"Cordage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crept slowly over. The sea, unbroken by foam or ripple, shone like a broad blue mirror, reflecting here and there some fleecy patches of snow-white cloud as they stood unmoved in the sky. The good ship rocked to and fro with a heavy and lumbering motion, the cordage rattled, the bulkheads creaked, the sails flapped lazily against the masts, the very sea-gulls seemed to sleep as they rested on the long swell that bore them along, and everything in sea and sky bespoke the calm. No sailor trod the deck; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... frequently moored for the night off his island, and partook of such entertainment as he could supply. He sent his fish to market when he caught more than he could consume, and he and his children made ropes and cordage, for which also he had a ready sale on the river. Pending this communication, he prepared me a substantial supper, to which I did ample justice, and then shewed me, at my request, to a small, neat chamber, where I sought and found the repose I ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... Bering's Island and elsewhere, induced private parties to go in search of profit. Various expeditions were fitted out in ships of clumsy construction and bad sailing qualities. The timbers were fastened with wooden pins and leathern thongs, and the crevices were caulked with moss. Occasionally the cordage was made from reindeer skins, and the sails from the same material. Many ships were wrecked, but this did not ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Indians from the surrounding districts, who though skilful and intelligent were excessively lazy. Whilst the Thetis was being sheathed, and the extensive repairs necessary to the Esperance were being carried out, the clerks and officers were at Manilla, seeing about the supply of provisions and cordage. The latter, which was made of "abaca," the fibre of a banana, vulgarly called "Manilla hemp," although recommended on account of its great elasticity, was not of much use on board ship. The delay at Manilla was rendered very disagreeable by earthquakes and typhoons, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is as calm as Pecksniff, saving for his knitted brows now turning into cordage over Little Dorrit. The theatre has disappeared, the house is restored to its usual conditions of order, the family are tranquil and domestic, dove-eyed peace is enthroned in this study, fire-eyed radicalism ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest,— Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early rope-makers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were twisting themselves into cordage. But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful.... Then the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers of ships, that we had had ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... to the contrary, but that it will grow there excellent well; and by planting will be yeelded plentifully: seeing there is so much ground whereof some may well be applyed to such purposes. What benefite heereof may growe in cordage and linnens ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... air, hardens, and can be drawn out into the slender threads we know as cobweb. The silkworm encases its body with a mile or more of gleaming silk, but there its usefulness is ended as far as the silkworm is concerned. But spiders have found a hundred uses for their cordage, some of which are ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... forward to be free of the sail and its tackling. Courtney, wrapped in his extra, his fur-lined coat, pointing to a low folding-chair for Lefevre, threw himself on a heap of cordage. He looked around and above him, at the rippling, flashing water and the black hulls of ships, and at the serene, starlit ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... and forms also a large article of export to Europe. The fibrous and uneatable rind of the fruit is not only used to polish furniture and to scour the floors of rooms, but is manufactured into a kind of cordage, (Koir) which is nearly equal in strength to hemp, and which Roxburgh designates as the very best of all materials for cables, on account of its great elasticity and strength. The sap of this as well as of other palms is found to be the simplest and easiest remedy that can ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Wilbur released the brake and turned about for the next order, he cast his glance out upon the bay, and there, not a hundred and fifty yards away, her spotless sails tense, her cordage humming, her immaculate flanks slipping easily through the waves, the water hissing and churning under her forefoot, clean, gleaming, dainty, and aristocratic, the Ridgeways' yacht "Petrel" passed like a thing of life. Wilbur saw Nat Ridgeway ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... without the boiler. Why, then, is Girlhood so prodigal of its health and strength? Why does it imprison itself in close, hot rooms? Why live on a diet that no brute could bear? Why confine every limb and muscle of its body? Why engirdle its waist in warmth and cordage, and expose its feet to every storm and frost, to mud and snow? It is useless to talk, and preach, and write about the value of a good character unless we couple it with an equally earnest lesson about ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... fro with gigantic ungainliness in the strong breeze. It was only a small balloon, as balloons are measured, but it seemed monstrous as it wavered over the human forms that were agitating themselves beneath it. The cordage was silhouetted against the yellow taffetas as high up as the widest diameter of the balloon, but above that all was vague, and even spectators standing at a distance could not clearly separate the summit of the great sphere from the darkly moving sky. The car, held by ropes ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... necessary to take upon myself such investigation; it is however possible that we might have patched these up, so as to reach Rio de Janeiro, had not the running rigging been as rotten as the masts, and we had no spare cordage on board. The state of the provisions, however, rendered a direct return to Rio de Janeiro out of the question, the good provisions on board being little more than sufficient for a week's ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... occasion to thinke all cost and labour well bestowed. For it is very certaine, that there is one seat fit for fortification, of great safety, wherein those commodities following, especially are to be had, that is to say, Grapes for wine, Whales for oyle, Hempe for cordage, and other necccessary things, and fish of farre greater sise and plenty, then that of Newfound land, and of all these so great store, as may suffice to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... yields native grain so well. The rock seen uppermost is often a ferruginous conglomerate, lying on granite rocks. The gum-copal tree is here a mere bush, and no digging takes place for the gum: it is called Mchenga, and yields gum when wounded, as also bark, cloth, and cordage when stripped. Mountain masses are all around us; we ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... an hour later they heard a boat come alongside, and the voices of the sailors. Then they heard the creaking of cordage as the sails were let fall in readiness for a start. Half an hour later another boat came alongside. There was a trampling of feet on the deck above them, and the bey's voice giving orders. A few minutes later the anchor was raised, there was more talking on deck, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... with a sort of fierce sobbing groan, wrung from the very depths of his despairing grief, he turned resolutely away, and sprang off the vessel. Standing at the extreme edge of the pier, he let slip the last rope that bound her,—her sails filled and bulged outward,—her cordage creaked, she shuddered on the water—lurched a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... thus:—Unknown "To me, what deity before us stands, "But sure I am, that form conceals a god. "O thou! whoe'er thou art, assist us;—aid "Our undertakings;—who have seiz'd thee, spare, "Unknowing what they did. Bold Dictys cries,— "Than whom none swifter gain'd the topmost yards, "Nor on the cordage slid more agile down;— "Prayers offer not for us. Him Lybis joins; "And brown Melanthus, ruler of the helm; "Alcimedon unites; Epopeus too, "Who rul'd the rowers, and their restings mark'd; "(Arduous they urg'd their sinews by his voice)— ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... 'chute opening on the deck of the Penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a spliced beryllium plumb line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than two hundred feet of gleaming metal cordage. ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... bows, deluging us fore and aft, nearly filling the main-deck, and washing the carpenters away from their half-completed work. A second and a third followed, rolling aft, so as to almost bury the vessel, sweeping away the men who clung to the cordage and guns, and ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... on a boulder. Among the pines it was already dusk, and the air seemed filled with a grey mist, but this was caused by the innumerable dry wiry twigs which fringed the lower branches of the trees with webs of fine cordage; and when a ray of the setting sun struck through the pine trunks, it lit up the bracken with emerald and brightened the ruddy scales of the pine bark to red gold. Here it was dry and sheltered, with the thick carpet of pine-needles underfoot ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... and they proceeded to Baltimore, dragging the wreck behind them, to be repaired there. Here young Crockett was amazed at the aspect of civilization which was opened before him. He wandered along the wharves gazing bewildered upon the majestic ships, with their towering masts, cordage, and sails, which he saw floating there He had never conceived of such fabrics before. The mansions, the churches, the long lines of brick stores excited his amazement. It seemed to him that he had been suddenly introduced into a sort of fairy-land. All thoughts of home ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... of the numerous river depredators, of which I may hereafter speak. A mudlarker was a man who had an old boat, generally sold by some merchant vessel, furnished with an iron bar full of hooks, which was lowered down by a rope to catch pieces of cordage, oakum, canvas or other articles, which might fall overboard from the numerous vessels in the river; these were sold to the marine stores, such as were kept by old Nanny. But, as I observed, this was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands." The carnage was terrific. Twice the Danish flagship took fire, and out of a crew of 336 no fewer than 270 were dead or wounded. Two of the Danish prams drifted from the line, mere wrecks, with cordage in rags, bulwarks riddled, guns dismounted, and decks ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... to draw 2-1/2 feet water. Carpenters tools, including hatchets and long saws. Iron work and nails. Pitch and oakum. Cordage rigging, and sails. 2 Boat compasses. 2 Spying-glasses for day or night. 2 Small union flags. 6 Dark lanterns. 2 Tons of Carolina rice. Cooking utensils. ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... slowly, majestically on the ground swell of the Pacific, the water hissing and boiling under her forefoot, her cordage vibrating and droning in the steady rush of the trade winds. It was drawing towards evening and her lights had just been set. The master passed Presley, who was leaning over the rail smoking a cigarette, and paused ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... within the smallest compass. [16] I need scarce remind you (he said, continuing his narrative) what a vast amount of wooden spars and cables [17] a ship depends on in order to get to moorings; or again, in putting out to sea; [18] you know the host of sails and cordage, rigging [19] as they call it, she requires for sailing; the quantity of engines and machinery of all sorts she is armed with in case she should encounter any hostile craft; the infinitude of arms she carries, with her crew of fighting men aboard. Then all the vessels and ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... gone from thence towards Panama; whom our General still pursued, and by the way met with a bark laden with ropes and tackle for ships, which he boarded and searched, and found in her 80 lb. weight of gold, and a crucifix of gold with goodly great emeralds set in it, which he took, and some of the cordage also for his own ship. From hence we departed, still following the Cacafuego; and our General promised our company that whosoever should first descry her should have his chain of gold for his good news. It fortuned that John Drake, going up into the top, descried her about three ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... courser part of the said wool, they make felt to couer their houses and their chests, and for their bedding also. [Sidenote: Great expense of wooll.] Of the same wool, being fixed with one third part of horse haire, they make all their cordage. They make also of the said felt couerings for their stooles, and caps to defende their heads from the weather: for all which purposes they spend a great quantity of their wooll. And thus much concerning the attyre of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... structure would be destroyed, and their screams and cries on quitting it were truly heartrending. Solomon Eagle was the last to go forth, and he delayed his departure till the flames burst through the windows. Another great storehouse of oil, tar, cordage, hemp, flax, and other highly inflammable articles, adjoining the church, had caught fire, and the flames speedily reached the sacred fabric. The glass within the windows was shivered; the stone bars split asunder; and the seats and other woodwork withinside ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... several specimens for inspection, and, on trial, by some flax-dressers among us, the threads produced from them, though coarse, are pronounced to be stronger, more likely to be durable, and fitter for every purpose of manufacturing cordage, than any ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... of the shore between the Heads, was strewed with her contents. I never witnessed so total a wreck in so short a space of time. The violence of the surf had completely beaten her sides out, leaving stem and stern hanging together as by a thread, while her ribs and broken cordage and sails, completed the picture, had any thing been wanting to perfect it. I could moralize any day on a single bit of plank on a shore—each fragment seems to tell its tale, and awakens a train of thoughts and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... have been very deficient in judgment to have acted as he did. He had everything to his hand—the means—the men to build the boats—provisions, arms, sails, and cordage, and yet he threw all these chances away, and attempted to do what ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... West Bay, where the railway terminates. The church of St Mary is a handsome cruciform Perpendicular building. The harbour is accessible only to small vessels. There is some import trade in flax, timber and coal. The principal articles of manufacture have long been sailcloth, cordage, linen and fishing-nets. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... in that small back room, but gay-coloured lawless times, when our fancy was let free, and we fought on empty stomachs, and felt only the wind in our faces, and heard the creak of straining cordage. What if ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... wheel; it was a true image of the building of Noah's ark. The young countess, seated beside her husband, watched the progress of the work with regret that she could not help it; and yet she did assist in making knots to secure the cordage. ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... time she plunges, doing something nautical in connexion with her foresail overhead. And then she leans over in the breeze, and the white sheets catch it full—so near you can hear the boom click as it swings, and the rattle of the cordage as it runs through the blocks—and then she gets her way on her, and shoots off through a diamond-drench of broken seas, and we who can borrow the coastguard's telescope can know that she is the Mary of Penzance, but are none the wiser. And a man stripped to the waist, who is washing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the thistles," pursued Marvel, without deigning to reply to Goodenough. "I will mow the thistles; their down I can contrive to work up into cotton, and the stalks into cordage: and, with the profit I shall make of these thistles, and of my decoy, and of my goose-quills and feathers, and of my silver sprig rabbits, I will buy jackets for my sheep, for my sheep shall all have jackets after shearing. Why should not Lincolnshire ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... was the consequence? He went about with his mint, and relieved poor people, and gratified his mania at the same time. His face began to beam with benevolence and innocent self-satisfaction. On Richard Hardie's all was cordage: and deep gloom sat on ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... awful, undying shriek, mingled with a prolonged relentless hiss. No gathering strength, no languid fainting into momentary lulls, but one protracted gigantic scream. And this was not the whistle of wind through cordage, but the actual sound of air travelling with tremendous velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was the sea running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... them: A mast was hoisted in each of them, and the sail was spread between the masts: The sail, which I preserved, and which is now in my possession, is made of matting, and is as neat a piece of work as ever I saw: their paddles were very curious, and their cordage was as good and as well laid as any in England, though it appeared to be made of the outer covering of the cocoa-nut. When these vessels sail, several men sit upon the spars which hold ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... to undo Scood's knot, but he worked at it, and, as he did so, wondered whether it was possible to make use of the cordage of the boat to take up and let down to the imprisoned pair, but he was fain to confess that, even doubled, there was nothing sufficiently trustworthy for the purpose; and, after throwing in the line, he gave the boat a good thrust as he leaped aboard, and then, as it glided out, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... States, and was the name given to saddle-girths of leather or woven horse-hair. It suggests Mexican horsemanship and the open prairie. The explanation given in the Century Dictionary will make clear its meaning to the untravelled: "The two ends of the tough cordage, which constitute the cinch, terminate in long narrow strips of leather called latigos, which connect the cinches with the saddle, and are run through an iron ring, called the larigo ring, and then tied by a series of ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... out, and, followed by his companions, raced madly for the place. The bridge was but a slight affair, a native structure formed of a couple of long bamboo poles with cross pieces lashed into place by native cordage. ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... could perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board, and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the hatchways from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly "We are captured by a"—A sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sink them, preserving only the boats for the purpose of fishing. Escalente bore inveterate enmity against Velasquez, who had refused him a good district in Cuba, and went immediately to Villa Rica where he executed this service effectually. All the sails, cordage, and every thing else that could be useful were brought on shore, and the whole of the ships sunk. Escalente then came back to Chempoalla with a company formed of the mariners, many of whom became excellent soldiers. Cortes now summoned all the chiefs who had renounced ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... I; so watching an opportunity to do so unobserved, for I supposed they might have laughed at me, I stepped quietly into the coupe; and amid the creaking of cordage, and the thumping of feet on the roof, fell as sound asleep as ever I did in my life—these sounds coming to my muffled ears, soft as the echoes on the Rhine. When it was that I awoke I cannot say; but as I rubbed my ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against the cordage. Night fell. There was a retributive glee in the whistle of the mocking wind through the rotten rigging, and the ship's timbers groaned to the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... which the white Manila rope, so much used on the India station, is made. This rope floats in water, and is not subject to rot, nor does it require tarring. A frigate on the China station in 1805 had nearly the whole of her running rigging of this cordage. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... while Castell and all the ship's company, save the helmsman who steered her to the harbour's mouth, clung to the bulwarks and the cordage of the mainmast, and, forgetful of their own peril, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... phase of youth, in which he takes certain matured things for granted, and whether he realizes his illusion or no, believes them to be eternal. This phase ends sharply with every man, by the action of one blow. Some essence is dissolved, some binding cordage snaps, or some ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... cutting of the tree of life in your heart it will yield everything to you when it grows. The people in the South Seas, if they have a palm-tree, can get out of it bread and drink, food, clothing, shelter, light, materials for books, cordage for their boats, needles to sew with, and everything. If you will take Jesus Christ, and plant Him in your hearts, everything will come out of that. That Tree 'bears twelve manners of fruits, and yields His fruit every month.