"Bight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absolutely nothing. Therefore it must not be supposed that the bird conflict myth is confined to the districts in which we have evidence of its existence. We may rather infer that a myth so widely distributed—it ranges from the head of the Bight, 129 deg. E., to the coast north of Sydney, and probably as far as Moreton Bay; to the north it is found among the Urabunna, and probably elsewhere—is common ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... ceased as abruptly as it had struck. The Arangi righted with a jerk to an even keel, leaving Jerry stranded in the starboard scuppers. He trotted across the level deck to Skipper, who, standing erect on wide-spread legs, the bight of the mainsheet still in ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... from the weapons of these people, and their military courage, which must in great measure be the effect of habit, that they have frequent wars among themselves. As we proceeded westward from this place, we found, at the distance of two or three miles, a small bight, forming a kind of bay, in which a river empties itself. Upon taking a view of this river from the mast-head, it appeared to run very far into the country, and at the entrance, at least, to be navigable for small vessels. This river we called Granville's River, and to the westward ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... a fire-bucket and fill it from the men's kids: Mr. Tickell, see the cook swallow his own mess. Bosen's mate, take a bight of the flying jib sheet stand over him, and start him if he dailies with it." With this the captain went below, and the cook, supping at the bucket delivered himself as follows: "Well, ye lubbers, it is first— rate. There's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... three acres in area—and later on I had put up a house, nothing very elegant, but everything for comfort, a model bachelor's establishment. For our present need no better asylum could have offered. The island was small and occupied only by my own domestic establishment. It lay in the bight of Oliver's Bay, quite a mile from the nearest shore, and there was but one other bit of land anywhere around—an uninhabited islet known as 'The Thimble,' that lay a quarter of a mile due east. Surely this isolation promised security. Here, if anywhere, we might snap our fingers ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... chain on end, topgallant masts struck, and yards braced by, without being able to communicate with the shore; while at the same time in Aden harbour she will lie within a few yards of the shore, in perfectly smooth water, with the bight of her chain cable scarcely taught."—CAPTAIN ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... north cables, the wind blowing strong from the N.N.W., and the whole “pack” outside of us setting rapidly to the southward. Indeed, notwithstanding the recent tightening and readjustment of the cables, the bight was pressed in so much as to force the Fury against the berg astern of her twice in the course of the day. Mr. Waller, who was in the hold the second time that this occurred, reported that the coals about the keelson were moved by it, imparting the sensation ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... defiance to the entire universe! The hairy bundle loses its head all at once, likewise its heart: it has not spirit left even to get out of the way. A momentary lean of the bicycle first to the left and then to the right describes what artists call "the line of beauty," in a bight of which the bundle remains behind, crushed in spirit, but unhurt ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... to look. Manuel was looking upwards conversing with the people above, and holding Williams' flask in both his hands. He never once glanced into the passage; he seemed to be trying to undo the cord knotted to the end of the thick rope, which hung in a long bight before him. The flask captured my eyes, my thought, my energy. I would tear it away from him directly. There was in me, then, neither fear nor intelligence; only the desire of possessing myself of the thing; but an instinctive caution prevented my rushing ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... about half-an-hour, and then a sort of bay or bight appearing on one side, we brought the vessel into it, and moored her stem and stern fast to the trees. There she lay so completely concealed, that any one passing up the canal could not by any possibility have seen her, even in ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Consulate General] Sweden Gotland Sweden Gough Island Saint Helena Grand Banks Atlantic Ocean Grand Cayman Cayman Islands Grand Turk [US Consular Agency] Turks and Caicos Islands Great Australian Bight Indian Ocean Great Belt (Store Baelt) Atlantic Ocean Great Britain United Kingdom Great Channel Indian Ocean Greater Sunda Islands Brunei; Indonesia; Malaysia Green Islands Papua New Guinea Greenland Sea Arctic Ocean Grenadines, Northern Saint ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Snaggs, ladling out a good portion of the contents of the dish into a plate, which the steward passed on to the first-mate, "I see a rope's-end hangin' down thaar, too, like a bight of the signal halliards or the boom-sheet, which some lubber hez let tow overboard. Hev it made fast an' shipshape. ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to get him lame 'way up here in the hills? I don't mind telling a man a thing once, but to tell it to him fifty-eight times and then have it do no good— Have you the faintest recollection of my instructing you to turn the bight OVER instead of UNDER when you throw that pack-hitch? If you'd remember that, we shouldn't have had all ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and silently, the boy ranchers soon released their ponies from the tethering ropes and managed to mount them, though it was not easy, owing to the lack of stirrups. But eventually they were on the backs of their mounts, and, looping a bight of the rope around the heads of Blaze and Blackie, ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... with the gray whale, and the captain had been bemoaning the decay of the whaling industry, the work of bringing the dead whale to the surface had been under way. Letting out more slack on the rope attached to the harpoon a bight of it was passed through a sheave-block at the masthead, thus giving a greater purchase for the lifting of the heavy body. The winch was run by a small donkey-engine, and for about ten minutes the line was hauled in, fathom ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... but slowly circling his head, he cursed them all with his baleful gaze. The ship's dinghy had been lowered, and he with his hands still tied, was dropped into it on the bight of a rope. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the weather became angry, and the wind blew fresh, raising a considerable sea. As we were in the bight of Samana, I felt a little uneasy about drifting too near the shore. These are some of the anxieties of a commander that his officers scarcely ever know anything about. Our prize was burned off Cape Raphael. I did not turn in until near midnight; was called two hours afterwards, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Lisbon is punished with imprisonment. The stream was against us, but the wind was in our favour, and we sprang along at a wonderful rate. I saw that our only chance of escape was in speedily getting under the shelter of that part of the farther bank of the Tagus, where the bight or bay commences at the extremity of which stands Aldea Gallega, as we should not then have to battle with the waves of the adverse stream, which the wind lashed into fury. It was the will of the Almighty ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the men to stand by and catch the slack, the captain ripped a line from the drum of the cart, dragged off his high boots, knotted the bight around his waist, and started on a run for ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... interrupted Kennedy McClure, who had come up from below, "what think ye of the landing? Can we make the auld place within the bight of the Mays Water? That would be the nearest to the Bothy on the Wild ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... over the little plain at Maryborough, protected by the surrounding forest from the action of the wind, the heated air accumulates over the surface until carried off in eddies, so, though on a vastly larger scale, in that great bight formed by the coasts of North and South America, having for its apex the Gulf of Mexico, there is an immense area in the northern tropics, nearly surrounded by land, forming a vast oceanic plain, shut off from the regular action of ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Pilate's eyes full upon him, Joseph sat thinking of the lake, recalling every bight and promontory, and asking himself how it was that he had not thought of Galilee for so long a time. He longed to set eyes on Magdala, and he would have ridden away at once, but an escort would have to be ordered, for a single horseman could not ride through Samaria ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... there is a bight of blue in the sky; and a lee set of dark-gray and purple clouds is folding down over the eastern horizon,—against which the spires and the flag show clearer than ever. It means that the rain has stopped; and the rain having stopped, my in-door ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the most inhuman traffic that ever was plied by degraded men—the traffic in slaves. Yet in the old days the trade was far from being held either cruel inhuman—indeed, vessels often set sail for the Bight of Benin to swap rum for slaves, after their owners had invoked the blessing of God upon their enterprise. Nor were its promoters held by the community to be degraded. Indeed, some of the most eminent men in the community engaged in it, and its receipts ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... off the coast for three hours in order to pick up the returning airmen, and during this time they were attacked by dirigibles and submarines, without, however, suffering damage. Six of the sea-planes returned safely to the ships, but one was wrecked in Heligoland Bight. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... Hartford writes: "When some of us youngsters were going through some gymnastic exercises (which he encouraged), he smilingly took hold of his left foot, by the toe of the shoe, with his right hand, and hopped his right foot through the bight without letting go." The lightness with which he clambered up the rigging of the flag-ship when entering Mobile Bay, and again over the side to see the extent of injury inflicted by the collision with the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... middy, thoughtfully; "I forgot about him. Bother the monkey! Phew! I am hot. I say, they may well call this Oily Bight. The sea looks just as if it had been greased. Oh, don't I wish I were in a good wet fog in the Channel. This is ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... with two hundred and fifty men, under the command of Giles Bland, "a man of courage and haughty bearing," and "no great admirer of Sir William's goodness." The ship proceeded to the Accomac shore, anchored in some bight, and sent ashore men to treat with the Governor. But the Governor turned the tables on them. He made himself captor, instead of being made captive. Bland and his lieutenants were taken, whereupon their following surrendered into Berkeley's hands. Bland's second in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... rivers of the bay, and been washed away by the undermining of the low alluvial banks on which they grow, and carried out to sea by the current. Along several of the freshwater channels on the western side of the Great Bight examined by the Fly's boats in 1844, I had seen this palm growing on the margin of the stream in great profusion, and according to Giaom, the bisi tree (as she called it) is occasionally carried by the winds and currents as far south as the Prince of Wales Islands, when the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... Winter has now clearly relaxed his hold. Indians who came in to-day from L'Arbre Croche, report that the ice is, however, still firm at Point Wa-gosh-ains (Little Fox Point), on the straits above. This point forms the bight of the straits, some twenty miles off, at their entrance into Lake Michigan. Attended the funeral of William Dolly, a Metif boy, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Major, who had really begun to enjoy California, "that the view from this Point includes more varied scenery than any other that is known in the world. Here we see the grand San Bernardino range of mountains; the Spanish Bight on the Mexican shore; the pretty city of San Diego climbing its hills, with the placid bay in front, where float the warships of the Pacific Squadron; the broad stretch of orange and lemon groves, hedged with towering palm trees; Santa ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... reel, in which he is pretending to be a tree and the children are climbing it. And when he has just published The Cruise of the Cow; or, Seven Hours at Sea, he will be seen with an intense expression tying a bowline on a bight or madly hauling on the throat-halyard—at Messrs. Mump and Gump's specially-equipped ponds. And for his passionate romance, The Borrowed Bride—— But I don't know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... buoy attached. The sailor, sometimes visible and then obscured by the rising of a swell, grasped the line, and a cheer went up. He took a half turn with the line around his waist, was rolling himself over into the bight of the line and it looked as if he would be saved. The sailors on deck were just about to haul in. The poor fellow's hands and fingers must have been numb, for he suddenly rolled out of the half-formed bight, losing his ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... administration immediately succeeding it. Afterwards he had at the peril of his life, made an exploring trip across the base of the northern peninsula of the colony with the intention, as he phrased it, of 'shaking round a bit.' He 'shook round' to some purpose, penetrated to the Big Bight, and got on the tracks of a famous lost explorer. Colin McKeith solved the mystery of that explorer's fate and had his revenge on the Government which had impeached him by pocketing the reward which it had offered any adventurous pioneer following ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... most parts of the bay. From Tanjong Datu the coast recedes into a bay, and again forms a low point, which I have christened Tanjong Lundu. The river Lundu disembogues itself into the bay just beyond the point of the same name; and the land on its far bank forms a bight of considerable depth. The Lundu is a barred river with but little water; though, judging from the opening, it is by no means small. Our pilots inform me at the same time, however, that within the bar there is considerable depth ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of the rope by which he was swinging, got hold of the dripping end and passed it to Mr Frewen, letting the rest fall back like a big loop, but not so quietly as I could have wished. Then we hauled in slowly, till after a little management we had the bight so exactly adjusted that Bob Hampton's feet rested upon it while ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall. It hangs from the ship's side at the end of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose end link is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a lever when the order is given. And the order is not "Heave over!" as the paragraphist seems to imagine, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Santa Claus loves us far better than he; Don't let him get fretful and angry again At dear brother Willie, and Annie, Amen!" "Peas Desus 'et Santa Taus tum down to-night, And bing us some pesents before it is 'ight; I want he should div me a nice ittle sed, With bight, shiny unners, and all painted yed; A box full of tandy, a book and a toy— Amen—and then Desus, I'll be a dood boy." Their prayers being ended they raised up their heads, And with hearts light and cheerful again sought their beds; They were soon lost in slumber both peaceful ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... profoundest consequences.] The differences of condition, therefore, had widened with each successive year. Jesus Christ had been born into a liberal and progressive Roman Empire that spread from the Arctic Ocean to the Bight of Benin, and was to know no Decline and Fall, and Mahomet, instead of embodying the dense prejudices of Arab ignorance, opened his eyes upon an intellectual horizon already nearly as ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... was seized up, as it is called, that is, placed against the shrouds, with his wrists made fast to the shrouds, his jacket off, and his back exposed. The captain stood on the break of the deck, a few feet from him, and a little raised, so as to have a good swing at him, and held in his hand the bight of a thick, strong rope. The officers stood round, and the crew grouped together in the waist. All these preparations made me feel sick and almost faint, angry and excited as I was. A man—a human being, made in God's likeness—fastened ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... one afternoon, they came to Margarita, and, the ship needing water, they entered a placid bight, where a strip of dazzling sand lay between the rippling surf and a heavy wood, but found beforehand with them a small bark from the mainland, her crew ashore filling barrels from a limpid spring, and her master and a Franciscan friar eating fruit upon her tiny poop. The dozen on land showed their ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... admiral Barbarossa, Turkish admiral Barham, First Lord of Admiralty Bart, Jean, French naval leader Battle cruiser, see Ships of War Beachy Head, battle of Beatty, British admiral, at Heligoland Bight; at Dogger Bank; at Jutland Berlin Decree Bismarck Blake, British admiral Blockade, in American Civil War; in World War Boisot, Dutch admiral Bonaparte, see Napoleon Bossu, Spanish admiral Boxer Rebellion Boyne, battle of Bragadino, Venetian general Breda, peace of Bridport, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... him and his wife threading the mazes of the broken coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes. With them were Indians, also three other men. The Indians landed them and their supplies in a lonely bight of land a hundred miles or so beyond Latuya Bay, and returned to Skaguay; but the three other men remained, for they were members of the organized party. Each had put an equal share of capital into the outfitting, and the profits were to ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... higher than in any other place till we come to Cape Three-points, and about ten leagues westward from that Cape the land begins to rise, and grows higher all the way to the point. Also about 5 leagues west from that Cape there is some broken ground with two great rocks, within which, in the bight of a bay, there is a castle called Arra belonging to the king of Portugal, which is readily known by these rocks, as there are none other between Cape Palmas and Cape Three-points. The coast trends ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... matter to get into them, and anyone but a sailor or a professional acrobat would find it safest to be lowered over the side in a basket. The voyage to the jetty at Largs Bay is a brief epitome of the Bay of Biscay, the Australian Bight, and the monsoons of the Indian Ocean. When you reach the jetty, you are hoisted on to it by practised hands as the launch jumps to the right level. Then—splash! and up comes a green sea through the boards and you are wet to the skin. Bathing, it seems, like education, is "free and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... clewed up, and t'other set. The wind howls, the rain beats, the ship staggers, the salt spray flies over us from time to time. During the space of three bells, we have our hands pretty full, and then the mate bawls: 'For'ard there! In with jib; lay out, men!' The vessel is buried to her bight-heads every plunge she takes, and sometimes the solid sea pours over her bowsprit as far as the but-end of the flying jib-boom. But to hear is of course to obey; and while some of our messmates spring to the downhaul of the jib, and rattle ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... seventeenth century and again, much more acutely, when the French were the masters of the Low Countries, and when Napoleon took control of the shipbuilding yards not only from Brest to Dunkirk, but from Dunkirk to the Bight ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... resolved in a kind of council, on the captain's motion, At sunrise to commit the old lady to the ocean. She was placed upon a plank, resting upon the taffrail, (the stern railing,) One end of which was secured by a bight of the trysail brailing. The captain read the prayers, somewhat curtailed, but a just proportion, The plank was raised, 'Amen!' the corpse dropped into the ocean. Down in its deep mysterious caves ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... of the smuggling craft in the North Sea was Robin Hood's Bay. Whenever the cruisers used to approach that bight the smugglers would sail out, fire upon them, and drive them along the coast. Before firing, the smugglers always hoisted English colours, and on one occasion a smuggling craft had the temerity to run alongside a Revenue cruiser, hail her, and in a derisive manner ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... popped every moment under a wave. In vain I called to him to come to me, and lay hold of the boat; he could neither see nor hear, and would have soon joined his illustrious namesake in the Elysian fields, had I not managed to throw the bight of a rope round his neck, and towed him within reach, when I held him up by the collar of his jacket (ducking him under water occasionally to make him cease from howling) until we ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... immediately and picked up the letter, crumpling it in his hand, as he did so; and at the same moment the torches arrived, inundating the blackness of the scene with a flood of light as bight ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... great smokes where the inhabitants were clearing and cultivating their grounds. We had now ran 25 miles to the W S W since noon, and were W five miles from a low point, which in the afternoon I imagined had been the southernmost land, and here the coast formed a deep bend, with low land in the bight that appeared like islands. The west shore was high; but from this part of the coast to the high cape which we were abreast of yesterday noon, the shore is low, and I believe shoal. I particularly remark this situation, because ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... the apex by a single upright post; a secondary door was hinged to the post, and could be hasped on either cheek of the real entrance; so, whether the wind was north or south, the cotter could make himself a triangular bight of shelter where to set his chair and finish a pipe with comfort. There is one objection to this device; for, as the post stands in the middle of the fairway, any one precipitately issuing from the cottage must run his chance of a broken ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he returned with the other in his boat, which he moored to the opposite side of the Woodville. The middle of the rope was kept on the bottom of the lake by the stone, while the two ends were carried forward by the boys until the bight was drawn under the keel of the steamer, as far as her position on the rocks would permit it to go. Lawry's end was made fast around the smokestack, and ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... his idees, sometimes, were so complicated that he did not know where to find the one he wanted, and that he had wished for a cauda, a thousand times, since he had been in the house, for, by keeping the end of it in his hand, like the bight of a rope, he might always have suthin' tangible to cling to. He told me, as a great secret, that he was fairly tired of rummaging among his thoughts for the knowledge necessary to understand what was going on, and that he had finally concluded to put himself, for the rest of the session, under ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I realized the danger it was far too late to turn and hammer out to the open. I was deep in the bottle-neck bight of the sands, jammed on a lee shore, and a strong flood tide sweeping me on. That tide, by the way, gave just the ghost of a chance. I had the hours in my head, and knew it was about two-thirds flood, with ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... life. Jimbei recognizes it.... Yes, the crest is that of Kishu[u] Ke; the money, funds remitted to his treasury. Hence all the greater need to hasten." Speed they did, by paths and shorter ways unknown to Dentatsu as frequent traveller of this road, and which spared the Hamana bight and rest at the tea sheds of the To[u]kaido[u]. Fright urged on Dentatsu without protest; settled purpose hastened Jimbei. Thus Yoshida post town was reached in good time to inn, for the priest ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the King's pavilion, where it stood in a bight of the meadow-land at the foot of the hill, with the wood about it on three sides. So fair a house Hallblithe deemed he had never seen; for it was wrought all over with histories and flowers, and with hems sewn with gold, and with orphreys of ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... foot tottering on the edge of death, his ear watching for the signs of ship-wreck, surely that, if it were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with an ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jib-boom and bowsprit. It was usual to have a boatswain's chair to sit and be lowered down in while tarring these stays. Some mates disdained pampering youths with a luxury of this kind, so disallowed it, and caused them to sit in a bowlin' bight instead. But the most villainous thing of all was when a boy for a mere technical offence, perhaps, indeed, no offence at all, would be ordered to ride a stay down without either chair or bowlin'. The tar-pot was held in one hand, the tarring was done ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... was high and cross, the tide setting against the wind; my brother and I were left in the boat to follow in the wake of the brig; but as my brother was casting off the rope forward, his leg caught in the bight, and into the sea he went; however, they hauled him on board, leaving me alone in the coble. It was not of much consequence, as I could manage to follow before the wind under easy sail, without assistance: so I kept her in the wake of the brig, both of us running nearly before ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... didn't seem likely that you would ever see their contents, for we had a very close shave of it. In the first place, we had about as bad a gale as I have met with, in crossing the bay; and were blown into the bight, with the loss of our bowsprit, fore-topmast and four of our guns, that we had to throw overboard to ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... Tom Ham's whilst we were at the fishin' in summer," explained Toby. "Tom Ham lives at Lucky Bight, ten miles to the nuth'ard from here. We'll be goin' for un ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... bark of the dog-rose is naturally worse than the Bight of Benin. The one you sent us had no dew-claws. Quite right; it has had its day. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... publication of the paper by Dr. Savage, to which I have already referred; containing notes of the observations which he made, and of the information which he collected from sources which he considered trustworthy, while resident at Cape Palmas, at the north-western limit of the Bight of Benin. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... and splash of the fall, Murren hurled the harpoon into the fish, and sprang back to clear the line. Although drenched and gasping from the torrent of water thrown over the boat by the devil ray, Colin took a bight of the line from the second coil and passed it around the foremost thwart. He was just in time, for a few seconds later the rope tautened. There was just one jerk and the boat started flying through the water, sending up a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... for tobacco; and when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was caught in shoals, they simply asked, "What will you pay for it?" I imprudently left my keg of specimen-spirits on board this ignoble craft, and the consequence was that it speedily became bone-dry. The Musaybah bight is a direct continuation of the Wady el-Mellh, which, joining that of El-Maka'dah, runs straight up to the Jebel el-Abyaz and to the Filon Husayn. These metalliferous quartzes cannot be further from the coast than a maximum distance of fourteen miles, and the broad, smooth watercourse, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... fearful that the reeds would have checked us; but there was a passage between the patches, through which we managed to force our way into a deep bight, and fortunately gained the river at the bottom of it much sooner than we expected. We were obliged to clear away a space for the tents; and thus, although there had been no such appearance from ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Bamnepo, with its outlying islet-reef of black rock, on which breaks an eternal surf, is the theoretical turning-point from the Windward coast, which begins with the Senegal, to the Leeward, and which ends in the Benin Bight. We are ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... however, reason to despair of deliverance, even if the breeze, which had now died away, should revive, for we were still embayed in the reef; and the tide of ebb being spent, the tide of flood, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, again drove the ship into the bight. About this time, however, we saw another opening, near a mile to the westward, which I immediately sent the first lieutenant, Mr Hicks, in the small boat to examine: In the mean time we struggled hard with the flood, sometimes gaining a little, and sometimes losing; but every man still did his duty, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was lost in vainly looking around for additional dogs, and then Mr. Townley generously loaned us his team and driver to help us on to Big Bight, fifteen miles away, where he thought we might get dogs ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... capital!" exclaimed George, as the last turn was taken, making all secure. "Now slip the bight over your—ah! here come the dogs, by all that's unfortunate. We must defend ourselves with the cane-knives. I'll tackle the first one, you take the next, and—mind— we have no time to waste; luckily there are only ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy rope rolled over into the lock, and the loop caught on one of ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... narrow outgate made a prodigious eddy or whirlpool ere it might clear itself of the under-water foot of the ness and make eastward so as to rush on toward the sea. But in the face of the wall, in the bight where the whirlpool turned from it, was a cave the height of a tall man, and some four feet athwart, and below it a ledge thrust out from the sheer rock and hanging over the terrible water, and it was but a yard wide or so. It was but ten feet above the water, and from it to the grass above must ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... anchor was carried to the bank astern, and, by dint of sheer strength, was laid over its summit with a fluke buried to the shank in the hard sand. By means of a hawser, and a purchase applied to its end, the men on the banks next roused the chain out, and shackled it to the ring. The bight was hove-in, and the ship secured astern, so as to prevent a shift of wind, off the land, from forcing her on the reef. As no sea could come from this quarter, the single anchor and chain were deemed sufficient for this purpose. As soon as the boats were at liberty, and before the chain had been ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... after 10 o'clock he retired to bed and to sleep. He never allowed himself to think and be sleepless. Mr. Bright had a habit of making his speeches after he had retired to bed, which Mr. Gladstone thought was detrimental to his health. Bight hours was the time Mr. Gladstone permitted himself to sleep. His bed-room was on the second floor and reached by a fine staircase. Everything in the room ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... this water the natives describe by saying, that if a boy commenced walking round it, by the time he finished his task he would have become an old man! After all may not this be the great Australian Bight that these natives have heard of, for none we met in Western Australia pretended to have seen it? They derive their information from the eastern tribes, and under such circumstances it must at least ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... berg; and it appeared to him that she was in a situation of considerable peril. She was a barque, under close-reefed topsails, reefed courses, fore topmast staysail, and mizzen; and she appeared to be embayed in the bight of a huge floe, with a whole fleet of bergs in dangerous proximity and apparently bearing down upon her. Perhaps the strangest peculiarity about her was that, notwithstanding her perilous position, she was dressed with flags, from her mast-heads ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Norway you will see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord. I was born within a hundred miles of that stretch of water. But I was not born Norwegian. I am a Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know. I never heard. Outside of that there is nothing mysterious. They were poor people and unlettered. They came of generations of poor unlettered people—peasants of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... mentioned that in 1699 Captain Lemuel Gulliver (in Swift's celebrated romance) arrived at the kingdom of Lilliput by steering north-west from Van Diemen's Land, which he mentions by name. Lilliput, it would thus appear, was situated somewhere in the neighbourhood of the great Bight of Australia. This curious mixture of definite knowledge and vague ignorance on the part of Swift exactly corresponds to the state of geographical knowledge about Australia in his days, as is shown in the preceding map of those parts of the world, as given by the great French cartographer ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... mighty host was heard, which proved to be the approach of a tropical flood, heralded by drops as large as marbles. It churned the still waters into a phosphorescent foam which rendered the darkness only more oppressive. The rain came down as it can come only in the Bight of Benin. The avalanche cooled us, reducing the temperature ten or fifteen degrees, giving us new life, and relieving our fevered blood. I told Mr. Block to throw back the tarpaulin over the main hatch and let our dusky friends get some benefit of it. In half an hour the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... do," answered the other. "We did get the bight of a cable over the breech, but the men could not hold it, even though they took a couple of turns ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... islands in the Gulf of Guinea, or Bight of Biafra, as it is usually called by English navigators, Ferdinand Poo, Princes isle, St Thomas, and Annobon, the discovery of which have been related as follows by Barbot, and his account seems the most probable[2]. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... ago Dr. Grenfell anchored his vessel in Big Bight, and went ashore to visit David Long. David had had a hard winter, and among other kindnesses to the family, Dr. Grenfell presented David's two oldest boys, lads of fifteen or sixteen or thereabouts, with a dozen steel fox traps. Lack of traps had prevented ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. He felt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into a place from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an able swimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashing seas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight the flooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... is to be told of Grettir that he set a stone in a bight of the rope and let it sink down ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... water and the helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... His: He made it, Black gulf and sunlit shoal From barriered bight to where the long Leagues of Atlantic roll: Small strait and ceaseless ocean He bade each one to be: The Sea is His: He made it— And ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... minutes together, with both arms buried in the treacherous snow, which was slipping under me, and the end of the lariat a foot or two away. Then with a snake-like wriggle I grasped it, and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around Ormond's shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of under the jutting shelf ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... last; as mentioned before, we were here in 9 deg. 6' S. Lat., about 125 miles east of Aru, and according to the chart we had with us and the estimation of the skippers and steersmen, no more than 2 miles from Nova Guinea, so that the space between us and Nova Guinea seems to be a bight to which on account of its shallows we have given the name of drooge bocht [*] [shallow bight] in the new chart; to the land which we had run along up to now, we have by resolution given the name of 't Westeinde van Nova Guinea (Western extremity of N. ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... it is only the mew that wails; We will sing to you all the day: Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, For here are the blissful downs and dales, And merrily merrily carol the gales, And the spangle dances in bight [1] and bay, And the rainbow forms and flies on the land Over the islands free; And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand; Hither, come hither and see; And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave, And sweet is the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... likeliest spot for a rise. Two barbed harpoons, always known as 'irons,' were carried on the same line, always called the 'warp.' It both could be used, so much the better, especially as they were some distance apart on the warp, the bight of which formed a considerable drag in the water. Other drags, usually called 'drugs,' were bits of wood made fast thwart-wise on the warp, so as to increase the pull on a sounding whale. The coiling and management of the warp was of the utmost importance. Many ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... hardships, this brief delay was least bearable. Then a bight of rope fell across Rudolph's back. He seized it, hauled taut, and planting his feet against the wall, went up like a fish, to land gasping ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... blowing from the land, on the south side of Cuba, and especially from the Bight of Bayamo, by which some of our cruisers have been damaged. They are accompanied by vivid lightning, and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... provisions, and neither of these were in sufficient quantities to last them to the place where they expected to find fresh supplies inland. But the first view of Encounter Bay convinced them that no vessel could ever venture into it at a season when the S. W. winds prevailed, and to the deep bight which it formed upon the coast (at the bottom of which they then were), it was hopeless to expect any vessel to approach so nearly as to be seen by them. To remain there was out of the question; to cross the ranges towards the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... said the first lieutenant, "there—shake the wind out of her sails for a moment, until the men get the canvass"—whirl, a poor fellow pitched off the lee fore yardarm into the sea. "Up with the helm—heave him the bight of a rope." We kept away, but all was confusion, until an American midshipman, one of the prisoners on board, hove the bight of a rope at him. The man got it under his arms, and after hauling him ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... obtained the first authentic information of the death of Park, and recovered his gun, robe, and other relics. Here, embarking in canoes, they ascended the river through its rapids to Yaouri, and thence traced it to the sea in the Bight of Benin. On their way, they discovered the Benue, which joins the Niger two hundred and seventy miles from the ocean, with a volume of water and a width nearly equal to its own. They encountered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... inches long. A hole was drilled into the block at each end and through these holes the rope was threaded. A knot in the rope then held the end from slipping out. The loop between the two holes, or the bight, as sailors would call it, was now slipped over the stake, and the rope hauled tight by drawing up the tie block, as shown in Fig. 43. A still later improvement consisted in making ties of stout galvanized iron wire, bent to the form shown in Fig. 44. The wooden ties were ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... sea abounds with a variety of most excellent fish, with which, as well as with other provisions, we were always plentifully supplied. Off this part of the coast we could find no ground, at less than a cable's length from the shore, with a hundred and sixty fathoms of line, excepting in a small bight to the eastward of the south point, where we had regular soundings of fifty and fifty-eight fathoms over a bottom of fine sand. Before we proceed to the western districts, it may be necessary to remark, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... armor, when the ocean he mounted. The Hetwars by no means had need to be boastful Of their fighting afoot, who forward to meet him Carried their war-shields: not many returned from The brave-mooded battle-knight back to their homesteads. 55 Ecgtheow's bairn o'er the bight-courses swam then, Lone-goer lorn to his land-folk returning, Where Hygd to him tendered ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin |
