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Sail   Listen
noun
Sail  n.  
1.
An extent of canvas or other fabric by means of which the wind is made serviceable as a power for propelling vessels through the water. "Behoves him now both sail and oar."
2.
Anything resembling a sail, or regarded as a sail.
3.
A wing; a van. (Poetic) "Like an eagle soaring To weather his broad sails."
4.
The extended surface of the arm of a windmill.
5.
A sailing vessel; a vessel of any kind; a craft. Note: In this sense, the plural has usually the same form as the singular; as, twenty sail were in sight.
6.
A passage by a sailing vessel; a journey or excursion upon the water. Note: Sails are of two general kinds, fore-and-aft sails, and square sails. Square sails are always bent to yards, with their foot lying across the line of the vessel. Fore-and-aft sails are set upon stays or gaffs with their foot in line with the keel. A fore-and-aft sail is triangular, or quadrilateral with the after leech longer than the fore leech. Square sails are quadrilateral, but not necessarily square. See Phrases under Fore, a., and Square, a.; also, Bark, Brig, Schooner, Ship, Stay.
Sail burton (Naut.), a purchase for hoisting sails aloft for bending.
Sail fluke (Zool.), the whiff.
Sail hook, a small hook used in making sails, to hold the seams square.
Sail loft, a loft or room where sails are cut out and made.
Sail room (Naut.), a room in a vessel where sails are stowed when not in use.
Sail yard (Naut.), the yard or spar on which a sail is extended.
Shoulder-of-mutton sail (Naut.), a triangular sail of peculiar form. It is chiefly used to set on a boat's mast.
To crowd sail. (Naut.) See under Crowd.
To loose sails (Naut.), to unfurl or spread sails.
To make sail (Naut.), to extend an additional quantity of sail.
To set a sail (Naut.), to extend or spread a sail to the wind.
To set sail (Naut.), to unfurl or spread the sails; hence, to begin a voyage.
To shorten sail (Naut.), to reduce the extent of sail, or take in a part.
To strike sail (Naut.), to lower the sails suddenly, as in saluting, or in sudden gusts of wind; hence, to acknowledge inferiority; to abate pretension.
Under sail, having the sails spread.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sail" Quotes from Famous Books



... Queen that sail'st above, Thy dew-tears on the fallen fling,— The blighted wreaths of civil strife, The war that ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... know," said the flight-lieutenant; "I'll have to try to get somewhere. I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're a little ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... was only a frolic, no serious harm could possibly come of it. I would certainly go, now I had gone thus far. What fool idea the girl was bent on I hadn't the least idea; but I easily recognized the folly upon which I was about to set sail. Heigh-ho! What was a lonely young bachelor to do? At the most, they could only ask me to vacate the premises, should I be so unfortunate as to be discovered. In that event, Teddy Hamilton would come to my assistance. . . . She was really beautiful! And then I awoke to the ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... would exhort and stimulate Scipio not to delay. Though driven from his kingdom, he said he would join him with no despicable force of foot and horse. Nor was it right, said he that Laelius should continue in Africa, for he believed that a fleet had set sail from Carthage, with which, in the absence of Scipio, it would not be ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... blooming gardens of Damascus, though they can be found indeed on the map, live much more truly in that enchanted realm that rises o'er "the foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn." What craft can sail those perilous seas like the book that has been called a great three-decker to carry tired people to Islands of the Blest? "The immortal fragment," says Sir Richard Burton, who perhaps knew the Arabian Nights as did no other European, "will never be superseded in the infallible ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... then, word for word, 'I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... for thy lord, or devotion to his daughter—speed swiftly upon my errand. Rest not, halt not, spare not the spur; but hie thee day and night until thou reach the sea; take the first bark, and haste with sail and oar to Ceuta, nor pause until thou give this letter ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... Sail up the river Koksoak. Transactions in that region. Dangerous eddy. Meet Esquimaux. Address to them. Their joy and eagerness to have Missionaries, resident among them. Find a suitable situation for a settlement. Description of ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch

... am called to give a toast, it shall be "Sail-ships; may their shadows never be less!" They are, indeed, a part ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... Aramis, "and the sloop out there making ready to sail must be that which is to take us to our destination; now," continued he, "if only De Winter does not keep us waiting. It is not at all amusing here; there is not ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... marvellous sheath. And when ye have made all this I shall let make a girdle thereto such as shall please me. All this King Solomon did let make as she devised, both the ship and all the remnant. And when the ship was ready in the sea to sail, the lady let make a great bed and marvellous rich, and set her upon the bed's head, covered with silk, and laid the sword at the feet, and the girdles were of hemp, and therewith the king was angry. Sir, wit ye well, said she, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... her designs upon that ear it behooved her to stop talking. Though her little picture was an oval of three inches by four, it had cost her more strokes than any canvas of ten times the size had ever done. And Eleanor was to sail ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... them, while the bird stands upon the ground, suffices to lift its feet clear. Their movements when in the air are very majestic and beautiful to