"Mainmast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who had been on the point of trying to join von Ludwig and Jack, saw the strategy of this plan and stooped down behind the guns. The lookout forward also stepped behind the mainmast, where he began to blaze away at the foe. The man aft, by a dash, succeeded in reaching the side of von ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... accomplishment. He knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and design. But these were avocations, and the man's trade was war. 'When my uncle go make wa', he laugh,' said Tembinok'. He forbade the use of field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cruising in these waters met a Japanese vessel off Cape Bojeador (N.W. point), and fired a shot which carried away the stranger's mainmast, obliging him to heave-to. Then the galley-men, intending to board the stranger, made fast the sterns, whilst the Spaniards rushed to the bows; but the Japanese came first, boarded the galley, and drove the Spaniards aft, where they would ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... away close to the gammoning, and the foremast and main-topmast immediately followed it over the side. The wreck was quickly cleared; and, by the greatest activity and energy on the part of the officers and men, the mainyard and mainmast were saved, the latter having been endangered by the foremast falling across the stay, and the former by the wreck of the main-topmast and top-sail-yard lying upon it. Notwithstanding the continuance of the gale, and the uneasy motion of the ship for the next two days, we succeeded ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... breeze was blowing strong. The sails had been taken off the mainmast, but that on the foremast was dragging the Lido through the water at a good rate of speed, and before night they were off Cape Spartivento. The wind held till next morning, when they were abreast of the Gulf of Taranto. Then came a long spell of calms or baffling winds, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green. In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone. By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean under ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a minute I saw it, just abreast of the mainmast, crouched down in the shadow of the weather rail, sneaking off forward very slowly. This time I took a good long sight before I let go. Did you ever happen to see black-powder smoke in the moonlight? It puffed out perfectly round, like a big, pale balloon, this did, and for a second something ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... the Hoonah silhouetted against the glow, old Kayak Bill stood alone. In his hazel eyes was the wistful look that crept there sometimes when he watched the domestic happiness of those about him. A-top the cabin by the mainmast Jean and Gregg stood looking back over the lengthening stretch of water. Kon Klayu lay, an oblong of jade in the amber light, ringed with a wreath of foam. A single gull winnowed across the vision calling a wistful question, and from the Lookout ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... a shipyard and build ships," he told Anne. "See this little model!" and he held up a tiny wooden ship, fully rigged, with a little American flag fastened at the top of the mainmast. "Rose made that flag," he said proudly. "See, there's a star for each ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... sort of faint perfume of adventure, and died before spring set in. But indubitably it was a company, it had even a house-flag, all white with the letters F. C. T. C. artfully tangled up in a complicated monogram. We flew it at our mainmast head, and now I have come to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind in existence. All the same we on board, for many days, had the impression of being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly departures for Montreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and prospectuses ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the P.M. While the Carpenters were buisey in repairing the Sheathing and plank under the Larboard bow I got people to go under the Ship's bottom, to examine all her Larboard side, she only being dry Forward, but abaft were 9 feet water. They found part of the Sheathing off abreast of the Mainmast about her floor heads, and a part of one plank a little damaged. There were 3 people who went down, who all agreed in the same Story; the Master was one, who was positive that she had received no Material Damage besides the loss of the Sheathing. This ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... he was far from remaining silent, and Royson, never at a loss when rapidity of thought and action was demanded, took the lead. He woke up the crew with a string of orders, rushed from foremast to mainmast and back to the bows again to see that the men hauled the right ropes and set the sails in the right way, and, had the Aphrodite bowling along under canvas in less than two minutes after the stopping of the screw. Not until every sheet was drawing and the yacht running free did it occur ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... flag to come into its harbours, Byron was obliged to pass to Zante in a small vessel, and to join the Greek brig afterwards, which was waiting for him near Zante. Hardly was Byron on board when he kissed the mainmast, calling it "sacred wood." The ship's crew astonished at this whimsical behaviour, regarded him in silence; suddenly Byron turned towards the captain and the sailors, whom he embraced with tears, and said to them, "It is by this wood that you will consolidate your independence." At these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... commenced settling by the stern before the termination of the conflict. Her crew had jumped into the sea, supporting themselves by portions of the wreck, spars, and other accessible objects, the water swept over the stern and upper deck, and when thus partially submerged, the mainmast, pierced by a shot, broke off near the head, the bow lifted from the waves, and then came the end. Suddenly assuming a perpendicular position, caused by the falling aft of the battery and stores, straight as a plumb-line, stern first, she went down, ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... Providence in Rhode Island. Vessels of a type not seen to-day made up the greater part of the 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. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the boys saw as they followed their conductor over the ship they found her to be a three-masted, bark-rigged vessel with a cro' nest, like a small barrel, perched atop of her mainmast. Her already large coal bunkers had been added to until she was enabled to carry enough coal to give her a tremendous cruising radius. It was in order to economize on fuel she was rigged for the carrying of sail when she encountered a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the job, but doesn't like to show funk, either—and he goes. Lots of water on the main-deck, and he splashes along; it was getting dark, too. All at once, by the mainmast, somebody catches him by the arm. Stafford. He wasn't thinking of Stafford at all. Captain Harry had said something as to the mate not being quite satisfactory, but it wasn't much. Cloete doesn't recognise him in his oilskins at first. He sees a white face with big eyes peering ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... be "in the full tide of happiness" for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred and twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: "A shot through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, 'It is warm work, and this may be the last to any of us at any moment'; and then, stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion, 'But, mark you—I would not be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the only one who had noted the falling barometer. Captain Hamilton was already standing at the foot of the mainmast, shouting orders that were taken up by Ditty and Rogers and carried on to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... of the second day's voyage, a sudden and violent thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the raging of which our mainmast was struck by lightning, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... shells continued. Already fire had broken out on board in several places. A sliver of metal sheered through the ensign staff. Without hesitation one of the crew rushed off, retrieved the weather-worn bunting, and made his way to the mainmast. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... given its liberty, partook freely of bread crumbs and drank of fresh water, then assumed a perch aloft, where it carefully dressed its feathers, and after thanking its entertainers with a few cheerful notes it extended its wings and launched out into space, no land being in sight. The broken mainmast of a ship, floating, with considerable top hamper attached, was passed within a cable's length, suggestive of a recent wreck, and inducing a thousand dreary surmises. At first it was announced as the sea serpent, but its true nature ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Will shouted; "we shall finish with her before the other can come up." As he spoke a shot from the long-tom struck the cutter's mainmast, which tottered for a moment and then fell over her side towards L'Agile, and the sails and hamper entirely prevented the crew from working her guns. For another five minutes the fire was kept up; then the crew were seen to be leaping overboard, and presently ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... having been evidently stirred up. The adjacent land seemed eroded in a remarkable manner. It has its floods, which excavate these valleys and ravines, and leave those singular ridges behind. Towards evening I climbed the mainmast, and, standing on the cross-trees, saw the sun set amid a blaze of fiery clouds. The wind was strong and bitterly cold, and I was glad to slide back to the deck along a rope, which stretched from the mast-head to the ship's side. That night we cast anchor ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... this time, in all the excitement of action, pacing the quarter-deck. A shot through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, "It is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment:"—and then stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion—"But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands." About this ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... in the afternoon, the mainmast fell overboard, sweeping several of the crew into the sea, and severely injuring four or five more. By this time they were near enough to the Kentish coast to discern objects on land, but the waves which rolled mountains high prevented the possibility of any help approaching. By great exertion ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... tempest was the first I had ever witnessed, and was undoubtedly a more formidable one than I have ever since encountered in eighteen passages across the Atlantic. I was told, after it was over, that the vessel had sprung its mainmast—a very serious injury to a sailing ship, I suppose, by the mode in which it was spoken of; and for three days we were unable to carry any sail whatever for the fury ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... them to working the pumps, to save the sinking ship. Human courage and resolution have seldom been more severely tried than in the exigencies of this terrible night on board the Richard. Jones continued to ply his feeble cannonade from the deck, levelled at the mainmast of the adversary. Both vessels were on fire, when, at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the mainmast told that it might fall at any moment. Passengers and crew redoubled their shouts to Poseidon and to Zeus of AEgina. A fat passenger staggered from his cabin, a huge money-bag bound to his belt,—as if gold were the safest spar to cling to in that boiling ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... colors; the vanes at the mast-heads were gilded; the three lions of Normandy were painted here and there; the figure-head was a child with a bent bow, its arrow pointed towards the land of England. At the mainmast-head floated a consecrated banner, which had ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... because the gutter boy, Greene, was the most poorly clad of all, Hudson gave the dead man's overcoat to the London lad. Instantly there was wild outcry from the other men. It was customary to auction a dead seaman's clothes from the mainmast. Why had the commander shown favour? In disgust Hudson turned the coat over to the new mate—thereby adding fresh fuel to the crew's wrath and making Greene a real source of danger. Greene was, ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... but not so as to prevent the guns from being handled. While the cannon roared and the flames shot up, the two crews again met in desperate hand-to-hand strife, for it was evident that one of the two vessels must be lost. By the light of the flames Jones saw that the mainmast of the Serapis was cut almost in two. Quickly he gave the order, and another double-headed shot finished the work. Captain Pearson, who had commanded his ship most gallantly, hauled down his flag and surrendered. Alluding to the fact that the British ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of the center boards, or other equivalent devices for the same specific purpose, in the extreme bow and stern of vessels, that is to say, the placing of the said boards forward of the foremast or aft of the mainmast, in two masted vessels, and forward of the foremast and aft of the mizzen mast in three masted vessels, substantially as shown and described, and for the objects ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... as the sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast head Lord, how beautiful was Thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... tempest; but when they began to cry out and entreat the favor of our blessed Father Ignatius, then the vessel ceased to drift. Thus invoking him in every danger—as they frequently did, both religious and laymen—the Lord again bestowed upon them a special favor; for when the mainmast fell, which they were obliged to cut, its fall was not, as they feared, such as to sink the vessel, inasmuch as the yard and the topsail, falling upon the rocks, served as a support, and on that side held back the ship so that it could ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... was covered. Upon the forecastle stands Farmer Hayseed (Oates) chewing a straw with the greatest composure, and waiting until the hay shall fall at his feet, at which time he will feed it to his ponies. This crow's nest, which was a barrel lashed to the top of the mainmast, to which entrance was gained by a hinged trap-door, shielded the occupant from most of the wind. I am not sure that the steersman did not have the most uninviting job, but hot cocoa is a most comforting drink and there was always plenty to ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my native country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... Barbarigo and the land, were able to fall on the rear of the extreme left of the line, while the larger galleys pressed the attack in front. The Venetian flagship was rushed by a boarding-party of Janissaries, and her decks cleared as far as the mainmast. Barbarigo, fighting with his visor open, was mortally wounded with an arrow in his face, and was carried below. But his nephew Contarini restored the fight, and with the help of reinforcements from the next galley drove the boarders from the decks of the flagship. Contarini was mortally ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... black hull a nicely laid band of white ran sheer from stem to stern; her bows swelled to meet the seas in a gentle curve that hinted the swift lines of our clippers of more recent years. From mainmast heel to truck, from ensign halyard to tip of flying jib-boom, her well-proportioned masts and spars and taut rigging stood up so trimly in one splendidly cooerdinating structure, that the veriest lubber must have acknowledged her the finest ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... that quite as well as we. He was well up to his business, and chose his own distance. His next shot swept along our deck, smashing half a dozen men most horribly, and tied itself round the foot of the mainmast, wounding it badly. And then I saw for the first time that most hideous missile which the Americans had introduced, but which other nations declined to use, as barbarous and uncivilised. It was a great iron ring round which were looped iron bars ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... of the blows of the carpenter's hammer, and the creaking of the pumps, nothing was heard save the voice of the captain, who stood leaning against the mainmast trying to ascertain on a chart the place to which he had been driven by the storm. The movements of the needle were scrutinized more and more carefully, while from time to time, the voice of an officer taking soundings, echoed on the air. At last the ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... this strange incident of the coffin is this: After the battle of the Nile a portion of the Orient's mainmast was drifting about, and was picked up by order of Captain Hallowell of the Swiftsure, who had it made into a coffin. It was handsomely finished, and sent to Admiral Nelson with ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Bermuda. They carried very few guns, generally from six to twelve or fourteen, the corsairs believing that four muskets did more execution than one cannon.[108] The buccaneers sometimes used brigantines, vessels with two masts, the fore or mizzenmast being square-rigged with two sails and the mainmast rigged like that of a barque. The corsair at Martinique of whom Labat speaks was captain of a corvette, a boat like a brigantine, except that all the sails were square-rigged. At the beginning of a voyage the freebooters were generally so crowded in their small vessels that they ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... left to gaze in open-mouthed wonder at the shrinking figure of Mr. Duckett at the wheel. They regarded each other in silence, until a stealthy step behind Mr. Chalk made him turn round smartly. Mr. Stobell, who was stealing up to secure him, dodged hastily behind the mainmast. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... swung slowly aback, the canvas on the mainmast pressed against the mast, still further retarding the vessel's sluggish movement; and as she drifted almost imperceptibly up to them, a few strokes of Leslie's arms took the pair alongside, where some half a dozen rope's ends, with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... could be made a first- class officer and a brilliant sailor. No one quite understood him, not even his brother Henry, usually known as Fitz. Fitz did not understand him now; he had not understood him since the fatal notice had been posted on the broad mainmast, of which some may wot. He did not know what to say, so, like the wise old Duke, he ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Barkur, the Malayalim Vakkanur) and HELLI. But we read that in 1527 Simon de Melo was sent to burn ships in the River of Marabia and at Monte d'Elli.[1] When Da Gama on his second voyage was on his way from Baticala (in Canara) to Cananor, a squall having sprung his mainmast just before reaching Mt. d'Ely, "the captain-major anchored in the Bay of Marabia, because he saw there several Moorish ships, in order to get a mast from them." It seems clear that this was the bay just behind ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mother and father, whose windows looked out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace, climbing the old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright. He began the day thus because there was not time to go far afield before his lessons. The old tree's variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant mast, and he could always come down by the halyards—or ropes of the swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... terrible naval battle between the English and the Dutch, the English flag-ship, commanded by Admiral Narborough, was drawn into the thickest of the fight. Two masts were soon shot away, and the mainmast fell with a fearful crash upon the deck. Admiral Narborough saw that all was lost unless he could bring up his ships from the right. Hastily scrawling an order, he called for volunteers to swim across the boiling water, under the hail of shot and shell. A dozen sailors ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... did not take my sailor instinct long to guess what was amiss. Those in front shot side to side, those behind tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long and as thick as the mainmast of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the fun-loving Rover, and launched the baseball high into the air. Just then the steam yacht gave a lurch, the ball hit the mainmast, and down it bounced squarely upon Asa Carey's head, knocking the mate's cap over his eyes and sending ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... from rolling down it only by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung, jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... start off with him and have a look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar. 'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure enough, on the far side of Dean Point they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with half a dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother's son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and nearby part of a ship's ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... rolled her to and fro with extreme violence. Rocket after rocket had been sent up, until the drenching seas had rendered the firing of them impossible. The foremast had already gone by the board, carrying most of the crew with it. On the cross-trees of the mainmast only two remained—a man and a woman, who could barely maintain their hold as the battered craft ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... proved a coward at last, And he played at bo-peep behind the mainmast, And there they did stand, boys, and shiver and shake, For fear that that terror their lives it would ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... "Nighthawk,"—her who sailed with the "Bonita" and "Driving-Scud" and "Mazeppa," in the great Sea-Derby, whose course lay round the world. How, one Christmas-day, off the pitch of Cape Horn, he, standing on her deck, saw her dive bodily into a sea, and all of her to the mainmast was lost in ocean,—her stately spars seemingly rising out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;—it seemed an age to him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to make sail in a reef-topsail-breeze ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... sorr," promptly replied Tim Rooney, showing himself from behind the deck-house between the mainmast and foremast, which had previously hidden him from the view of the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... about eight o'clock in the evening until after midnight, when the Vengeance lay completely silenced and apparently helpless. But the rigging and spars of the Constellation had been so badly cut up that the mainmast fell, and before the wreck could be cleared away the Vengeance was able to make her escape. During the two years and a half in which hostilities continued, the little navy of the United States captured eighty-five armed French vessels, nearly all privateers. Only one American war vessel was ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... Hydra hesitated, and at first even declined to do so; but, at last, on the 28th of April, this island also issued a manifesto of adherence to the patriotic cause. On the third of May, a squadron of eleven Hydriot and seven Spezzia vessels sailed from Hydra, having on the mainmast "an address to the people of the Egean sea, inviting them to rally round the national standard: an address that was received with enthusiasm in every quarter of the Archipelago where the Turks were not numerous ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... way towards the kitchen, intending to look for matches and a lantern. Although the sea was very rough, he noticed that the ship did not move, a fact which astonished him very much. But when he came to the mainmast, he was even more astonished to find himself walking on a parqueted floor, partly covered by a strip of carpet of a small blue and white checked pattern. He walked and walked, but still the carpet stretched ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... length from the shore we could see the mainmast of the barque floating upon the waves, disappearing at times in the trough of the sea, and then shooting up towards Heaven like a giant javelin, shining and dripping as the rollers tossed it about. Other smaller pieces of wreckage dotted the waters, while ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... drawn in Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its mouth, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the foot of his mainmast," he went on. "Let each man fire as he gets the mast on ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... state of nervous bewilderment, and loading our pistols in a manner that ensured their not going off, we valiantly hurried on deck in the rear of the exasperated officer. On reaching the raised quarter-deck of the vessel, we found the crew clustered together near the mainmast, armed with hand-spikes, boat-oars, crow-bars, and a miscellaneous assortment of other weapons, and listening to an harangue which the carpenter was in the act of delivering to them. They were all intoxicated; but the carpenter, a ferocious, determined villain, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... captain calls to me, for he never stirred from us, "What the devil is friend William a-doing yonder?" says the captain; "has he any business upon, deck?" I stepped forward, and there was friend William, with two or three stout fellows, lashing the ship's bowsprit fast to our mainmast, for fear they should get away from us; and every now and then he pulled a bottle out of his pocket, and gave the men a dram to encourage them. The shot flew about his ears as thick as may be supposed in such an action, where the Portuguese, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... ship was never known to have entered. There they anchored, and fearing that the wind with which they entered might shift to that which generally prevails in that season and with greater fury, they determined to run the said ship into the mud, and to cut away the mainmast, in order to render them less liable to drag, and to leave the port again and encounter the enemy. Accordingly, all possible haste was displayed in disembarking the men, and the silver and reals of your Majesty and of private persons, and the most valuable goods; but scarcely was that done ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... appear as if the house of commons was a capricious court; a court neither bound by law nor by the usages of parliament. The debate on the question was one of great violence; and in the course of it, Colonel Barre compared the state to a vessel in a storm which had parted with her mainmast (Grafton,) and was trying to sail under a jury-mast (North). The new premier acknowledged that the storm was great, but asserted that the ship was not compelled to hang out lights for pilots, as her own crew were capable of conducting her safely into port. And so it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... on the mainmast, Thad?" asked Dory, making ready to do something,—"one on each side of the mast, with a rope leading up? Do ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... followed the first appearance of the storm, gave place to a sullen roar, and then, of a sudden, the thing struck the Halfmoon, ripping her remaining canvas from her as if it had been wrought from tissue paper, and with the flying canvas, spars, and cordage went the mainmast, snapping ten feet above the deck, and crashing over the starboard bow with a noise and jar that rose above the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the captain on the quarter-deck in a cocked hat and sword, the shoals of flying fish and albacore skittering about a transom as high and carved and gilded as a church, the royal pennant at the mainmast head. Maybe it would be the Earl of Balcarras with her cannons shining ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore! But that's not to the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you'd thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land service,—to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman.—But to make an end ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they stumbled and lurched along past the mainmast, they could see aft his round, broad face with a white paper before it, and beside his shoulder the sleepy head, writh dropped eyelids, of the boy, who held, suspended at the end of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp. Even before ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of the cockpit and made his way along the slippery deck until he reached the bowsprit. Clinging to the mainmast, he steadied himself while he surveyed the thrashing sail, whose folds of canvas hung over and trailed in the water until, caught every now and then by the wind, it bellied out like a balloon. A wave bigger than the rest completely submerged ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... looked ahead, All for'ard, the long white deck Was growing a strange dull red,... Red from mainmast to bitts! Red on bulwark and wale,— Red by combing and hatch,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. Lord, how beautiful was Thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... watertight over the remaining holds. For this purpose three powerful pumps, with the necessary boilers, were obtained from Halifax, sent by rail to Annapolis, and then shipped on board a tug, from which they were hoisted into the Ulunda by means of the derricks on the mainmast. These were centrifugal pumps, capable of discharging 2,000 gallons a minute each. One was placed in the engine room, another with its suction in No. 3 hold, and when these two compartments were pumped dry, it was found that in No. 3 hold the leak was easily kept under, while ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... just risen over Manomet, sank behind Captain's Hill, the Little James had rounded the Gurnet, and was standing on for Cape Ann, with Myles Standish leaning against her mainmast, and smoking the pipe Hobomok had bestowed upon him with the assurance that he who used it carried a charmed life so long as it remained unbroken. The captain's arms were folded and his eyes fixed upon the fort-crowned hill where lay his home, but it was ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... procession, of which we formed the mainmast, almost entirely disappeared from our mind, to be succeeded by the spirit of revolt against this impious persecution as these things came before us. What have our people done to these colonists, we asked, that is so utterly unforgivable, that this law should be passed as ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Scotch giant, and then I'll go on with my own story. Fingal, you must know, was a giant himself, and no fool of one, and any one that affronted him was as sure of a bating, as I am to keep the middle watch to-night. But there was a giant in Scotland as tall as the mainmast, more or less, as we say when we a'n't quite sure, as it saves telling more lies than there's occasion for. Well, this Scotch giant heard of Fingal, and how he had beaten everybody, and he said, 'Who is this Fingal? By Jasus,' says he in Scotch, 'I'll just ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... their attention was the large map which was suspended on a frame rigged against the mainmast. It was brilliant with colors, with all the streams, towns, and lakes, properly labelled, upon it. A small table stood at the left, or port side, of it, covered with a cloth, with a Bible and a vase of flowers upon it. Chloe, the stewardess, had provided the latter from the pots which ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... nonchalance of a grazing ox. At noon, just after dinner, a few cat's-paws curdled the milky-blue whiteness of the glassy surface, and the water once more began to talk beneath the bow-sprit. It was very hot. The sun spun silently like a spinning brass discus over the mainmast. On the fo'c'sle head the Chinamen were asleep or smoking opium. It was Charlie's watch. Kitchell dozed in his hammock in the shadow of the mainsheet. Wilbur was below tinkering with his paint-pot about the cabin. The stillness was profound. It was the stillness of the summer sea ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... down, and farther down, Her love's ship for to see, And the topmast and the mainmast ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... ship, which by its building was Spanish, stuck fast, jammed in between two rocks. All the stern and quarter of her were beaten to pieces by the sea; and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks, had run on with great violence, her mainmast and foremast were brought by the board - that is to say, broken short off; but her bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog appeared upon her, who, seeing me coming, yelped and cried; and as soon as I called him, jumped into ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, "whether I was a whig or tory?" Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed "how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet," says he, "I dare engage these creatures have their titles ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... in a moderate breeze, too. I had seen her on the stocks, and knew the beautiful lines below the water-mark. And she was going to carry the sail to drive her. I took particular pains to get the measurements of her mainmast while it lay on the dock under the shears. It was eighty-seven feet—and she only a hundred and ten feet over all—and it stepped plumb in the middle of her, further forward than a mainmast was generally put in a fisherman. To that was shackled ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... the cloak over his shoulders, stole silently to the hatchway, and cautiously climbed up. Thrusting out his head he looked about him, and he saw two or three figures bundled together at the mainmast— woodsmen who had celebrated victory too sincerely. He looked for the watch, but could not see him. Then he drew himself carefully up, and on his hands and knees passed to the starboard side and moved aft. Doing so he saw the watch start up from the capstan where he had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... two masts, a mainmast and a mizzen or dandy mast. The former was 6 feet long and the latter 4 feet long, and each measured 1-1/2 inches in diameter at the base, tapering to about 1 inch diameter at the upper end. They were held ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... illustrating the moment in the action at which the mainmast of the Guerriere, shattered by the terrific fire of the American frigate, fell overside, transforming the former vessel into a floating wreck and terminating the action. The picture represents accurately the surprisingly ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does it often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cut down in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant seas a new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart mainmast, or a home is to be builded that needs the fiber of strong and steadfast timber. So, I think, with men and women, there would not be so much unsightly growing old, with waning power and wasted faculties, if we attended ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... hoist the admiral's flag at the mainmast," said Roger, but the match that he set up for a mast caught fire almost as soon as the candles were lighted in the miniature fleet. His flag fell overboard, ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... nobody could call her a dry boat, she will behave herself in any ordinary sea, and come about quicker than most of her type. She is fast, has sound timbers and sheathing that fits her like a skin, and her mainmast and bowsprit are particularly fine spars of Oregon pine; her mizzen doesn't count for much. Let me mention the newest of patent capstans—I put this into her myself—cabins panelled in teak and pitch-pine and cushioned with red morocco, two suits of sails, besides a ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the crew, were in a state of dull and languid repose. Suspended between the two masts, in an Indian hammock, lay Featherstone, with a cigar in his mouth and a novel in his hand, which he was pretending to read. The fourth member of the party, Melick, was seated near the mainmast, folding some papers in a peculiar way. His occupation at length attracted the roving eyes of Featherstone, who poked forth his head from his hammock, and said ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... was at last fixed. We had no gay-coloured flags, but Sambo had preserved a red handkerchief, which was hoisted to the head of the mainmast, and waved proudly in the breeze. The sky was bright, the wind light and balmy. The shores were then knocked away; and, with loud cheers, and prayers that the Good Hope might have a prosperous voyage, we saw her ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... been rigged upon the mainmast, and this morning, after breakfast, Mr. Whitney, three Esquimos, and myself started in Mr. Whitney's motor-boat to hunt walrus. The motor gave out very shortly after the start, and the oars had to be used. We were fortunate in getting two walrus, which I shot, and then we returned to the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... were again released, Ledscha was standing, in the dusk of evening, at the foot of the mainmast, pressing her brow against the wood as if she needed some support to save herself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sharpie were flexible and in heavy weather spilled some wind, relieving the heeling moment of the sails to some degree. In summer the 35-to 36-foot boats carried both masts, but in winter, or in squally weather, it was usual to leave the mainmast ashore and step the foremast in the hole just forward of the bulkhead at the centerboard case, thereby balancing the rig in relation to the centerboard. New Haven sharpies usually had excellent balance, and tongers could ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... rain rather sharply again, or I should have been disposed to remain on deck for a while and improve my acquaintance with this genial-looking sailor; as it was, I merely paused beside him long enough to note that the deck between the foremast and the mainmast seemed to be crowded with rough, round-backed, awkward-looking men, having the appearance of navvies or something of that kind; also that the main hatch was partially closed by a grating through an aperture in which, at the after port ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the gulf, and as at that moment the tide turned, it was impossible to enter. They were therefore compelled to stand off, for even if he had wished to do so, Pencroft could not have gained the mouth of the Mercy. Hoisting the jib to the mainmast by way of a storm-sail, he hove to, putting the head of the vessel ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... mass of fire from her bows to her mainmast; a volume of flame poured from her main hold, rising higher than her lower masts, and ending in a huge mass of smoke carried by the wind ahead of her; the quarter-deck was still free from fire, but the heat on it was so intense ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... those that had to be used in pulling the others ashore. Dr. Geddie, Mr. Mathieson, Mrs. Paton, and I were perched among the boxes on the John Knox, and had to hold on as best we could. On sheering off from the F. P. Sage, one of her davits caught and broke the mainmast of the little John Knox by the deck; and I saved my wife from being crushed to death by its fall, through managing to swing her instantaneously aside in an apparently impossible manner. It did ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... Scyldings Word-sway wielded, and the well-loved land prince Long did rule them. The ring-stemmed vessel, Bark of the atheling, lay there at anchor, Icy in glimmer and eager for sailing; The beloved leader laid they down there, Giver of rings, on the breast of the vessel, The famed by the mainmast. A many of jewels, Of fretted embossings, from far-lands brought over, Was placed near at hand then; and heard I not ever That a folk ever furnished a float more superbly With weapons of warfare, weeds ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a speck, however minute, broke the clearly-defined line that joined sea and sky. After a time Curtis made his way along the netting to the shrouds, and swung himself quickly up to the top of the mainmast. For several minutes he remained there examining the open space around, then seizing one of the backstays he glided down and rejoined us on ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... slackening flood that we cast off our moorings and head up the river with our backs to the waning sunset. Since we tow a dinghy astern and are ourselves towed by the silent yachtsman, you may call it a procession. She has been stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, and all spars but the mainmast. Now we bring her alongside the town quay and beneath the shears—the abhorred shears—which lift this too out of its step, dislocated with a creak as poignant as the cry of Polydorus. We lower it, lay it along the deck, and resume our way; past quay doors and windows where already the townsfolk ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... portion of the mainmast head of the Lady Franklin, and entangled in the rigging were two corpses—a man and a woman. The arms of the man were clasped round the body of the woman, and her head lay on his breast. The Prison Island appeared but as a long ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... it. After we had finished, swabbed down decks, and coiled up the rigging, I sat on the spars, waiting for seven bells, which was the signal for breakfast. The officer, seeing my lazy posture, ordered me to slush the mainmast, from the royal-mast-head down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no food for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns,'' and that if I showed any sign ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... opium clipper had drifted athwart the bow of a large merchantman, which in turn was almost foul of us. In less than five minutes the clipper sank. One man alone reappeared on the surface. He was so close, that from where I was holding on and crouching under the lee of the mainmast I could see the expression of his face. He was a splendidly built man, and his strength and activity must have been prodigious. He clung to the cable of the merchantman, which he had managed to clasp. As the vessel reared between the seas he gained ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... to persons not familiar with ships, that the sailors' quarters are in the forward part of the ship where they (the sailors) are supposed to be found after working-hours, in port, coming never abaft the mainmast; hence the ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... All personal quarrels are to be suspended while the expedition lasts, and for a month after it is completed. Neglect of this will be held as treason. Each morning at sunrise the ship-boys, according to custom, will sing 'Good Morrow' at the foot of the mainmast, and at sunset the 'Ave Maria.' Since bad weather may interrupt the communications the watchword is laid down for each day in the week: Sunday, Jesus; the days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of air, and the ocean seemed to be in one of its profoundest slumbers. The hard-breathing of Spike could be heard through the open windows of his state-room, and this was positively the only sound that was audible. The common men, who lay scattered about the decks, more especially from the mainmast forward, seemed to be so many logs, and from ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... it were, said Good-Night to the town, though it was only half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as we sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... him! Ye missed him!" cried the rival theorist joyfully. He was mistaken: the smoke cleared, and there was the pirate captain leaning wounded against the mainmast with a Yankee bullet in his shoulder, and his crew uttering yells of dismay and vengeance. They jumped, and raged, and brandished their knives, and made horrid gesticulations of revenge; and the white eyeballs of the Malays and Papuans glittered fiendishly; and the wounded captain ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... anchored inside the New Mole. The Santa Maria, the flagship of Columbus, was a three-masted vessel with a very high "forecastle" and "sterncastle" and very deep in the waist; she had three masts, the foremast carrying one square sail, the mainmast having both mainsail and main-topsail, the mizzen was rigged with a lateen sail, on the mainsail was painted the Maltese and on the foresail the Papal cross, and on deck she carried a brick-built cooking galley. A most beautiful model of this vessel is to be seen in the Science ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... answered, "when some frigate that's faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!" ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... shot carrying a line rose in the air, made a curve like a flying rocket, and fell athwart the wreck between her forestay and jib. A cheer went up from the men about the gun. When this line was hauled in and the hawser attached to it made fast high up on the mainmast and above the raging sea, and the car run off to the wreck, the crew could be landed clear of the surf and the slam of ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... except that he heard that the galleon collected the men in its small boats and finished its voyage, by taking another tack, as he heard from the natives of Camboanga. Therefore this witness never saw the said galleon again. He heard also that the said galleon had broken its mainmast. This is what he knows, and his deposition. It is the truth, on the oath that he took. He affirmed and ratified it. When this witness was asked if he had been in Maluco, and requested to tell what he knew of matters there, and why so many Portuguese should go there, he declared that he had ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... summons, the crew crowded round the mainmast. Many, eager to obtain a good place, got on the booms to overlook the scene. Some were laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits. Some maintaining sad, anxious countenance, or carrying a suppressed ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was lowered away until she danced on ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... The mainmast of the flagship Bristol was hit nine times, and the mizzenmast was struck by seven thirty-two-pound balls, and had to be cut away. In short, the flagship was pierced so many times that she would have sunk had not ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... again got up and we expected every moment that the boat would founder, we felt too much afraid and too wretched to talk. The captain was the only person who kept up his spirits. Once more he rose from his seat, and stepped on to the after-thwart, holding on by the mainmast. I watched his eye as he cast it round the horizon. I saw it suddenly light up. "A sail! my lads, a sail!" he exclaimed, pointing to the westward. Not another word was spoken for some time. We kept on our course, and we were soon able to ascertain that the stranger was standing almost directly ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... husband settled in a place not too wet, and got about the venerable boards of the Judy, looking at the old gear with curiosity, glancing, with her head dropped back, into the dark intricacy of rigging upheld by the ponderous mainmast as it swayed back and forth. Every time the men went hurriedly trampling to some point of the running gear she watched what they were at. For hours we beat about, in a great noise of waters, waiting for that opportunity at the entrance to home and comfort. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... points of the compass, the middle of which is dead ahead. They are screened so as not to be visible across the bow and they must be intense enough to be visible two miles ahead. The masthead light is carried on the foremast and the range-light on the mainmast, at an elevation fifteen feet higher than the former. The range-light emits light toward all points of the compass and must be intense enough to be seen at a distance of three miles. The stern light is similar to the masthead, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... them unfit to carry sail, and her bowsprit shot through in several places. Her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the Redoutable; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter-galleries on both sides carried away. Forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded.... The Temeraire was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... and sail—the sail furled to the mast, as it was used to lie in her—close against the stump of the mainmast; but though I sought with all the diligence that hurry would permit for her rudder, I nowhere saw it, but I met with an oar that had belonged to the other boat, and this with the mast and sail I dropped into her, the swell ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... one mouthful, and the only thing that he spat out was the mainmast, that had stuck between his teeth like a fish-bone. Fortunately for me, the vessel was laden with preserved meat in tins, biscuit, bottles of wine, dried raisins, cheese, coffee, sugar, candles, and boxes of wax matches. With this providential supply I have been able to live for ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... said the captain, "to the mainmast, and the sailors amused themselves by drenching him with buckets of cold water, till he was almost drowned. After several days, he became so sick and exhausted, that we saw that our sport would soon be at an end. For two days ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... institutions generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If it be that the people, when the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... by the passengers on board the Polynesia, the moon had barely cleared the horizon, as we have stated, and the top of the mainmast just reached the uppermost portion of the periphery, while spars, rigging and hull were marked against the yellow disk as distinctly as if painted in ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... was then already a full admiral, wearing his flag at the mainmast head, was made Vice-Admiral of Great Britain; an honorary position, but the highest in point of naval distinction that the nation had to give. As one who held it three-quarters of a century later wrote, "It has ever been regarded as the most ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... thing happened; of these explanations it will be sufficient to say that they were all different and none satisfactory; and the gross fact remains that the main boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the mainmast some three feet above the deck and whipped it overboard. For near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... catalog. Then he telegraphed to me to wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of ship-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. He ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... his flagship his broad pennant was flung to the breeze from the mainmast-head, the fleur-de-lis of France floated proudly from the mizzen, and amid the booming of cannon and the loud acclamations of the throngs assembled on the quay to bid them Godspeed, the ships moved slowly ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... I've got to say. Now I must go back on shore. There's lots of work. We will begin loading this schooner to-morrow morning, first thing. All the bundles are ready. If you should want me for anything, hoist some kind of flag on the mainmast. At night two shots will fetch me." Then he added, in a friendly tone, "Won't you come and dine in the house to-night? It can't be good for you to stew on board like ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... in hull and rigging; the spar-deck and forecastle being swept away, and her main deck blown up in midships, very possibly through the explosion of her boilers. Her bowsprit and mizzen-mast were gone, as was also her fore topmast; and the mainmast, with topmast and all attached, was leaning aft, and so far over the side that the observers would not have been surprised to see it fall at any moment. Loose ropes were trailing in all directions; and the tattered remains ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... had not strength to hold it. Away he went, right over the wheel, knocking down the mate on the other side; and the ship taking a heavy lurch, they both went into the scuppers together. The ship broached-to, and our mainmast and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... vice admiral under the very guns of two men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away, only that having to put on sail, their mainmast went by the board, whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... up through the narrows of New York harbor a ship having all the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted off; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken; all the pumps working to keep from sinking before they can ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... time for drinking, Captain Sharkey," said Martin. "The men are holding council round the mainmast, and may be aft at any minute. They mean mischief, Captain Sharkey, and we have come to ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old Dutch words which have resounded through the world, "Neen nimmer," "No, never." The fleets of Spain heard it, and understood it fully, when they saw the sinking Dutch ships with the flags nailed to the shattered mainmast, crying, "Neen nimmer," which indicated that ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown as the subject of the veritable rime; and his ears, contracted, flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to be either a lunatic or an apparition; ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... how this was done. There were two doors opening into the cuddy, one on each side of the mainmast, with a slide over each. Outside of these doors were two round holes, which I had sawed in the bulkhead for ventilation. By reaching the arm through one of these apertures the slide could be locked. I fastened Kate into the cuddy, and then gave ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a merry journey, but the sailors were of a different opinion. The ship strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and spars. One moment it was ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... shorter, and brighten with more concentrated light. It is but half past five, yet the sun dips redly behind Conanicut, the sunset-gun booms from our neighbor's yacht, the flag glides down from his mainmast, and the slender pennant, running swiftly up the opposite halyards, dances and flickers like a flame, and at last perches, with dainty hesitation, at the mast-head. A tint of salmon-color, burnished into long undulations of lustre, overspreads the shallower waves; but a sober gray begins ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Story of the honest Dutchman, who, upon breaking his Leg by a Fall from the Mainmast, told the Standers-by, It was a great Mercy that 'twas not his Neck. To which, since I am got into Quotations, give me leave to add the Saying of an old Philosopher, who, after having invited some of his Friends to dine with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... opened—and I think Prince George, the commander of the 'Thrush,' opened it—all the fleet was decorated aloft with incandescent lights—a truly grand sight. Two Russian ships were present, and their decorations surpassed our English display. One of them had the initial P shining between the foremast and mainmast, and G between the main mast and mizenmast. This was ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... soul is man's God still, What wind soever waft his will Across the waves of day and night To port or shipwreck, left or right, By shores and shoals of good and ill; And still its flame at mainmast height Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill Sustains the indomitable light Whence only man hath strength to steer Or helm to handle ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... London Bridge, and so to Deptford Creek, where remains, as it were embalmed, the famous ship Pelican, in which Drake had sailed round the world. There she stands, drawn up high and dry upon the sedgy bank of Thames, like an old warrior resting after his toil. Nailed upon her mainmast are epigrams and verses in honor of her and of her captain, three of which, by the Winchester scholar, Camden gives in his History; and Elizabeth's self consecrated her solemnly, and having banqueted on board, there and then honored Drake with the dignity of knighthood. "At which time a bridge ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Captain Barker expected before long to sight the Indian coast. One morning, about two bells, the lookout reported a small vessel on the larboard bow, laboring heavily. The captain took a long look at it through his perspective glass, and made out that it was a two-masted grab; the mainmast ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... as he talked, had been regarding Cap'n Abernethy, who in turn was looking at the mainmast. There seemed to be something in the very way Cap'n Abernethy looked at the mainmast which jarred on Mr. Watkins. Mr. Watkins dropped his voice, indicating the Cap'n with a curved, disparaging thumb, as he ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... forge a goodly anchor—a bower thick and broad; For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode, And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road— The low reef roaring on her lee—the roll of ocean poured From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board; The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains! But courage still, brave mariners—the bower yet remains! And not an inch to flinch he deigns, save when ye pitch sky-high; Then moves his ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... named Henderson, who had started twenty-five years before by blowing a bugle in the 52nd, and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to—filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From a hencoop abaft the mainmast (the Bute was a brig, by the way) I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war's great historian, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the deck, could feel the ship now as she rose, now as she fell in the trough of the sea, surging on closer and closer to the dreaded coast. Those agonising moments were not to last long. At length came a fearful crash. The mainmast, as if torn up by some invisible hand, fell over the side, the foremast and mizzenmast following in ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... strangely changed the ship appeared! Sunny, motionless, and quiet; no noisy children, no slatternly, slipshod women rolling about the decks, no slush, no washing of dirty linen in dirtier water. There was the old mate in a clean shirt at last, leaning against the mainmast, and smoking his yard of clay; the butcher close—shaven and clean; the sailors smart, and welcoming us with a smile. It almost looked like going home. Dined in Lyttelton with several of my fellow-passengers, who evidently thought it best ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler |