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was similarly established; then a fourth and fifth, and so on, till the pegs and cordage carried up with him gave out, when he came back to the ground to provide himself with a second supply. Obtaining this, he once more ascended, and continued to carry aloft ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the waves. A careful consideration of the principle of this mode of construction, and allowing for the strength and binding qualities of rattan (which resembles in these respects wire rather than cordage), makes me believe that a vessel carefully built in this manner is actually stronger and safer than one fastened in the ordinary way ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... tow the cutter. A seaman was passing along the outer edge of the hurricane-house at the moment, coming from the wheel, and with the decision of an old salt, he quietly passed his knife across the stretched cordage, and it snapped like pack-thread. The grapnel fell into the sea, and the boat was lossing in the wake of the ship, all as it might be while one could draw a breath. To furl the sails and ship the oars consumed but an instant, and then the cutter was ploughing ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hound the hull, The sharks they dog the haglets' flight; With one consent the winds, the waves In hunt with fins and wings unite, While drear the harps in cordage sound Remindful wails ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... The nest was wholly woven and felted with ravellings of woollen carpet in which scarlet predominated. Would the same thing have happened in the woods? Or did the nearness of a human dwelling perhaps give the birds a greater feeling of security? They are very bold, by the way, in quest of cordage, and I have often watched them stripping the fibrous bark from a honeysuckle growing over the very door. But, indeed, all my birds look upon me as if I were a mere tenant at will, and they were landlords. With shame ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... one barrel dried apples, one cask vinegar, two casks of rum, one or two barrels domestic coffee, one keg W. I. coffee, one and a half chests of tea, one barrel of pickles, one do. cranberries, one box chocolate, one cask of tow-lines, three or more coils of cordage, one coil rattling, one do. lance warp, ten or fifteen balls spunyarn, one do. worming, one stream cable, one larboard bower anchor, all the spare spars, every chest of clothing, most of the ship's tools, &c. &c. The ship by ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... not appear to suffer in any manner. For ourselves, we perceived no effect any more then a quickening of the pulse. At 10,000 feet above the ground we set a little green-finch at liberty. He flew out at once, but immediately returning, settled upon our cordage; afterwards, setting out again, he flew to the earth, describing a very tortuous line in his passage. We followed him with our eyes till he was lost in the clouds. A pigeon, which we set free at the same elevation, presented a very curious spectacle. Placed at liberty on the edge of the car, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stem, sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... remained motionless at the place where he had been stationed, and the ship, so far as human noise was concerned, was as still as death. Even the soldiers below, finding no attention paid to their cries, had subsided into comparative quiet. The silence was broken only by the creaking of cordage, the dashing of water against the bows, and the groaning of the timbers. Ever and anon Hornigold's deep voice, crying "Larboard" or "Starboard" as the case might be, rolled along the deck to the watchful men gripping the wheel. Suddenly the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pain. Those that die well eternal bliss shall follow. Those that die ill their own black deeds shall swallow. Shall thy black barge those guilty spirits row That kill themselves for love? Oh, no! oh, no! My cordage cracks when such foul sins draw near, No wind blows fair, nor I my boat can steer. What spirits pass and in Elysium reign? Those harmless souls that love and are beloved again. That soul that lives in love and fain would die to win, Shall ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... still struggling down the chutes from the dock. The dirty decks were confusingly littered with cordage and the cattlemen's luggage. The Jewish elders stared sepulchrally at the wilderness of open hatches and rude passageways, as though ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... in the lower left-hand corner (No. 3) are locally recognized as the shuttle and some other requisite of the weaver's trade. Inverness had spinning and weaving for its staple industries when Pennant visited the place in 1759. Its exports of cordage and sacking were considerable, and (says Pennant) "the linen manufacture saves the town above L3000 a year, which used to ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... twenty years ago, the water front of a great seaport like New York, viewed from the harbor, showed a towering forest of tall and tapering masts, reaching high up above the roofs of the water-side buildings, crossed with slender spars hung with snowy canvas, and braced with a web of taut cordage. Across the street that passed the foot of the slips, reached out the great bowsprits or jibbooms, springing from fine-drawn bows where, above a keen cut-water, the figurehead—pride of the ship—nestled in confident strength. Neptune with his trident, Venus rising from the sea, admirals of every ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of rigidity in his balloon. The immediate cause may have been a leaky valve permitting the gas to escape, or a faulty air-pump which made prompt filling of the ballonet impossible. But the effect of these flaws was to deprive the balloon of its rigidity, cause it to buckle, throwing the cordage out of gear, shifting stresses and strains, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet, We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, And this is ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the only manufactured articles annually exported from the Philippine Islands are eight to twelve thousand pieces exports of light sail cloth, two hundred thousand pounds of abaca cordage assorted, and six hundred carabao hides and deer skins, which can scarcely be considered in a tanned state/ for, although the Royal Company, from the time of their establishment, long continued to export considerable quantities of dimities, calicos, stripes, checks, and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... were nothing the less boisterous for our Presents, but by and by burst our Cordage, and threw ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... people thought, desperate task of finding the North Pole—any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads, might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of the equipment, did not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they raise Indian corn, potatoes, pumpkins, turnips, etc. On the highest part of this sandy eminence, four windmills grind the grain they raise or import; and contiguous to them their rope walk is to be seen, where full half of their cordage is manufactured. Between the shores of the harbour, the docks, and the town, there is a most excellent piece of meadow, inclosed and manured with such cost and pains as show how necessary and precious grass is at Nantucket. Towards the point of Shemah, the island is more level and the soil ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... had much difficulty in forcing a way through the wreckage, broken masts and planks, the multitude of dead bodies and net work of cordage, which covered the surface of the water; but even amid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... came to this country like all our countrymen in search of peace and work and plenty. Both found only hard work and hard knocks. Sacco was a shoe-worker. Vanzetti had followed many trades after his arrival here in the summer of 1908. He worked in mines, mills, factories. Finally he landed in a cordage plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. That was the last factory job he held. For here, as in all the others, he talked union and organization, and organized a successful strike. After that, he was blacklisted for good and had ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... the "vexed question," with the Soudanese and Saharan merchants, as to how the ostrich is hunted and caught. In Soudan the ostrich is snared by small cords, the bird getting its legs into the nooses. The trap is a quantity of herbage laid over the cordage. Here the Negro waits for his rich feathery booty, and draws the cordage as soon as their feet are in the noose. Others throw stones, sticks, and lances, at the ostrich; others shoot them. But in Sahara, and in what is called the edge of The Desert, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... was a chance, and I went along the beach, as far as the nature of the rocky shore would allow me, up and down, up and down, like a dog on a race course, till at last, among a lot of cordage and fishing gear, I thought I espied a man cast ashore, and so it was. He was entangled in the mass of wreckage, and appeared dead. As I thought a spark of life might still remain, I tried to disengage him, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... filaments of blue and violet and grassy green which flutter in the cordage of the ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the wind like the whips of ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of stupid heroines. The very air of the book is salt. As you read, you hear the wind in the rigging,—a sound that one never forgets. The form and motion of waves, the passing of distant ships, the outlines of spars and cordage against the sky, the blue above and the blue below, all the scenery of the sea, here for the first time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... beneath her lofty stern I found hanging therefrom a tangle of ropes and cordage whereby I contrived to clamber aboard, and so beheld a man in a red seaman's bonnet who sat upon the wreckage of one of the quarter guns tying up a splinter-gash in his arm with hand and teeth; perceiving me he rolled a pair of blue eyes up at me ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... motor car—with Liane at his side registering more impatience than he thought the occasion called for—Lanyard listened, stared, wondered, the breath of the sea sweet in his nostrils, its flavour in his throat, his vision lost in the tangled web of masts and cordage and funnels that stencilled the moon-pale sky: the witching glamour of salt water binding all his ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... bewilder'd on the deck: The wind sung, cordage strain'd, and sailors swore, And the ship creak'd, the town became a speck, From which away so fair and fast they bore. The best of remedies is a beef-steak Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before You sneer, and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the sale of spirituous liquors to the Indians. In 1802, the Legislature of Upper Canada, as had that of Lower Canada, passed an Act appropriating L750 to encourage the growth of hemp, in order to render England independent of Russia in the supply of hemp for cordage for the navy, as was being rapidly the case in the supply of timber to build ships. As obstructions on the St. Lawrence rendered communication more difficult between Upper and Lower Canada than with Albany and New York, articles of commerce from Europe could be more readily brought in by that ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... whom the Shepherd of the Shadows said: "Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead; But when they hear my fatal gateway clang Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang. They see the smoke of home above the trees, The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze; The beaten path that wanders to the shore Grows dear because they shall not tread it more, The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes, And in the sunset's melancholy ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... almost fainted, as the heavy bottle, without a break, pirouetted down between sails and cordage, and seeking an opening in the gunwale of the boat flopped into six fathoms ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... he walked them rapidly among the bales, boxes, cordage, wagons, lumber, and people crowding the wharf, then turned abruptly townwards, entered a short, lane-like street, and finally stopped at a low, quaint-looking old shop, leaning in a tired manner against a larger building beyond, thus throwing its doors and windows into such oblique ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... echoes linger tenderly and tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the use of canvas, cables, and cordage made of hemp grown in the United States in the equipment vessels of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage—the arm of a derrick sliced a slow arc across ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... great crossbeam of wood Representeth the Holy Rood, Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung Is the mind of man, that round and round Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound! And the rope, with its twisted cordage three, Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity Of Morals, and Symbols, and History; And the upward and downward motions show That we touch upon matters high and low; And the constant change and transmutation Of action and of contemplation, Downward, the Scripture ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... outlaws in their unlawful enterprises. He was a tall, thin, bony figure, with white hair combed straight down on each side of his face, and an iron-grey hue of complexion; where the lines, or rather, as Quin said of Macklin, the cordage, of his countenance were so sternly adapted to a devotional and even ascetic expression, that they left no room for any indication of reckless daring or sly dissimulation. In short, Trumbull appeared a perfect specimen of the rigid old Covenanter, who said only what he thought right, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the white wings were off scudding before the rising breeze, dipping their glossy boat-sides into the clear water, straining their cordage in their tense efforts to reach the stake boats. Mandeville indiscriminately distributed itself on piers, large and small, bath-house tops, trees, and craft of all kinds, from pirogue, dory, and pine-raft to pretentious ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... the waves! The storm had burst upon us in all its violence; our masts seemed to reach up to the clouds, and then to plunge into the abyss. A terrible shock told us that the ship had touched the bottom. We then cut away the cordage and masts to lighten her and try to float her again; this came to pass, but the force of the waves turned her over on her side....As the ship was already leaking in every part, the passengers all rushed on deck; and some...threw themselves into the sea and perished....The passengers ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... sight, and while Trent and his men had no better expectation than to strike for Honolulu in the boats. Nothing else was notable on deck, save where the loose topsail had played some havoc with the rigging, and there hung, and swayed, and sang in the declining wind, a raffle of intorted cordage. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... food, there would be still something in my lot which I should find intolerable. I should spend my days upon the island's loftiest crag, watching for a sail. The thought of a thousand ships not far away, rushing round the globe, with throb of piston, crack of cordage, strain of timber, buffeting of waves, and shouting crews, would drive me distracted. What to me were blue skies and soft winds when I might be sharer in this elemental strife? How should I covet, in all this adorable and detested beauty of my solitary isle, the grey skies that looked ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... decked with flowers, flew over the waves, to all seeming with the same hunted rapidity as the moon rushed through the heavens,— and so far, though her masts bent reed-like in the wind, and her sails strained at their cordage, she had come to no harm. Tossed about as she was, rudderless and solitary, there was something almost miraculous in the way she had weathered a storm in which many a well-guided ship must inevitably have gone down. The purple ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... self unto in coming & going to prepare things for our departure when the season would permitt; but I cannot omit telling that amongst other kindnesses I did Mr. Bridgar I gave him stuff suffitient to sheath his shallup, which was quite out of order, as also cordage & all things else necessary; but hee did not well by me, for contrary to his word which he had given me not to goe to the fort in the Island, hee attempted to goe thether with his people in his shallup, & being come within musket-shott under a pretence of desiring some ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... enterprising business-man. Girard had a genius for business. He was not less bold in his operations than prudent; and his judgment as a man of business was well-nigh infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever he thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cordage to a pipe of old port; and he labored incessantly with his own hands. He was a thriving man during the first year of his residence in Philadelphia; his chief gain, it is said, being derived from his favorite business ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... same ship drifts in slowly shoreward, over the harbor-bar, under the calm of the solemn sunset. Even the deepening twilight can not disguise the evidences of a terrible "sea-change." Not a trace of paint or gilding remains on the wave-worn, shattered timbers. Sails rent and cordage strained tell tales of many storm-gusts, or, perchance, of one tornado; and see! her flag is flying half-mast high: the corpse of the Pilot is on board. Let us stand aside, lest we meet the passengers as they land. It were worse than ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... weather the south-east end of Mowee in heavy weather, the leach ropes of the main topsail and two topgallant sails gave way, and the sails were blown to pieces. Cook says, "neither the cordage, canvas, nor indeed hardly any other stores used in the Navy, are equal in quality to those in general use in the merchant service"; and he relates how such failures have constantly resulted in "infinite trouble, vexation, and loss." ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... by means of slight square wire, but in others the fastenings are composed of fine woollen thread, round which is twisted spirally a thin, flat strip of gold. These strips are one of the oldest specimens of woollen cordage now in existence ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... The natives cultivate a plant much resembling flag. It is their substitute for hemp and flax; and by their ingenuity of management, yield them excellent clothing, and lines and cordage for their fishing-nets and other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the Cape A ship wrecked to the southward Three of her people brought in by a fishing boat Particulars Two accidents The Britannia arrives from England Vessels and assistance sent to the wreck Public works Cordage wanted The Mercury sails June The Ganges arrives from Ireland Transactions Some runaways taken and brought to trial The Reliance arrives from the Cape A strange desertion Public ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Rudder and helm to regulate her course; With wicker-work he bordered all her length For safety, and much ballast stowed within. Meantime Calypso brought him for a sail Fittest materials, which he also shaped, And to his sail due furniture annexed Of cordage strong, foot-ropes and ropes aloft, Then heaved her down with levers to the deep. —Odyssey, B. V. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... N. size, magnitude, dimension, bulk, volume; largeness &c. adj.; greatness &c. (of quantity) 31; expanse &c. (space) 180; amplitude, mass; proportions. capacity, tonnage, tunnage; cordage; caliber, scantling. turgidity &c. (expansion) 194; corpulence, obesity; plumpness &c. adj.; embonpoint, corporation, flesh and blood, lustihood. hugeness &c. adj.; enormity, immensity, monstrosity. giant, Brobdingnagian, Antaeus, Goliath, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of the salt sea. From the moment that the Sea Queen leaves lower New York bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward. The adventures of Ben Clark, the hero of the story and Jake the cook, cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. Otis is ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray streaming away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... arose in strength and shook a golden dew of stars from the tresses of her streaming clouds, till the wonderful deep heavens sparkled with a myriad gemmy points. The west wind going on his way sung his wild chant amongst the cordage, and rushed among the sails as with a rush of wings. The ship leant over like a maiden shrinking from a kiss, then, shivering, fled away, leaping from billow to billow as they rose and tossed their white arms about her, fain to drag her ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... describing the passage of the great frigate through the narrow channel, gives every detail with such vividness and power that the most unimaginative cannot merely see ship, shore, and foaming water, but almost hear the roaring of the wind, the creaking of the cordage, and the dashing of the waves against the breakers. As he read on the listener's interest kept growing until he was no longer able to remain quiet. Rising from his seat he paced up and down the room furiously until the chapter was finished. Then half ashamed of the excitement into which he had ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... secrets they were desired to betray. Near to this miscellaneous assemblage rose another heap, the base of which appeared to consist of some half score of elephants' teeth, rough hemp, fragments of huge cable, cable-yarn, and all manner of cordage; rolls of lewxerns', martrons', and leopard-skins; wolf-skins, "tawed and untawed;" girdles of silk, velvet, and leather; and on pegs, immediately over, hung half a dozen mantles of miniver, and some wide robings of the pure spotted ermine. Upon a huge sea-chest were heaped bales of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of two cordage mills burned, and a new mill of one story construction was erected in its place. The advantage of manufacture therein was so great that the owners of the property changed the remaining old mill into a storehouse; and now, as they wish to increase their business, it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various |
