"Oakum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wheels, with a hose and jet attached, and a tank capable of containing some fifty gallons. This engine I now ordered to be uncovered, and prepared for action by securely lashing a small loose mop-head of oakum round the nozzle of the hose, taking especial care that the aperture of the jet should be left perfectly free. Roberts, who seemed at once to divine and understand my plan even before I had explained it to him, undertook this part of the work in person; and in about ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... account of him who was languishing in sickness. That they might not be wholly dependent on one lamp, of which some accident might deprive them, they made another. In collecting such wood as had been cast on shore for fuel, they had fortunately found some cordage and a little oakum (the sort of hemp used for calking ships), which they turned to great account as wicks for their lamps. When this store was consumed, they had recourse to their shirts and drawers—a part of dress worn by almost all Russian peasants—to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... side so much that they laid her keel bare; and on the outer side they put planks, upon which all the crew got to work at the ship, some cleaning the planks from the growth of sea-weed, others extracting the calking, which was quite rotten, from the seams; and the calkers put in fresh oakum and then pitched it over, for they had a stove in a boat where they boiled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... a staid, wall-eyed veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and stand-up collar, over which dangled either a queue, or marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it—it would have puzzled old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-scuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... asbestos stove? If a man found a coil of rope in a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done with a coil of rope; and some of them might even be practical. He could tow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat's-cradle, or pick oakum. He could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her boxes for a travelling maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he could hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller who should find a telephone ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... both these blessings in the one simple process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... famished. To crown it all, Love had lugged him into the very porch of Paradise, to slam the gates in his face.... Mind and body alike were craving for some immense distraction. In return for board and lodging for his terrier and himself, the man would have picked oakum—furiously: but not in Hampshire. That was the county of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth, oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned, tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... came on board, which he did with one of his wives. It was my morning watch, when the frigate was hailed and desired to heave to, which was done. The cooper, a black man, personated the sea-god. His head was graced with a large wig and beard made of tarred oakum. His shoulders and waist were adorned by thrumbed mats; on his feet were a pair of Greenland snow-shoes. In his right hand he held the grains (an instrument something resembling a trident, and used for striking fish). He was seated on a match tub placed on a grating, with his wife, a ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... And as treadmills and oakum picking can be dismissed in the one case, so can much of the theological machinery for the discipline and punishment of sinners against spiritual laws be dispensed with, in the case of those who are, spiritually ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... another man. Go, mix me a glass of just what I love when I've not had a drop all day. Gentlemen, will any of you honour me, by sharing in a cut? This beef is not indigestible, and here is a real Marylander, in the way of a ham. No want of oakum to fill up ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... made very soon afterwards by Messrs. Newcomen and Cawley of Dartmouth, it consisted in employing for the steam-vessel a hollow cylinder, shut at bottom and open at top, furnished with a piston sliding easily up and down in it, and made tight by oakum or hemp, and covered with water. This piston is suspended by chains from one end of a beam, moveable upon an axis in the middle of its length, to the other end of this ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... sea anchor," declared Ben, "but in the first place, Frank, get below and empty your canvas clothes bags, stuff 'em with oakum and pour all the lubricating oil you can spare in on top of the oakum and then make a lot of holes in ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... next morning, we gave the ship a good heel to port, in order to come at, and stop the leak. On ripping off the sheathing, it was found to be in the seams, which were very open, both in and under the wale, and, in several places, not a bit of oakum in them. While the carpenters were making good these defects, we filled all our empty water-casks, at a stream hard by the ship. The wind was now moderate, but the weather was thick ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... beautifully packed in the shell that when once removed it is found impossible to replace them. A bland oil is pressed from the seeds, which is used by artists, and at Para the fibrous bark of the tree is used for calking ships, as a substitute for oakum. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... for. The company's just where it has to have a boost. It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he's read his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances for ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... muzzles of what appeared to be heavy rifles protruded; though the guns that seemed so formidable were really only logs of wood. Two high smoke-stacks, built of empty pork-barrels, rose from the centre of this strange craft; and at the bottom of each stack was an iron pot, in which was a heap of tar and oakum that sent forth volumes of black smoke when lighted. One dark night the fires in this sham monster were lighted, and she was towed down to the Confederate batteries, and set drifting down the river. She was quickly discovered, and the batteries on the bluffs opened on her ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... They dug the compacted oakum from the seams with their knives, and by iron rings in each corner, now eaten with rust to almost the thinness of wire, they lifted the hatch. Below was a filthy-looking layer of whitish substance, protruding from which were charred, half-burned staves. First they repeated the experiment ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... swift little ship in the middle of the second watch, or two in the morning. He was "to go down secretly into the well of the ship, and with a spike-gimlet to bore three holes, as near the keel as he could, and lay something against it [oakum or the like] that the force of the water entering, might make no great noise, nor be discovered by a boiling up." Thomas Moone "at the hearing hereof" was utterly dismayed, for to him the project seemed flat burglary as ever was committed. Why, he asked, should the Captain want to ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... was best of all; Falmouth, with its narrow streets and crowd of sailors, postmen, 'longshoremen, porters with wheelbarrows, and passengers hurrying to and from the packets, its smells of pitch and oakum and canvas, its shops full of seamen's outfits and instruments and marine curiosities, its upper windows where parrots screamed in cages, its alleys and quay-doors giving peeps of the splendid harbour, thronged—to quote Miss Plinlimmon again—"with varieties of gallant craft, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... laughed," said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take more than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that he meant 'to beat the record on oakum!'" ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... pulpit now and then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners. For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all come out ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... "Oakum to me, {156} ye sailors bold, Wot plows upon the sea; To you I mean for to unfold My mournful historie. So pay attention to my song, And quick-el-ly shall appear, How innocently, all along, I was ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... or pipe conveying water from the flume to the wheel, should be constructed of liberal size, and substantially, of two-inch chestnut planking, with joints caulked with oakum, and the whole well bound together to resist the pressure of the water. Means should be provided near the bottom for an opening through which to remove any obstructions that may by accident pass by the rack. Many wheels have plates provided in their ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... ten minutes later he found Mr. Reardon very busy calking with oakum the cracks round the door and window of his state-room, through which little wisps of yellow smoke were curling. Mr. Schultz was so completely deceived that he hurried round to his own quarters and pawed over his own mattress and bedding in a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... like real milk. When it is soft the fruit is like green hazel-nuts in taste, and better; and there is a serum for many ills and infirmities, which is called whey, as it looks much like that of milk. It is there called tuba. They make honey from this tree; also oakum with which to calk ships, which lasts in the water, when that from here would rot. Likewise they make rigging, which they call cayro; and they make an excellent match for arquebuses, which, without any other attention, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... pump! Bear up the helm! Sling a man overboard to stop the leaks, that is, truss him up around the middle in a piece of canvas and a rope, with his arms at liberty, with a mallet and plugs lapped in oakum and well tarred, and a tar-pauling clout, which he will quickly beat into the holes the ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... assist in searching for the leak, and some of each of their companies to aid our men in pumping. Some were set to rummage the hold in search of the leak, and others to stick our sprit-sail full of oakum, with which we made several trials under the ship's bilge, but could not find the leak. We at length found, by divers trials within board, that the leak was before the main-mast; and we, next morning, fitted the sprit-sail again, letting it down at the stern, and brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... pasteboard could work. As there are six of us, I propose to put a false neck over each of our heads, and I'll manage to paint in a quarter less than no time, six as ugly faces as you ever saw, on as many balls of canvas, which I'll stuff with oakum. So each of us will have a head to hold in his hand. Unless some accident happens, we certainly can manage to keep ahead of the rover till nightfall. Then we'll just mix up a number of lumps of gunpowder and sulphur, and place them about the deck ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... draperies of some airproof woolen stuff. At nighttime the maid enters your room, seals the windows, pulls down the shades, locks the shutters, closes the curtains, draws the draperies—and then, I think, calks all the cracks with oakum. When the occupant of that chamber retires to rest he is as hermetic as old Rameses the First, safe in his tomb, ever dared to hope to be. That reddish aspect of the face noted in connection with the average Englishman is not due to fresh air, as has been popularly supposed; it is due to the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought, and then he went to work. From the useless little vessel which, had belonged to the Rackbirds he gathered some bits of old rope, and having cut these into short pieces, he proceeded to pick them into what sailors call oakum. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... savage growl, "that's your sort; thunder and oakum, I'm as peckish as a shark, and here's ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... imprisonment like a common felon. Mr. Truelove was indisposed to reveal the secrets of his prison-house out of a tender regard for my feelings, but seeing that I preferred to know the worst, he told me all about the felon's cell, the plank bed, the oakum picking, the wretched diet, and the horribly monotonous life. My chief feeling on hearing this sad tale was one of indignation at the thought that a man of honest convictions and blameless life should be subjected ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... excavation, it of course progressed slowly. Three summers were consumed in sinking the pump-shaft. After this a framework, or caisson, of stout timber and boards, was built round the mouth of the shaft, and rendered watertight with pitch and oakum. It rose to a height of about twelve feet above the surface of the sea, and was strengthened and supported by stout bars, or buttresses of timber. A platform was placed on the top, and a windlass, at which four men could ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Random, written forty years after Dampier's time, give us some idea of life on board ship, for in the forty years between the two dates it differed in no essential particulars. Pepys describes a sailor who had lost his eye in action having the socket plugged with oakum, a fact which tells more than could a volume of how seamen were then cared for. It was the days of the press and of the advance-note system, which prevailed well into the present century, and those seamen ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... me. We shall be ready for any night-rush. I'll take a leaf out of modern warfare, and show them not only that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but why we are top-dog. It is simple—night illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded in the gunpowder and fire ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... to be sure! What can Mr. Grey mean? There was Mrs. Oakum's gray and silver brocade, and Mrs. Cotton's point-de-Venice mantle, and Miss Prime and Miss Messe and Miss Middlings, who always dress exquisitely, and Mrs. Shinnurs Sharcke with that superb India shawl that must have cost two thousand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... throat with fresh provisions; with butchers'-meat and garden-stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a state, of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' luggage; and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of anybody, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... heated, contrary to orders, on the fore part of the main deck, caught fire, and the people, instead of damping it out, most imprudently attempted to extinguish it with buckets of water. The steam blew the flaming pitch all around; the oakum caught fire, and the ship was immediately in a blaze. Many of the crew jumped overboard, and others were preparing to hurry out of her, when the presence and authority of the Admiral allayed the panic. He ordered to beat to quarters; the marines to fire upon any one who should attempt ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the same Bark. In Lieu of a Gunnel, they have a small Pole fastned with Thongs, sticks across & Ribs of Bark, and they deposit Sheets of Bark in her Bottom to prevent Breaches there. These vessels are very light, each broken and often patched with Pieces of Bark as well as corked with Oakum ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak—but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked." At the beginning of the paragraph he says that he and his philosopher sat down each with "some shingles of thoughts well dried," which they whittled, trying their knives and admiring the clear yellowish ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast-and-water, it would have been much nicer.' He adds: 'When we got into the street, which was strange to me, and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tallow, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place injustice.' In this opinion his readers who know Yarmouth ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... seventeenth century a Spanish ship, richly laden, was beset off Marblehead by English pirates, who killed every person on board, at the time of the capture, except a beautiful English lady, a passenger on the ship, who was brought ashore at night and brutally murdered at a ledge of rocks near Oakum Bay. As the fishermen who lived near were absent in their boats, the women and children, who were startled from their sleep by her piercing shrieks, dared not attempt a rescue. Taking her a little way from shore in their boat, the pirates ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... into a tar-barrel, and set to work at it. Moreover, he is made to fetch and carry like a dog. Like as not, if the mate sends him after his quadrant, on the way he is met by the captain, who orders him to pick some oakum; and while he is hunting up a bit of rope, a sailor comes along and wants to know what the deuce he's after, and bids him ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... it fell short of telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... I'll cover the whole of this property with a couple of tubs, one to catch rain-water and t'other filled with garden mould. If the sea rots 'em, I'll have the whole estate careened, and its bottom pitched and its seams stopped with oakum. I'll rig up a battery here, and if the water-butt runs dry you shall blaze away at the guns till you fetch the rain down, as I've seen it fetched down before now by a cannonade. But I mean to have a garden here, ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... take long. When I was a little shaver, me and my granddad, the first Cap'n Lote Snow—there's been two since—were great chums. When he was home from sea he and I stuck together like hot pitch and oakum. One day we were sittin' out in the front yard of his house—it's mine, now—watchin' a hoptoad catch flies. You've seen a toad catch flies, haven't you, Mr. Fosdick? Mr. Toad sits there, lookin' half ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... tidewater slipway, every detail of the vessel was visible, even to the last fathom of oakum now being hammered into her port garboard seam. White painted and trim, she spelled speed and weatherliness in every line, and a note of admiration escaped Barry as he regarded her clean underbody from a safe distance. A trickle of water was already creeping up towards her ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... been kept tight by the rock that had caused it. It was necessary to close this leak at once. An iron bolt, which was screwed for a nut at one end, was obtained and passed through a strong piece of wood about 2 feet square. The inside of this board was cushioned with canvas and oakum, and it was taken down outside the ship by the diver and placed over the hole, with the feathered end of the bolt sticking through the hole; the diver was then sent down inside the hold, and with a nut set up the whole cushion until the flow of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... Oakum; they spent all evening at Mrs. B———'s. The Captain is a Marblehead man by birth, not far from sixty years old; very talkative and anecdotic in regard to his adventures; funny, good-humored, and full of various nautical experience. Oakum (it is a nickname which he gives ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... glimmer which had aided me down the same passage only twelve days before. As I ran, I saw the great beast lurching along before me, its huge bulk filling up the whole space from wall to wall. Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum, and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was far larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its height. It fills me with amazement now to think ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that can be imagined. It was found necessary to caulk every part of the upper works, as well as all the decks, the seams having been so much opened by the frost as to require at least one, and in many parts two threads of oakum, though the ship had scarcely ever laboured at all since she was last caulked. I also at this time laid out a small garden, planting it with radishes, onions, mustard, and cress; and a similar attempt was made by Lieutenant Liddon; ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... materials used in stopping leaks the same diversity. "Pitch" one easily gets from pix (Latin); "tar" as easily from the Saxon tare, tyr. "Junk," old rope, is from the Latin juncus, a bulrush,—the material used along the Mediterranean shore for calking; "oakum," from the Saxon oecumbe, or hemp. The verb "calk" may come from the Danish kalk, chalk,—to rub over,—or from the Italian calafatare. The now disused verb "to pay" is from the Italian pagare;—it survives only in the nautical aphorism, "Here's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... and a whipping-post was substituted, and only the upper part of the body was exposed. The tramp question was as troublesome in the seventeenth century as it is to-day. We confine them in workhouse-cells and make them break stones or pick oakum; whipping was the solution adopted by our forefathers. We have seen John Savidge wielding his whip, which still exists among the curiosities at Hungerford. At Barnsley in 1632 Edward Wood was paid iiijd. "for whiping of three wanderers." Ten years earlier Richard White received ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... there till he was a pale, handsome boy of nine years, and then he was taken to the workhouse, where, with many other boys of his own age or older, he had to work hard all day picking oakum. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... seaweed adhered to it. It was encrusted and damascened over with the rust of ocean. There was a ring of tar round its neck, showing that it had been hermetically sealed. Now it was unsealed and open. They had, however, replaced in the flask a sort of bung made of tarred oakum, which had been ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... cooking at that time, "I want Will to come with me to make a little search for that old boat we were told could be found hidden under a shelving rock near the shore. It hasn't been used for some years, and is apt to be in poor shape, but I've got some oakum and a calking tool. With those, I hope to put it in condition, so with frequent baling we can use ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... article that could possibly be needed in the fitting out of a ship. There was part of a coil of brand-new ratline close to my hand, which would serve my purpose admirably, I therefore whipped out my knife and cut off as much as I required, seized a double handful of oakum and a belaying-pin with which to form a gag, cut off a length of marline with which to secure the gag in place, and then, having made a running bowline in the end of my length of ratline, I stole, still in my stocking feet, to the door, and very cautiously peered out at Jose. The man was sound asleep, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries it .. coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots. He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging. No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye see, in ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... uneventfully, in his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in during the voyage of the Gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tug of war! Every man knows exactly what to do, for he has been well drilled. Some hand up kegs of powder and balls of oakum soaked in tar. Others carry these along the deck and down below. Now they drag two eighteen-pounders amidships, double-shot them, and point them down the main hatch, so as to blow out the bottom of the ship. In a few minutes everything ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... those who are a little unwell for having taken a draught too much, through the lewd demeanour and vexation of the beetles that inhabit the diarodal (diarhomal) climate of an hypocritical ape on horseback, bending a crossbow backwards, the plaintiff truly had just cause to calfet, or with oakum to stop the chinks of the galleon which the good woman blew up with wind, having one foot shod and the other bare, reimbursing and restoring to him, low and stiff in his conscience, as many bladder-nuts and wild pistaches as there is of hair in eighteen cows, with as much for the embroiderer, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... so that if, by the blow of a whale, or by touching on a rock, water should get into one of these divisions, it can go no farther, and the leak being found, is soon stopped. They are all built double, or have two courses of boards, one within the other, both of which are well caulked with oakum, and nailed with iron; but they are not pitched, as they have no pitch in Mangi, instead of which they are payed all over with the oil of a certain tree, mixed up with lime and chopped hemp which binds faster than pitch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... length he became a pleasant companion among us. I gave him a new suit of frieze after the English fashion, because I saw he could not endure the cold, of which he was very joyful; he trimmed up his darts, and all his fishing tools, and would make oakum, and set his hand to a rope's end upon occasion. He lived with the dry caplin that I took when I was searching in the pinnace, and did eat dry ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... smooth. He collected lumber from all available sources for the ends and bottom, fastening them on with a miscellaneous collection of nails and springs. Then he patiently picked an old piece of tarred rope into oakum, and caulked it into the seams with a sharpened gate-hinge. He notched a pine tree, gathered the gum and boiled it into pitch to make the joints tight. That extraordinary pair of oars he sawed, chopped, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various |
