"Mast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cyclop had not devoured, gave manifest proof how far manly wisdom excels brutish force. He chose a stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which he sharpened and hardened in the fire, and selected four men, and instructed them what they should do with this stake, and made ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... her father, 'they durst not, so dear was the love that my people bore me. Antonio carried us on board a ship, and when we were some leagues out at sea, he forced us into a small boat, without either tackle, sail, or mast: there he left us, as he thought, to perish. But a kind lord of my court, one Gonzalo, who loved me, had privately placed in the boat, water, provisions, apparel, and some books which I prize above ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... put into place as soon as the sun set. The white one was run up the mast, and the green light to the right and the red one to the left gleamed in the shrouds. If the Dream was run down, at the least it would not be her fault—that was one consolation. To founder even when one is in order is to founder nevertheless, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... closed doors, like a knot of conspirators? The first tap of the Northern drum dispelled many illusions, and we need no better proof of which ship is sinking than that Mr. Caleb Cushing should have made such haste to come over to the old Constitution, with the stars and stripes at her mast-head. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... one of the few ports in which sailing ships still hold the field against steamers. It was filled with a noble fleet. As a mark of sympathy, which touched us deeply, their flags were hoisted at half-mast as soon as our sad ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... details of her professional surroundings, she had grown used to them by sure and fatal degrees, and things that would once have disgusted her were indifferent to her now. Men who have been educated in conditions of ordinary refinement and who have volunteered in the ranks or gone to sea before the mast have experienced something very like what befell Margaret; but men are not delicately nurtured beings whose bloom is damaged by the rough air of reality, and the camp and the forecastle are not the stage. Perhaps ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... occasions arise when we may learn much from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seaward, and there they see ships coming from the south round the Ness, and they were not fewer than ten, and they row hard and steer thitherwards. Along their sides were shield on shield, but on that ship that came first stood a man by the mast, who was clad in a silken kirtle, and had a gilded helm, and his hair was both fair and thick; that man had a spear inlaid with ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... voice of the captain, who had just come on deck, shouting, "All hands shorten sail and save ship," but the order was given too late. The squall I had seen coming up just then struck her, and in one moment, with a fearful crash, the main-mast fell. I should have been crushed had I not by tumbling head first down the hatchway avoided it; the next instant the foremast followed, and the bob-stays giving way, dragged the bowsprit on board. The moment the crash was heard the first ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... colloquially holm, whence generally Holmes. Homewood is for holm-wood. The holm oak, ilex, is so called from its holly-like leaves. For Birch we also find Birk, a northern form. Beech often appears in compounds as Buck-; cf. buckwheat, so called because the grains are of the shape of beech-mast. In Poppleton, Popplewell we have the dialect popple, a poplar. Yeo sometimes represents yew, spelt yowe by Palsgrave. [Footnote: The yeo of yeoman, which is conjectured to have meant district, cognate with Ger. Gau in Breisgau, Rheingau, etc., is ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... had been for the boys, brought his hand down on his knee earnestly. "Then I'm with you, lads, till the last mast carries away. You're the pilot in these waters, Charley. What course shall ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... king his enemy for life. This Duke of Richmond, when Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex, during the American war, sailed in a yacht through the fleet, when the King was there, with American colours at his mast-head. He never forgave Fox for putting the Duke of Portland instead of himself at the head of the Government in 1782. During the riots in 1780 on account of Admiral Keppel, Tom Grenville burst open the door of the Admiralty, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the Tower to Westminster through the streets was safely accomplished. The retinues of the lords protected the queen from insult, and London put on its usual outward signs of rejoicing; St. Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a ship's mast, an adventurous sailor sitting astride on the weathercock five hundred feet in the air:[140] there was no interruption; and the next day (October 1), Arras having sent the necessary unction,[141] the ceremony was performed ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... to have weapons. Their was neuer the like number of our men aboord their iunke. I willed captaine John Dauis in the morning [the twenty-seventh of December] to possesse himselfe of their weapons, and to put the companie before mast, and to leave some guard on their weapons, while they searched in the rice, doubting that by searching and finding that which would dislike them, they might suddenly set vpon my men, and put them to the sword: as the sequell prooued. Captaine Dauis being beguiled with their humble ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... little company. The rolling of the barque was awful at two in the morning, and, at last, one violent kick parted the mizen rigging on the starboard side. Then came one vast roll, and a ponderous rush of water, and with a tearing crash, the mast went over the side. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... shifting rock, and he had modestly taken a hint as to timbering from Warren Pemberton. The tunnel was an accomplished fact, while over the frail hoisting-works of the Silver King a tiny flag—a corner torn from Bep's handkerchief—fluttered at half-mast. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, That well had borne their part; But the noblest thing that perished there Was that ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous
... for me—punch to the mast," cried another. "I'll drink enough to heat a jolly-boat. It's very kind of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... A rotten carcase of a butt not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast,—the very rats Instinctively have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed. The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. 30 The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... calling upon thee, wretched maiden! Did not he who won thy youthful heart, while yet it was little and fluttering, so pronounce the loved word "Mekaia?" Was not that the tone and accent which oft rang through the hollow beech woods, when together ye went to gather the ripened mast, and chanced to separate till the cry recalled? And look—see, one stands upon the beetling rock above thee, amidst the crash and thunder of the eddy into which thou art cast, his arms stretched towards thee, beautiful flower of the wilderness, and his look one of unutterable ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... in the least. With a sweep of her bare arm she had put the tiller hard aport, intending to tack back to Peel, but the wind had freshened and the sea was rising, and by the swift leap of the boat the boom was snapped, and the helpless sail came napping down upon the mast. Then they tumbled into the trough, and Glory had not strength to pull them out of it, and the boy was of no more use than a tripper. She was in her white muslin dress, and he was nursing his dog, and the night was closing ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... parishes under the parish priests, and was with difficulty dissuaded, though he was ill, from encouraging in person the warriors on the battlefield itself. A sacred banner was given them under which to fight—the standard from which this most famous battle of Stephen's reign gets its name—a mast erected on a wagon, carrying the banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverly, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and with a pyx at the top containing the Host, that, "present in his body with them, Christ might be their leader in the battle." The army was full of priests ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... father, 'yes, be a poor, miserable, drunken sailor before the mast, kicked and cuffed about the world, and die in some fever hospital in ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... about their own affairs, and had left the great building strangely cool and empty and silent. The wharves, too, were deserted—all but one, where a Hindu sat in the shade of a pile of luggage, and the top of a boat's mast wavered like the index of a balance above the edge of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and some sticks Russ had made a nice little boat, fastening to the mast a bit of cloth, which looked like a sail. Followed by his smaller brothers and sisters Russ took his boat to a place in the inlet where the water was not deep, and there he let the wind blow it about, to ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... Arthur's surprise to recognise, in the mass of lumberers gathered round a huge mast, the Milesian countenance of Murty Keefe, a discontented emigrant with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintance on the steamboat which took him to Montreal. He was dressing away the knots near the top with his axe, as though he had been used to the implement all ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... to have many a nice game with the sailors, winning from them ha'pennies and sixpences until the captain said I was ruining his men, and keeping them from their duty; and, being a heretic and a Dutchman, swore that unless I gave over he would tie me up to the mast and give me a round dozen. This threat obliged me to be more on my guard, though I occasionally contrived to get a game at night, and to win sixpennies ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... supporting a few planks made a sort of wharf. All this was black in the falling dusk, and I could just distinguish the whitish ruts of a cart- track stretching over the marsh towards the higher land, far away. Not a sound was to be heard. Against the low streak of light in the sky I could see the mast of Powell's cutter moored to the bank some twenty yards, no more, beyond that black barn or whatever it was. I hailed him with a loud shout. Got no answer. After making fast my boat just astern, I walked along the bank to have a look at Powell's. Being so much bigger than mine she was aground already. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid, and two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the mast-head and fore-yard tackle. Photographs of this ravelled cable were for a long time exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Messrs. Newall & Co's. shop in the Strand, where we remember to ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... leagues off Madeira, surveying through his spy-glass a stranger of suspicious appearance making sail towards him. On his firing a gun ahead of her to bring her to, she ran up a flag, which he instantly recognised as the flag from the mast in ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... the black clouds immediately overhead, descending like the lightning straight downward, till all at once it struck the main truck. With a roar louder than that of the recent thunder it exploded; fast sheets of fire flashed out into the air, and a stream of light passed down the entire mast, shattering it as a tree is shattered when the lightning strikes it. The whole ship was shaken to its centre. The deck all around the mast was shattered to splinters, and along its extent and around its base a burst of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... propeller ceased to turn and the steamer came up into the wind. The United States destroyer acting as convoy also came to a halt. The French flag on the steamer and the American flag on the destroyer were at half-mast. Thirty-two men from the dead man's company lined up on the after-deck. The coffin (a rough pine box), heavily weighted at one end, lay across the rail over the stern. Here a chute had been rigged so that the coffin might not foul the ship's screws. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... theatre, said he supposed that dancing girls wore their dresses at half-mast as a mark of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... himself—in time—in time, mind! I don't know but that even a real gentleman would find it difficult to keep a stiff lip to the end. Presently we went to work getting our boat ready. I was busying myself setting up the mast, when the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... came harshly across the waves, as if in passion: "Heave to, or I'll sink you." At the same moment the black flag was run up to the peak, and a shot passed between the main and fore-mast. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Confound it, he's only nailing his grit to the mast and planning on what end of the row to tackle ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... by time, peered above the surface at high water; but at low tide a considerable part of the hull was bare, and its great ribs or timbers, partly stripped of their planks, looked like the skeleton of some sea monster. There was also the stump of a mast, with a few ropes and blocks swinging about and whistling in the wind, while the sea gull wheeled and screamed around ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of the United States flew at half-mast from this Capitol and from American installations and ships all over the world, in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Unlike all other voices I have heard. Just as the white cloud, at the sunrise, glows With roseate colors, so the pallid hue Of Helen's cheek, like tinted sea-shells grew. Through mine, his hand caused hers to tremble; such Was the all-mast'ring magic of ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on the 2d of June, about five, A.M., and remained until eleven, A.M., when we embarked, the gale still continuing with unabated violence. Immediately after leaving the Fort the gale carried away our mast; fortunate it was for us that it gave way, else the boat must have capsized. We soon got another mast from the Fort, and sped on our way night and day, if it can be said there is any night here, when the light is so powerful as to throw the stars into the shade. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... down And hushes the town. And where is the voice that I heard crying? Snow settles Over the nettles. Where is the voice that I heard crying? Sand at last On the drifting mast. And where is the voice that I heard crying? Earth now On the busy brow. And where is the voice that I ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... suitable expression of national bereavement, I direct that the diplomatic representatives of the United States in all foreign countries display the flags over their embassies and legations at half-mast for ten days; that for a like period the flag of the United States be displayed at half-mast at all forts and military posts and at all naval stations and on all ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... half-waking, half-sleeping condition, accompanied with a feeling of weariness, which, however, is by no means disagreeable. As I slowly recovered, and heard the voice of Peterkin inquiring whether I felt better, I thought that I must have overslept myself, and should be sent to the mast-head for being lazy; but before I could leap up in haste, the thought seemed to vanish suddenly away, and I fancied that I must have been ill. Then a balmy breeze fanned my cheek, and I thought of home, and the garden at the back of my father's cottage, with its luxuriant ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... of the flag-ship and her immediate neighbours, and this brave man had obtained permission to try a little plan of his own, if assailed by any adventurous British boats in charge of the vessels explosive. In the bows of some stout but handy boats he had rigged up a mast with a long spar attached, and by means of a guy at the end of that spar, a brace of heavy chain-shot could be swung up and pitched headlong into any boat alongside. While the crew of Scudamore's launch were intent upon boarding ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... latter enabled him to see the work upon which the mate and himself were engaged. The captain, aided by the passenger, was lashing the throat of the gaff down to its place, when a heavy bolt of lightning, accompanied at the same instant by a terrific peel of thunder, struck the main-royal mast-head, and leaped down the mast in a lurid current of fire. At the throat of the main-boom it was divided, part of it following the mast down into the cabin and hold, and the rest darting off on the spar, where the captain, ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... cannot conscientiously perform yourself, you cannot ask another to perform as your agent. Circulate a declaration of DISUNION FROM SLAVEHOLDERS, throughout the country. Hold mass meetings—assemble in conventions—nail your banners to the mast! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;— Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite! Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight: On the deck ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... he chooses another with diverging and horizontal roots, the habitual direction taken by all the large vegetables of this island, the sand of which is covered only by two feet of earth. This shall be the mast. He plants it in the middle of the raft, where it is kept upright by its roots, knotted and interwoven with the various pieces which compose the floor. For a sail, has he not that which was left him by the Swordfish? and will not his seal-skin ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... took their places on the rowers' seats, While blue-eyed Pallas sent a favoring breeze, A fresh wind from the west, that murmuring swept The dark-blue main. Telemachus gave forth The word to wield the tackle; they obeyed, And raised the fir-tree mast, and, fitting it Into its socket, bound it fast with cords, And drew and spread with firmly twisted ropes The shining sails on high. The steady wind Swelled out the canvas in the midst; the ship Moved on, the dark sea roaring round her keel, As swiftly through the waves ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... raise a tempest, causing fears; The naked boy could not so wield his arms, But that the waves were masters of his might, And threatened him to work far greater harms If he devised not to scape by flight: Then for a boat his quiver stood instead, His bow unbent did serve him for a mast, Whereby to sail his cloth of veil he spread, His shafts for oars on either board he cast: From shipwreck safe this wag got thus to shore, And sware to bathe ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... The siren boomed intermittently, and Gibraltar, invisible, flashed Morse messages in long and short shafts of light on the thick, moist atmosphere. To add to the eerie effect of it all, a ship's light was hung upon the mast, and cast yellow rays ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to comprehend the reason. Any one who has ever climbed up a steep ascent,—such as a piece of wall, the mast of a ship, or even an ordinary ladder,—will have noticed that the going up, is much easier than the getting down again; and where the ascent is very steep and difficult, it is quite possible that ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air to the height of 230 feet ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... also met with some of enormous dimensions, several of the floes, to which we applied our hawsers and the power of the improved capstan, being at their margin more than twenty feet above the level of the sea, and over some of these we could not see from the mast-head. Upon the whole, however, the magnitude of the ice became somewhat less towards the north-west; and within thirty miles of that margin the masses were comparatively small, and their thickness much diminished. Bergs were in sight during the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... luxuriant ferns, which hung Narcissus-like over their own graceful quivering images. Profound quiet brooded in the warm, hazy air, burdened with balsamic odors; but once a pine burr full of rich nutty mast crashed down through dead twigs, bruising the satin petals of a primrose; and ever and anon the oboe notes of that shy, deep throated hermit of ravines—the russet, speckled-breasted lark—thrilled through the woods, like antiphonal echoes in some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... erratic officer, had lost half a year's pay. The magnitude of the disaster was almost national, he felt, and sadly, shyly, he said: "Will you have the flag at half-mast, Colonel?" ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was in Gobal's cabin, guaranteeing for her father the fulfilment of his bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy was moving up stream with her splintered mast and ragged sails, and the Ninety-Nine was looking up and over towards the Bay of Belle Amour. She reached it in the late afternoon of the next day. Bissonnette did not know the object of the expedition, but he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... both sides of a gully deep with last year's leaves, was an oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or, rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet, set with gems, which I had touched with as brilliant tints as my pencil could impart. Sinking ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... thing) drove down upon, and broke up her Chain-plates, or stenctions [sic], to which the wire rigging holds: so she could not sail at all: and the Red Rover got the Prize, after going only two rounds instead of three: which is odd work, I think. Major Leathes' mast went over in the first round, as it did a year ago. At Evening, the Otter grounded as she lay by the South Pier: and would have knocked her bottom out had not Ablett Pasifull gone off to her and ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks, the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater, taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... tops of the mast pulleys were fixt with ropes: and when the engines were about to be used, men standing on the sterns of the vessels drew the ropes tied to the head of the ladder, while others standing on the prows assisted the raising of the machine and kept it steady with long poles. Having then brought the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... to the first person who descried the chase, which fell to the share of Mr John Drake, who first discovered her, one morning about three o'clock. They came up with her about six, gave her three shots, which struck down her mizen-mast, and then boarded. They found this ship fully as rich as she was reported, having thirteen chests full of dollars, eighty pounds weight of gold, a good quantity of jewels, and twenty-six tons of silver in bars.[28] Among other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... was then looked upon more as a novelty than as the inception of a new method of long-distance travel. The trip had failed to demonstrate that steam was an entirely adequate substitute for the mast and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... see myself with such impatience that I had not dreamed a moment of the danger to which we had exposed ourselves. That pleasure was soon followed by another; for I saw at anchor in this same place 2 ships, of which one had the glorious flag of His Majesty hoisted upon his main mast, that I recognized to be the one that was commanded by Captain Outlaw when the one in which I was passed had been separated from the 2 others. At the same time I made the shallop approach & I perceived the new Governor with all his men under arms upon the deck, who demanded of us where our ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Lighthouse yacht rode at another buoy with all hands on board that could possibly be spared out of the floating light. The party of artificers and seamen which landed on the rock counted altogether forty in number. At half-past eight o'clock a derrick, or mast of thirty feet in height, was erected and properly supported with guy-ropes, for suspending the block for raising the first principal beam of the beacon; and a winch machine was also bolted down to the rock for ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out on board of the Josephine, and now he wants to be magnanimous with his victims. If we go with the crowd, it will be because Lowington is afraid to leave us behind. We are not a set of babies, Sheffield, to be whipped and sent to bed when we are naughty. Neither are we sailors before the mast, to be kicked here and there, at the pleasure of our masters. What do you suppose the fellows came to Europe for, if it was not to see the country? Are we to be left on board just because we went on a ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... is he, but strong enough To handle the tallest mast; From the royal barque to the slaver dark, He buries them ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... had been already tried, Deane and Monk, received the joint command of the fleet. On the other hand, the Dutch were intoxicated with their success; they announced it to the world, in prints, poems, and publications; and Van Tromp affixed a broom to the head of his mast as an emblem of his triumph. He had gone to the Isle of Rhee to take the homeward-bound trade under his charge, with orders to resume his station at the mouth of the Thames, and ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... that now are coming the great waves which will lift the boats over; and they are lifted, so that those on shore can only see their keels. The next moment the entire boat is hidden by the surging waves—neither boat, nor mast, nor people are to be seen: one would fancy the sea had swallowed them up. A minute or two more, and they show themselves, looking as if some mighty marine monsters were creeping out of the foaming sea, the oars moving ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... saw close ahead of them a large boat, which, with its sail hanging idly by the mast, was drifting downstream. Two boatmen were sitting by the tiller, smoking ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... or high officers of state, by removing a successful rival out of their way, but it seemed to promise little advantage to the community at large, other than the changing of one despotism for another. Besides, a populace who know that they mast be governed, prefer generally, if they must submit to some control, to yield their submission to some one master spirit whom they can look up to as a great and acknowledged superior. They had rather have a Caesar than a Senate ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... time for the excitement to wear itself out. But this did not result, and his approach was the occasion of a fresh outbreak of feeling in Chicago; the demonstrations of the residents of that city were not a flattering welcome home. Bells were tolled as for public mourning, flags were hung at half mast. Nothing was omitted that might emphasize the general aversion to the man who ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... ground had he died before the Republique Francaise removed religious restrictions from all burial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round about followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... I get a gude sail'r, To take my helm in hand, Till I get up to the tall top-mast, To see ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... "That kind of building has been suggested as ultra-modern architecture. They don't have an external steel frame. There's a central mast from which all the floors are hung. They have to be braced by cables, which make catenary curves like suspension-bridges ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... her head to the wind, she drifted with a heavily running tide, and right to leeward was a long reef of rocks that would inevitably crunch her into matchwood. The younger brothers said not a word, but looked at Rob, ready to obey his slightest gesture, and Rob stood by the mast calling out from time to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... coins and pottery from the line of the ancient Roman road, all the odds and ends of the forest, were scattered about within. To the yard came the cows, which, with bells about their necks, wandered into the fern, and the swine, which searched and rooted about for acorns and beech-mast in autumn. The men who dug in the sand-pits or for gravel came this way in and out to their labour, and so did those who split up the fallen trunks into logs. Now and then a woodpecker came with a rush up from the meadows, where he had ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... sailor-men before the mast," agreed the mate. "Men cleared out; wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn' the first ship that never ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel wished to enter a Spanish port to trade, the captain, pretending that provisions had run low, or that the ship suffered from a leak or a broken mast, sent a polite note to the governor accompanied by a considerable gift. He generally obtained permission to enter, unload, and put the ship into a seaworthy condition. All the formalities were minutely observed. The unloaded goods were shut up in a storehouse, and the doors sealed. But there ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... of the water, playing round but never on the darkened ship. Red and green lights blinked signals. Their progress was a devious one through the mine-strewn channel. There was a heavy sea even there, and the small lights on the mast on the pilot boat, as it came to a stop, described great arcs that seemed, first to starboard, then to port, to touch the very ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Plate Monsieur Fourbin had, was going to the Chest, the Men unanimously cried out avast, keep that out for the Captain's Use, as a Present from his Officers and Fore-mast Men. Misson thanked them, the Plate was returned to the great Cabbin, and the Chest secured according to Orders: Misson then ordered his Lieutenants and other Officers to examine who among the Men, were in most Want of Cloaths, and to distribute those of the dead Men impartially, ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... in my time, but never just in that way. With the mizzen boom we rigged up a fore jury-mast and made shift to hoist a storm staysail to give us steerin' way and rigged up a tiller for steerin'. The wind was whistling like all possessed. It was askin' more than any vessel had a right to stand, and around midnight the fore staysail was ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... flashed a glance to the cove where the Roma's angling mast appeared against the beach. Then he looked out to sea and his eyes brightened as the mast of a fishing-boat rounded the point and turned shoreward. It was Ankovitch ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... his marriage with that of the birth of his son must have shown him that these tales were unfounded, he felt that they would be revived by the adoption of this child by the First Consul." Thus this wretched story did harm in every way. The conduct of Josephine mast be judged with leniency, engaged as she was in a desperate straggle to maintain her own marriage,—a struggle she kept up with great skill; see Metternich, tome ii. p. 296. "she baffled all the calculations, all the manoeuvres of her adversaries." ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... other hand, detached passages are in the author's very best vein; and there is a truly delightful scene between Lord Anophel and his chaplain Grovelgrub, when the athletic Sir Oran has not only foiled their attempt on Anthelia, but has mast-headed them on the top of a rock perpendicular. But the gem of the book is the election for the borough of One-Vote—a very amusing farce on the subject of rotten boroughs. Mr. Forester has bought one of the One-Vote seats for his friend ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To co-operate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or co-operate, since one would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above all, as I ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... not, Miss; but sure you know as well as I do that the mast that's in her isn't over and above strong, and I wouldn't like anything ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... consequence, as its latitude was known before. The longitudes have been settled by lunar observations, as is already mentioned. I have taken 67 deg. 46' for the longitude of Cape Horn. From this meridian the longitudes of all the other parts are deduced by the watch, by which the extent of the whole mast be determined to a few miles; and whatever errors there may be in longitude, must be general. But I think it highly probable that the longitude is determined to within a quarter of a degree. Thus the extent of Terra del Fuego from east to west, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... thou comest to Themistios[7], to sing of him, away with chill reserve, shout aloud, hoist to the top-yard of the mast the sail, and tell how in the boxing and the pankration at Epidauros he won a double prize of valour, and to the portals of Aiakos bare fresh wreaths of flowers, led by the Graces ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... small but stout property-mast, and arranged it against a canvas background of coast scenery. 'I generally use it for children in sailor costume,' he said, 'but I think it will bear your weight long enough for ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... thought there was no time to be lost. Twice, before he could finish what he was about, messages came from Captain Jefferies, to order him to something else. Then a violent crash above from the fall of a mast; and then he heard one cry—'I'll be cursed if I should care, if we did but know where-abouts we are.' Then all was in such uproar, that no voices could be distinguished. At last his cabin-door unlocked, and many voices called upon him at once to come upon deck that instant ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... was rowed off to the middle of the river, as there could be no longer any attempt at concealment. Dan now took the bow oar, and they rowed until a light breeze sprang up. Vincent then put up the mast, and, having hoisted the sail, took his place at the helm, while Dan went forward into the bow. They passed several fishing boats, and the smoke was seen curling up from the huts in the clearings scattered here and there along the shore. The sun had now ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... with a rocky islet for a breakwater on the one side, and the rudiments of a Highland village, containing a few good houses, on the other. Half a dozen small vessels were riding at anchor, curtained round, half-mast high, with herring nets; and a fleet of herring-boats lay moored beside them a little nearer the shore. There had been tolerable takes for a few nights in the neighboring sea, but the fish had again disappeared, and the fishermen, whose worn-out tackle gave such evidence ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... remember. It was his first venture, yes! But there had been so many like to it since. Still—the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... and three o'clock when I was called to go on watch; and after I had been sitting in the stern smoking and thinking for an hour or more, I noticed that the light on the mast had gone out. It was, however, growing lighter, and, fancying that the fog was thinner, I trusted to the coming of the day and a breeze, and made no attempt to take down and ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... a magnet-like attraction in These waters to the imaginative power, That links the viewless with the visible, And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond Yon highway of the world my fancy flies, When by her tall and triple mast we know Some noble voyager that has to woo The trade-winds, and to stem the ecliptic surge. The coral groves—the shores of conch and pearl, Where she will cast her anchor, and reflect Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... except they will haue them run headling, into ouermany ieoperdies, as Vlysses had done many tymes, if Pallas had not alwayes gouerned him: if he had not vsed, to stop his eares with waxe: to bind him selfe to // od. m. the mast of his shyp: to feede dayly, vpon that // od. k. swete herbe Moly with the blake roote and // Moly Her- white floore, giuen vnto hym by Mercurie, to // ba. auoide all the inchantmentes of ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... me that I felt the earth move, and that a secret, invisible force was slowly dragging me into space and becoming tangible to my senses. I saw it mount into the sky; I seemed to be on a ship; the poplar near my window resembled a mast; I arose, stretched out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... observed Captain Shirley, "when she is working automatically neither the periscope nor the wireless-mast shows. The wireless impulses are carried down to her from an inconspicuous float which trails along the surface and carries a short aerial with a wire running down, like a mast, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... done is to stop the mules; in giving a lick ahead, they are all made to bounce at once, and in giving a lick back, they are turned around and made to pull the other way: and should the wind prove favorable, by means of a mast, with which they are all provided, sails can be hoisted, and the the double power of mules and wind be put in requisition. This description of boat is getting to be quite fashionable on the Illinois and tributaries, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... to anklets over one leg the three pigeons walked busily around under the trees gorging themselves on last year's mast. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... day or two at sea, when a gale came on. The master made every effort to guide the vessel, but it was of no use, and at last she was dashed among the breakers. Then we tried to launch the boats, but could not do it, and, as a last resource, I and one other man clung to the mast for safety. We were in ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... it floated off, a frail support for the little group it carried. The lake was strewn with fragments, spars and barrels, and to these many persons were clinging. Hugh had managed to secure a piece of broken mast with spars attached, and with its aid he supported the mother and child until an iron-bound cask, caught in the cordage, struck him heavily in the darkness. The mother heard him groan, and his grasp loosened, "Quick!" ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Artist views At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, 290 Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand, He walkt with to support uneasie steps Over the burning Marle, not like those steps On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire; Knotholes he so endur'd, till on the Beach Of that inflamed ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... "victory!" the sight of the Christian standard at the mast-head of Ali's ship, the news of his death, which spread from ship to ship, gave new courage to the allies and robbed the Turks of spirit. They fought on, but more feebly. Many of their vessels were boarded ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and sunny; sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 310 Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was hoisted on the mast of the pirogue. Benito took the tiller, and off they went, after a last gesture from Lina to Fragoso to keep ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the cause of so much feeling that United States troops were held in readiness for transportation to Utah. The first of these was the placing of the United States flag at half mast in Salt Lake City, on July 4, over the city hall, county court-house, theatre, cooperative store, Deseret News office, tithing office, and President Taylor's residence, to show the Mormon opinion that the Edmunds law had destroyed liberty. When a committee of non-Mormon citizens ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... reality I was as anxious to proceed as Leo. The colossal negro's head and the stone wharf had excited my curiosity to an extent of which I was secretly ashamed, and I was prepared to gratify it at any cost. Accordingly, having carefully fitted the mast, restowed the boat, and got out our rifles, we embarked. Fortunately the wind was blowing on shore from the ocean, so we were able to hoist the sail. Indeed, we afterwards found out that as a general rule the wind set on shore from ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... with the proceedings. The pole was then taken out, reared aloft, and so much activity was displayed, so many eager hands assisted, that in an inconceivably short space of time it was firmly planted in the ground; whence it shot up like the central mast of a man-of-war, far overtopping the roofs of the adjoining houses, and looking very gay indeed, with its floral crown a-top, and its kerchiefs and streamers fluttering ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... decorator. This is a thirty-six. Next winter—if my wife will stand the muss (My God! How it litters up the dining-room!) I am going to build a forty-two. All of the boys bring out a new boat each spring!' The old fellow squinted at his mast and tightened a cord. Then he continued. 'If you are interested, come around any Sunday morning until the pond is frozen. And if you want to try your hand at a boat this winter, just ask any of us boys and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks |
