"Mainsail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caught by vinegar when seeking honey. There might be vinegar-pots to be found in her larder, but they were kept behind closed doors and sampled only when she was alone. As she sat looking out to sea, Max's brain still at work on the problem of her unusual mood, a schooner shifted her mainsail in the light breeze and set her course for ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... storm. The gale drove us in and in to the centre of the hurricane. Somewhere around dawn on Sunday mornin' the wind decided to show us what it really could do. We were runnin' before the wind with a triple-reefed mainsail and not another stitch. "Why weren't we under bare poles," you asks? Because there was a sea chasin' after us with every wave looking like a whale out of water. We weren't lookin' to get pooped, any more than we had to. The mainmast went ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... raise the mast and hoist the mainsail, and the wind filled the sail, and they made taut the ropes all round. But anon strange matters appeared to them: first there flowed through all the swift black ship a sweet and fragrant wine, and the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... "The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent, In streaming pendants flying, is unbent; With brails refixed, another soon prepared, Ascending spreads along beneath the yard; To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend, And soon their ear-rings and their robans bend. That task perform'd, they first the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... four days, and be ready to sail Saturday noon. Which ain't the way he usually does it, believe me! Why, I've known him to hold up a directors' meetin' for an hour while he debated with a yacht tailor whether a mainsail should be thirty-two foot on the hoist, or thirty-one foot six. And instead of shippin' up cases of mineral water and crates of fancy fruit, he has them blamed Shaw books packed careful and expressed to Travers Island, where ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... the journey, and, turning the team over to a man by the waterside, paddled off to a big, half-decked boat beautifully built and fitted in Toronto. Stirling, who admitted that he knew nothing about such matters, sat down aft and lighted a cigar, while Weston proceeded to get the tall gall mainsail and big single headsail up. He was conscious that his companion was watching him closely, and when he let go the moorings and seated himself at the tiller the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... instead thereof, one builds him a new bark, and one caulks the sides of that which hath made many a voyage; one hammers at the prow, and one at the stern; another makes oars, and another twists the cordage; and one the foresail and the mainsail patches,—so, not by fire, but by divine art, a thick pitch was boiling there below, which belimed the bank on every side. I saw it, but saw not in it aught but the bubbles which the boiling raised, and all of it swelling up and again ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... Monument at Plymouth should issue a pamphlet giving a picture of the "Landing of the Pilgrims, December 21, 1620," in which women are pictured, and in which the shallop is shown with a large fore-and-aft mainsail, while on the same page is another picture entitled, "The Shallop of the MAY-FLOWER," having a large yard and square-sail, and a "Cuddy" (which last the MAY-FLOWER'S shallop we know did not have). The printed description of the picture, however, says: "The ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... her magnificent sailing qualities, for in a few minutes the boat was far behind, when there was a put from the cutter's side, but not to send a ball across their bows, for before the report reached the boys' ears a peculiar sound came overhead, and there was a hole through the mainsail. ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... wharf, a pretty little craft of six or eight tons, with a mainsail and jib. It was a delightful afternoon; a gentle westerly wind swept over a placid sea, and the sky was as clear as the mirror that reflected its exquisite blue. Greenleaf and Miss Sandford took ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... half-past ten, the lookout in the crow's nest sang out: "Smoke—oh!" sounding upon his fish horn. The boatkeeper ran aft and lit a huge calcium flare, holding it so as to illuminate the big number on the mainsail. Suddenly, about a quarter of a mile off their weather-bow, a couple of rockets left a long trail of yellow against the night. It was the Cape Horner, and presently Vandover made out her lights, two glowing spots moving ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... safely through the surf," said Goring. The two men sprang in and pushed off, pulling me in after them. With mainsail and jib we ran out from the land and passed safely over the bar. Then my two companions without a word of farewell sprang overboard, and I saw their heads like black dots on the white foam as they made their ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tacks and sheets! Mainsail haul! of all haul!" shouted Commander Newcombe; but at that instant, before the words were well out of his mouth, while the yards were in the act of being swung round, a terrific blast laid the ship over, a heavy sea striking her at the same time. ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... her stores taken aboard to go to sea. And that was attended to next morning, and she was out for her trial trip the same afternoon. Everybody said she looked as handsome as a photograph going out, though all the old sharks, when they saw her mainsail hoisted for the first time, said she'd certainly have need of her quarter and draught to stand up ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... bridges or causeways, on one of which we crossed without difficulty. The men had hoisted one sail upon the cart at first setting off; but the wind being now, as they expressed it, "on the larboard quarter," a second blanket was rigged as a mainsail, to their great amusement as well ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... for there we chiefly lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and rencontres, she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and all its many moods of bright and darksome, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of mile of the two ships—the NASSAU and the DAGGET—the newcomer backs her foreyard and hauls up her mainsail. A cheer rises from the ships. She wants to "gam," I.E. to gossip. With eager hands four boats are lowered from the two ships, and the captains and second mates of each are soon racing for ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... short on her heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay full of shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... swell, the Fram, light as she now was, surpassed herself in rolling, and that is indeed saying a great deal. This rolling brought us a little damage to the rigging, the gaff of the mainsail breaking; however, that affair did not stop us long. The broken spar was quickly ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... took no thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails—mainsail, main royal, foresail—play ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... point of land, now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella turned inside out. I saw the Whim, greenish white in a greenish foam, heeled over till her masts were all but on the waves and her mainsail, half torn from its