the eye, being in every respect identical with those of our common hen or red-tailed hawk. They sail along in the same calm, effortless, interminable manner, and sweep around in the same ample spiral. The shape of their wings and tail, indeed their entire effect against the sky, except in size and color, is ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... the one side 35 towards the Pontus because of the winds which blow from within outwards, and on the other side, towards the West and the Egean, because of the South-East 36 and South Winds. They left also an opening for a passage through, so that any who wished might be able to sail into the Pontus with small vessels, 37 and also from the Pontus outwards. Having thus done, they proceeded to stretch tight the ropes, straining them with wooden windlasses, not now appointing the two kinds of rope to be used apart from one another, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... turned into Vincent Square, which looked vaster than ever with the murky haze, enclosed by its high railings, and under a wide expanse of steel-blue sky, across which the clouds were driving fast like ships in full sail scudding for harbour before a storm. Against the mist below, the young and nearly leafless trees showed flat, black profiles as of pressed seaweed, and the sky immediately above the house-tops was tinged with a sullen red from miles of lighted ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... sun was throwing exquisite lights across the point, painting the slopes of grass a golden green, and giving a pearly softness to the gray rocks. In the background was drawn the far-off water-line, over which a few specks of sail glimmered against the sky. Miss Ringtop, who, with Eunice, Mallory, and myself, occupied one carriage, expressed her 'gushing' feelings in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... who will work under the direction of Dr. Richard P. Strong of Harvard, now in Europe, sail from New York on their way to Serbia, where they will fight typhus and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Scotland in the west, an Archdeacon, and a knight called Missel,[8] as Envoys from Alexander King of Scotland. They shewed more fair language than truth, as seemed to King Haco. They set out so abruptly on their return, that none wist till they were under sail. The King dispatched Briniolf Johnson in pursuit, and he detained them with him. The King declared that they should remain that winter in Norway, because they had gone away without taking leave, contrary ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson

... we must tread the same road to Heaven—the road of suffering and love. When I myself have reached the port, I will teach you how best to sail the world's tempestuous sea—with the self-abandonment of a child well aware of a father's love, and of his vigilance in the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... the appearance of things, that he amused himself with looking on at Harry in his new character of a lover; and generally once a day, had some little joke at the expense of Elinor's embarrassment. But now, the two months had passed; Harry was to sail the next week for France—and Elinor, the morning after her birth-day, was to give a ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... was there who had found it a fine country and was urging me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. I got a great desire to see it, and in one way and another I raised the money for fare—250 francs—($50) and set sail from the old port of Athens. I got ashore without any trouble in New York, and got work immediately as a push-cart man. Six of us lived together in two rooms down on Washington Street. At the end of our day's work we all divided up our money ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... a sail in the bay, and after we had enjoyed one of those delicious evenings which I think can be found nowhere else—sailing on a mirror silvered by the moon, over which float the odours of the jasmine, the orange-blossom, the pomegranates, the aloes, and all the scented flowers which grow along ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Cove of Cork stretches before them, a sheet of glassy water, dotted with a hundred sail, from the base of the sultry hill faced with terraces and called Queenstown, to the far Atlantic beyond the Heads. Heavy and dark loom the fortified Government buildings of Haulbowline and the prisons of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Horn, the Rhinegrave Otto Lewis, Henry Matthias, Count Thurn, Ottenberg, Baudissen, Banner, Teufel, Tott, Mutsenfahl, Falkenberg, Kniphausen, and other distinguished names. Detained by contrary winds, the fleet did not sail till June, and on the 24th of that month reached the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... with his eyes for a long time in vain. At last he sighted a triangular patch of yellow light on the red background of the cliffs of Tanjong Mirrah. It was the sail of the prau that had caught the sunlight and stood out, distinct with its gay tint, on the dark red of the cape. The yellow triangle crept slowly from cliff to cliff, till it cleared the last point of land and shone brilliantly for a fleeting minute on the blue of the open sea. Then the prau ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... sun rise in a shower of red and gold on a May morning, and then begin a slow and quiet sail up a sky of silky blue. It even touched the gloomy shades of the Wilderness with golden gleams, and shy little flowers of purple, nestling in the scant grass, held up their heads to the glow. From the window ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... over a troubled sea, or like those sudden sunsets after a storm, which not only control the wave, but gild the leaden mass with crimson and unexpected gold, whose brightness may reach some storm-driven sail, giving it the light of hope, bringing the ship to a well-defined and hospitable shore, and regulating, with a new attraction, the lately distracted compass. Therefore, we do not hesitate to say that the philosophy, and the creed, and the manners ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... new objects enchain the attention. All rapid motion is exhilarating alike to mind and body; and in reading Cooper's novels we feel a pleasure analogous to that which stirs the blood when we drive a fast horse or sail with a ten-knot breeze. This fruitfulness in the invention of incidents is nearly as important an element in the composition of a novelist as a good voice in that of a singer. A powerful work of fiction may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... quoth the Shipman, "of five islands, with the inhabitants of which I do trade. In each year my good ship doth sail over every one of the ten courses depicted thereon, but never may she pass along the same course twice in any year. Is there any among the company who can tell me in how many different ways I may direct the Magdalen's ten yearly voyages, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... adroitly put upon his plate a portion of some dish he seemed to like; had he been a gourmand, she would almost have killed him; but what a delightful specimen of the attentions she would show to a husband! She did not commit the folly of depreciating herself; on the contrary, she set every sail bravely, ran up all her flags, assumed the bearing of the queen of Alencon, and boasted of her excellent preserves. In fact, she fished for compliments in speaking of herself, for she saw that she pleased the viscount; the truth being that her eager ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... The great Auditorium building loomed up before them, with the Art Gallery on their right and the Columbus statue on their left. Under them trains were gliding by like long serpents, and out in the lake fleet steamers and sail-boats loaded with people were moving about like white spots on the blue waters. Uncle and Johnny passed along the sidewalk in front of the hotel when something at the corner caught their attention, and they came up for a moment to look at it. Two or three men ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... perspective diagram of a kite. The sail of each box measures from top to bottom one-sixth the total circumference of the box, or, to express the matter differently, each face of the box is half as long again as its depth. The distance separating the boxes is equal to the depth of ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... Hand. With some strength in other suits, one Royal is his bid, unless his cards justify him in telling the Dealer that, in spite of the announced long, weak Spades, the combined hands are apt to sail more smoothly and on more peaceful seas to the port called "Game" by the No-trump than ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... pleasant country, and would doubtless have made the Indies, if our ships had not grown foul and our crews mutinous from fear of the unknown. It is clear to me that we must establish a port of victualling in that southern Africa before we can sail ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... by which a ship deviates from the line of her course towards the right or left in steering.' Falconer's Marine Dictionary. The meaning seems to be that the inventorial description could not overtake his merits, because it would yaw—keep turning out of the direct line of their quick sail. But Hamlet is set on using far-fetched and absurd forms and phrases to the non-plussing of Osricke, nor cares much to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... higher life. They have, all, their gambols; all, their sober cares and labors. The lambs are sporting on the green knoll; the anxious dams are bleating to recall them to their side. The citizen beaver is building his house by a laborious carpentry; the squirrel is lifting his sail to the wind on the swinging top of the tree. In the music of the morning, he hears the birds playing with their voices, and when the day is up, sees them sailing round in circles on the upper air, as skaters on a lake, folding their wings, dropping and rebounding, as if to see what sport they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... arm, and Millicent, standing in the picture gallery, noticed their return. She suspected that this was the result of some manoeuvre of Mrs. Keith's intended for her advantage, and tried to summon her resolution. The man she loved would sail next day, believing that his poverty and the stain he had not earned must stand between them, unless she could force herself to give him a hint to the contrary. This was the only sensible course, but she ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... see Chauvelin. Our Dutch Allies, however, were by no means ready. The separate Admiralties of the Dutch Provinces had not enough men to equip, still less to man, their ships; and almost their only defence lay in a British squadron which set sail for Flushing on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the daily paths of life, Mixed in their pleasures, shared their hopes and fears For two long happy years, to turn and doom Their city to ruin, and their wives and children To the insolence of rapine? Nay, I dare not. I will sail at once, and get me gone for ever. I will not tell my love that I am bound By her father's jealous fancies to return To Bosphorus no more. To break my oath! That were to break it only in the word, But keep it in the spirit. Surely Heaven ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... waifs that haply meet to part again upon the waves of time, but rather like two happy children playing King and Queen, drifting in a golden boat along the crystal stream of life, never so much as touching on a shoal, but gliding on, sometimes plying silver oars, and sometimes spreading a purple sail to catch the sandal-scented breeze that blows from Malaya loaded with the lazy odour of the South, letting all the hours slip past us unperceived, till we float away together into the open ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... diddle, indeed, is this. The captain of a ship, which is about to sail, is presented by an official looking person with an unusually moderate bill of city charges. Glad to get off so easily, and confused by a hundred duties pressing upon him all at once, he discharges the claim forthwith. In about fifteen minutes, another and less reasonable bill is handed him ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that I was abjectly afraid. I declared that I would go no farther. I threatened in my terror to cut the sheet of the sail. I attacked the Professor with considerable acrimony, calling him foolhardy, mad, I know not what. He ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... sail as the tide served, some time before sunrise, the passengers were advised to seek their berths at an early hour. Thirty minutes before the steamship entered the danger zone (as she would soon after leaving the harbour) ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... Cobham Hall. When Dickens sat at his desk in a room of the chalet, "up among the branches of the trees", the five mirrors which he had put in reflected "the leaves quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river". The birds and butterflies flew in and out, the green branches shot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds and the scent of flowers and of everything growing for miles had the same free access. No imaginative artist, whether in words ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... prayer, Then spread his wings of gilded blue, And on to the elfin court he flew; As ever ye saw a bubble rise, And shine with a thousand changing dyes, Till lessening far through ether driven, It mingles with the hues of heaven: As, at the glimpse of morning pale, The lance-fly spreads his silken sail, And gleams with blendings soft and bright, Till lost in the shades of fading night; So rose from earth the lovely Fay— So vanished, ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... their departure. They were to sail on the very day after Alaric's liberation, so as to save him from the misery of meeting those who might know him. And now Harry came with Mrs. Woodward to bid farewell, probably for ever on this side the grave, to her whom he had once ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... the familiar surroundings of the stateroom of a steamer. On a couch opposite sat a man, half undressed for bed, reading a book. I recognized the face of my friend Gordon Doyle, whom I had met in Liverpool on the day of my embarkation, when he was himself about to sail on the steamer City of Prague, on which he had urged ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld; Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Sarah; "only I wish you'd hurry and get through, so we can go down to the swamp and sail. Couldn't you ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... and painful trouble Shall I be encompassed, if I go too near the Iernian Islands. For unless, by bending within the holy headland, I sail within the bays of the land, and the barren sea, I shall go outward into the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... enthusiastic vivacity that cheered the irrepressible Ardan, I cannot exactly say. But certainly they were all soon talking over the matter as calmly as you or I would discuss the advisability of taking a sail on the lake ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... ship, the Connemara, on a single whaling cruise on the coast of Peru. The first slight signs of a gale, seen only by the careful skipper. The hasty preparations for it: all hands to shorten sail; then the moaning of the wind high up in the sky. All hands to reef sail now—the whirl and whoo of the gale as it came down on them. The ship careening as it caught her, the speaking-trumpet—the captain howling his orders ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... uncle's mating impulse, he had mentally embroidered the bare instinct with some of the idealism in which his own emotion was clothed. His imagination pictured Cyrus and Belinda starting as light-hearted adventurers to sail the chartless seas of romance. What remained of their gallant ship to-day except a stark and battered hulk wrecked on the pitiless rocks of the actuality? A month ago that marriage had seemed merely ridiculous to ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... day betid somewhat of new tidings; for scarce was this isle out of sight behind, ere we saw a boat come sailing toward us from the north-east, and it came on swiftly with a blue ripple of the lake behind it. Thereat we marvelled, and yet more when we saw that its sail was striped of gold and green and black; next then were we betwixt fear and joy when, as it drew nigher, we saw three women in the said boat, clad in gold, green, and black; and it came so nigh unto us at last, that we could see their faces that they were verily those of ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... from the moon; for her talk runs upon golden castles, crystal domes, and Heaven knows what extravagances beside. What, however, she related with most distinctness was this: that while she was once taking a sail with her mother on the great lake, she fell out of the boat into the water; and that when she first recovered her senses, she was here under our trees, where the gay scenes of the shore filled ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... sit with their faces in the direction in which the canoe is going, "dig" in their paddles, send the water flying behind them, and forward the canoe shoots at the rate of seven miles an hour. They have always a sail for their canoe, as well as paddles, to take advantage of a fair wind. The sail is triangular, and made of matting. When set, the base is up, and the apex down, quite the reverse of what we see in some other islands. The mat sails, however, are giving place to cloth ones, made ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... uncle, But none came, and Tuesday morning distressed Mrs. Pritchard with its want of amendment. It was not to be hoped for, Fleda knew, while this fearful watching lasted. Her uncle might not have seen the advertisement—he might not have got her letter—he might be even then setting sail to quit home forever. And she could do nothing but wait. Her nerves were alive to every stir; every touch of the bell made her tremble; it was impossible to read, to lie down, to be quiet or still anywhere. She had set the glass of expectancy for one thing in the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... birds still held their flight, circling with heavy wings about the spot, struggling at times against the torrent of wind, and then favoured by their position and height, making bold swoops upon the thicket, away from which, however, they never failed to sail, screaming in terror, as if apprised, either by sight or instinct, that the hour of their voracious dominion ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Ind was the land of Nubia, and therein reigned King Melchior, in the time that Christ was born. Therein also is the land of Araby, in which is the hill Sinai: and a man may lightly sail by the Red Sea out of Egypt and Syria into Ind. In this land is found gold wonderfully red, like thin and small roots, and that gold is the best that is in the world. Herein is also a hill called Bena, where is found a precious stone, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... and gulfs. Then turned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with the stream and against the stream, stopped it in his course, guided it with one hand, and with the other laid hard about him with a huge great oar, hoisted the sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds, ran upon the edge of the decks, set the compass in order, tackled the bowlines, and steered the helm. Coming out of the water, he ran furiously up against a hill, and with the same alacrity and swiftness ran down again. He climbed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Dominions. They arrive at Arrepa Fort. The Author Travelled a Nights in these Woods without fear, and slept securely. Entertained very kindly by the Dutch. Sent to Manaar, Received there by the Captain of the Castle, Who intended they should Sail the next day to Jafnipatan to the Governor. They meet here with a Scotch and Irish Man. The People Flock to see them. They are ordered a longer stay. They Embark ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... the new tenderfoot scout presently, after he had stood there, conjuring up his thoughts; "I remember that you told them something before we set sail on our trip." ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... coast of Africa, though guinea-fowls do so. Guinea-pigs really come from Brazil. The name guinea-pig was given to these little animals because, when the sailors brought them home, people thought they had come from Africa. But in the seventeenth century a common voyage for ships was to sail from English or other European ports to the west coast of Africa, where bands of poor negroes were seized or bought, and carried over the Atlantic to be sold as slaves in the American "plantations." The ships naturally did not come home empty, but often people were not ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... sight as daylight grew stronger was enough to make the stoutest heart, ignorant landsman's or practised seaman's, quail. A whole fleet—great line-of-battle ships, a crowd of transports under sail and steam—lay at the mercy of the gale, which increased every moment in force and fury. The waves rose with the wind, and the white foam of "stupendous" breakers angrily lashed the ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... best, which let us man With mariners expert, who, rowing forth 410 Swiftly, shall summon our companions home. Scarce had he said, when turning where he sat, Amphinomus beheld a bark arrived Just then in port; he saw them furling sail, And seated with their oars in hand; he laugh'd Through pleasure at that sight, and thus he spake. Our message may be spared. Lo! they arrive. Either some God inform'd them, or they saw, Themselves, the vessel of Telemachus Too swiftly ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... Breaking free for a moment from the vice-like grip of the other, Jasper leapt with the spring of a panther at one of the sails of the windmill as it came round, and was whirled upwards; with the spring of another panther, Andrew leapt on to the next sail and was whirled after him. At that moment the wind dropped, and the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... were, roaming in the forests and sailing on the mill pond. One day, when there were no boys at hand and several girls were impatiently waiting for a sail on a raft, my sister and I volunteered to man the expedition. We always acted on the assumption that what we had seen done, we could do. Accordingly we all jumped on the raft, loosened it from its moorings, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... expected in these slow-moving lands, when they were brought to the abruptest conclusion. On the 24th Sept. a letter from the Commodore of the station informed me that I had been appointed H. M.'s Commissioner to Dahome, and that, unless I could at once sail in H.M.S. "Griffon," no other opportunity would be found for some time. The only step left was to apply for a canoe, and, after a kindly farewell to my excellent host, I left Boma on the evening of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... wish you wouldn't be so silly. The idea of me sailing without my trunks! Why don't you ask me to sail ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... wide, and in none more than two, it wound in and out, up and down, this way and that. For a hundred feet we were dead against the wind, then a sharp turn sent us spinning along before it, when, standing up, I held the waterproof in my outstretched arms as a sail. Each bend of the shore was so abrupt that the impetus of turning drove the canoe half a length into the long grass, and it was with some difficulty backed out. We were cut off from our companions' canoe, but could see their heads apparently ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... multiplied to about sixteen. Nothing is, in my opinion, so favorable to the display of beauty as a ball. A state of rest is ungraceful; all nature is most beautiful in motion; trees agitated by the wind, a ship under sail, a horse in the course, a fine woman dancing: never any human being had such an aversion to still ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... grey seas that tossed between, dissevering the ancient and gigantic continent from the tiny motherland, unsettling rumours ran. After close on forty years' fat peace, England had armed for hostilities again, her fleet set sail for a foreign sea. Such was the news the sturdy clipper-ships brought out, in tantalising fragments; and those who, like Richard Mahony, were mere birds-of-passage in the colony, and had friends and relatives going to the front, caught hungrily at every detail. But to the majority of the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... bastions drifted Of piled eternities of ice and snow; Where storms, like ploughmen, go, Ploughing the deeps with awful hurricane; Where, spouting icy rain, The huge whale wallows; and through furious hail Th' explorer's tattered sail Drives like the wing of some terrific bird, Where wreck and famine herd.— Home of the red Auroras and the gods! He who profanes thy perilous threshold,—where The ancient centuries lair, And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,— Let him beware! Lest, coming on that hoary presence there, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... fourteenth the young couple set sail for the land of the Southern Cross, and were absent exactly twelve months, the reason for their return being that they wished their first-born child to see the light first in Bourhill. And they never ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... sat herself down and threw her white handkerchief over her head, letting it flutter in the wind. One of the crew asked her why she did so, and she replied that the servant in the castle had been tormenting her, saying that she would never dare to sail to Gorcum in such tempestuous weather, and she was now signalling him that she had been as good as her word. Whereupon she continued to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... certainty whether the ocean they observed was a sea or a vast lake, it was often called "The Sea of Darkness." A friend of the Latin poet, Ovid, describing the first approach to this sea, says that as you sail out upon it the day itself vanishes, and the world soon ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... idea, too," exclaimed Tommy. "We'll go to Katalla, and perhaps we can find a boat about ready to sail for Cordova. In that case we ought to get up to the wireless station and back in a couple of days. The distance isn't great, but ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... European trip was indefinitely postponed, but the family were going for a shorter jaunt to Bermuda. Caroline begged Eleanor to join them. "You can come as well as not," she urged. "You know your father would let you—he always does. And we sail the very first day of your ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... run over the Rock of Gibraltar with the monkeys; or, at another time, seated on a little bench in the chimney corner, when the fire blazed up well, before the candles were lighted, to forget the kitchen, and the supper, and her bustling aunt, and sail round the world with Captain Cook. Yes these things were all the sweeter for ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... so situated that we might work it for a year without being discovered. Meanwhile, by making frequent trips to Ballarat and Bendigo, you could sell a great deal of my gold along with such as we may earn. Then I should sail for England, taking with me as much gold as I could safely handle, leaving you to sell more, and eventually join me with the remainder. In this way we can, if we choose, rid ourselves of three hundred thousand pounds' worth without ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... fifth day," he wrote, "we were left behind by a full-rigged English ship ... bound round the Horn, we have not spied a sail, nor a land bird, nor a shred of sea-weed. In impudent isolation, the toy schooner has plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help; now to the sound of slatting ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... ample quantity of ammunition to the Asiatic squadron and providing it with coal; getting the battle-ships and the armored cruisers on the Atlantic into one squadron, both to train them in manoeuvring together, and to have them ready to sail against either the Cuban or the Spanish coasts; gathering the torpedo-boats into a flotilla for practice; securing ample target exercise, so conducted as to raise the standard of our marksmanship; gathering in the small ships from European and South American ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... what I cannot of myself discover. Therefore I deepened over her mind the spells I command; therefore I have drawn her hither as the loadstone draws the steel, and therefore I would have borne her with me to the shores to which I was about this night to sail. I had cast the inmates of the house and all around it into slumber, in order that none might witness her departure; had I not done so, I should have summoned others to my aid, in ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... independence—of getting away from advice and restraint, and of earning money for herself. In London more than in the country, girls go off and engage themselves as servants or in some other capacity, and so start alone in the world like little boats putting out on a stormy sea without sail or oar, rudder or compass. And many, many are wrecked on the first rock; and many go through wild tempests and suffer terrible hardships. A few battle through the winds and waves ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison

... contrast with her father's shabby dwelling an abode of wealth and plenty like Mansfield Park, arranged that she should accompany her brother back to Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her own family. Within four days from their arrival William had to sail; and Fanny could not conceal it from herself that the home he had left her in was, in almost every respect, the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder and impropriety. Nobody was in his right place; nothing was done as it ought to be. She could ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... when the "King's Own" was finished, I was as happy as a pedestrian who had accomplished his thousand miles in a thousand hours. My voluntary slavery was over, and I was emancipated. Where was I then? I recollect; within two days' sail of the Lizard, returning home, after a six weeks' cruise to discover a rock in the Atlantic, which never existed except in the terrified or intoxicated noddle of some master of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... lot—there peeped a wish— To hand a pilot's oar and sail, Or haul the dripping moonlit mesh Spangled with herring-scale: By dying stars how sweet 'twould be, And dawn-blow freshening the sea, With weary, cheery pull to shore To gain my cottage-home once more, And meet, before I reached the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of this miracle, but in Majorcan verse, in a primitive romance that breathed the simple confidence of centuries which clung trustfully to the marvelous. The saint, having embarked on his mantle, set up his staff for a mast and his hood for a sail; then a wind from heaven blew upon the strange vessel; in a few hours the servant of the Lord sailed from Majorca to Barcelona; the lookout at Montjuich announced with a flag the apparition of the prodigious craft, the bells of Seo rang, and the merchants rushed down to the sea-wall ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... are all leaving England? Five of the Chinese sail with the P. and O. boat to-night. Ali Khan goes to-morrow, and Rama Dass, with Miguel, and the Andaman. I meet them at ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... day, yer come Brer Fox creepin' up, en he went en push on de do' easy, en de do' open, en he see sump'n' w'ite on de bed w'ich he took fer Miss Goose, en he grab it en run. 'Bout dat time Mr. Dog sail out fum und' de house, he did, en ef Brer Fox had n't er drapt de cloze, he'd er got kotch. Fum dat, wud went 'roun' dat Brer Fox bin tryin' ter steal Miss Goose cloze, en he come mighty nigh losin' his stannin' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... expected y' would. Blaze away. Your privilege—my bad luck. Sail in ol' man. What's y'r objection ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... and Calais was to be the base of an invasion of France over soil worn by the tramp of English troops. In March, 1513, Henry, to whom the navy was a weapon, a plaything, a passion, watched his fleet sail down the Thames; its further progress was told him in letters from its gallant admiral, Sir Edmund Howard, who had been strictly charged to inform the King of the minutest details in the behaviour of every one of the ships.[127] Never had such a display of naval force left ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... out of a black sky like a blown candle and the sea began to whip itself to a froth. The wind quickened, boomed to a roar, and sent the schooner heeling to a squall across the leaden waters. The open sea closed in on them. Before they could get in sail and make secure the sheets ripped with a scream, braces parted and the topmasts snapped off. The Nancy went pitching forward into the yawning deeps with drunken plunges from which it seemed she would never emerge. Great combing seas toppled down and pounded the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... dat you be so solky, and no take notice of your goot friends?—Come, Sare, shew your politesse, and salute de genteelmens at de window, who so kind as come to look at you.—Make way dere, goot peoples and leetel childer, dat de genteelmens sail see,—dat vill do. Now, sare, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... the giant in the turban, with his companion, strode rapidly by, apparently not deigning to look at us, and disappeared in the village. He was scarcely out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a curiously mottled sail. As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel, apparently of flour, a stout young fellow pulled a pair of oars, and a slender-waisted damsel, neatly ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... property, while the black children added to a planter's estate. White servants gave you trouble, and in four or seven years at most their time expired, and you had to break in new ones. But still, if he could pick up a fellow that would know how to sail his sloop in a pinch, he ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... capacity for carrying deemed the sine qua non. Now, speed is the object; and it has been proved, that in making quick trips, with a lesser cargo, in suitable seasons, the advantage is greater than in freighting larger vessels, that in consequence of their greater capacity sail slower. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... in which he states that he had sailed from Amsterdam in a Dutch vessel; was taken by the French, and retaken by the English; had arrived at Demarara in the ship Hope; and should he not soon hear from his mother, would return to Europe with a fleet which was shortly to sail under convoy. Mrs. Graham notices this event ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... morning sky had been (like the miller's wedded life) without a cloud. The day had been sultry, for the time of year unseasonably so. And, just when the miller most grudged an idle day, when times were hard, when he was in debt,—for some small matters, as well as the sail business,—and when, for the first time in his life, he felt almost afraid of his own hearthstone, and would fain have been busy at his trade, not a breath of wind had there been to turn the sails of the mill. Not a waft to cool his perplexed forehead, not breeze enough to ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... man had said in the Y.M.C.A. hut on the night before they set sail for France. He had told the soldiers that they needed a personal Saviour, and that that Saviour was ever waiting, ever watching, to give them help; that He would be near all those who stretched out their lame hands of faith towards Him, and help them, strengthen them, comfort them. ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... fate filled Kerns with a pleasure bordering upon melancholy. It was his work; he had done it; it was good for Gatewood too—time for him to stop his irresponsible cruise through life, lower sail, heave to, set his signals, and turn over matters to this ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything that ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... and now we pause, Though not for want of matter; but 't is time According to the ancient epic laws, To slacken sail, and anchor with our rhyme. Let this fifth canto meet with due applause, The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime; Meanwhile, as Homer sometimes sleeps, perhaps You 'll pardon to my muse a few ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... the Blanco Encalada, that there was great excitement prevailing aboard that ship; for the fleet had received orders to sail, that very day, for the port of Arica, and the squadron was only waiting for Commodore Riveros, who had superseded Rebolledo Williams, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... take New Orleans and on the 18th of April the Union ships began to bombard the forts. The Confederates replied fiercely, and for four days the sky seemed ablaze and the earth shook. Then having succeeded in cutting the chain across the river Farragut determined to sail past the fort and take ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... able to enjoy the festa with his family; the command being taken by the mate, a sailor of limited experience in those waters. The engineers were English or Scotch, the chief being one of the Blairs. What with the Christmas festivities and the customary dawdling, we did not sail till 10 P.M., instead of at 10 A.M., and, to make up for the delay, the commander pro tem. made a straight course for the port of Argostoli in Cephalonia, our next stopping place. We made the island about 10 A.M. of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... friend of his to dine with us," said his mother. "I saw him gallop off half an hour ago. We are going to be very quiet to-day that you may have a chance to rest; tomorrow guests have been invited to meet you. Stephen thought that this evening you might like a sail,—unless you have had too much of the water?" And she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... release was effected, and a safe voyage home given. And once more he sets sail upon the Rhine. The maiden, still watching beneath the vines, sees at last the object of all this patient love approach—approach, but not to touch the strand to which she, with outstretched arms, has rushed. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... persuaded to participate. Captain Asher C. Baker, Director of the Division of Exhibits, was sent on a special mission to France, sailing from New York early in November. The United States collier "Jason" was then preparing to sail from New York with Christmas presents for the children in the war zone, and the secretary of the navy had arranged with the Exposition authorities that, on the return trip, the ship should be used to carry exhibits from Europe. The first plan was that the exhibits should come only from the ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... quartered in the Suburb in great numbers. As for the new Government, it is easily seen who is at the head of it. There is a Doge, to be sure, but his orders come all from Paris. While we were waiting there expecting a ship to sail to Barcelona, the Medusa, English Frigate, came in, and amongst its passengers who came with her we found a Cambridge acquaintance, who advised us to go without delay to Leghorn as the Spanish Squadron was waiting ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... principal squadron, which, under the command of the praefect Asclepiodatus, an officer of distinguished merit, had been assembled in the north of the Seine. So imperfect in those times was the art of navigation, that orators have celebrated the daring courage of the Romans, who ventured to set sail with a side-wind, and on a stormy day. The weather proved favorable to their enterprise. Under the cover of a thick fog, they escaped the fleet of Allectus, which had been stationed off the Isle of Wight to receive them, landed in safety on some part of the western ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... table, then he collapsed into a nearby chair. He had just enough presence of mind left to send her for the bottle of blood-restorer pills, and just enough strength left to swallow several of them when she brought it. Then he boarded the phantom ship that had mysteriously appeared beside him and set sail upon ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young

... sprang at once like cats to their stations, and the immense lateen sail was trimmed over on the other tack with an amount of alacrity which showed how intense was their relief at finding somebody on board ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail. The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over 1860 yards, but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year in which the Fall was for the first time carefully ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... the port upon the application of a British subject, who alleged that he had been informed that the Bermuda was carrying contraband to the Transvaal. After a detention of five days the ship was allowed to sail because it was not shown that the allegation had any foundation ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell

... to quiver, the eyes to fill with tears; her girlish figure suddenly collapsed and sank upon the ground as the sail of a vessel falls to the deck when a sudden blast of wind ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... navigator of the 16th century, is known only in connexion with the expedition to the coast of California, of which he was leader. He set sail on the 9th of May 1540 with orders from the Spanish court to await at a certain point on the coast the arrival of an expedition by land under the command of Vasquez de Coronado. The junction was not effected, though Alarcon reached the appointed place ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia



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