effect of the fire of the Ranger, the following words may be quoted from Jones's official report: "Her fore and maintopsail yards being cut away and down on the caps, the topgallant yard and mizzen gaff both hanging up and down along the mast, the second ensign which they had hoisted shot away and hanging on the quarter gallery in the water, the jib shot away and hanging in the water, her sails and rigging cut entirely to pieces, her masts and yards all wounded and her hull very ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... setting; and they floated through waves as rosy as the rosy sky. A fresh wind filled the sail, and ruffled Gulliver's white breast as he sat on the mast-head crooning a cheery song to himself. Dan held the tiller, and Davy lay at his feet, with Nep bolt upright beside him; but the happiest face of all was Moppet's. Kneeling at the bow, she leaned forward, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... factory had ceased for the day: clerks and porters had gone about their own affairs, and had left the great building strangely cool and empty and silent. The wharves, too, were deserted—all but one, where a Hindu sat in the shade of a pile of luggage, and the top of a boat's mast wavered like the index of a balance above the edge ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... new life if he can be got but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing how to find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... had been held for Stephen Marshall many days, the university had been draped in black, with its flag at half-mast, the proper time, and its mourning folded away, ere Paul Courtland was able to return to his ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and now he wants to be magnanimous with his victims. If we go with the crowd, it will be because Lowington is afraid to leave us behind. We are not a set of babies, Sheffield, to be whipped and sent to bed when we are naughty. Neither are we sailors before the mast, to be kicked here and there, at the pleasure of our masters. What do you suppose the fellows came to Europe for, if it was not to see the country? Are we to be left on board just because we went on a ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... and down to the forward beaching-hooks at the water's edge, at the first streak under the wales; and they set light sails, hauling the tacks well out and making the sheet fast after the southern fashion, and then swaying away at the halyards, till the white canvas was up to the mast-head, bellying full, and as steady as the upper half of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... at Chatham's left to burn, The Holland squadron leisurely return; And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles, To Ruyter's triumph led the captive Charles. The pleasing sight he often does prolong, Her mast erect, tough cordage, timber strong, Her moving shape, all these he doth survey, And all admires, but most his easy prey. The seamen search her all within, without; Viewing her strength, they yet their conquest doubt; Then ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... retreat. But Nelson had no idea of retreating. All the notice he took of the signal was to give strict orders that his own signal for close action should be kept flying, and, if necessary, nailed to the mast; and turning to Captain Foley, he jocosely remarked: "You know I have only one eye; I have a right sometimes to be blind:" and putting his glass to the blind eye, he added, "Really, I don't see ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Respectable. It might have sent us out as missionaries.... There's a flying-fish; and to-morrow I won't have to watch clerks punch a time-clock; and you can hear a sailor shifting the ventilators; and there's a little star perched on the fore-mast; singing; but the big thing is that you're here beside me, and we're going. How bully it is to be living, if you don't have to give up living in order to ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... staggered back against the mast, letting two silvery bloaters slip through his hands overboard. His handsome, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... wounded by penetration through the anus or vagina, or even by an instrument entering the buttocks and passing through the smaller sacrosciatic notch. Camper records the case of a sailor who fell from a mast and struck upon some fragments of wood, one of which entered the anus and penetrated the bladder, the result being a rectovesical fistula. About a year later the man consulted Camper, who unsuccessfully attempted to extract the piece of wood; but by incising the fistula it was found that two calculi ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... tedious one, for we had a succession of calms all the way. It was very discouraging, for we would be sailing with a good breeze, our sails all filled; then the wind would die away, and the sails would flap lazily against the mast. ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... brought along, before reaching the top. The latter stage of this proceeding was like scrambling over the dome of the Washington Capitol with a great yawning cliff below, and was well calculated to try the nerve of any one except a competent mountaineer or a sailor accustomed to a doddering mast. A ravine was next reached, through which tumbled with loud noise and wild confusion, over broken rocks and amid some scant lichens and mosses, a stream of pure water, which had hollowed out a shaft or funnel, forming a glacier mill or moulin. It was over the roof of this tunnel that we ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... bodies as they stood up for the stroke, flung their weight upon the enormous oars, and sat down at the finish, only to rise up again with monotonous shouts of encouragement, the banging of the sail against the mast, the rippling of the water as the prow pressed forward—all these spoke of life to the watchers, of endeavour, and bravery, and travel, causing their blood to redouble its pace and their hope to arise. There was still one doubt which troubled them, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... gale from the south-west. As soon as the position of the unfortunate vessel was discovered, the lifeboat was launched, and proceeded under sail to the spot. The sea was breaking fearfully over the mast-head of the steamer, repeatedly filling the lifeboat. To increase the danger, an expanse of shoal-water lay close to leeward of the wreck, so that had the lifeboat's cable parted, her destruction and that of her crew might have followed. Fully aware of the risk they ran, they persevered, as brave ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... to hear that, Mr. Peasley, because if you're not I'll be the first one to find it out—and don't you forget it! I'll have no marine impostors aboard my ship. Where do they ship little boys before the mast, Mr. Peasley?" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... him. At once all Obed's most generous sympathies were roused. He took the glass, and eagerly scrutinized the vessel. He recognized it at once, as Windham had, to be an English yacht; he saw also that it was waterlogged, and he saw the figure at the mast. But the figure was no longer standing erect, or waving hands, or making despairing signals. It had fallen, and lay now crouched in a heap at the foot of the mast. This Windham also saw. He conjectured what ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... large scale of the traveling cash-boxes on wires used in large department stores. If a suitable transport had been anchored outside the line of surf, fifty or seventy-five yards from the beach, and a steel cable stretched from it to a strong mast on shore, I do not see any reason why cargo might not have been carried over the cable in a suspended car or cars with much greater rapidity and safety than it was carried in lighters. Such devices ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... high sense which all feel of the loss our country has sustained in the death of this good and great man, the President directs that the vessels of the Navy in our own and foreign ports be put in mourning for one week by wearing their colors half-mast high, and that the officers of the Navy and of the marines wear crape on the left arm below the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... the Princess where she sat High in the hall: above her drooped a lamp, And made the single jewel on her brow Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... one of the most desperate naval fights the world has ever seen. Of the three hundred men on the British flagship not more than five, we are told, escaped uninjured; and at the close there was not left on any one of the eight vessels a mast that could carry sail, or a sail that could render service. In less than two hours and a half the fight was won, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... alone, aloof from the other small craft anchored near the pier. Her mast seemed taller and her lines more graceful silhouetted against the sky, silvered by the moon. It was indeed the witching ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... more loving and tender; she seemed to feel that she mast take his mother's place as well as her own; and it was precisely this sweetness that induced Jack to make greater exertions each day. His bodily frame was in the same condition as that of the Fakirs of India—urged to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... small tree, with a round, straight stem, and began to cut it down. The boys gathered around him, wondering what it could be for. Forester smiled, and worked on in silence, declining to answer any of their questions. Marco said it was for a mast, he knew, but when they asked him where the sail was, he seemed perplexed, and could ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... skins; When, lo! the rescued winds, with boisterous sweep, Roar to the clouds and lash the rocking deep; Heaves the smote vessel in the howling blast, Splits the stretch'd sail, and cracks the tottering mast. Launch'd on a plank, the buoyant hero rides Where ebon Afric stems the sable tides, While his duck'd comrades o'er the ocean fly, And sleep not in ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... boy, reckless and brave, Warm'd by the lighting and lulled by the thunder, Fann'd by the whirlwind and rock'd on the wave; Wildly the winter wind howls round his pillow, Cold on his bosom the spray showers fall; Creaks the strained mast at the rush of the billow, Peaceful he ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. Now and again, too, there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark, and a heavy blow of the ship's bows against the swell: so much heavier weather was made of it by this great rigged ship than by my home-made, lopsided coracle, now gone ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... from New York, Philadelphia, &c.; chebacco-boats from fishing on "Georgis;" and schooner-rigged pilot-boats, darting about under jib and mainsail, and boarding every vessel that carried the star-spangled "jack" at her fore-topgallant-mast head. Nothing could surpass the tranquil life of the scene: more than a hundred vessels, of all descriptions, were gradually but rapidly approaching a common focal point, the narrow entrance of Boston harbor, under the impulse of a fresh breeze ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... for running out warps, or putting a sailor ashore to bring off anything required. The other boats are better suited for a voyage, but they are for the most part too large and heavy to be rowed by two oars and, moreover, they have not a mast and sail on board, as this has. Therefore that is the one that I ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... seabeach, to thee I send these cakes, and the gifts of a scanty sacrifice; for to-morrow I shall cross the broad wave of the Ionian sea, hastening to our Eidothea's arms. But shine thou favourably on my love as on my mast, O Cyprian, mistress of the bride- chamber ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... over-charged. Captain Kitson is no creature of romance, (or was not, we should rather say; for he has long since been gathered to his fathers); but a brave, uneducated man; who during the war had risen from before the mast to the rank of Post Captain. He had fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar, and distinguished himself in many a severe contest on the main during those stirring times, and bore the reputation of a dashing naval officer. At the advanced age of eighty, he retained all his original ignorance ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie |
