"Mainmast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his family on board of the vessel commanded by the Adelantado, and, sending back the damaged ship to port, continued on his course. Throughout the voyage he experienced the most tempestuous weather. In one storm the mainmast was sprung in four places. He was confined to his bed at the time by the gout; by his advice, however, and the activity of the Adelantado, the damage was skillfully repaired; the mast was shortened; the weak parts were fortified by wood taken from the castles or cabins which the vessels ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Mediterranean Sea so violently that they rose mountain high and almost buried a small frigate under their white caps. The captain of the frigate stood at the helm and hoarsely roared out his commands to the sailors, but they did not understand him, and when the storm tore off the mainmast a loud outcry was heard. The captain was the only one who did not lose his senses. With his axe he chopped off the remaining pieces of the mast, and turning to his crew, his face ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the first I had ever witnessed, and was undoubtedly a more formidable one than I have ever since encountered in eighteen passages across the Atlantic. I was told, after it was over, that the vessel had sprung its mainmast—a very serious injury to a sailing ship, I suppose, by the mode in which it was spoken of; and for three days we were unable to carry any sail whatever for the fury of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... last few days of our wrecking, Captain Selover had omitted his daily visit. The fact made me uneasy, so that at my first opportunity I sculled myself out to the schooner. I found him, moist-eyed as usual, leaning against the mainmast doing nothing. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mellow orange. Up in the bow of the Hoonah silhouetted against the glow, old Kayak Bill stood alone. In his hazel eyes was the wistful look that crept there sometimes when he watched the domestic happiness of those about him. A-top the cabin by the mainmast Jean and Gregg stood looking back over the lengthening stretch of water. Kon Klayu lay, an oblong of jade in the amber light, ringed with a wreath of foam. A single gull winnowed across the vision calling ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... taught-rigged hermaphrodite, or brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it; it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same scale, tapering away through ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... to have brought forth a sharp retort at any other time; but then Vince felt its justice, and he went on again, and his hand touched the shrouds which held the mainmast in place, and a little care had to be exercised to pass round. But this was silently achieved by both; and Vince was gliding his right-hand along the top of the bulwarks once more, when it was as if an electric shock had passed through him, for he had suddenly touched ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... did not open, were then passed on to the midshipman on duty on the quarter-deck, with orders to take them to the purser's office; and the commander then proceeded to muster the lot abaft the mainmast bitts. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... said, and she walked to the piano which was screwed athwart the deck in front of the polished mahogany sheath of the steel mainmast. It was in her mind to play some lively excerpts from the light operas then in vogue, but the secret influences of the hour were stronger than her studied intent, and, when her fingers touched the keys, they wandered, almost without ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... his finger on his nose, and winked at the mainmast. "There's few can show me the way, Jack," he answered softly; "very few. Now I want you to help me too; I want you to talk ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... boat was slightly altered, and we stood down towards the wreck. As we approached her we saw that her mainmast was gone, that her foremast and yards were still standing, with their sails fluttering wildly from them. The lifeboat crew now looked anxiously towards the wreck, to ascertain if any men were still left in the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... this time, in all the excitement of action, pacing the quarter-deck. A shot through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, "It is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment:"—and then stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion—"But mark ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... mizzen-mast, carried away the wheel, and did other serious damage, killing and wounding twenty men. Two shot struck the third, carrying away her shrouds and injuring her masts; loss in killed and wounded, thirty. The fourth had her mainmast destroyed, with a loss of sixteen. The fifth had a large shot, six feet eight inches in circumference, enter her lower deck; loss fifty-five. The sixth, not injured. The seventh, a good deal damaged, with a loss of seventeen. The eighth had no loss. The ninth was so much injured that, "had ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... gaed down, and farther down, Her love's ship for to see, And the topmast and the mainmast ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... object was a portion of the mainmast head of the Lady Franklin, and entangled in the rigging were two corpses—a man and a woman. The arms of the man were clasped round the body of the woman, and her head lay on his breast. The Prison Island ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of the center boards, or other equivalent devices for the same specific purpose, in the extreme bow and stern of vessels, that is to say, the placing of the said boards forward of the foremast or aft of the mainmast, in two masted vessels, and forward of the foremast and aft of the mizzen mast in three masted vessels, substantially as shown and described, and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... hands executed the last order; all the yards on the mainmast swung round towards the wind till the light breeze caught the sails aback, and brought them against the mast. The effect was to deaden the headway of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... been rigged upon the mainmast, and this morning, after breakfast, Mr. Whitney, three Esquimos, and myself started in Mr. Whitney's motor-boat to hunt walrus. The motor gave out very shortly after the start, and the oars had to be used. We were fortunate in getting two walrus, which I shot, and then we returned to the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... one of the whaleboats, boarded the steamer, took in provisions, made a lug out of a piece of canvas, hoisted the Union Jack to the mainmast upside down, and pulled safely away from the 'Clonmel' against a head wind. They hoisted the lug and ran for one of the Seal Islands, where they found a snug little cove, ate a hearty meal, and rested for three hours. They then pulled for the mainland, and reached Sealer's ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... roared, and laid her down so, that I thought she would never get up again. However, by keeping her away, and clewing up every thing, she righted. The remainder of the night we had very heavy squalls, and in the morning found the mainmast sprung half the way through: one hundred and twenty-three leagues to the leeward of Jamaica, the hurricane months coming on, the head of the mainmast almost off, and at short allowance; well, we must make the best of it. The mainmast was well fished, but ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... me with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown as the subject of the veritable rime; and his ears, contracted, flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to be either ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... hard-breathing of Spike could be heard through the open windows of his state-room, and this was positively the only sound that was audible. The common men, who lay scattered about the decks, more especially from the mainmast forward, seemed to be so many logs, and from Mulford no ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the prophets, or most likely he wouldn't have said that. It hit Beriah like a snowslide off a barn roof. I found out afterwards that the widder had more'n half promised to go with HIM. He slumped down in his chair as if his mainmast was carried away, and he didn't even rise to blow for the rest of the time we was in the shanty. Just set there, looking ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands at the water's edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour. Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing upwards invisibly, detonated overhead ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to it. It was a dismal sight to look at; the ship, which by its building was Spanish, stuck fast, jammed in between two rocks. All the stern and quarter of her were beaten to pieces by the sea; and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks, had run on with great violence, her mainmast and foremast were brought by the board - that is to say, broken short off; but her bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog appeared upon her, who, seeing me coming, yelped and cried; and as soon as I called him, jumped ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... said he, "one little dose of this will be better for you than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast." ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... between the ports—started at the sound of Bill's voice; and, seeing that his eye was fixed on him, pretended slily for a moment to be intently gazing out seawards, and then slunk stealthily along the deck more aft to the bitts of the mainmast, where a group of his tawny fellow-countrymen were gathered together away from the rest of the crew—squatting on their haunches, and gabbling away ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stood a little aloof. His face was not so radiant as the faces of the boys. His features were twitching, and his hands were clasped tight behind his back. He stood leaning against the mainmast, his eyes fixed on Tom. It was thus that he stood when Tom caught sight of him, and ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... her starboard shaft is partially fractured, and that to reduce the strain upon it the floats of her starboard wheel have been shortened five inches, the strain being further reduced by giving her a decided list to port; that her crank is "bandaged," that she is leaky; that her mainmast is sprung, and that with only four hours' steaming many of her boiler tubes, even some of those put in at Auckland, had already given way. I cannot testify concerning the mainmast, though it certainly does comport itself like no other mainmast I ever saw; but the other statements and many ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... rain rather sharply again, or I should have been disposed to remain on deck for a while and improve my acquaintance with this genial-looking sailor; as it was, I merely paused beside him long enough to note that the deck between the foremast and the mainmast seemed to be crowded with rough, round-backed, awkward-looking men, having the appearance of navvies or something of that kind; also that the main hatch was partially closed by a grating through an aperture in which, at the after port angle of the hatchway, other men of a like sort were ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore! But that's not to the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you'd thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land service,—to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman.—But to make an end of the ship,—to see how ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... November day to build an ice-boat. From the numerous building operations going on in the neighborhood, in the light of the moon, he secured the necessary timbers, and from a neighbor's back yard—also in the light of the moon—he got a young sapling which served delightfully as a mainmast. With the needed materials all gathered, it suddenly struck him that a plan of some kind ought to be made of the proposed ice-boat, in order to guard against grave errors in construction. To think was to act with this bright youngster. He got him his mother's bread-board ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... mainmast went and as it swung clear, the stays were hastily cut by the captain and Paul. The captain frantically motioned Betsy to grab one of the lines attached to the mast. The next moment a sea broke over her that carried the three ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... 10th, there was a dreadful storm of thunder, lightning, and rain, during which the mainmast of one of the Dutch East Indiamen was split, and carried away by the deck; and the maintop-mast and topgallant-mast were shivered to pieces. The stroke was probably directed by an iron spindle, which was at the maintop gallantmast head. As this ship lay very near the Endeavour, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... was mad confusion, and a frantic banging of canvas as the schooner came up beam to the wind, with her rent mainsail flogging itself to tatters. Its ponderous boom was broken, and the mainmast-head had gone, but it was not the first time the sealermen had grappled with somewhat similar difficulties, and Dampier kept his head. He had the boat to think of, and she was somewhere to windward, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the break of the poop is a stack of petrol cases; a further stack surmounted with bales of fodder stands between the main hatch and the mainmast, and cases of petrol, paraffin, and alcohol, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... for some hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was presently engaged by a British cruiser. The two ships fought for three hours, circling and driving southward as they fought, until the twilight and the cloud-drift of a rising gale swallowed them up. A few days later Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. The crew ran out of food and subsisted on fish. They saw strange air-ships going eastward near the Azores and landed to get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two big liners, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... added uncle Hapgood. "If he hadn't been as cool as cowcumber, and as stiff as the mainmast of a frigate, we should have been taken, every one ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... aback, the canvas on the mainmast pressed against the mast, still further retarding the vessel's sluggish movement; and as she drifted almost imperceptibly up to them, a few strokes of Leslie's arms took the pair alongside, where some half a dozen rope's ends, with loops in them, already dangled in the water. With a deft movement, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... water, then assumed a perch aloft, where it carefully dressed its feathers, and after thanking its entertainers with a few cheerful notes it extended its wings and launched out into space, no land being in sight. The broken mainmast of a ship, floating, with considerable top hamper attached, was passed within a cable's length, suggestive of a recent wreck, and inducing a thousand dreary surmises. At first it was announced as the sea serpent, but its true nature was soon obvious. At midnight, March 1st, Nassau light ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... perished" from cold. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 2732—Capt. Young, 8 Feb. 1739-40.] To-day it was broad farce. He held his sides with laughter to see the lieutenant of the tender he was in, mad with rage and drink, chase the steward round and round the mainmast with a loaded pistol, whilst the terrified hands, fearing for their lives, fled for refuge to the coalhole, the roundtops and the shore. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1498—Complaint of the Master and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... and with not a star in sight, and in no condition to take any reckonings, we made up our minds that we must somehow fight our way through one more night before giving up. The mainmast was a wreck; the shrouds on the port side having been torn from the gunwale the second day of the storm, and the entire deck was one mass of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... pull and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was lowered away until ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... arms of the French Republic topped with the "Phrygian" cap, being flanked on either side by two allegorical female figures, one of which was symbolic of the Armed Peace protecting herself with a sword, and the other was intended to represent French trade. Over the allegorical medallion was the mainmast used to display the French flag. Owing to the arrangement of the palace itself the flag was thus displayed in the continuation of the center of the main ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... in thinking over this; his own tastes run in a gory direction, but perhaps Ethel, being a girl, may not care for battles or desperate duels. A compromise strikes him; he will draw a pirate ship: that will be first rate, with the black flag flying on the mainmast, and the pirate captain on the poop scouring the ocean with a big glass in search of merchantmen; all about the deck and rigging he can put the crew, with red caps, and belts stuck full ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... these war-ships or prizes had, for me, the interest that attached to a large black two-masted steamer of eighteen hundred tons, which was lying at anchor off the government wharf, flying from her mainmast-head a white flag emblazoned with the red Greek cross of the Geneva Convention. It was the steamship State of Texas, of the Mallory line, chartered by the American National Red Cross to carry to Cuba supplies for the starving reconcentrados, and to serve as headquarters ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... one of the ships, which had suffered most, hauled off and abandoned the fight. That of the admiral had fared little better, and now her condition grew desperate. With her rigging torn, her mainmast half cut through, her mizzen-mast splintered, her cabin pierced, and her hull riddled with shot, another volley seemed likely to sink her, when Phips ordered her to be cut loose from her moorings, and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... addition to the ordinary fore-and-aft sails we had two movable yards on the foremast for a square foresail and topsail. As the yards were attached to a sliding truss they could easily be hauled down when not in use. The ship's lower masts were tolerably high and massive. The mainmast was about 80 feet high, the maintopmast was 50 feet high, and the crow's-nest on the top was about 102 feet (32 m.) above the water. It was important to have this as high as possible, so as to have a more extended view when it came to picking our way through the ice. The aggregate ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... residents. Went on board. How strangely changed the ship appeared! Sunny, motionless, and quiet; no noisy children, no slatternly, slipshod women rolling about the decks, no slush, no washing of dirty linen in dirtier water. There was the old mate in a clean shirt at last, leaning against the mainmast, and smoking his yard of clay; the butcher close—shaven and clean; the sailors smart, and welcoming us with a smile. It almost looked like going home. Dined in Lyttelton with several of my fellow-passengers, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... voyages in Europe, and to the coast of Africa, he was appointed mate of a French East Indiaman, bound to Madras. On the outward passage they encountered a heavy gale off the Cape of Good Hope, which sprung the mainmast and otherwise injured the ship, which determined the captain to bear up for the Mauritius, where he arrived in safety; a quarrel having taken place on the passage out between Lafitte and the captain, he abandoned the ship and refused to continue the voyage. Several privateers were at this time ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof—"house" they ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... cut away the mainmast, which they did, and this augmented the shock, neither could they get clear of it, though they cut it close by the board, because it was much entangled within the rigging; they could see no land except ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... very act. A war of words ensued; but the explanations given under the attendant circumstances were so unsatisfactory, that the vigilant chief of the customs clapped his broad mark on the mainmast, and seized the vessel and the unfortunate cask of rum in the name and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... haven't counted; but I've had a lovely time at the wood. (Harvey turns out basket, and weighs fish.) Only seven—well, I must do better next time. 13 lb., too; that's not high average; but I report myself satisfied. Here comes Terlan with the mainmast of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... from the mainmast told that it might fall at any moment. Passengers and crew redoubled their shouts to Poseidon and to Zeus of AEgina. A fat passenger staggered from his cabin, a huge money-bag bound to his belt,—as if gold were the safest spar to cling to in that boiling deep. Others, less frantic, gave commissions ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... stepped over the prostrate forms to the quarter deck, where the officer weakly dropped his sword to signify his surrender. Lieutenant Biddle walked to where the colors were still fluttering and pulled them down. A few minutes later the mainmast and foremast fell. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... leading boats it did not take my sailor instinct long to guess what was amiss. Those in front shot side to side, those behind tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long and as thick as the mainmast of an old three-decker. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the "Royal Sovereign," the King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. "The Emperor of Lilliput's features are ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sailing were quickly verified; so quickly, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour we found ourselves within easy range of the chase—a fact which was brought home to us by a shot from her passing within a foot of our hammock rail and whizzing between our fore and mainmast. ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... crane was smashed to bits by a Japanese explosive shell just as it was raising a launch, the same shot carrying off the third funnel just behind it. When Togo's last ship had left the Connecticut behind, only one funnel full of gaping holes and half of the mainmast were left standing on the deck of the admiral's flag-ship, which presented a wild chaos of bent and broken ironwork. Through the ruins of the deck structures rose the flames and thick smoke from ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... Philip, "can that refer to—?" and Philip walked a step or two forward, so as to conceal himself behind the mainmast, hoping to obtain some information, should they continue the conversation. In this he was ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... about one hundred tons burden, completely decked, with a high poop and forecastle. Her length has been variously estimated. Two of her masts had square sails, the mizzen being lateen-rigged. The foremast had a square foresail, the mainmast a mainsail and maintopsail, and there was a spritsail on the bowsprit. The courses were enlarged, in fair weather, by lacing strips of canvas to their leeches, called bonetas. There appear to have been two boats, one with a sail, and the ship was armed with lombards. The rigs of these vessels ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... exquisite distress; Then, too severely taught by cruel fate, To share in all the perils I relate, Then might I, with unrivall'd strains, deplore The impervious horrors of a leeward shore. As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung, Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung: Some on a broken crag were struggling cast, 660 And there by oozy tangles grappled fast; Awhile they bore the o'erwhelming billows' rage, Unequal combat with their fate to wage ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and within two minutes of the time it was first sighted was alongside. The cable was slipped, the engines backed, and all hands called to quarters. But it was too late—the torpedo struck the Housatonic just forward of the mainmast, on the starboard side, on a line with the magazine. The man who steered her (the Hundley) knew where the vital spots of the steamer were and he did his work well. When the explosion took place the ship trembled all over as if by the shock of an earthquake, and seemed to be lifted out of the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... ten days. We should have moved about in less time, but for the crippled state of the schooner. She fell in with a heavy gale off Norfolk Island about June 20th- 23rd; and we have been obliged to be very careful of our spars, which were much strained. Indeed, we still need a new mainmast, main boom, and gaff, a main topmast, foretopmast, and probably new wire rigging, besides repairs of other kinds, and possibly new coppering. Thank God, the voyage has been so far safe, and, on the whole, prosperous. We sailed first of all to the Banks Islands, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drifted athwart the bow of a large merchantman, which in turn was almost foul of us. In less than five minutes the clipper sank. One man alone reappeared on the surface. He was so close, that from where I was holding on and crouching under the lee of the mainmast I could see the expression of his face. He was a splendidly built man, and his strength and activity must have been prodigious. He clung to the cable of the merchantman, which he had managed to clasp. As the vessel reared between the seas he gained a few feet before he was again ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... if the house of commons was a capricious court; a court neither bound by law nor by the usages of parliament. The debate on the question was one of great violence; and in the course of it, Colonel Barre compared the state to a vessel in a storm which had parted with her mainmast (Grafton,) and was trying to sail under a jury-mast (North). The new premier acknowledged that the storm was great, but asserted that the ship was not compelled to hang out lights for pilots, as her own crew were capable of conducting her safely into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... one of which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my native ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... and deserted, Only close beside the mainmast Stands a lonely child, heartbroken, ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If it be that the people, when the war is over, shall ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... quarrels are to be suspended while the expedition lasts, and for a month after it is completed. Neglect of this will be held as treason. Each morning at sunrise the ship-boys, according to custom, will sing 'Good Morrow' at the foot of the mainmast, and at sunset the 'Ave Maria.' Since bad weather may interrupt the communications the watchword is laid down for each day in the week: Sunday, Jesus; the days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the crew crowded round the mainmast. Many, eager to obtain a good place, got on the booms to overlook the scene. Some were laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits. Some maintaining sad, anxious countenance, or carrying a suppressed indignation in their eyes. A few purposely kept behind, to avoid ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... struck the Randolph just forward of the mainmast; the men, swarming in dense masses on the rail and hanging over the bowsprit ready to leap, dropped on her deck at once with loud cheers. A sharp volley from the few marines left on the frigate checked ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was left to gaze in open-mouthed wonder at the shrinking figure of Mr. Duckett at the wheel. They regarded each other in silence, until a stealthy step behind Mr. Chalk made him turn round smartly. Mr. Stobell, who was stealing up to secure him, dodged hastily behind the mainmast. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... water is gushing Through hatches and seams; 'Tis roaring and rushing O'er keelson and beams; And nought save the lightning On mainmast or boom, At intervals ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The mainmast, an enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... a horizontal arc of twenty points of the compass, the middle of which is dead ahead. They are screened so as not to be visible across the bow and they must be intense enough to be visible two miles ahead. The masthead light is carried on the foremast and the range-light on the mainmast, at an elevation fifteen feet higher than the former. The range-light emits light toward all points of the compass and must be intense enough to be seen at a distance of three miles. The stern light is similar to the masthead, but its light must not be visible forward of the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of ship-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. He ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... passed since then in explaining how the thing happened; of these explanations it will be sufficient to say that they were all different and none satisfactory; and the gross fact remains that the main boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the mainmast some three feet above the deck and whipped it overboard. For near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled them to skim the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... her work daintily, Captain Ratlin," said he who was evidently an officer, and who had been standing by the mainmast, but now ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... lofty perch a sailor swung spider-like among the network of sheets and halyards that clung about the mainmast, its meshes clearly defined against the pure blue of the sky, while below there, on the bridge, the big brass nautical instruments gleamed, and the caps of the Captain and his lieutenants showed white in the sun. As Blythe glanced down and away from this ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... answered, "when some frigate that's faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!" ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... two masts, a mainmast and a mizzen or dandy mast. The former was 6 feet long and the latter 4 feet long, and each measured 1-1/2 inches in diameter at the base, tapering to about 1 inch diameter at the upper end. They were held in brass bands, or clamps, bent around ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... year now that one of them spells come over me. I rec'lect well, 'twas a hot day in August. We was becalmed off the mouth of the river, and the Mary couldn't make no headway, 'peared as though. The crew stuck their jackknives into the mainmast, and whistled all they knew for a wind; and I set there and watched the sails playin' Isick and Josh, Isick and Josh, till, honest, I could feel the soul creakin' inside me with tiredness. I expect the sun kind o' scrambled my brains, same as a dish of eggs; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... and the shot was dancing away to leeward. The next shot struck the merchantman on the quarter. A moment later the vessel was brought up into the wind and a broadside of eight guns fired. Two of them struck the hull of the privateer, another wounded the mainmast, while the rest cut holes through the sails and struck the water a quarter of a mile to windward. With an oath the captain of the privateer brought his vessel up into the wind, and then payed off on ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... and at first even declined to do so; but, at last, on the 28th of April, this island also issued a manifesto of adherence to the patriotic cause. On the third of May, a squadron of eleven Hydriot and seven Spezzia vessels sailed from Hydra, having on the mainmast "an address to the people of the Egean sea, inviting them to rally round the national standard: an address that was received with enthusiasm in every quarter of the Archipelago where the Turks were not numerous enough ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... long for the onset, Morgan had run to the waist of the ship when he saw the inevitable collision and had called all hands from the poop and quarter. The Mary Rose was provided with an elevated quarter-deck and above that a high poop. Massing his men in the gangways just forward of the mainmast and on the forecastle itself, with the hardiest spirits in the front line and Morgan himself in advance of all sword in hand, the two parties contemplated each other for a little space ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... mouthful, and the only thing that he spat out was the mainmast, that had stuck between his teeth like a fish-bone. Fortunately for me, the vessel was laden with preserved meat in tins, biscuit, bottles of wine, dried raisins, cheese, coffee, sugar, candles, and boxes of wax matches. With this providential supply I have been ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... appeared to have the charge of the vessel; "Gustave Adolphe, tu parles bien l'Anglois; demandez-lui les nouvelles," continued the old man, folding his arms across, and looking very big indeed, as he reclined against the mainmast ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... inches in compass, and weighs 9,000 lbs., her least cable being eight inches in compass, weighing near 1,300 lbs. To the Royal Sovereign belong eighteen masts and yards: whereof the greatest, called the mainmast, is 113 feet long, and 38 inches diameter; her main yard 102 feet long, and 23 inches diameter; and her main top, 15 feet diameter. She hath ten several sorts of sails of several names (as every ship of every one of the sixth rate has): whereof her greatest sail, called her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... were of an elaborate character. A mirror in the centre of the table represented a lake, on which was a full-rigged ship, made of pinks, roses, and pansies. The national colors floated over the mainmast, and small white flags, with the monogram "C. F." in golden letters, hung from the other masts. The guests were not seated, but stood up and enjoyed the croquets, game, salads, ices, and creams. The health ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... on the 12th, a Dutch East Indiaman, about two cables away from the Endeavour, had mainmast "split all to shivers." The ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... other. It therefore became necessary to adopt the measure which would soften the first blow as much as possible, and I ordered the helm to be put down. When the ship came head to wind she struck the Revolutionnaire just before the mainmast, slewed our cut-water right across, carried away the jib-boom, spritsail yard, &c., and then backed clear of her. A lad fell overboard from the Revolutionnaire and made a great noise, which enabled us to send a boat and pick him up, he having ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... feet high, in which sit the two steersmen. In the after part of the vessel was a low poop, about three and a half feet high, which forms the captain's cabin, its furniture consisting of boxes, mats, and pillows. In front of the poop and mainmast was a little thatched house on deck, about four feet high to the ridge; and one compartment of this, forming a cabin six and a half feet long by five and a half wide, I had all to myself, and it was the snuggest and most ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... long. The Shiner hailed from Gloucester and was "the real thing," as Colin said under his breath. One hundred and twelve feet long she was, with an air, as she sat on the water, of knowing every little wickedness of the ocean and understanding the way to conquer it too; her mainmast cleared eighty-five feet, and was stepped well forward, with a boom that Colin did not overestimate greatly when he put it at eighty feet. Although the boy was not a keen judge, he thought the bowsprit ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green. In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone. By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean under ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... standing at the port bulwark abreast of the mainmast, gazing out over the sea in a reflective way, and looking quite forlorn and chastened. The crew, in skylarking style, were drawing water over the side with buckets and throwing it down the deck from forward, so that Dinshaw frequently had to pull himself up on the bulwark to avoid having ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... this strange incident of the coffin is this: After the battle of the Nile a portion of the Orient's mainmast was drifting about, and was picked up by order of Captain Hallowell of the Swiftsure, who had it made into a coffin. It was handsomely finished, and sent to Admiral Nelson ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... cabin, and Scott walked aft to the compass abaft the mainmast. The binnacle was lighted, and he looked into it. The course was all right, though the ship yawed a good deal in the trough of the sea, the gale pelting her squarely on the beam. Though it was not an easy ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... grace. Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In their midst the central steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... surprise, The storms did arise, Attended by winds and loud thunder; Our mainmast being tall Overboard she did fall, And five of our ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... books, and now Barkur, the Malayalim Vakkanur) and HELLI. But we read that in 1527 Simon de Melo was sent to burn ships in the River of Marabia and at Monte d'Elli.[1] When Da Gama on his second voyage was on his way from Baticala (in Canara) to Cananor, a squall having sprung his mainmast just before reaching Mt. d'Ely, "the captain-major anchored in the Bay of Marabia, because he saw there several Moorish ships, in order to get a mast from them." It seems clear that this was the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... climes bright and warm. She is built for the sunlight and not for the storm; Her anchor is gold, and her mainmast is pride— Every sheet in the wind doth she dashingly ride! But Content is a vessel not built for display, Though she's ready and steady—come storm when it may. So give us Content as life's channel we steer. If our Pilot be Caution, we've little ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... o'clock when the "Bonadventure" reached the gulf, and as at that moment the tide turned, it was impossible to enter. They were therefore compelled to stand off, for even if he had wished to do so, Pencroft could not have gained the mouth of the Mercy. Hoisting the jib to the mainmast by way of a storm-sail, he hove to, putting the head of the vessel towards ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... quarter-deck, the captain calls to me, for he never stirred from us, "What the devil is friend William a-doing yonder?" says the captain; "has he any business upon, deck?" I stepped forward, and there was friend William, with two or three stout fellows, lashing the ship's bowsprit fast to our mainmast, for fear they should get away from us; and every now and then he pulled a bottle out of his pocket, and gave the men a dram to encourage them. The shot flew about his ears as thick as may be supposed in such an action, where the Portuguese, to give them their due, fought very briskly, believing ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... by the passengers on board the Polynesia, the moon had barely cleared the horizon, as we have stated, and the top of the mainmast just reached the uppermost portion of the periphery, while spars, rigging and hull were marked against the yellow disk as distinctly as ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... so prosperous, has been marred to-day by a sad accident. Mr. Wilkins, the mate, was standing almost directly under the mainmast at about 4.30 this afternoon, when Railton, who was aloft, let slip a block, which descended on the mate's head, striking it with fearful force and killing him instantly. He was an honest, kindly man, to judge from the little I have seen of him, and, as Captain Holding assures me, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the weary eye to rest upon but a dreary expanse of ocean and sky. All was still as death, save the hissing at the bows of the vessel, as she parted the unfathomable deep. The crew loitered upon the decks listlessly; and we, as palantines, huddled together around the mainmast, were whiling away the time in songs, or talking of the homes we had left behind, and future hopes in a foreign land. We were suddenly interrupted by the female I have already mentioned, who came rushing up the companion, from the cabin, and crouched amongst us like a frightened hare. I could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... carried very few guns, generally from six to twelve or fourteen, the corsairs believing that four muskets did more execution than one cannon.[108] The buccaneers sometimes used brigantines, vessels with two masts, the fore or mizzenmast being square-rigged with two sails and the mainmast rigged like that of a barque. The corsair at Martinique of whom Labat speaks was captain of a corvette, a boat like a brigantine, except that all the sails were square-rigged. At the beginning of a voyage the freebooters were generally so crowded in their small vessels that ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... three or four hours' sail Geoffrey and Lionel acquired much nautical knowledge. They learned the difference between the mainmast and the mizzen, found that all the strong ropes that kept the masts erect and stiff were called stays, that the ropes that hoist sails are called halliards, and that sheets is the name given to the ropes that restrain the sails at the lower ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... of the Ungerengeri flourished the banana, and overtopping it by seventy feet and more, shot up the stately mparamusi, the rival in beauty of the Persian chenar and Abyssinian plane. Its trunk is straight and comely enough for the mainmast of a first, class frigate, while its expanding crown of leafage is distinguished from all others by its density and vivid greenness. There were a score of varieties of the larger kind of trees, whose far-extending branches embraced across the narrow but swift river. The depressions of the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the moment in the action at which the mainmast of the Guerriere, shattered by the terrific fire of the American frigate, fell overside, transforming the former vessel into a floating wreck and terminating the action. The picture represents accurately the surprisingly slight damage ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... wind, battling with it to fling lines in the vain hope of saving some sailor who was being churned to death in that dreadful creaming of the sea below. Yes, and there were forms of men visible on board; two had climbed the mainmast, which crashed before they could clutch at the ropes that were being flung to them from land, crashed and carried them down shrieking into the surge. Mark found it hard to believe that last summer he had spent ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly calculated, at least three thousand pounds. And then came the foremast, larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... in the after deckhouse, which extends the full width of the Roosevelt from a little aft of the mainmast to the mizzenmast. In the center is the engine-room, with the skylight and the uptake from the boilers, and on either side are the cabins and the messrooms. My own cabin occupied the starboard corner aft; forward from this was Henson's room, the starboard messroom, and in the forward starboard ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... as well as we. He was well up to his business, and chose his own distance. His next shot swept along our deck, smashing half a dozen men most horribly, and tied itself round the foot of the mainmast, wounding it badly. And then I saw for the first time that most hideous missile which the Americans had introduced, but which other nations declined to use, as barbarous and uncivilised. It was a great iron ring round which were looped iron bars between ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... probably the last commander-in-chief who ever drew a bowstring in European battle. But on the whole the fire of the Christians was greatly superior to that of the Turks. Twice the deck of Ali was swept clear of defenders, and twice the Spaniards rushed on board and advanced as far as the mainmast. At that point they were on each occasion driven back by the janizaries, who, though led by Ali in person, do not appear to have made good a footing on the deck of Don John. A third attempt was more successful. Not only did the Spaniards pass the mast, but they approached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Colonel GOURLEY. Presently rose and delivered slashing speech, laying low the Reverberating COLOMB as if he had been set up in the Place Vendome; reviewing the British Fleet in masterly style; nimbly running up the mainmast and sighting Jerusalem and Madagascar, to the absolute confounding of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... account of the Englishmen who saw the first part of the engagement from the shore, the Emden was cut up rapidly. Her forward smokestack lay across the deck, and was already burning fiercely aft. Behind the mainmast several ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... people six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, the King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. "The Emperor of Lilliput's features are strong and masculine" (what a surprising humour there ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be "in the full tide of happiness" for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred and twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: "A shot through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, 'It is warm work, and this may be the last to any of us at any moment'; and then, stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion, 'But, mark you—I would not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boys saw as they followed their conductor over the ship they found her to be a three-masted, bark-rigged vessel with a cro' nest, like a small barrel, perched atop of her mainmast. Her already large coal bunkers had been added to until she was enabled to carry enough coal to give her a tremendous cruising radius. It was in order to economize on fuel she was rigged for the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the rocks at the projections of the cape, evidently placed there by the crew to attract the attention of vessels passing. The mizen mast and main topmast had been cut away, and there were a few marks of the axe upon her mainmast. The natives appeared to have taken notice of the ironwork, for some spike nails were found about their fireplaces; these traces, however, were not very recent, nor was it probable that any natives were upon the island at ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... it only by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung, jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel Keeling's ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... pick up the burden he had brought from the cabin. He hastened to the rail of the wreck. In a moment he had clambered overboard, letting himself down by means of a line secured to a belaying pin at the mainmast. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... narrows of New York harbor a ship having all the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted off; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken; all the pumps working to keep from ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... some bruised in their arms and legs, others in their breasts, so that they voided blood for two days: some were as it were drawn out in length, as if racked. But, God be praised, they all recovered, except the four men who were struck dead. With the same flash of lightning our mainmast was terribly split from the head to the deck, some of the spikes that went ten inches into the wood being melted by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... men wounded in this last attack, but none killed; and the mainmast was much damaged, and the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... high, blow low, let tempests tear The mainmast by the board; My heart, with thoughts of thee, my dear, And love well stored, Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear, The roaring winds, the raging sea, In hopes on shore to be once ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... a minute I saw it, just abreast of the mainmast, crouched down in the shadow of the weather rail, sneaking off forward very slowly. This time I took a good long sight before I let go. Did you ever happen to see black-powder smoke in the moonlight? It puffed out perfectly round, like a big, pale balloon, this did, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... snow differed somewhat slightly from a brig. It had two masts similar to the fore and mainmasts of a brig or ship, and, close abaft the mainmast, ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... were nearly in line, and the shot that had narrowly missed the foremast, and passed through the foresail, had struck the mainmast and brought it, and its sail, overboard. The crew of the brig raised a general cheer. A minute before a French prison had stared them in the face, and now they were free. The helm was instantly put up, and the brig bore ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... the Duke of York in the Duke of York's lodgings, with the rest of the officers and many of the commanders of the fleet, and some of our master shipwrights, to discourse the business of having the topmasts of ships made to lower abaft of the mainmast; a business I understand not, and so can give no good account; but I do see that by how much greater the Council and the number of counsellors is, the more confused the issue is of their councils; so that little was said to the ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... of heaving-to a boat under her after square-sails," retorted Dick. "Give her the stay-sails, if you will, and no harm done; but a true seaman will never get a bagful of wind between his mainmast and his lee-swifter, if-so-be he knows his business. But words are like thunder, which rumbles aloft, without coming down a spar, as I have yet seen; let us therefore put the question to some one who has been on the water, and knows a little ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... stern before the termination of the conflict. Her crew had jumped into the sea, supporting themselves by portions of the wreck, spars, and other accessible objects, the water swept over the stern and upper deck, and when thus partially submerged, the mainmast, pierced by a shot, broke off near the head, the bow lifted from the waves, and then came the end. Suddenly assuming a perpendicular position, caused by the falling aft of the battery and stores, straight as a plumb-line, stern first, she went down, the jibboom being the last to appear ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... morn, as the sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast-head. Lord, how beautiful was thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... it was the hardest blow the Mary Turner had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the air as she rolled so far over as to expose half her copper wet-glistening in the sun. As she righted sluggishly, the mainmast swayed drunkenly in the air but ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... hand on the mainmast, in the manner in which another might drop a palm on the shoulder of a departing faithful companion, and the wind in the rigging vibrated through the wood like a sentient and affectionate response. Then he went resolutely down into ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... two old Dutch words which have resounded through the world, "Neen nimmer," "No, never." The fleets of Spain heard it, and understood it fully, when they saw the sinking Dutch ships with the flags nailed to the shattered mainmast, crying, "Neen nimmer," which indicated that they ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... replied Tim Rooney, showing himself from behind the deck-house between the mainmast and foremast, which had previously hidden him from the view of the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Dr. Geddie, Mr. Mathieson, Mrs. Paton, and I were perched among the boxes on the John Knox, and had to hold on as best we could. On sheering off from the F. P. Sage, one of her davits caught and broke the mainmast of the little John Knox by the deck; and I saved my wife from being crushed to death by its fall, through managing to swing her instantaneously aside in an apparently impossible manner. It did graze Mr. Mathieson, but he was not ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the sounds I had heard for what I saw. Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room. Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing a number ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... deafening roar of the thunder. Occasionally he halted at the taffrail, and gazed into the thick darkness of the south-west, from which his experience taught him the tempest would come. Then, at the foot of the mainmast he halted again, to listen for any sound that might come over the waters from the eastward; but his glances in this direction were brief and hurried, for he expected the storm from the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... were in a state of dull and languid repose. Suspended between the two masts, in an Indian hammock, lay Featherstone, with a cigar in his mouth and a novel in his hand, which he was pretending to read. The fourth member of the party, Melick, was seated near the mainmast, folding some papers in a peculiar way. His occupation at length attracted the roving eyes of Featherstone, who poked forth his head from his hammock, and said ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... broke over the ship, tearing away all her upper works, and sweeping the captain and six of the sailors overboard. The water poured in torrents into the cabins, and drove every one from the berths. The bulwarks, boats, and binnacle were carried clean off, and the mainmast had to be cut away. The sailors then turned the ship about, and after a long and dangerous voyage, succeeded in bringing her, dismasted as she was, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... hottest. On the Monarch, which for hours was under the most galling fire from the Danish ships, two hundred and twenty of the crew were killed or wounded. "There was not a single man standing," wrote a young officer on board of her, "the whole way from the mainmast forward, a district containing eight guns a side, some of which were run out ready for firing, others lay dismounted, and others remained as they were after recoiling.... I hastened down the fore ladder to the lower deck and felt really ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... indemnified himself for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp. I remember being on the wharf, with some naval officers, when he came down from his first trip. The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck's wings were seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck trousers. The naval heroes, mindful of their own short rations, and taking high views of one's duties in a conquered country, looked ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... approvingly, as, halting in his walk, Guy stood near him, upright and steady as a mainmast of Memel pine. "That's the sort I like to carry," the old sailor remarked confidentially to his second in command as they shared an amicable grog under ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and going to the lanyard at the mainmast, hauled down the black flag. Then they both set to work cleaning up the deck. The three dead men were given sea burial—slipped overboard without other ceremony than the short prayer for each which Jeremy repeated. The gunner who lay ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... morn, as the sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. Lord, how beautiful was Thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor) |