boom, snapping in the wind. In this fashion she was being driven at breakneck speed across the Gulf. I thought—I tried to think—that I had seen a small boat being dragged behind. Surely ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... land and destruction on this—the attempt, the hope, the failure; then the stout-hearted, skillful captain would try one rare maneuver to save the ship, cargo, and crew. He would club-haul her, "and if that fails, my lads, there is nothing but up mainsail, up helm, run her slap ashore, and lay her bones on the softest bit ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... south, with a look in it that seemed to portend more wind; so, as a measure of precaution, I went to work, upon the conclusion of our meal, and shortened sail by taking down a couple of reefs in the mainsail, and a single reef in the little stay foresail which the boat carried. And, this done, I rearranged the royal in the stern-sheets as a bed for my companion, urging her to turn in at once and get as much rest as ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... there was usually a tremendous lurch; and sometimes an avalanche of books descended upon me from the shelf overhead. Yet I slept pretty soundly. Once I was awakened by a tremendous noise outside—something like a gun going off. I afterwards found it had been occasioned by the mainsail being blown away to sea, right out of the bolt-ropes, the fastenings of which were immediately outside ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... wuss. Good-night Capp'n. Baby'll ketch cold if I keep on jawin' here. Mind your weather eye, and port your helm when you reach the landin'. If you'll take the advice of a young salt, you'll clew up your mainsail an' dowse some of your top-hamper—ah! I ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Nancy Jane now," called the boy from the dooryard, pointing to a sloop on the other side of the wide estuary, bowling in with topsail and jib furled, and her rusty mainsail bellying under pressure of a wind ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... rigging were consumed in the fire at Grimross. He had fortunately saved two of the compasses from the flames. After days of toil he managed to get the vessel in fair working order. The old half-burnt blankets were patched together and a mainsail and jib were completed. On the 30th of May, 1771, he set ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... Comfort Island!" sputtered Andy through the spray, as he and Jamie sprang for the mainsail ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... table, at a word from Hastings the two Japanese had gone on deck. Billy could hear them throwing down the halyards, casting off gaskets, and heaving the anchor short on the tiny winch. In several minutes one called down that everything was ready, and all went on deck. Hoisting mainsail and jigger was a matter of minutes. Then the cook and cabin-boy broke out anchor, and, while one hove it up, the other hoisted the jib. Hastings, at the wheel, trimmed the sheet. The Roamer paid off, filled her sails, slightly heeling, and slid across the smooth water and out the mouth of New ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Cove below. How they scamper along, eager to walk the deck of that trim little craft, the Falcon, anchored in the stream, and sitting like a bird on the bosom of the famed river. Wait a minute and you will see the mainsail flutter in the breeze. Now our rollicking young friends have marched past ruins of "chapel, convent, hospital," &c., on the beach; you surely did not expect them to look glum and melancholy. Of course they knew all about "Monsieur Puiseaux," ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... twisted smile, helped them get away. The mainsail took a steady set; but the jib, from the first, possessed an ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... jib. b. Jib. c. Foresail. d. Foretopsail. e. Foretopgallantsail. f. Foreroyal. g. Mainsail. h. Maintopsail. i. Maintopgallantsail. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... away very strong, and the cobles had to cower southward under a bare strip of mainsail. The men ashore did not like to be asked whether they thought the weather would get worse; and the women stood anxiously at their doors. A little later and they gathered all together on the rock-edge. One coble, finely handled, ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... it, the boat had reached the opposite side of the lake, and it was necessary to come about. Suddenly the skipper had thrown her head into, the wind, the jib and mainsail were clattering thunderously, and the boom went slashing over like a club in the hands of a giant. Before the Twins had dared to lift their heads again, there was a silence, and the sails began to fill and the boat to resume her speed quickly in a new direction. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... it was broad daylight. The boat had come to a stop, the mainsail was down, and they were taking in the jib. I heard the anchor go over with a splash, and then ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... generwine crew, aint I? All right, my hearties, I'll set ye to work fast enough." And then followed a string of orders in true nautical style, and the Rover boys flew in one direction and another to execute them. Up went the mainsail and the jib, and the top-sail followed, and soon the Old Glory was standing off into Santa Barbara Channel, with Mrs. Stanhope in the carriage waving them an adieu, and the girls and the boys ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... way to spread sail after sail with a rapidity little short of that seen on board of a vessel of war. The rattling of the clew-garnet blocks, as twenty lusty fellows ran forward with the tack of the mainsail, and the hauling forward of braces, was the signal that the ship was clear of ground, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the lad steered their boats towards the shore side by side, the former hauling in his mainsail somewhat to lessen the speed of his boat. They parted to the northward of the promontory described, Dermot steering for the little cove in which stood the solitary hut already spoken of, while his uncle continued along the shore a ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... the wind 'twas worse than ever. The way Phil see-sawed that piece of pie back and forth over the river was a sin and shame. He could have slacked off his mainsail and headed dead for the buoy, but no, he jiggled around like an old woman crossing the road ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said the Laird, who had sought Mannering for some time, and now joined him, "there they go—there go the free-traders—there go Captain Dirk Hatteraick, and the Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen, half Manks, half Dutchman, half devil! run out the bowsprit, up mainsail, top and top-gallant sails, royals, and sky-scrapers, and away,—follow who can! That fellow, Mr. Mannering, is the terror of all the excise and custom-house cruisers; they can make nothing of him; he drubs them, or he distances them;—and, speaking of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... said he, wiping his brow with a huge coloured handkerchief as big as a mainsail, 'one night in such a furnace as that would ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... hard as we stood in for the Old Head of Kinsale pilot boat breasting the foaming surge like a sea gull—"Carrol Cove" in her tiny mainsail—pilot jumped into the main channel a bottle of rum swung by the lead line into ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... deck rather disappointed at the result of the conference, for I was interested in the chase. I ordered the jib and mainsail to be taken in, and the helm to be put down. The fog had lifted to the northward and westward of us, so that I could see St. Augustine light and the pilot-boat. We took up one of the pilots, and in less than half an hour we were anchored under ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... jib: take the bonnet off the jib, and put a reef in her," came the strong swift sentences. "Brail up the foresail, and double reef the mainsail." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... The mainsail was first hoisted, its size greatly surprising the boys; then the foresail and jib were got up, and lastly the mizzen. Then the capstan was manned, and the anchor slowly brought on board, and the sails being sheeted home, the craft began to steal through the water. The tide was still ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... a letter's lineaments Though swollen to mainsail measure,—magically, I gather from your words; and on its face Are three vast seals, red—signifying blood Must I suppose? It moves on Dresden town, And dwarfs the city as it passes by.— You ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... pirate, as free a freebooter as the century and the waters of San Francisco Bay would permit. Spider had already agreed to sail with me as my crew of one, and, also, as cook while I did the deck work. We would outfit our grub and water in the morning, hoist the big mainsail (which was a bigger piece of canvas than any I had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the first of the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would slack sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the bay to the Asparagus ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... which had secured the two paddle-like rudders, one on either beam, which had been tied up to be out of the way when the stern anchors were put out—are loosed, and the rudders drop into place. The foresail (not 'mainsail,' as the Authorised Version has it) is set to help to drive the ship ashore. It is all exactly what we should expect to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and they were able to shew a small bit of canvas; but towards night the storm again arose, and the waves ran so high that the ships were hardly able to live. The admiral endeavoured to carry a close-reefed mainsail, to bear his ship over the surges; but was at length forced to lay to, and to suffer his ship to drive astern before the wind. On Thursday the 14th February, the storm increased so that every one expected to perish, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... are called hieroglyphics. A fly is an obnoxious insect that disturbs you in the morning when you want to sleep. Real bravery is defeated cowardice. A brigantine is a small, two-masted vessel, square rigged on both masts, but with a fore-and-aft mainsail and the mainmast considerably longer than the foremast. A mushroom is a cryptogamic plant of the class Fungi; particularly the agaricoid fungi and especially the edible forms. Language is the means of concealing ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... other rewards promised by the Sovereigns, which were 10,000 maravedis to him who should first see it.[109-4] At two hours after midnight the land was sighted at a distance of two leagues. They shortened sail, and lay by under the mainsail ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... was thrown up by an invisible war-ship in the direction of Fort Taylor, and instantly two powerful search-lights were focused upon a pale, whitish object, far out at sea, which looked in the bluish, ghostly glare like the mainsail of the Flying Dutchman. Before I had time to form a conjecture as to the significance of these mysterious signals and apparitions, I was startled by a sudden flash and the thunder of a heavy gun from the darkness ahead; and away out at ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... go drifting down the river. A quiet, smoky October day; the distant hills all softened in the haze; the near shores green with the fresh-springing aftermath. Reuben lounged upon the sunny side of the mainsail, thinking, with respectful pity, of the poor fagged fellows in roundabouts who were seated at that hour before the red desks in Parson Brummem's school-room. At length he was enjoying a taste of that outside life of which he had known only from travellers' books, or from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... gale in the evening at S.W. by W., which, being fair for the Portugal fleet, and the weather pleasant and agreeable, we heard the signal given to unmoor, and running in under the island of Si—-, we hauled our mainsail and foresail up in the brails, lowered the topsails upon the cap, and clewed them up, that we might lie as snug as we could, expecting their coming out, and the next morning saw the whole fleet come out accordingly, but not at all to our satisfaction, for they consisted of ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... she reached under the seat and brought out the pile of Blazeton weeklies. With her feet upon the pile to keep it from blowing away, she proceeded to unfold one of the papers. It crackled and snapped in the wind like a loose mainsail. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for Spanish prizes, one was sighted, bound from Antwerp to Cadiz. Cobham gave chase, easily captured her in the Bay of Biscay, and discovered there were forty Inquisition prisoners aboard. After rescuing the prisoners, the captain and crew of the Spanish vessel were then sewn up in their own mainsail and tossed into the sea, no doubt with such sententious expressions of godliness as was thought befitting to sacred occasions of that period. This ceremony having been performed, the vessel was scuttled, so that she might nevermore be used in trading with British sailors or any one ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... snapped them up and took no notice of them. In his anxiety he dropped the telegram, and without being seen I pushed it under the counter with my foot. An hour later the yacht was under sail, with two reefs in her mainsail and a ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... to look in or out. You could rock in the hair-cloth chair by the water door, and join in conversation with more active persons mending seines upon the wharf; or you could dangle your heels from the work-bench, and listen to stories and debates inside, and look on Captain Philo sewing upon a mainsail. ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... interested: "An' did they say he was as big as a cabin an' a ruff on him like the mainsail of a whaler?" ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Moderate weather till 4 A.M., when we hauled down our mainsail to get clear of the keys & brought to under our ballast mainsail, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... a been for a great big nigger wench he had, called Rose. My! what a slashin' large woman, that was; half horse, half alligator, with a cross of the mammoth in her. She wore a man's hat and jacket, and her petticoat had stuff enough in it to make the mainsail of a boat. Her foot was as long and as flat as a snow shoe, and her hands looked as shapeless and as hard as two large sponges froze solid. Her neck was as thick as a bull's, and her scalp was large and woolly ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... summer's evening that a beautiful English built craft, after having beat up the Black Sea all day against the ever prevailing a north-cast wind, now gathered in her light sails and barely kept steerageway by still spreading her jib and mainsail. With the setting sun the breeze had lulled also to rest, and there was but a cap full now coming from off the mountains of the Caucasus, just enough to keep the little clipper steady ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... the squall burst upon them. Captain Dettmar, springing aft, lifted the coiled mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them, ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders swarmed from the tiny forecastle, two of them leaping to the halyards and holding by a single turn, while the third fastened down the engineroom, companion and swung the ventilators around. Below, Lee ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... sails of their ships are made of bamboo, like matting. They do not use a yard on the mast, but raise the mainsail on the mast fastened to a pole as an infantry flag is placed on a pike; and the sheets hang down from the other side with which the sail is turned to this or that side, according to the direction of the wind. The sail ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... come, swinging in the air; and the moment they have reached the deck they are off and up the ratlines again, again to drop into the air until the gaff is high hoisted, the peak swinging this way and that, and the gray folds of the mainsail lazily flapping in the wind. The steamer begins to roar. The yachts fall away from their moorings, and one by one the sails fill out to the fresh breeze. And now all is silence and an easy gliding motion, for the eight competitors have all started away, and the steamer ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... in shipshape manner, and came conveniently to hand. The wind freshened perceptibly while I was thus engaged, veering into the southeast, so that all the cloth I dare spread was the jib and a closely reefed mainsail. The boat acted a bit cranky, but, confident she would stand up under this canvas, I crawled back to the tiller, eased off the sheet a trifle more, and waited results. We shipped a bucket full of water, and then settled into a good pace, a cream of surge along our port gunwale, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... this bright summer morning! Sheila sat in the stern of the small boat, her hand on the filler. Lufrath lay at her feet, his nose between the long and shaggy paws. Duncan, grave and watchful as to the wind and the points of the coast, sat amidships, with the sheets of the mainsail held fast, and superintended the seamanship of his young mistress with a respectful but most evident pride. And as Ingram had gone off with Mackenzie to walk over to the White Water before going down to Borvabost, Frank Lavender was Sheila's sole companion out in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... impatience. It wanted but half an hour of 'knocking off time'—and that half-hour would be time enough, for his watch to finish the scraping of the deck-house—but the wind waits on no man, and already the weather clew of the mainsail was lifting lazily to a shift. It was hard to give up the prospect of having the house all finished and ship-shape before the Mate came on deck (and then trimming yards and sail after the work was done); but here was the wind working light into the eastward, and the sails nearly aback, and ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... dainty cutter of about thirty tons, very swift by the rake of her masts and the lines of her bow. She was coming up from the south under jib, foresail, and mainsail; but even as we watched her all her white canvas shut suddenly in, like a kittiwake closing her wings, and we saw the splash of her anchor just under her bowsprit. She may have been rather less than a quarter of a mile from the shore—so near ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the crew were set to bale at the fore scuttle and hatchway. Though they could not keep the water under, they still hoped to preserve her afloat, till she could be run upon Weymouth sand. The lashings of the boats were cut; but they could not get out the long-boat, without bending the mainsail aback, which would have retarded the vessel so much, as to deprive them of the chance of running ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... May thy cool breath to my heart bring healing! Let Death now follow, his booty seeking: The moves are many before the checkmate! Awhile I'll harass thy love of plunder, As on I scud 'neath thy angry eyebrows; Thou only fillest my swelling mainsail, Though Death ride fast on thy howling tempest; Thy billows raging shall bear the faster My little ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... all the single masters. This is the type of our great yacht racers. Next to the sloop, and very much like it, is the schooner rig yacht. This is a fine boat, but beyond the pockets of boys; however, smaller sizes can be rigged on the same plan, with a jib and mainsail, and they will be found to be both ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the next half hour the owners of the boats which lay alongside the quay sauntered down one by one. Brown lugsails were run up on the smaller boats. The mainsail of the hooker was slowly hoisted. At half past eleven there was not a single boat of any kind left afloat in the harbour. Peter Walsh, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was laying long stripes of green paint on the already shining bottom of the Blue Wanderer. He worked ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... in the lagoon, using only our engine to escape the coral traps. Past the ever-present danger, with the wind now half a gale and the rain falling again in sheets—the intermittent deluge of the season—the Morning Star, under reefed foresail, mainsail and staysail, pointed her delicate nose toward the Dangerous Islands and hit hard ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... New England fleet. The ketch, often referred to in early annals, was a two-master, sometimes rigged with lanteen sails, but more often with the foremast square-rigged, like a ship's foremast, and the mainmast like the mizzen of a modern bark, with a square topsail surmounting a fore-and-aft mainsail. The foremast was set very much aft—often nearly amidships. The snow was practically a brig, carrying a fore-and-aft sail on the mainmast, with a square sail directly above it. A pink was rigged like a schooner, but without a bowsprit or jib. For ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... friend of liberty. Hearing a noise in front, I looked up and discerned the light spar of a mast peeping over an intervening barrier of rock; we wound round it, and on the other side found a cutter-rigged boat of about eighteen tons hauled close to the natural quay, with her mainsail set and flapping heavily in the night wind. Here we met another seaman. In ten minutes we were under way; the smooth groundswell running free and silent from our quarter, and the boat laying herself out with an easy speed, as she caught ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... head-yards, the brig dropped her mainsail, braced her cross jack-yard sharp aback, put her helm a-weather and got sternway, while her after sails and helm kept her to the wind. So she fell off from us and the two vessels passed, perhaps ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look. "Wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she walks home with all her salt wet. There's some work first, though." He pointed down into the darkness of the open main-hatch between the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... towards the north, and this was the sole avenue of escape which remained. Here, again, was one of those trivial circumstances which are so potent in the shaping of events. Had either of the sails blown out, or had the mainsail been set at the same time as the foresail, the course followed during the next few hours must have been deviated from to some extent, and the alteration of a cable's length in direction could not fail to exercise ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... veerin' t' the s'uth'ard," said the skipper, anxiously, while they put a double reef in the mainsail. "'Twill be a rough ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... day, we managed, despite a new hole in the old boiler, to steam out of hospitable Sinfir at 6:30 a.m. on the auspicious Wednesday, February 13. The appearance of the Mukhbir must have been originale enough: her canvas had been fished out of the hold, but in the place of a mainsail she had hoisted a topsail. We passed as close as possible to the islet-line of Secondary formation, beginning with Shu'shu', the wedge bluff-faced to south: the Palinurus anchored here in a small bight on the north-east side, between two reefs, and narrowly escaped being wrecked by a northerly ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... lands, and fisheries, and visits it now upon an income of $2000 a year, derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for the midland markets. He preserves, however, the habit and appearance of old days: that is to say, his chin is folded away under his lip like a reef in a mainsail; his cheek-bones hide his ears, so tusky and prominent are the former, and tipped with a varnish of red, like corns on old folks' feet; he has a nose which is so long and bony that it seems to have been constructed in sections, like a tubular bridge, and to communicate ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... hadn't reckoned that we carried such heavy metal, and our luck in getting both shots on board must have surprised them. Then her bow paid off, there was a puff of smoke amidship, and a ball from the long swivel gun buzzed overhead, passing through our mainsail ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... name from the Carib word "boucan," a kind of gridiron on which, like the natives, they cooked their meat, hence, bou-canier. The word filibuster comes from the Spanish "fee-lee-bote," English "fly-boat," a small, swift sailing-vessel with a large mainsail, which enabled the buccaneers to pursue merchantmen in the open sea and escape among the shoals and shallows of the archipelago when pursued in their turn ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... with the Buffalo, but the Lady Nelson and the Integrity remained with the king's ship until the end of the storm, when both vessels lost sight of her. The Lady Nelson, having split her fore-and-aft mainsail, bore up for Twofold Bay to refit. On the 21st she again put to sea only to meet with another storm of still greater violence, which stove in her bulwarks, washed overboard her boats, compasses, and many articles belonging to the Government. The ship consequently ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... as, in looking back upon my own life-stream, I discern the remains of my precious system lying high and dry among the rocks of that winter's experience. Yet I tried all ways to make it go. I was like a boy with a new boat, who increases or lessens his ballast, now tries her with mainsail, foresail, topsail, jib, flying jib, and jibber jib, and now with bare poles,—anything to make her float. Each night I took my poor system home for repairs, and each morning, full of hope, tried to launch it anew in my school-room. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... cross beams fastened to the masts to which the sails are fixed. The "main-yard" is the largest. The mainsail is attached to it. ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne
... through the sails or rigging, but not a spar was touched nor an important rope cut. We could see some of her crew aloft reeving and stopping braces and ready to repair any damage done, working as coolly under fire as old man-of-war's men. But while we were looking, down came the gaff of her mainsail, and the gaff-topsail fell all adrift; a lucky shot had cut her peak halyards. Our crew cheered with a will. "Well done, Hobson; try it again!" called the captain to the boatswain's mate, who was captain ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... in stopping the leak, this was not accomplished until the mainsail had been carried away by the heavy sea, and other injuries sustained. It was a terrible time for all, and the crew, exhausted and overworked on insufficient food, were only held to their tasks by the captain and mates standing over ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... was taken in the mainsail, and Johnson filled the cabin with a storm-sail of No. 1 duck, and sat cross-legged on the streaming floor, vigorously putting it to rights with a couple of the hands. By dinner I had fled the deck, and sat in the bench ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mainsail lash the sea As I clung to the rock alone; Then she heeled over, and down she went, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer feather-white an' skatting in over the bows." New words are eagerly seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of, without appreciation of their cause. Obsolete has come hereto from the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... now uttered find no place in any known code, and in a moment the Bull Pup becomes a scene of unwonted excitement. The jib, mainsail, and gaff topsail are hauled up to their very tautest; finally, the cable is slipped, and then old Sandy for the first time looks around. The boys fail to suppress a loud guffaw, and forthwith dodge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... a danger to the ship. The jibs I speedily doused and brought tumbling to the deck; but the mainsail was a harder matter. Of course, when the schooner canted over, the boom had swung out-board, and the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under water. I thought this made it still more dangerous; yet the strain was so heavy that I half feared to meddle. At last I got my knife and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I put the Reindeer about on the other tack, ran up under the lee of a junk, shivered the mainsail into the wind and lost headway, and forged past the stern of the junk so slowly and so near that one of the patrolmen stepped lightly aboard. Then I kept off, filled the mainsail, and bore ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... which the Petrel was tied was crowded this Saturday afternoon with various parties of excursionists making for the steamers, ferries, yachts, and other craft that lay along the water front. Already the Petrel had hoisted her mainsail and, under the gentle breeze, was straining upon her shore lines awaiting the word to cast off. As Iola stood idly gazing at the shifting scene, wondering how Dick had succeeded on his mission to his brother, she observed Dr. Bulling approaching with his usual ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the huge sea, and to heave to would be sure ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... likely to be so with the wind rising out of the northeast; and ere long the Petrel's topmast was sent down, and a double reef put in her mainsail. Until midnight it blew hard with a fast rising sea, and a mist as thick as a hedge. After this, it was ugly weather all the way home, and as they passed Ailsa Craig the wind changed to full north, and fetched the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... that when it ceased blowing half a gale the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather or rain. This may all seem common enough to most people; but to those accustomed to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail or foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last few summers has been remarkable—alternating at times with equally persistent spells of calm and fog such as ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... her mainsail and foresail up, both bellying far outward under the impulse of the wind, while the hull keeled far over to the right in response, and the foaming water at the bow told that she was making her way at high speed toward her destination, wherever ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... wet, and the gale in the highest degree violent, they clung so fast to the masts and rigging, that it was scarcely possible to get them either up or down; yet by the dexterous activity of our people, we got the mainsail up, clewed up the main top-sail, and got the ship's head round without receiving much damage. The violence of the wind continued several hours, but before morning it veered again to the N.W. and continued in that quarter till the afternoon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... distinct flash. The wind, which had been southeast, had now left us, and it was dead calm. We sprang aloft immediately and furled the royals and top-gallant-sails, and took in the flying jib, hauled up the mainsail and trysail, squared the after yards, and awaited the attack. A huge mist capped with black clouds came driving towards us, extending over that portion of the horizon, and covering the stars, which shone brightly in the other part of the heavens. It came upon us at once with a blast, and a shower ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... shore the two commanders sat together in the sheets, a strange contrast to one another, while under the feet of the rowers was a litter of huge stones which Sir Nigel had ordered to be carried to the cog. These once aboard, the ship set her broad mainsail, purple in color, and with a golden St. Christopher bearing Christ upon his shoulder in the centre of it. The breeze blew, the sail bellied, over heeled the portly vessel, and away she plunged through the smooth blue rollers, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... face, head and neck shaped not unlike an old-fashioned water-pitcher, and a form suggestive of an obese lobster balancing on an upright horse-shoe. His nose was too high up; his mouth and chin bulged too tremendously; his neck inside a whole mainsail of shirt-collar was too much fluted, and his eyes were as much too small and oyster-like as his ears were too ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... Mr. Masefield has received sufficient credit for his prose fiction. In 1905 he published A Mainsail Haul, which contained a number of short stories and sketches, many of which had appeared in the Manchester Guardian. It is interesting to recall his connection with that famous journal. These are the results partly of his experiences, partly of his reading. It is plain that he has turned over ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of Biscay, on the morning after the tempest, the full force of which she had fortunately escaped, trying to make some headway under her jib, close-reefed topsails, and storm staysails, with a bit of her mainsail set to steady her, half brailed up—although the task was difficult, with a nasty chopping cross-sea ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... hives, their thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary robin sings near. I sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay-window on the indolent scene—the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance—off on the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was run up, followed by the answering pennant, the mainsail was lowered, the foresail backed, and the yacht was brought to, while the Italian ship, which was made out to be the Cigno, came ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... before was on and we could feel that she was rolling a little. A peek through the periscope while she was up disclosed further evidence of the breeze—tossing white crests, two coasters hustling for harbor under short sail, an inbound fisherman with reefed mainsail making great leaps for home. Looking through the periscope so, it was easy enough to understand the feeling of power which might well come to the master of a submarine in war time. The sub can be lying there—in dark or bright water will make no difference; on such a day ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... note the circumstance, Servadac turned his entire attention to the Dobryna, which, now little more than a mile from shore, could not fail to see and understand his signals. Slightly changing her course, she first struck her mainsail, and, in order to facilitate the movements of her helmsman, soon carried nothing but her two topsails, brigantine and jib. After rounding the peak, she steered direct for the channel to which Servadac by his gestures was pointing her, and was not long in entering ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... proceeded to bale. But the wind showed a disposition to freshen, careening the boat so steeply that, despite Stukely's utmost care, the water began to slop in over the lee gunwale, as well as over the bows; and at length they decided to take a reef in the mainsail, for Dick had no fancy for spending the rest of the cruise in an ineffectual endeavour to free the boat of water that came in faster than he could throw it out. This was done, and the boat resumed her headlong rush to the southward, until by the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the first half took in all canvas and reefed it with the exception of the mainsail. This was unbent entirely and stowed away. In its place was bent on a riding sail, for until their salt was all wet there would be very little occasion for any sort of sailing, their only progress being as they ambled leisurely from ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... said in a low voice, while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. "I should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... part, by Captain Price, of the Volcano; and in order to give to his ship a still greater resemblance than it already had to a merchantman, he displayed an old faded scarlet ensign, and drew up his fore and mainsail in what sailors term a ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... forecastle deck, from which, extending some feet further aft, a sliding hatch was fitted, so that in reality their boat was half decked over. They lastly gave her a thick coat of tar outside, and two coats of paint all over inside. She was rigged with a mainsail, a mizen, and a foresail, to which they added a sliding bowsprit, so that a jib could be set in light winds, with a flying gaff topsail. Having plenty of canvas and spars, they also fitted a square sail; some sand-bags served for ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... She jumped over the waves, as if the sea was a great play-ground, and the game for the morning, Leap-Frog. Though the wind was so high that we were obliged to lower our foresail, and to double-reef the mainsail, the only water we got on board was the spray that was blown over us from the tops of the waves. In the state of the weather, getting down Channel was out of the question. We were obliged to be contented, on this first day of our voyage, with running across ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... and went in amongst them, firing a broadside within half musket shot at one of the frigates with evident effect, as, from the damage caused, they did not return our fire. Whilst tacking to give them the other broadside, our mainsail split in two, and night setting in, we relinquished the pursuit in ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... tackin' when it fust began to blaw, an' all bustlin' 'bout in the dark, when the mainsail went lerrickin' 'cross an' knocked the poor dam bwoy owerboard into as ugly a rage o' water as ever I seed. Tom had his sea-boots on, an' every sawl 'pon the bwoat knawed 'twas all up as soon as we lost en. We shawed a light an' tumbled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the marriage, and Mr. Hardy at last assented. The worst of it was that something of all this doubt on the part of the Earl and his friends was sure to reach the opposite party. "They are shaking in their shoes," Serjeant Bluestone said to his junior counsel, Mr. Mainsail. "I do believe they are not going to fight at all," he said to Mr. Goffe, the attorney for the Countess. Mr. Mainsail rubbed his hands. Mr. Goffe shook his head. Mr. Goffe was sure that they would fight. Mr. Mainsail, who ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... together on the edge, we waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long, however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sped by the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:— "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we'll out to the seas again— Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of the shingle, lay the lugger. Her jib was flapping; the mainsail set for the hoisting; every stick and stay in place. Half a dozen burly Grenadiers, black-muzzled with a week's beard, were busy about her, stowing their kits, laughing ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... that noo mainsail, sir. . . . There's a nice li'l sailin' breeze, sir." Casey, hinting at a spin in the galley, somehow reminded one of a spaniel when he sees the gun-case opened. Had he been blessed with a tail, he would most ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... carriage of one of the quarter-deck guns, I was just in time to see the French ship's mizenmast fall forward, dragging down the main-topgallant-mast with it and passing through the main topsail and mainsail in its fall, splitting them from head to foot. There was at once great confusion on board the Frenchman, and, being thus deprived in a moment of all her after-sail, she immediately fell square off before ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... in fact, there was no sloop that could beat her. She was a clinker-built boat, about seventeen feet long, and her breadth of beam—that is, the distance across her from one side to the other—was great compared with her length. She was rigged like Frank's boat, having one mast and carrying a mainsail and jib; but as her sails were considerably larger than those of the Speedwell, and as she was a much lighter boat, the boys all expected that she would reach the island, which the young skippers ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... dear relations and country; yet the present haste he feared might hinder the seeing of them at all. Upon a strange earnestness in his own mind and judgement, he gave a positive command to the captain to cause all the sails to be taken down except the mainsail only, and that to be half-furled. Upon the captain's dispute, Whitelocke with quickness told him that if he did not presently see it done he would cause another to do it, whereupon the captain obeyed; and it was a great mercy that the same was ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... was not at her moorings, and he concluded that his cousin was away in her on some excursion. When he reached the boundary line of the estate, he discovered the sailboat with her bow on the beach, though her mainsail was still set. A gentle breeze was blowing, with which the Florence could make good headway; but there seemed to be no one on board of her. Corny watched her for some time, waiting for the appearance of Christy. It was not an easy matter to climb the high fence which bounded ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... burthen, properly rigged and ballasted; also buy a red shirt, a small low-crowned straw hat, some tar to smear over your hands, and learn the first stanza of 'The sea! the sea!' to make every thing seem more nautical and ship-shape. Hoist jib and mainsail, and venture out. After you have drifted a mile or two, it will fall a dead calm, and the boat (Gazelle? Wave? Gull?) will float two or three hours, the sun flashing back from the glassy surface of the water, burning ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... bell in the first dog-watch; the weather was fine, the water smooth, the breeze light; and the brig, with little more than bare steerage-way upon her, was laying her course, with squared yards, both clews of her mainsail hauled up, and studding-sails set on both sides, her topsails occasionally collapsing and flapping to the masts for lack of wind to keep them "asleep." Miss Trevor was, as usual, on deck, seated in a deck-chair, with a book on her lap and the fingers ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... New River Inlet, we discovered a small sail standing to the northward. The breeze was very light, so we downed our sail, got out our oars, and gave chase. The stranger stood out to seaward, and endeavored to escape; but slowly we overhauled her, and finally a shot caused her mainsail to drop. As we pulled alongside I saw from the dress of the crew of three that they were man-of-war's men, and divined that they were deserters. They were thoroughly frightened at first, for our appearance was not calculated to impress them favorably. To our questions they returned evasive ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... took our mainsail, which was hard frozen, and carried it ashore to cover our house, first thawing it by a great fire; by night they had covered it, and had almost hedged it about, and our six builders desired they might travel up into the country to see ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... made on a mainsail, the yard being seventy-one feet long, and reefyard sixty-six feet long, eleven inches diameter at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... was under her mainsail, jib, and fore-top-sail. The foresail was brailed, and the foot stopped, and the flying-jib was stowed. None of the halyards were racked, nor sheets stoppered. This was a precaution we always took, on account of ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that. All hands got me over the side, and it seems to me I went to sleep, sitting in the stern-sheets and watching that Adamu steer. Then I saw the Flibberty's mainsail hoisting, and heard the clank of her chain coming in, and I woke up. 'Here, put me on the Flibberty,' I said to Adamu. 'I put you on the beach,' said he. 'Missie Lackalanna say beach plenty good for you.' Well, I ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... much to go there," said I, and the captain, without comment, changed his course a little more to the eastward and let the reef out of his mainsail. ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... figure to yourself, reader, the picture of a hardworking man, with horny hands like our hedgers, ditchers, weavers, porters, &c., setting to work on the highroad in that vast sweeping toga, filling with a strong gale like the mainsail of a frigate. Conceive the roars with which this magnificent figure would be received into the bosom of a poor-house detachment sent out to attack the stones on some new line of road, or a fatigue party of dustmen sent upon secret ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... those of the crew who were not engaged at the windlass swarmed up the rigging and threw off the gaskets of the foresail and mainsail, while a couple of hands ran out on the bowsprit and unloosed the lashings of the jib, the topsails having been dropped before ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... began to blow from the north-east, accompanied by a drizzle, and he stood off to the northward and westward, knowing that the coast of New York lay in the opposite direction. At half-past one he stowed the flying-jib, reefed the mainsail, and took the bonnet off the jib. At two he was compelled to get a second reef aft; and by half-past two he had put a balance-reef in the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... stand, because she scudded before the sea very well, and we knew that the topmast being aloft, the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way through the sea, seeing we had sea-room. When the storm was over, we set foresail and mainsail, and brought the ship to. Then we set the mizzen, maintopsail, and the foretopsail. Our course was east- northeast, the wind was at southwest. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather braces and lifts; we set in the lee braces, and hauled ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... high water would float well up on the shore. The following, as near as can be recollected, were the articles landed from the ship; (and the intention was, when all should have been got on shore, to haul the ship on shore, or as near it as possible and burn her.) One mainsail, one foresail, one mizen-topsail, one spanker, one driver, one maintop gallantsail, two lower studdingsails, two royals, two topmast-studdingsails, two top-gallant-studdingsails, one mizen-staysail, two mizen-top-gallantsails, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... last. With a few words and many dramatic gestures, he made known how the trader, roused from a two-day stupor by the pitching of the vessel and the banging of the boom sticks, had staggered up out of the cabin, and been struck by the heavily swinging boom of the mainsail. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the players persist in winning the game by the most heterodox grouping. This constitutional independence has its good and evil results, in sports as elsewhere. It is this which has created the American breed of trotting horses, and which won the Cowes regatta by a mainsail as flat as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... well, O lady mine, Fare ye well, my pretty one, For the anchor's at the cat-head and the voyage is begun, The wind is in the mainsail, we're slipping from the land Hull-down with all sail making, close-hauled with the white-tops breaking, Bound for the Rio Grande. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... reached the vessel than the latter began to drift, carrying the boat along with her. Instantly those on board endeavoured to hoist the mainsail of the Smeaton, with the view of working her up to the buoy from which she had parted; but it blew so hard, that by the time she was got round to make a tack towards the rock, she had drifted at least three ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Swordfish, gave this order in disgust at last; for the tide was against her, with a heavy pitch of sea, and the mainsail scarcely drew the sheet. What little wind there was came off the land, and would have been fair if it had been firm; but often it dropped altogether where the cliffs, or the clouds that lay upon them, held it. The cutter had slipped away from Scarborough, as soon as ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to fight us," cried another. "See, he is hauling up the foot of his mainsail; but he wants to keep the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Fairfax, who stood up as he replied, ending the conversation with a wave of the hand to Sam, who had taken position at the wheel. The latter began shouting orders in a shrill voice. Carr cast off, and, with the negro and myself at the halliards, the mainsail rose to the caps, while we began gliding out from the shore into the deeper water. By the time we had hoisted the jib, and made all secure, we were out far enough to feel the full force of the stiff breeze, the Adele careening until her rail was ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Arbroath without being able either to deliver the provisions or take the artificers on board. The Lighthouse yacht was also soon obliged to follow her example, as the sea was breaking heavily over her bows. After getting two reefs in the mainsail, and the third or storm-jib set, the wind being S.W., she bent to windward, though blowing a hard gale, and got into St. Andrews Bay, where we passed the night under the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broke off short of the point, and drove in within half-a-mile of the rocks. Then, while I waited to see the end of her, she suddenly wore round, and after staggering a moment while the sea broke over her, hauled up to the wind, and careening over, with her mainsail sweeping the water, started gaily on ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... gaping watchers in the stockade on the headland beheld the great ship creep forward under the rising cloud of smoke, her mainsail unfurled to increase her steering way, and go about close-hauled to bring her larboard guns to ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... when about thirty leagues west of North Cape, and about the same latitude as the Bay of Islands, no land in sight, the wind rose so that they had to bring to, under the mainsail, but moderated a little the next day so that they could run in towards the land. Again it freshened up and blew a perfect hurricane, accompanied by heavy rain, and a "prodidgeous high sea," which caused the ship ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... they set sail, one pleasant forenoon, from Borvabost, and the light wind that ruffled the blue of Loch Roag gently filled the mainsail of the Maigh-dean-mhara as she lightly ran down the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... and carried three officers, a passenger, and ten men. At 11 A.M. we "sheeted home," and stood out of the harbor with a fair breeze, and all canvass spread: but, within an hour, the wind freshened to a gale, and compelled us to take in everything but a close reefed mainsail. The sea being rough, and the weather squally, our boat took in more water than was either agreeable or safe, until we somewhat improved matters by constructing a temporary forecastle of tarpaulins. Finding it impossible, however, to contend against wind and current, we bore ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... on the gaff of the mainsail broke short off. We replaced it with the gooseneck from the gaff of the storm trysail, and the second gooseneck broke short off inside fifteen minutes of use, and, mind you, it had been taken from the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... obey this order. He received his despatches from the captain of the frigate, with orders to proceed to sea immediately. Mr Vanslyperken, under the eye of his superior officer, could not dally or delay: he hove short, hoisted his mainsail, and fired a gun as a signal for sailing; anxiously looking out for Ramsay's boat with his letters, and afraid to go without them; but no boat made its appearance, and Mr Vanslyperken was forced to heave up his anchor. Still he did not like to make sail, and he remained a ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat |
