"Rigging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continent. His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera nor abyss—neither divine injunction nor infernal machination—was in the way of men visiting every part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was to direct man to a view-point whence he should see that the heavens were of like matter with the earth. All this done, the acorn was planted from which the oak of our civilization should spring. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the sky! A Home! a Gordon! was the cry; Loud were the clanging blows: Advanced—forced back—-now low, now high, The pennon sunk and rose; As bends the bark's mast in the gale When rent are rigging, shrouds and sail, It wavered 'mid ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... not been two days on board, when the youngsters proposed a walk into the main top. I mounted the rigging with perfect confidence, for I was always a good climber; but I had not proceeded far, when I was overtaken by the captain of the top and another man, who, without any ceremony or preface, seized me by each arm, and very deliberately lashed me fast in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Sancho, "that if they were for my own person I could not want them more;" and forthwith, fortified by this licence, he effected the mutatio capparum, rigging out his beast to the ninety-nines and making quite another thing of it. This done, they broke their fast on the remains of the spoils of war plundered from the sumpter mule, and drank of the brook that flowed from the fulling ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... laughing; "and the pirate captain ran up the rigging with a hammer and some tin-tacks, and nailed the colours to ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... pale, rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and bright. The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great ship with three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled, for there was no breath of air, and the sailors sat aloft in the rigging or leaned lazily over the bulwarks. Music and singing filled the air, and as the sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were lighted. It seemed as if the flags of every nation were hung out. The little ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... together with the forts and batteries, as far as the Lazaretto or Tarfuria on one side, and fort St. Joseph on the other, inclusively, shall be given up on the embarkation of the second division; as shall also the harbour; and all armed vessels in it of every description, with their rigging, sails, stores, and ammunition. The fortresses of Elvas, Almaida, Peniche, and Palmela, shall be given up as soon as the British troops can arrive to occupy them. In the mean time, the General-in-Chief ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Augustin says of the Santa Anna, which Thomas Candish captured and burnt in 1586 off the Californian coast: "Our people sailed so carelessly that they used their guns for ballast; .... the pirate's venture was such a fortunate one that he returned to London with sails of Chinese damask and silken rigging." The cargo was sold in Acapulco at a profit of 100 per cent., and was paid for in silver, cochineal, quicksilver, etc. [Value of return freight] The total value of the return freight amounted perhaps to between two and three million dollars, [38] of which ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... will be me!" said Hal. "He looked at the rigging of my frigate, and said I knew all the ropes quite well; and he told Papa he might be proud ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have the cant of it too!" cried Montroymont. "But I'll tell ye for all that. It's to try and see if we can keep the rigging on this house, Francie. If she had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold our hands out by the wayside. When ye hear her—when ye hear folk," he corrected himself briskly, "call me a coward, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against us, and the strong breeze, which steadily increased, seemed as if the country were blowing with all its might against us, in a vain effort to drive us away from its shores. The sea, the rigging, the vessel itself, all vibrated and quivered as ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... their breath as they realized that she was sailing toward them straight against the wind that blew strong off the north shore. For a full half-hour they stood and gazed, until they could distinguish the different parts of her rigging, until they could see, standing high on her poop, the figure of a man with "one hand akimbo under his left side and in his right hand a sword stretched out toward the sea." Then, all at once, a mist rose out of the sea behind her and covered her like smoke, and through ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... the rocks as the breaking billows would permit. I walked along, occasionally drenched by the spray, until I arrived where I had last seen the vessel. The waves were dashing and tossing about, as if in sport, fragments of timber, casks, and spars; but that was all I could see, except a mast and rigging, which lay alongside of the rocks, sometimes appearing above them on the summit of the waves, then descending far out of my sight, for I dared not venture near enough to the edge to look over. "Then the vessel is dashed ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... fight of three hours ensued, during which the other ships, which were at some distance, made all speed to come up. By this time the enemy was almost silenced, when a favourable change of wind enabled her to get out of reach of the AGAMEMNON's guns; and that ship had received so much damage in the rigging that she could not follow her. Nelson, conceiving that this was but the forerunner of a far more serious engagement, called his officers together, and asked them if the ship was fit to go into action against such a superior force without some small refit and refreshment for the men. Their ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The superior officers, who had all belonged to the old ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... creature. Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his sight. He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other. He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something precious to him. He was always solicitous about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be careful of ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... completely cleared at an early hour on the 16th, we were all busily employed in "winding" the ship, and in preparing the outriggers, shores, purchases, and additional rigging. Though we purposely selected the time of high water for turning the ship round, we had scarcely a foot of space to spare for doing it; and indeed, as it was, her forefoot touched the ground, and loosened the broken part of the wood so much as ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... and working plans of a British ship of the merchant MAY-FLOWER class of the seventeenth century, as laid down by Admiral Francois Edmond Paris, of France, in his "Souvenirs de Marine." The hull and rigging of this model were carefully worked out by, and under the supervision of Captain Joseph W. Collins (long in the service of the Smithsonian Institution, in nautical and kindred matters, and now a member of the Massachusetts Commission of Inland Fisheries and Game), but were calculated on ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... relied confidently in taking their part in the bombardment; and silently their ships, one by one, left the port. The Italian and American vessels remained for a time; and as the British ships followed, in stately order, their crews manned the rigging and vociferously cheered our sailors, who ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... insufficiently seasoned, and had fallen into so bad a condition that half their original cost was needed for the repair of their hulls; there were too few workmen in the dockyards, and the stores were empty of sails, rigging, and cordage. Lord Egmont, the first lord of the admiralty, represented the necessity for a large expenditure on the navy, but Grenville would not hear of it. So, too, in less important matters, he grudged spending money on the police of London, and highway ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... were scowling, Still nearer the rock-skirted shore; Yet fiercer the tempest was howling And louder the wild waters roar. The cold rain in torrents came pouring On deck thro' the rigging and shrouds, And the deep, pitchy dark was illumined Each moment with gleams from the clouds Of forky-shap'd lightning as, darting, It made a wide pathway on high, And the sound of the thunder incessant Re-echoed the breadth of the sky. The light-hearted ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... length to the gown waist, which is put into a ribbon upon the left side, the Queen only having her train borne. Ruffle cuffs for married ladies, treble lace lappets, two white plumes, and a blond lace handkerchief. This is my rigging, I should have mentioned two pearl pins in my hair, earrings and necklace of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to live on board the brig. We had plenty of work, cleaning out the hold and getting rid of the coal-dust, and then we scrubbed the deck, and blacked down the rigging, and painted the bulwarks and masts, till the change in the appearance of the dingy collier was like that of a scullery-maid when she puts on her Sunday best. We did not mind the hard work, though it was a good deal harder than any we had been accustomed ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... the engine room section of the Laconia. There was a tangle of oars, spars and rigging on the seats in our boat, and considerable confusion resulted before we could manage to place in operation some of the big oars on ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... twenty-ninth of April: "At last I think we are off. We should have been outside by four o'clock this morning, if M. de Macnamara had not been obliged to ask Count Dubois de la Motte to wait till noon to mend some important part of the rigging (I don't know the name of it) which was broken. It is precious time lost, and gives the English the advantage over us of two tides. I talk of these things as a blind man does of colors. What is certain ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... is very durable; it is equally applicable to cables and to ships' standing and running rigging, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... condition of the schooner, enabled the West Indiaman to gain considerably on her antagonist; but the pirate kept up a well-directed fire with his bow-chasers, and many of the shots struck the hull and cut the rigging seriously. As the sun descended towards the horizon the wind fell gradually, and ceased at length altogether, so that both vessels lay rolling on the swell with their sails ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 22' S. and longitude 147 deg. 29' W, and there not being any signs of land, with a heavy sea from the westward, and strong gales, I wore, and stood back to the northward, fearing that we might receive such damage in our sails and rigging, as would hinder ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... arms around his Father's neck, and promised him, and then putting away his medal, he went softly on tiptoe up to his play-room, and shutting the door, began to work on a sloop that he was rigging. He did not get on very fast, for he could not help thinking of his dear Mother, and wishing he could see her. She had hemmed all the sails of the sloop for him, and he was going to name it the ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... The wind does not whistle over waves. It only whistles through rigging or some other obstacle that ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... ten o'clock, a signal from the English admiral caused the frigate to withdraw, and the firing ceased. Our line of ships was not greatly damaged in this long and terrible combat, because the broadsides from the frigate simply cut into our rigging, and did not enter the body of our vessels. The brig and the cutter, however, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... is one thing we can do on stormy nights," she added. "We can pray. And I sometimes think, nights when the winds are roaring, how many souls all along the coast must be kneeling while the sailors at sea are up in the rigging, climbing, or furling ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... the rigging followed by others. The sail had to be stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain to drown him, but he went on clinging to the top-gallant mast-stays and looking down he could see the faces of the others following him, faces sheeted over with rain ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... son's illness, answered with indifference, 'that he could do nothing for him,' and left him to his fate. The other, when the accounts reached him, hurried down, and watching for a favourable moment, crawled on all fours along the weather gunwale to his son, who was in the mizen rigging. By that time, only three or four planks of the quarter deck remained, just over the weather-quarter gallery; and to this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail to prevent his being washed away. Whenever the boy was seized with a fit of retching, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... spread-eagled and mastheaded, while all save those they could bribe were forbidden to bring them drink or food; but here was a whole body of junior officers, punished en masse, as it were, lashed to the rigging and taking the wind and the spray in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Bellomont was able to say of Boston alone, "I believe there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ireland." Thereafter the business rapidly developed, until in a map of about 1730 there are noted sixteen shipyards. Rope walks, too, sprung up to furnish rigging, and presently for these Boston was a centre. Another industry, less commendable, grew up in this as in other shipping centres. Molasses was one of the chief staples brought from the West Indies, and it came in quantities far ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... merchants selling monkeys, parrots, rope, sailcloth and fantastic collections of bric-a-brac where, heaped up pell-mell, were old culverins, great gilded lanterns, old blocks and tackle, old rusting anchors, old rigging, old megaphones, old telescopes, dating from the time of ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... middle of the stream we swung round, the current caught us, and away we flew like a great winged bird. Only it didn't seem as if we were moving. The shore, with the countless steamboats, the tangled rigging of the ships, and the long lines of warehouses, appeared to be ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... watch on deck were busy about the rigging or the guns, or the hundred and one details of a sailor's work, the rest of the crew had the interval till dinner pretty much to themselves. Some slept, some reeled out yarns to their messmates, others mended ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... and his knees knocked; he would have prayed, but his tongue denied its office. Crowe seeing his perturbation, "Mayhap, friend," said he, "you take me for a buccaneer; but I am no such person. —My name is Captain Crowe.—I come not for your silver nor your gold, your rigging nor your stowage; but hearing as how your friend intends to bring my friend Sir Launcelot Greaves to action, d'ye see, I desire in the way of friendship, that, while they are engaged, you and I, as their seconds, may ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a fortnight on my third voyage, and the schooner and brig were lying in a little bay when we saw what we took to be a large merchant ship coming along. She was all painted black, her rigging was badly set up, her sails were dirty and some of them patched, she was steering east, and seemed as if she was homeward bound after a long voyage. Off we went in pursuit, thinking we had got a prize. She clapped on more sail, but we came up to her hand over ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... pocket-knife, but, overpowered by numbers, perished also under the blows of these murderers. I next saw (and that was the last occurrence of which I was witness before quitting the ship) the sailors who were aloft, slip down by the rigging, and get below through the steerage hatchway. They were five, I think, in number, and one of them, in descending, received a knife-stab in the back. I then jumped overboard, to escape a similar fate to that of the captain and Mr. M'Kay: the women in the canoes, to whom I ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... for some moments, and marked the beating of the waves; the glitter of sea-lights pulsing on the ripples; the sweep of belated gulls through the creaking rigging; the dark hull of a passing vessel with a grinning topmast lantern; the vigilant pilot, whose eyes glared like a fiend's upon the waste of blackness; the foam that the panting screw threw against the cabin windows; the flap of fishes caught in the threads of moonlight; the depths over ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... fleets keep to the sea in winter as well as in summer, and it is a hard life indeed when decks and rigging are covered with ice, and fierce north winds blow the snow down, and the cold is bitter enough to freeze a man's very blood. Seas run high and rough, which is always the case in shallow waters, and great rollers sweep over the decks of ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... foregoing letter which related to its gifted writer's interview with Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, Titmouse read in a kind of spasm—he could not draw a breath, and felt a choking sensation coming over him. After a while, "I may spare myself," thought he, "the trouble of rigging out—Huckaback has done my business for me with Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap!—Mine will only be a walk in vain!" And this cursed call of Huckaback's, too, to have happened after what had occurred ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... text is mutilated, and does not furnish enough information to follow in every detail the building of the ark. From what we can understand, the vessel of Shamashnapishtim was a kind of immense kelek, decked, but without masts or rigging of any sort. The text identifies the festival celebrated by the hero before the embarkation with the festival Akitu of Merodach, at Babylon, during which "Nebo, the powerful son, sailed from Borsippa to Babylon in the bark of the river Asmu, of beauty." The embarkation of Nebo ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Another says that "Krakatoa appeared to be alight with flickering flames rising behind a dense black cloud." A third recorded that "the lightning struck the mainmast conductor five or six times," and that "the mud-rain which covered the decks was phosphorescent, while the rigging presented the appearance ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... undiminished, his immediate antagonist out of the battle, mistaking himself as the object of the laughter of the blacks, turned upon them, charging and slashing the many legs that fled before him. They dropped down the cabin and forecastle companionways, ran out the bowsprit, and sprang into the rigging till they were perched everywhere in the air like monstrous birds. In the end, the deck belonged to Jerry, save for the boat's crew; for he had already learned to differentiate. Captain Van Horn was hilariously vocal of his praise, calling ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... forts dominating the sand-dunes that stretched away to right and left. The sands shone; the sea was a silvery blue, edged with a dazzle where its breakers touched the shore; a clear northerly breeze came sweeping inland and hummed in the galley's rigging as it flew by. From the streets of Dunkirk sounded the cheerful bustle of the morning's business; and as Tristram glanced up at the glistening spire of the Jesuits' church, its clock struck out eleven o'clock as merrily as if it ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of America with success." "Well, try it; if she does not wear, we can only loose the fore-sail afterwards." This was a great condescension from such a man as Sir Hyde. However, by sending about two hundred people into the fore-rigging, after a hard struggle, she wore; found she did not make so good weather on this tack as on the other; for as the sea began to run across, she had not time to rise from one sea before another lashed against her. Began to think we should lose our masts, as the ship ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... much bigger than Jan, was driving her. On the deck of the boat there was a little cabin with white curtains in the tiny windows and two red geraniums in pots standing on the sills. From a clothesline hitched to the rigging there fluttered a row of little shirts, and seated on a box near by there was a fat, friendly looking woman with two small children playing by her side. The father of the family ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... maidens endeavouring to sing and keep their balance is amusing if not aesthetic. Everything, in fact, suffers a "sea change," if not into something "rich and strange," often into something expensive. The first time a passenger ventures on the forecastle or up the rigging—the peculiar realms of the sailor—Jack chalks him, which means that he must pay his footing, by sending a bottle of whisky for'ard. It is seldom that a stranger long escapes "spotting" under these circumstances. As a curiosity I may mention that ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... southwestward, Looked on the vapour as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, Looked toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships, Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars. The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses, The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and first of native born American white men. When at last the shallop left the Mayflower's side it was in teeth of such bad weather as left the former expedition far in the shade, for not only was the northeast wind more bitter, but the temperature so low that the spray froze upon the rigging and the men's jerkins, turning them into coats of mail ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... or a little more than two frasilahs; the cloth is then folded singly over these layers, each corner tied to another. A bundle of coir-rope is then brought, and two men, provided with a wooden mallet for beating and pressing the bale, proceed to tie it up with as much nicety as sailors serve down rigging. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Yorkshire Gazette to have been "lost, together with one hundred and fifty passengers and the winter's supply of gingerbread for Whitby, off either the French or Dutch coast" one stormy Christmas, the date not given) Cook was sent to assist in rigging and fitting for sea a vessel, called the Three Brothers, some 600 tons burden, which was still in existence towards the close of last century. When she was completed, Cook made two or three trips in her with coals, and then she was employed for some months as a transport for troops ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the rigging to save The wild woman-kind below, With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave— He was pitched to his death at a blow, For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew: They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro Through the cobbled ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... were jolted over the somewhat rough road, but the vehicle arrived without any accident, and was soon loaded with the case and rigging of the balloon. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... for herself," answered the maid, who had gone to the window, "for he is just crossing the court this blessed minute, on his way to the orangery, where they are rigging ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... fins; of the Sirens who tell of such wonderful things that the merchants have to stop their ears with wax lest they should hear them, and leap into the water and be drowned; of the sunken galleys with their tall masts, and the frozen sailors clinging to the rigging, and the mackerel swimming in and out of the open portholes; of the little barnacles who are great travellers, and cling to the keels of the ships and go round and round the world; and of the cuttlefish ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... field-hand, our colored hero took a great pride in coming out on grand occasions like the present in a guise more beseeming his high reputation as an Indian-fighter. So, going at once to his own cabin, where he kept all his war and martial rigging perpetually ready for use in a minute's notice, he dashed through the process with a celerity quite astonishing in one who was usually so heavy and deliberate in his motions. First, he drew on his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... great ship rose from some mighty swell, and then, settling down, drove ahead, cleaving the calm water and leaving a wide wake of foam behind. The black smoke poured out of the broad funnels, and sifted upward through the scant rigging, and was dissipated in the clear air above. The throbbing of the engine made its pulsations felt through the ponderous craft from stem to stern, as a giant breathes more powerfully when gathering his energy for the final effort of the race. A ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... became so wet as to impede our work, and on our foreman riding by, he ordered them curbed to the bottom and a tripod set up over them on which to rig a rope and pulley. The next morning troughs and rigging, with a remuda of horses and a watering crew of four strange vaqueros, arrived. The wells were only about twenty feet deep; but by drawing the water as fast as the seepage accumulated, each was capable of watering several hundred head of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... of her rigging and of all the goods which remained. The body of Captain Oldham was found, awfully mutilated, beneath a sail. The rest of the crew, but two or three in number, had been carried as captives by the savages on the shore. Captain ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... wrong-end foremost half his time. It is true that one of his hands coiled a rope against the sun, and he called it querling a rope, too, when I asked him what he was about; but I am not certain that anything was meant by it; though, I daresay, the French coil half their running rigging the wrong way, and may call it 'querling it down,' too, for that matter. Then Jasper himself belayed the end of the jib-halyards to a stretcher in the rigging, instead of bringing it to the mast, where they belong, at least among ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... question as he paced the busy Docks. He would return then to Northbourne, where his other beloved child lay in jeopardy of her young life. Through the anxious night-watches by her bed, the old sailor pictured his boy on board some barque ploughing the seas, the stormy winds roaring through the rigging, the decks wet and slippery, the rough sailors cuffing and jostling the unwelcome intruders who ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... two or three days' work might patch it up temporarily. If it were destroyed altogether as far as the first pier, it would stop the cannon getting over till a temporary bridge is constructed; but by rigging up some strong cables, they could pass cases of musket ammunition across the gap in the same way, you know, as I have seen pictures of shipwrecked people being swung along under a cable in a sort of cradle. What ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... the grotto alone, and having observed the orifice, had by her letter apprised Guiscardo of its apparent height above the floor of the grotto, and bidden him contrive some means of descending thereby. Eager to carry the affair through, Guiscardo lost no time in rigging up a ladder of ropes, whereby he might ascend and descend; and having put on a suit of leather to protect him from the brambles, he hied him the following night (keeping the affair close from all) to the orifice, made the ladder fast by one of its ends to a massive ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... vessel, saving a few Morisco oar-makers and caulkers. Then the armadores, or owners of the new galleot, as soon as it is finished, come down with presents of money and clothes, and hang them upon the mast and rigging, to the value of two hundred or three hundred ducats, to be divided among their slaves, whose only pay till that day has been the daily loaves. Then again on the day of launching, after the vessel has been keeled over, and the bottom carefully greased ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... 131) lanterns all lighted, and the large trumpet in the lee-gangway ready to speak him, and to demand the surrender of his ship to the United States of America; but he, at that instant, commenced a fire from his stern and quarter guns, directed at our rigging and spars. No parley being then necessary, I sent my principal aid-de-camp, Mr. Vandyke, to the different officers commanding divisions on the main battery, to repeat strictly my orders, before given, not to throw away ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... about the ship by all hands with little whips of ropeyarn or of fibrous maho bark. His back was then pickled with some salt, after which he was discharged the company. If a man were in want of clothes, he had but to ask a shipmate to obtain all he required. They were not very curious in the rigging or cleansing of their ships; nor did they keep watch with any regularity. They set their Mosquito Indians in the tops to keep a good lookout; for the Indians were long-sighted folk, who could descry a ship at sea at a greater distance than a white man. They ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... while Trask and Marjorie went to the poop-deck. The Nuestra looked clean as a pin and fresh as a maker's model. Her decks had been scrubbed until the caulking in the seams looked like lines of black paint on old ivory. Her standing rigging had been newly tarred, her bright work polished, and the water casks lashed in the waist had their hoops painted a bright yellow, not yet dry. New hemp hung in the belaying pins. The roof of the cabin, covered by a tarpaulin, gleamed with oil and yellow paint. She had been scrubbed and freshened ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... dynamite explosion was something terrific. Fifty-five tons exploded at one time, wounding 700 people, killing 80, and leaving 1,500 homeless. It ripped a chasm in the earth deep enough to hold an Atlantic steamer with all her rigging. The Kaffirs thought the sun had burst. Betty says the noise of the report was something awful. Little Jacky was digging in the garden at the time. He returned to the house at once with a very troubled ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... is this," began Belton; "you know that there is one serious flaw in the Constitution of the United States, which has already caused a world of trouble, and there is evidently a great deal more to come. You know that a ship's boilers, engines, rigging, and so forth may be in perfect condition, but a serious leak in her bottom will sink the proudest vessel afloat. This flaw or defect in the Constitution of the United States is the relation of the General Government to the individual state. The vague, ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the skipper studied the horizon to the northeast. That he was not pleased with his observation Harriet was confident. Again he took a long look at the barometer, glanced at the compass to see that she was on her course, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, studied the rigging overhead. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him. Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of Ben's party-colored rigging: stooped and lean, his step slouched: his head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face, too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of utter solitude: the brain was dulled with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... acted rightly. Five minutes later four thunderous reports rang out, and shells splashed the sea on all sides of the Saigon. Then the machine-guns began to speak, and a perfect storm of bullets tore through the vessel's rigging, some directed so low that they pierced the top rim of the funnel smoke-stack. The display lasted sixty seconds. When it was over, a very sheepish looking lot of men arose from the recumbent attitudes they had assumed. Of the whole ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... beautiful Amentet, and thou comest, being renewed each day. Behold, thou art that Image of gold, and thou dost possess the splendors of the disks of heaven and art terrible; thou comest, being renewed each day. Hail, the horizon rejoiceth, and there are shouts of joy in the rigging [of thy boat]; when the gods who dwell in the heavens see the Osiris Nu, the overseer of the palace, the chancellor-in-chief, triumphant, they ascribe unto him as his due praises which are like unto those ascribed unto Ra. The Osiris Nu, the overseer of the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... fish played in the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed rested a live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind never known to sleep upon the sea came flying toward them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The owners of the Pinta predicted that they would all be caught in this ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst, for the light winds were not strong enough to drive the ships through it as easily as they had sailed at ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in Ethelberta's room on the second floor. This was a pleasant enough way of passing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open casement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, the pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St. Sever on the other side of the river. How languid his interest might ultimately have become there ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... many came round us, some in canoes, and others swimming. I soon prevailed on one to come on board, which be no sooner did, than he was followed by more than I desired; so that not only our deck, but rigging, was presently filled with them. I took four into the cabin, and gave them various articles, which they shewed to those in the canoes, and seemed much pleased with their reception. While I was thus making friends with those in the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... almost always felt to be extremely tedious and dull to landsmen; but every change in the atmosphere, the varied appearance presented by the sea, the numberless creatures found in it, the birds which hovered about the ship or pitched on the rigging, all afforded matter of interest to the enlightened persons on ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... no notice of what was going on in the ship. The Chevalier de la Vieuville had drawn up the marines on either side of the main-mast, and at a signal-whistle of the boatswain the sailors, who had been busy in the rigging, stood up on the yards. Count Boisberthelot approached the passenger. The captain was followed by a man, who, haggard and panting, with his dress in disorder, still wore on his ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... forgetful of his own misery in the spectacle of the river—the rose sky, the long perspectives, the houses and warehouses showing in fine outline, and then the wonderful blue night gathering in the forest of masts and rigging. He was admirably patient. There was no fretfulness in his soul, nor did he rail against the world's injustice, but took his misfortunes with ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... But Silver spied him from her flower-room, and came down to the sail-boat where it lay at the foot of the ladder. 'You are not going out this cold day,' she said, standing by his side as he busied himself over the rigging. She was wrapped in a fur mantle, with a fur cap on her head, and her rough little shoes were fur-trimmed. Waring made no reply. 'But I shall not allow it,' continued the maiden, gayly. 'Am I not queen of this castle? You yourself have said it ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... year has been eventful for me. There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks one's self on. Thank God I think I may say I have weathered mine—not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... storehouse hunting for a half-bar'l of salt the skipper said was there. It was an awful blustering kind of day, with a thin icy rain blowing from all points at once; sea roaring as if it wished it could come ashore and put a stop to everything. Bad days at sea, them are; rigging all froze up. As I was saying, we were hunting for a half-bar'l of salt, and I laid hold of a bar'l that had something heavy in the bottom, and tilted it up, and my eye! there was a stir and a scratch and a squeal, and out went some kind of ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ships of the enemy had brought all their guns over to the sides opposed to the Royalist vessel, and fought eighteen guns to his eight. Fearing to injure each other, both aimed entirely at the hull of their opponent, while Harry's guns were pointed at the masts and rigging. The sides of the Lass of Devon were splintered and broken in all directions, while those of his assailants showed scarcely a shot mark. The fire of his men in the tops—all old soldiers—had been so heavy and deadly that they had killed most of the marksmen in the enemy's tops, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... aware that a violent squall of wind must be approaching the vessel. Being convinced of this he arose from his berth, dressed quickly, and hurried upon deck, where he found a great confusion of men running hither and thither and scrambling up and down the rigging like monkeys, while the Captain, and one whom he had come to know as the Captain's mate, were shouting out orders in a strange ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... and found himself upon an ocean which he called the Pacific, because of its peaceful aspect. Magellan's sailors now begged him to return, for food was getting scarce, but the navigator replied that he would go on, "if he had to eat the leather off the rigging." He did go on, for ninety-eight days, until he reached the Ladrone Islands. [24] By a curious chance, in all this long trip across the Pacific, Magellan came upon only two islands, both of them uninhabited. He then proceeded to the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... waves can do to her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If it be that the people, when the war is over, shall consent to live under a military or other dictatorship, that they shall ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the same general construction so far as the main planes are concerned, each aviator has his own ideas as to the "rigging." ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... way of cattle would have taken prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer, if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance. Swarthy boys and dark-eyed Madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio, suggested Murillo; oily brown shadows of faces with a lurid streak in the wrong place, meant Rembrandt; ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... rigging and removed Tricksy very gently from her perch, tucked her under one arm with her head hanging in front and her heels behind, slid down the ropes and deposited the little girl on ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... strange. It must have been done awful crafty and still. They say it was such a—funny way to kill a man, rigging ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... to dawn, Lemminkainen went to the beach, that was hidden behind a projecting point, where his vessels lay. He found them still there, but as he approached he heard the rigging wailing in the wind, and saying: 'Must we lie here for ever and rot, since Ahti has sworn not to go to war for sixty ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... he should think proper to sail on the Thames, to improve himself in seamanship. In addition to these, the King made him a present of the "Royal Transport," with orders to have such alterations and accommodations made in her, as his Tzarish Majesty might desire, and also to change her masts, rigging, sails, &c., in any such way as he might think proper for improving her sailing qualities. But his great delight was to get into a small decked boat, belonging to the Dock-yard, and taking only Menzikoff, and three or four others of his suite, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... all this time had been pelting us with her shot, but to no purpose. As we passed, we gave her a broadside which did some damage, for she bore down to the sloop, and never fired another shot, but careened her over and let some men down the side to stop her holes, & sent some to repair the rigging and sails, which were full of shot holes. All the damage we got was one shot through our main-sail. The ship mounted 6 guns of a side, and the sloop eight. She was a Spanish privateer, bound on a cruize to the N'ward, & had taken 5 ships & the sloop which we had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously after hearing ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... terrific explosion. Jeremy trembled on his rock. The ships were in darkness for a moment after that first great flare, and then, before another shot could be fired, little tongues of flame began to spread along the hull and rigging of the larger craft. Little by little the fire gained headway till the whole upper works were a single great torch. By its light the victorious vessel was plainly visible. She was a schooner-rigged sloop-of-war, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... which appears triumphant in the panel itself; infrequent still, spaced apart as the scattered houses which warn us that we are approaching a village, they betokened to me the vast expanse of waving corn beneath the fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single poppy hoisting upon its slender rigging and holding against the breeze its scarlet ensign, over the buoy of rich black earth from which it sprang, made my heart beat as does a wayfarer's when he perceives, upon some low-lying ground, an old and broken boat which is being caulked and made seaworthy, and cries out, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust |
