"Mast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as a sailing-craft, and has a short mast and a sail," interposed Morris. "I talked with the rajah about her, and he told me that he had been out to sea in her. He said he had never had occasion to use the sail, but he carried it in case anything should ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... inwardly consume thyself with thine own rage: not without cause is this going to the abyss; it is willed on high, there where Michael did vengeance on the proud adultery."[1] As sails swollen by the wind fall in a heap when the mast snaps, so fell to earth ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... that first great disappointment. For the next seven years, she worked faithfully learning the new profession from the very bottom. "I became aware," she said, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast." In that way she learned hers, playing minor parts, doing cheerfully the drudgery of her profession, refusing all offers for more important work until she felt herself thoroughly capable of undertaking it. One would wish that her example might ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... the few ports in which sailing ships still hold the field against steamers. It was filled with a noble fleet. As a mark of sympathy, which touched us deeply, their flags were hoisted at half-mast as soon as our ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... ensued baffles description. The men hoisted the colours half-mast high. The Union Jack was pulled down and dragged through the mud. The distinctive ribbons worn round the hats of the men as badges were pulled off and trampled underfoot. I saw men crying like children with shame and despair. Some went raving up and down that they were Englishmen ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... 'Ah! Women wants mast-heading off and on, for 'em to have a bit of a look-out over life as it is. They go stewing over books of adventure and drop into frights about awful man. Take me, now; you had a no small admiration for my manly valour once, and you trusted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Some officers were already perched on the mast-heads. At eight o'clock the fog lay heavily on the waves, and its thick scrolls rose little by little. The horizon grew wider and clearer at the same time. Suddenly, just as on the day before, Ned Land's ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... away in a sieve, they did, In a sieve they sailed so fast, With only a beautiful pea-green veil Tied with a ribbon, by way of a sail, To a small tobacco-pipe mast. And everyone said who saw them go, "Oh! won't they be soon upset, you know? For the sky is dark, and the voyage long; And, happen what may, it's extremely wrong In a sieve to sail so fast." Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... Marvellous mirinda. Masculine vira. Masculine virseksa. Mash miksajxo. Masher dando. Mask masko. Mask maski. Mason masonisto. Masquerade maskitaro. Mass meso. Mass amaso. Massacre elmortigi. Massacre bucxado. Massive masiva. Mast masto. Master (of house) mastro. Master (teacher) instruisto. Master (of profession) majstro. Mr. sinjoro. Masterpiece cxefverko. Mastic mastiko. Masticate macxi. Mastication macxado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... climbing on to the shoulders of another, had succeeded in untying the cord on which the Union Jack was bent, and hauled it down. Then they reversed it and hoisted it half-mast high, and began to cheer for ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... commander, whom a strong sense of misfortune had entirely deprived of mind so necessary on these occasions, was earnestly requested to get into the boat, but he would not, thinking her unsafe. He maintained his station on the mizen top-mast that lay among the wreck to leeward; the surf which was rushing round the bow and stern continually overwhelming him. I was myself close to him on the same spar, and in this situation we saw many of our shipmates meet an untimely end, being either dashed against the rocks or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... sword, To bear it would break my vow; And fetch ye hither a vessel's mast, I'll wield it well ...
— The King's Wake - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... is some one else who knows a passage, you must think it highly improbable I should saddle myself with a lunatic like you. Thirdly, these gentlemen (who need no longer pretend to be asleep) are those of my party, and will now proceed to gag and bind you to the mast; and when your men awaken (if they ever do awake after the drugs we have mingled in their liquor), I am sure they will be so obliging as to deliver you, and you will have no difficulty, I daresay, to explain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pins, and sewed with twine made from the husks of certain Indian nuts, prepared in a peculiar manner; this twine or thread is very strong, and is able to endure the force and violence of the waters, and is not easily corrupted[12]. These ships have only one mast, one beam or yard, and one deck, and are not payed with pitch, but with the oil and fat of fishes; and when they cross the sea to India, carrying horses or other cargoes, they lose many ships, because ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... were at length rummaged out of the little receptacle of food, clothing, and dirt in the bow of the boat, and cast into the waves For a moment all flattered themselves that the experiment had been successful—the sail fluttered, swelled a little, and then flapped idly down against the mast. The party were in despair, until, after a whispered consultation together, Julian and Edwin stepped forward as messengers of mercy. In a trice they divested themselves of jacket and vest and made a proffer of their next garment to ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... new household. But Miss Neilson's death has saddened me, and yesterday Mrs. Horsford came with letters from Norway, giving particulars of Ole Bull's last days, his death and burial. The account was very touching. All Bergen's flags at half-mast; telegrams from the King; funeral oration by Bjoernson. The dear old musician was carried from his island to the mainland in a steamer, followed by a long line of other steamers. No Viking ever had ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... die than take a gift of. When a man is accused, Arethusa, it is not that he fears the gallows—it's the shame that cuts him. At such a time as that, the way to help was to stand to your belief. You should have nailed my colours to the mast, not spoke of striking them. If I were to be hanged to-morrow, and your love there, and a free pardon and a dukedom on the other side—which would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on which Sir Cloudsley Shovel was cast away: among these unfortunate men none were saved but three, viz. Miles Bishop, and James and Henry Clerk, who were miraculously preserved on a broken mast. From this accident the rocks took the name they bear, "The Bishop and ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... her first voyage on the deep. And beautifully indeed did she spread her white sails to the breeze, while, guided by a string secured in Walter's hand, her graceful form cut the waves or danced lightly over them, her bright red pennons floating gracefully from stern and mast. It was quite a long time before the excitement of this first voyage wore away. Each of the children had in turn to get a "hold" of the guiding-string; and great amusement was caused by one of the wooden-doll sailors which Mrs. Leslie had dressed for Harry's ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy
... they heard and obeyed eagerly. First they lowered the sails, loosing the sheets, and lowering the mast by the forestays, they laid it in the mast-stead, and themselves went forth on the strand of the sea. Then forth from the salt sea to the mainland they dragged the fleet ship high up on the sands, laying long sleepers thereunder, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... made are of no great value: they entered the country, and saw everywhere the effects of fire, which they supposed was intended to drive wild animals from the coast. They could not discover a tree suitable for a mast, and were unsuccessful in obtaining water. A small map, which sketched the form of the coast with considerable exactness, accompanied the account of this voyage, and tended to awaken the French to the importance ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the Silvia sailed from St. John's, and one week later (Friday the 27th), with her flag at half mast, steamed slowly to her dock ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... wherefore we were met by a smaller vessel, in which came the goodman or host of the house where we were to lodge in Osaka, and who brought with him a banquet of wine and salt fruits to entertain me. A rope being made fast to the mast-head of our boat, she was drawn forwards by men, as our west country barges are at London. We found Osaka a very large town, as large as London within the walls, having many very high and handsome timber bridges which serve to cross the river Jodo, which is as wide as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... with such impatience that I had not dreamed a moment of the danger to which we had exposed ourselves. That pleasure was soon followed by another; for I saw at anchor in this same place 2 ships, of which one had the glorious flag of His Majesty hoisted upon his main mast, that I recognized to be the one that was commanded by Captain Outlaw when the one in which I was passed had been separated from the 2 others. At the same time I made the shallop approach & I perceived the new Governor with all his men under ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... afterpart she has a large house, lightly built, the roof of which forms a poop, while the interior serves, I have no doubt, for the cabin of the skipper, and probably for his wives and children, as well as his passengers and the whole of his crew. She has a heavy, rough spar for a mast, tapering towards the head and raking forward. The sail which they are now just hoisting is, in shape, like a right-angled triangle, with a parallelogram below its base; the hypothenuse or head of the sail is secured to a yard, like an enormous fishing-rod; ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... directly in our teeth, driving us back again towards the coast of Flanders. All night long we lay closely hugging the wind, in the hopes of again working our way off shore. When morning broke, a man went to the mast-head, to look out and ascertain whether the coast was in sight. He had not been long there when ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... rock, and it had never once failed him. All people that have to do with water craft are superstitious about some things, and I freely acknowledge that times innumerable I have "whistled up" a wind when dead calm threatened, or stuck a jack-knife in the mast, and afterwards watched with great contentment the idle sail fill, and the canoe pull out to a light breeze. So, perhaps, I am prejudiced in favor of this legend of Homolsom Rock, for it strikes a very responsive chord in that portion of my heart ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... lifelike from the black water, throwing itself fully into the bright sunshine, and then lost to sight and to pursuit. I saw also a long, flat-bottomed boat go up the river, with a brisk wind, and against a strong stream. Its sails were of curious construction: a long mast, with two sails below, one on each side of the boat, and a broader one surmounting them. The sails were colored brown, and appeared like leather or skins, but were really cloth. At a distance, the vessel looked like, or at least I compared it to, a monstrous water-insect skimming ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has tried to lay-to, he will not have a sail left in the bolt-ropes, or perhaps a mast on deck. I know the stiff-neckedness of those Spanish tubs. Hurrah! there he is, right ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... finished all he had been called upon to do, and was standing leaning against the mast, when Ike Denman ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... commonly reported that the manifesto by which the Canon of St. Paul's proclaims that he nails the colours of the straitest Biblical infallibility to the mast of the ship ecclesiastical, was put forth as a counterblast to "Lux Mundi"; and that the passages which I have more particularly quoted are directed against the essay on "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration" in that collection of treatises by Anglican divines of high standing, who must assuredly be acquitted ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... made themselves fast with their grappling irons, two on one side and two on the other, while the admiral galley lay across her stern. In this guise the Centurion was sore galled and battered, her main-mast greatly wounded, all her sails filled with shot holes, and her mizen mast and stern rendered almost unserviceable. During this sore and deadly fight, the trumpeter of the Centurion continually sounded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the resort of idlers, watching the fishermen on the opposite side cast for salmon, and draw up netfuls on the green bank. The Clyde was not deepened till 1768. Before that the whole tonnage dues at Glasgow were only eight pounds a year, and for weeks together not a single vessel with a mast would be seen on the water. St. Enoch Square was a private garden; Argyle Street an ill-kept country road; and the town herd still went his rounds every morning with his horn, calling the cattle from the Trongate and the Saltmarket to their pasture on the common ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... they prepar'd A rotten carcase of a butt not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast,—the very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the old war," said the veteran loyalist. "The Gazette here says that many of your countrymen agree with you about the new one. At the declaration of hostilities the flags of the shipping at Boston were placed at half-mast and a public meeting denounced the war as ruinous ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... at the mast, Our course lies straight ahead; The ocean's trough is deep and rough, The waves are stained with red. The bond of danger tighter grows, We serve a common plan; Send o'er the sea the word that we ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... in this world occasionally, good as well as bad. There came up a heavy storm, and the next morning, walking with my father on the beach, strewn with deep-sea flotsam and jetsam, we came upon the mast of a ship, water-logged till it had the weight of iron; it might have been, as my father remarked, a relic of the Spanish Armada. And it was covered from end to end with the rarest and most ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... man, we've broken them in. Still, I admit, it was a job. Why, that same Seldom Helward I ironed and ran up on the fall of a main-buntline. We were rolling before a stiff breeze and sea, and he would swing six feet over each rail and bat against the mast in transit; but the dog stood it eight hours before he stopped cursing us. Then he was unconscious. When he came to in the forecastle, he was ready to begin again; but they stopped him. They're keeping a log, I learn, and are going to law. Every ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Australia, which had never been visited before by Europeans. Dampier must have found it very difficult to keep his journal so carefully and regularly, particularly in his early voyages, when he was merely a seaman before the mast or a petty officer. He tells us that he carried about with him a long piece of hollow bamboo, in which he placed his manuscript for safe keeping, waxing the ends to keep out the ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... vpon the carte, it stretched ouer the wheeles on each side fiue feete at the least. I told 22. oxen in one teame, drawing an house vpon a cart, eleuen in one order according to the breadth of the carte, and eleuen more before them: the axeltree of the carte was of an huge bignes like vnto the mast of a ship. And a fellow stood in the doore of the house, vpon the forestall of the carte driuing forth the oxen. Moreouer, they make certaine fouresquare baskets of small slender wickers as big as great chestes: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... pressed in consequence of the injuries received by all her masts during the engagement; but both British frigates succeeded in shaking off their pursuers. "La Sabina" was recaptured; she had already lost one mast, and the remaining two were seen to go over the side as she was bringing-to, when the enemy overtook her. It is interesting to note that her captain, Don Jacobo Stuart, was descended from the British royal house of Stuart. He, with many of his crew, had been transferred to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... between Number Five and the Tutor? I hope not, for I want them to be joined together in that dearest of intimacies, which, if founded in true affinity, is the nearest approach to happiness to be looked for in our mortal, experience. We mast wait. The Teacups will meet once more before the circle is broken, and we may, perhaps, find the solution of the question ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... inspire a song for me To sing those gods of woodland, hill and glade, Without whose arts man's hunger still would be Only on mast and gathered acorns stayed. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... south stiffened to a gale. The mast creaked and strained as the gathering storm tore at the mainsail. The ship reeled and pitched as the spiteful waves smote her high bow and swept hissing and gurgling along the deck. She began to jib like a horse and refused to obey ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... in a sieve, they did, In a sieve they sailed so fast, With only a beautiful pea-green veil Tied with a ribbon, by way of a sail, To a small tobacco-pipe mast. And every one said who saw them go, "Oh! won't they be soon upset, you know? For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long; And happen what may, it's extremely wrong In a sieve to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... perhaps. Didn't he refuse all offers for his pictures during his lifetime? Hardly think he could have been overwhelmed with applications for the one opposite. (He regards an enormous canvas, representing a brawny and gigantic Achilles perforating a brown Trojan with a small mast.) Not a dining-room picture. Still, I like his independence—work up rather well in a sonnet. Let me see. (He takes out note-book and scribbles.) "He scorned to ply his sombre brush for hire." Now if I read that to PODBURY, he'd pretend to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... children. First we laid the dead in the largest of Athalbrand's ships, his people and Athalbrand himself being set undermost. Then on them we set the dead of Thorvald, Thorvald, my father, and his son Ragnar, my brother, bound to the mast upon their feet. This done, with great labour we dragged the ship on to high ground, and above it built a mighty mound of earth. For twenty days we toiled at the task, till at last it was finished and the dead were hidden beneath it for ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... shivered from top to bottom, and sometimes only within and the outside whole, but among the rest Sir W. Rider did tell a story of his own knowledge, that a Genoese gaily in Leghorn Roads was struck by thunder, so as the mast was broke a-pieces, and the shackle upon one of the slaves was melted clear off of his leg without hurting his leg. Sir William went on board the vessel, and would have contributed towards the release of the slave whom Heaven had thus set free, but he could not compass it, and so he was brought ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... goods, like any second or third floor in a stack of warehouses; and the promenade or hurricane-deck being a-top of that again. A part of the machinery is always above this deck; where the connecting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen working away like an iron top- sawyer. There is seldom any mast or tackle: nothing aloft but two tall black chimneys. The man at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of the boat (the wheel being connected with the rudder by iron chains, working the whole length of the deck); and the passengers, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... ships, which had suffered most, hauled off and abandoned the fight. That of the admiral had fared little better, and now her condition grew desperate. With her rigging torn, her mainmast half cut through, her mizzen-mast splintered, her cabin pierced, and her hull riddled with shot, another volley seemed likely to sink her, when Phips ordered her to be cut loose from her moorings, and she drifted out of fire, leaving cable and anchor behind. The remaining ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... but, to Colonel Witham's thrifty mind, it had offered an excellent vantage for displaying a dingy banner, with the advertisement of the Half Way House lettered thereon. This fluttered now in a mournful way, half way up the mast, as though it were a sign of mourning for the quality of food and lodging one might expect at the hands ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... American Republic, no matter what his opinions may be upon any religious subject. Suppose we are in a storm out at sea, and the billows are washing over our ship, and it is necessary that some one should reef the topsail, and a man presents himself. Would you stop him at the foot of the mast to find out his opinion on the five points of Calvinism? What has that to do with it? Congress has nothing to do with baptism or any particular creed, and from what little experience I have had in Washington, very little to do with any kind of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of which I took a good draught, and this gave me heart. What I stood most in need of, was a boat to take the goods to shore. But it was vain to wish for that which could not be had; and as there were some spare yards in the ship, two or three large planks of wood, and a spare mast or two, I fell to work with these, to make ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... wind, and Dan shook loose the linen, and a straight shining streak with specks of foam shot after us. The mast bent like eel-grass, and our keel was half out of the water. Faith belied her name, and clung to the sides with her ten finger-nails; but as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... spread along her upper deck, now mounted rapidly to the mast and rigging, forming one general conflagration and lighting up the heavens to an immense distance round. One by one her stately masts fell over her sides. By half-past one in the morning the fire reached the powder magazine; ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... The plan of escape had been well arranged by Captain Ralph and his followers. When they found that their long-trusted leader was dead, their dismay was great. No time, however, was to be lost. A man who had gone to the mast-head, whence he could look over the mangrove-bushes into the lagoon, reported that some of the vessels there were making sail in pursuit. We, however, had a good start of them. Still, without a leader, there was some confusion, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... on board, the second mate, who talked very seriously to me, and pointed out how wonderful had been my preservation, and I felt it. It was he who first read the Bible with me, and made me understand it, and, I may say, become fond of it. I did my duty on our passage home as a seaman before the mast, and the captain was pleased with me. The ship I was in was bound to Glasgow, and we parted company with the convoy at North Foreland, and arrived safe in port. The captain took me to the owners, who paid me fifteen guineas for my services during the voyage ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Pretoria and then to Koomati Poort, resulted in the country already occupied being left open to raids, constantly growing in audacity, and fed by small successes, on the part of a few bold and skilful guerilla leaders who had nailed their colours to the mast. ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... through every chink in the foliage; made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... if the foot to slavish lips to bring; The Normans scowl; he tilts the throne and backward falls the king. Loud laugh the joyous Norman men.—pale stare the Franks aghast; And Rou lifts up his head as from the wind springs up the mast: "I said I would adore a God, but not a mortal too; The foot that fled before a foe let cowards ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... you with a description of the ball room, but the editors have requested me to the contrary. Some secrets of gorgeous splendor there are which are wisely concealed from the general gaze. But a floor three hundred feet square, and walls as high as the mast of an East Boston clipper, confer ample room for motion; and the unequalled atmosphere of the saloon is perhaps unnecessarily refreshed by fountains of rarest distilled waters. This is also my picture gallery, where all mythology is exhausted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... we have, in the third compartment, the Marriage of Michael with the Eastern Maiden, and then the Voyage from the Holy Land to the Shores of Tuscany. On the deck of the vessel, and at the foot of the mast, is placed the casket containing the relic, to which the mariners attribute their prosperous voyage to the shores of Italy. Then Michael is seen disembarking at Pisa, and, with his casket reverently carried ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... showed that he had been brought there by two sailors, who said he had been struck in a gale by a falling mast. The wound healed, but left him mentally a wreck. The physicians decided that the brain was suffering from pressure, and that trepanning would relieve, if ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... I offer you, and feel as you're an honest man all the same. And Polly, if you're going out as a private soldier you'll want money. It isn't as if an untravelled man was talkin' to you. I know the Black Sea Coast I spent one Febiwerry there, a man before the mast. I'll back it again the Pole for cold. You'll miss a lot o' comforts, Polly, as a pound or two would buy ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... their feet on the hard ground like the roar of a kettledrum, their harness and trappings fluttering over their backs, the wagon pitching like a ship in a gale, the girl clinging to its high seat as a sailor to a swaying mast. Behind, and swiftly drawing level with the flying bronchos, sped the black horse, still with that smooth grace of a skimming swallow and with such ease of motion as made it seem as if he could readily have increased his ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through? These Voyages, (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Sea, which were just come out) WHO will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast, than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice, before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of Savages is like another.' BOSWELL. 'I do not think the people of Otaheite can be reckoned Savages.' JOHNSON. 'Don't cant in defence of Savages.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... seeing them lie in this case, went to them, if peradventure he might awake them, and cried, You are like them that sleep on the top of a mast, for the Dead Sea is under you-a gulf that hath no bottom (Prov. 23:34). Awake, therefore, and come away; be willing also, and I will help you off with your irons. He also told them, If he that "goeth about ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Downe with the top-Mast: yare, lower, lower, bring her to Try with Maine-course. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... began to shape themselves slowly and gradually, as the features of a landscape through dissolving mists. They trembled as the foliage trembles in the breeze that disperses the vapors. Images of the past gained distinctness of outline and coloring, and all at once, like the black hull, broken mast, and rent sails of a wrecked vessel, one awful scene rose before me. The face, like that of the angel of death, the sound terrible as the thunders of doom, the bleeding body that my arms encircled, the destroying husband,—the victim brother,—all came ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... novices to look out—away went deck chairs and tables. The Misses Hunt—poor old ladies—who had been quietly knitting unconscious of any coming danger, were unceremoniously precipitated into the lee scuppers. I seized the mizen-mast, while C—— falling foul of a roving hen-coop, grasped it in a loving embrace, and accompanied it to some haven of safety, where he stretched himself upon it until permitted to walk upright again. The officers and crew appeared like so many cats in the facility with ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... canoe, slightly improved as to model and built upon the incomparable plan of Mr. Rushton of Canton, New York. The canoes are fourteen feet long, ten and a half inches deep and twenty-seven inches wide, decked over except a man-hole sixteen by about thirty-six inches, and weighing, with the mast and lug sail, from fifty to fifty-six pounds. The paddle is eight feet long, bladed at each end, grasped in the middle, and drives the canoe by strokes alternating on each side. The traveller sits flat upon the boat's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... voyage were soon made; and waiting only to secure a copy of the treaty with Badur, and plans of the fort which had been commenced, he ordered the short mast, with its tapering lateen yard, to be raised, and the sail trimmed close to the breeze blowing into the roadstead of Diu. But instead of turning up along the northern coast of the Gulf of Cambaya, he directed the bow of his little bark boldly out ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... with their antique carvings, their recumbent statues of old-world bishops, and their Scripture pieces by various masters, sorely faded; and here and there, above the rich foliage of its various woods, like the tall mast of a ship at sea, is seen the handsome and lofty campanile, so peculiar ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... for some time been patrolling the North Sea. Soon after 6 o'clock Tuesday morning—there is disagreement as to the exact time—the Aboukir suddenly felt a shock on the port side. A dull explosion was heard and a column of water was thrown up mast high. The explosion wrecked the stokehole just forward of amidship and, judging by the speed with which the cruiser sank, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... seeing his little son acquire. The arrow was drawn nearly to its head, indicating great strength in the little arms which were guiding it, and it was just ready to fly. The name of this vessel was the Mira. William made it his flag ship. He hoisted upon its mast head the consecrated banner which had been sent to him from Rome, and went on board accompanied by his officers and guards, and ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at the moment of our shoving off—spite of the topsail of each vessel being to the mast—the space had widened between them, till I daresay it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and the barque bore on the lee quarter of the Hindoo Merchant. The great heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... after the President died on Saturday morning, the rain began to pour in torrents. The flags that flew from a thousand gilt-tipped peaks in celebration of victory drooped to half-mast and hung weeping around their staffs. The litter of burnt fireworks, limp and crumbling, strewed the streets, and the tri-coloured lanterns and balloons, hanging pathetically from their wires, began to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... whose vessel fought that of Rooks, dismasted it, and pursued it all next day towards the coast of Barbary, where the Admiral retired. The enemy lost six thousand men; the ship of the Dutch Vice-Admiral was blown up; several others were sunk, and some dismasted. Our fleet lost neither ship nor mast, but the victory cost the lives of many distinguished people, in addition to those of fifteen hundred soldiers or sailors ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... near her doom. She was built on the Samian model, broad, flat, high in poop, low in prow,—excellent for cargo, but none too seaworthy. The foresail blew in tatters. The closely brailed mainsail shook the weakened mast. The sailors had dropped their quaint oaths, and began to pray—sure proof of danger. The dozen passengers seemed almost too panic-stricken to aid in flinging the cargo overboard. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... builds his hopes in the air of men's fair looks, Lives like a drunken sailor on the mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... a herring gasping here; Bunker of Nantucket Bay, Blown from out the port, dropped sheer Half a cable's length to leeward; yet we faintly raised a cheer As with his own right hand Our Commodore made fast The foeman's head-gear and The "Richard's" mizzen-mast, And in that death-lock clinging held us there from ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... woods; but the former, as long as it stays with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the ring-dove, palumbus torquatus; frequents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... not. Maybe he's that way with every girl under forty. I've never seen him work, but I've seen him in the midst of that Newport bunch and they've got me lashed to the mast for clothes, looks, language, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to nail his colors to her mast; to give his affairs and perplexities into her hands; to abide by ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... deck speculating upon the probable termination of our voyage, Cape Clear was descried by the look-out on the mast-head. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to the Power unknown his eyes he rear'd— No sign of comfort in the Power appear'd: Silent he stood—when lo! another blast Rends the strong sail, and shakes the tottering mast! Now, by the mounting billows upward swung, Trembling amid the darksome sky they hung; Now seem'd to touch the fountains of the deep, Where in eternal rest the waters sleep. And now beneath a milder tempest's sway ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Miss Conway," he said; and if the Weather Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones it would have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the mast. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... jolly lot, an' used to sing 'Avast,' I think it were, or else 'Ahoy,' while bailing out the mast. And as I recollect it now,—" But here I cut him short, And said: "It's time to tack again, and bring your wits to port; I came to get a story both adventurous and true, And here is how I started out to write the interview: 'I saw a certain sailorman,' but you turn ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... she oars above Your drifting lives of ruth or love. Boon were those nights of dusted gold And glint of fireflies! Boon the cold And witching frost! All's one, all's one To thee, whose nights and days go on Now in one span of changeless dusk On one earth, crackling like the husk Of the dropt mast in winter wood: Remember'd joy—'tis all thy food, Hypsipyle, to whose fond sprite I vow my ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... equal, and their seasons differ little in temperature; and as no outrageous winds swell their seas into storms, navigation among them is safe and easy. Their small barks called catamorans have only a large bough of a tree set up in the middle, serving as mast and sail; the master steers only with an oar, and the passengers sit on poles ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... a shake of the voice, and it said:— By the driven snow-white and the living blood-red Of my bars, and their heaven of stars overhead— By the symbol conjoined of them all, skyward cast, As I float from the steeple, or flap at the mast, Or droop o'er the sod where the long grasses nod,— My name is as old as the glory of God. ...So I came by the name of ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... old hull, whose aspect seemed to bring up recollections of the history of early England, when fierce-looking men, half sailors, half warriors, came over from the Norland in boats like this, propelled by great oars, and carrying a short thick mast and one sail. All the upper portions had rotted away, but enough of the hull remained to show pretty well what its shape must have been, and that it had had a curiously-projecting place that must have curved out like the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... here: some straight, some curved, some upright, some toppling,—fallen, or leaning against one another, or heaped high upon each other. Climbing lianas, which cross from one tree to the other, like ropes passing from mast to mast, help to fill up all the gaps in this treillage; and parasites—not timid parasites like ivy or like moss, but parasites which are trees self-grafted upon trees— dominate the primitive trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the place of their foliage, and fall back to the ground, forming factitious ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... English side was inconsiderable; but of Scots, by general consent of writers, ten thousand were slain. And thus ended the War of the Standard, as it was usually called by the authors of that age, because the English, upon a certain engine, raised the mast of a ship, on the top whereof, in a silver box, they put the consecrated wafer, and fastened the standards of St. Peter and other saints: this gave them courage, by remembering they were to fight in the presence of God; and served likewise for a mark where to reassemble when they should ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... it farther enacted by the authority aforesaid, that from and after the said [first day of July] if any captain, or other officer on board any of his majesty's ships of war, shall wilfully spring, carry away, or lose any mast or masts of any such ship [Footnote: Left out, or ships.], or shall make any false pretence or excuse for leaving the station on which such ship or ships shall be appointed to cruise, or shall return into port before ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... to steal a look upon her) I rose, and creeping to the great mast, edged myself into the shadow and so beheld one that crouched there already, and knew him for that same red-headed fellow I had belaboured with the rope's-end. He was staring up at the quarter-deck and, following his look, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... 1st May they passed the great Nantuna, and got among the Bornese and Malay islands: at which the captain's glass began to sweep the horizon again, and night and day at the dizzy foretop gallant mast-head he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... suffusion; it grew dark; after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set, a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Fortunately, he loves to draw, and he sat on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with colored pencils. He was so surprised when I showed an interest in a red-and-green ferryboat, with a yellow flag floating from the mast, that he became quite profanely affable. Until then I couldn't get ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... rochers. Saxatilis, I suppose, in Sowerby, but am not sure of having identified that with my own favourite, for which I therefore keep the name 'Clara,' (see above, Sec. 9); and the other rock variety, if indeed another, mast be ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... it was one of the proudest moments of his life—a sight he would not have missed to be able to float at the mast-head of his vessel the broad pennant of the admiral. All he had endured was forgotten; and when the Old Flag was unfurled in the air which had but a short time before floated the "stars and bars," he pulled off his cap and shouted at ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... it grows in dense forests, growing tall and mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... naked boy could not so wield his arms, But that the waves were masters of his might, And threatened him to work far greater harms If he devised not to scape by flight: Then for a boat his quiver stood instead, His bow unbent did serve him for a mast, Whereby to sail his cloth of veil he spread, His shafts for oars on either board he cast: From shipwreck safe this wag got thus to shore, And sware to bathe in lovers' ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... comes down the stream in his barge, and with him one crying aloud, "Ho, all ye people, great and small, gentle and simple, men and boys, whoso is found in a boat on the Tigris [by night], I will strike off his head or hang him to the mast of his boat!" And ye had well-nigh met him; for here comes his barge.' But the Khalif and Jaafer said, 'O old man, take these two dinars, and when thou seest the Khalif's barge approaching, run us under ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... plate successively—a fact which, as may be conceived, may have its importance. If, for example, we are photographing a ship that is being tossed about by the sea (and we borrow this example from our colleague, Mr. Davanne), the image of the top of the mast will not be formed at the same instant as that of the base, and if the motion of the mast has sufficient extent it may take on a curved form, due to the fact that it has effected a movement between the moments during which its apex and base were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... upon him, and bribed, with a large sum, his confidential friend, who was in command of his vessel, to deliver him up to me. As I had anticipated, the cunning wretch fled to the yacht; they took him on board. Then they made him prisoner. He was shackled and chained to the mast. He begged for his life and liberty. He had brought a fortune with him in gold and jewels. He offered the whole of it to his friend, as a bribe, for he surmised what was coming. The faithful officer replied, as I had instructed him, that the Count could not offer that treasure, for he ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... a man could speak!— With horror all aghast In groups, with pallid brow and cheek, We watched the quivering mast. The atmosphere grew thick and hot, And of a lurid hue, As, riveted unto the spot, Stood officers ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... ne saw they never none, For it was so gay begone, Every nayle with gold ygrave, Of pure gold was his sklave, Her mast was of ivory, Of samyte her sayle wytly, Her robes all of whyte sylk, As whyte as ever was ony mylke. The noble ship was without With clothes of gold spread about And her loft and her wyndlace All of gold depaynted was." ANONYMOUS: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the "Royal George"; that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had he not protested against our dreaming him to have supplied hot rum-and-water on board, we wrote our names and addresses in the captain's log-book, and immediately asked permission to go to the mast-head. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Boldheart about three leagues off Madeira, surveying through his spy-glass a stranger of suspicious appearance making sail towards him. On his firing a gun ahead of her to bring her to, she ran up a flag, which he instantly recognized as the flag from the mast in ...
— Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Lieut-Col. Robin Redforth, aged 9 • Charles Dickens
... that point they were on each occasion driven back by the janizaries, who, though led by Ali in person, do not appear to have made good a footing on the deck of Don John. A third attempt was more successful. Not only did the Spaniards pass the mast, but they approached the poop and assailed it with a vigorous fire. The Pacha led on his janizaries to meet them, but it seems with small hope of making a successful resistance, for at the same moment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... coast-guard station, less than a mile away, would have been very busy, and she herself must surely have heard some of the disturbance. No, there had been no wreck, yet all about her lay the wave-sodden flotsam and jetsam of many past disasters. A broken mast stump was imbedded upright in the sand at one spot. In another, a ladder-like pair of stairs, suggesting a ship's companionway, lay half out of the water. Sundry casks and barrels dotted the beach, some empty, some still untouched. Rusty tins of canned ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... drew near to Chryse with the holy offerings. And when they were come within the haven, they furled the sail, and laid it in the ship, and lowered the mast, and rowed the ship to her moorings. They cast out the anchor stones, and made fast the cables from the stern. After that they landed, taking with them the offerings and the maid Chryseis. To the altar they brought the maid, and gave her into the arms ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where Spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and the misty pennon of the East-wind nailed to the mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month of March even, there are bright, warm mornings, when we open our windows to inhale the balmy air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of the cracks, to sun themselves; and think ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... beams placed crosswise upon one another, so as to form a perfect square; these were covered with a whiter and lighter wood; an enormous stake arose from the centre of the scaffold. A man clothed in red and holding a lowered torch stood near this sort of mast, which was visible from a long distance. A huge chafing-dish, covered on account of the rain, was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the wise Ulysses was thinking what he might best do to save himself and his companions, and the end of his thinking was this: There was a mighty pole in the cave, green wood of an olive tree, big as a ship's mast, which Polyphemus purposed to use, when the smoke should have dried it, as a walking staff. Of this he cut off a fathom's length, and his comrades sharpened it and hardened it in the fire, and then hid it away. At evening the giant ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Nobile in one of those long slender Sampaolese vipere—boats that are a good deal like gondolas, except that they have no felze, and carry a short mast at the bow, with a sail that is only spread when the wind is directly aft. I suppose the palace at Isola Nobile is one of the most beautiful in the world, with its four mellow-toned marble facades rising sheer out of the water, with its long colonnades, its graceful moresque windows, and the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... was then looked upon more as a novelty than as the inception of a new method of long-distance travel. The trip had failed to demonstrate that steam was an entirely adequate substitute for the mast and sail ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... governor, nor President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix, seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper. Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from multitudes who have no adequate way to express ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... fore-mast hands is a great, surly, crabbed, raw-boned, ignorant Prussian who is so timid aloft that the mate has frequently been obliged to do his duty there. I believe him to be more of a soldier than a sailor, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... increase our miseries we were again afflicted with swarms of large horse-flies, which bit us dreadfully. On the 4th, we remained in camp to rest the horses, and I walked round to reconnoitre. Upon the beach I found the fragments of a wreck, consisting of part of a mast, a tiller wheel, and some copper sheathings, the last sad records of the fate of some unfortunate vessel on this wild and breaker-beaten shore. There was nothing to indicate its size, or name, or the period ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... variety of contending feelings. On the other side sate Isabella, pale as death, her long hair uncurled by the evening damps, and falling over her shoulders and breast, as the wet streamers droop from the mast when the storm has passed away, and left the vessel stranded on the beach. The Dwarf first broke the silence with the sudden, abrupt, and alarming question,—"Woman, what evil fate has ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... galley-slaves kept by the Mediterranean countries to row their galleys in peace and war. These galleys, or rowing men-of-war, lasted down to modern times, as we shall soon see. They did use sails; but only when the wind was behind them, and never when it blew really hard. The mast was made of two long wooden spars set one on each side of the galley, meeting at the head, and strengthened in between by braces from one spar to another. As time went on better boats and larger ones were built in Egypt. We can guess how strong they ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... decks his magic vessel, Paints the boat in blue and scarlet, Trims in gold the ship's forecastle, Decks the prow in molten silver; Sings his magic ship down gliding, On the cylinders of fir-tree; Now erects the masts of pine-wood, On each mast the sails of linen, Sails of blue, and white, and scarlet, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... could the suggestion of the mate have been carried out. But it was the conviction of Captain Bergen that they would not spend more than two weeks at the fishery—if such it might be called—and, under the circumstances, it cannot be said he was imprudent. Steadying himself with one arm about the mast, the captain stood firmly in his elevated position, and, as the sun came slowly up and the golden radiance spread over the sky and sea, he swept the arch of the horizon to the south, east and west, straining his keen vision for the first sight of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Capriata had sailed many years, lay rotting under a grotesque and dark banian, never more to feel the foot of man upon the deck or to toss upon the sea. A consoling wave lapped the empty pintles and gave the decaying craft a caress by the element whose mistress she so long had been. Her mast was still stepped, but a hundred centipedes crawled ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... even the President wince. Remonstrances and protests poured in upon him from every part of the Union. The sailors and shipowners of Portsmouth burned Jay and Grenville in effigy, together with a miniature ship of seventy tons. In Charleston, the flags were put at half-mast and the public hangman burned copies of the treaty in the open street. While remonstrating with a disorderly crowd in Wall Street which was vilifying Jay, Hamilton was stoned and forced to give way with the blood streaming down his face. Personal abuse of the coarsest kind was heaped ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... was flapping in mid-air at the top of a mast. The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by stableboys, and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles, the sunlight making them look like bright dabs of color. After Cosinus ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... St. Lawrence, far beneath their feet, was still partially veiled in a thin blue mist, pierced here and there by the tall mast of a King's ship or merchantman lying unseen at anchor; or, as the fog rolled slowly off, a swift canoe might be seen shooting out into a streak of sunshine, with the first news of the morning ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... forreine tenure against their will: and that they be free of all their owne wines for which they do trauaile of our right prise, [Footnote: Prisage—one cask in ten, on wine, was the first customs-duty levied in England.] that is to say, of one tunne before the mast, and of another behind the maste. We haue granted furthermore vnto the said Barons for vs and our heires, that they for euer haue this liberty, that is to say, That we or our heires shall not haue the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... three miles of the Indiamen, when she rounded to. She then kept away a little, to close nearer, evidently examining the force opposed to her. The Indiamen had formed the line of battle in close order, the private signal between English men-of-war and East India ships flying at their mast-heads. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... divided attention of Rasmunsen, had been caught by a great mass of water and whirled around. The after leach hollowed, the sail emptied and jibed, and the boom, sweeping with terrific force across the boat, carried the angry correspondent overboard with a broken back. Mast and sail had gone over the side as well. A drenching sea followed, as the boat lost headway, and Rasmunsen sprang ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... when on the morning of the 22d of June the welcome cry of "Land, ho!" rang through the flag-ship every soul on board rushed on deck with joyous exclamations to catch once more a glimpse of the blessed land. The cry that had brought them such pleasure had come from the mast-head, and it was some time before those on deck could detect the dim blue cloud, low-lying in the west, that was said to be land. Even then one man, who was known as Simon the Armorer, was heard to mutter that it might be land and then again it might not; for his part, he believed ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... completed the mischief, he returned thanks for having strength for his work." Right up to the eve of the final assault, Heke attended the church services devoutly, and in planning this assault he betook himself to his Bible. A strong force of military was now protecting the mast, but Heke took his tactics from those of Joshua at Ai. While his ally, Kawiti, engaged the British soldiers and marines at the opposite end of the beach, Heke himself and his party lay in ambush below the block-house. The stratagem was successful: the block-house was easily overpowered; ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... you may command me—Not to molest the Company with the Recital of every vain and needless Circumstance; 'twas briefly thus. Scarce had we passed by Marget on our Course, when on a sudden, from the Top-mast head, a Sailer cries, All hands Aloft, three Sails ahead: With that we rumidg and clear our Deck, our Gun-room arm'd, and all things now are ready for a Fight. The Ships before descried, with warlike Stems cut the resisting Waves, whilst from their Pendants ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... {82a} for so it seems they were called by the inhabitants; these Hippogypi are men carried upon vultures, which they ride as we do horses. These vultures have each three heads, and are immensely large; you may judge of their size when I tell you that one of their feathers is bigger than the mast of a ship. The Hippogypi have orders, it seems, to fly round the kingdom, and if they find any stranger, to bring him to the king: they took us therefore, and carried us before him. As soon as he saw us, he guessed by our garb what we were. "You are Grecians," said he, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... Monday and Wednesday the stores were all closed and all business suspended, as if each family had lost its father. From the time of his death to the time of his interment the bells continued to toll, the shipping in the harbor wore their colors half mast high, and every public expression of grief was observed. On Wednesday, the inhabitants of the town, of the county, and the adjacent parts of Maryland proceeded to Mount Vernon to perform the last offices to the body of their illustrious neighbor. All the military within a considerable ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... seize all who are not provided with them. From their very nature, they must be liable to abuse on both sides. If Great Britain desires a mark, by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from the mast-head should be the credentials of our seamen. There is no safety to us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies), are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... unsettled weather, and a southerly swell. We generally brought-to, or stood upon a wind during night; and in the day made all the sail we could. About half an hour after sun-rise this morning, land was seen from the top-mast head, bearing N.N.E. We immediately altered the course, and steering for it, found it to be another reef island, composed of five or six woody islets, connected together by sand-banks and breakers inclosing a lake, into which we could see no entrance. We ranged the west and N.W. coasts, from its ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... We were the first on the spar, and making our way along it gained the rock. A few others seeing us followed. I entreated Jack to look after my friends, forgetting the danger to which he would be exposed in doing so. The people coming along the mast prevented him from going, and just then a heavy sea rolling in sent a sheet of spray over us, completely hiding the ship. When we looked again she was gone. The sea had lifted her, and falling off the rock she had sunk, dragging her fallen masts with those ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Captain was crippled, "her wheel and foretopmast gone and not a sail or rope left". She was engaged by several of the enemy, particularly by the San Nicolas (80) and the San Josef (112), whose mizzen-mast she had shot away. Collingwood pushed his ship, the Excellent (74), between her and the San Nicolas, gave the Spaniard a broadside within pistol shot, and passed on. The San Nicolas "luffing and the San Josef's mizzen-mast ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... cut into the shape of a boat is placed on the ground, and a mast about 12 inches high is fixed into its one and only seat by being firmly pressed into the hole cut through the seat. To the top of the mast is affixed a cocoa-nut shell which has a small hole cut into it about one third of the way up. Prior to the fixing of the mast and the shell, the ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... beneficially applies them for the good of that community of which he is a member, may be virtually, though not literally, called the discoverer of a principle. The man that projects, and the man that executes a voyage of discovery, have superior claims to the man at the mast head who first cries out land. The new turn that the discoveries of modern philosophers has given to natural philosophy, requiring a change of names as well as system; unusual words are unavoidably introduced to express new terms of science, which gives a different character ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... gilded barge I'll surely have, the same as Egypt's Queen, And it will be the finest barge that ever you have seen; With polished mast of stout pitch pine, tipped with a ball of gold, And two green trees in two white tubs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... near the mast, gazing into the fog. He looked taller and more evil than ever, and Robert saw the outline of a pistol beneath his heavy pea jacket. Several other men of various nationalities stood about the deck, and they gave Robert ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... So deare the loue my people bore me: nor set A marke so bloudy on the businesse; but With colours fairer, painted their foule ends. In few, they hurried vs aboord a Barke, Bore vs some Leagues to Sea, where they prepared A rotten carkasse of a Butt, not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sayle, nor mast, the very rats Instinctiuely haue quit it: There they hoyst vs To cry to th' Sea, that roard to vs; to sigh To th' windes, whose pitty sighing backe againe Did vs but ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... home the look-out observed what he took to be a great sea-serpent, but which, on further inspection, turned out to be a quantity of wreckage. On approaching the spot the figure of a boy was distinctly observed clinging to the broken portion of a mast, and obviously still alive. A small boat was instantly lowered, the ship's crew meantime making signals to the boy to inform him that he was being rescued. After a suspense of some half-hour the boat returned with the extraordinary intelligence that the figure seen ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... words on the bark of a beech, Just at the falling of the mast: "After scanning five; yes, each and each, I've found ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... gun shook the brooding swamp land of Porto Banos. And then, and not until then, did the flag crawl slowly from the mast-head. Mary Cairns broke the tenseness by bursting into tears. But Marshall saw that every one else, save she and Livingstone, were still smiling. Even the bluejackets in charge of the launch were grinning at him. He was beset by smiling faces. And then from the war-ship, unchecked, came, against ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst of light, struck the eye with sharpness ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a little wooden wharf upon the shore, and to this the sailor held the boat while Helen sprung out. Her feet were no sooner safe upon it than the boat was allowed to move away. She saw the black mast and the white figure recede together and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... they signed was the non-importation agreement. Next day, which was the first on which the stamps were to be distributed, the city seemed to sleep. The shops were closed and the citizens remained indoors. The flags were hung at half-mast and ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... them, and to that higher self-sacrifice whose whispers reached them in their early youth, then the false prophet's veil is raised, the poverty of the conception seen, and the life is either wrecked, or through storm-wind and surge of battling billows, with loss of mast and sail, is steered by firm hand into the port of a ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... with a moderate breeze and a little head-sea they appeared to have the advantage. The sails are from twelve to fifteen feet in length and a yard wide—made of coarse matting of the leaf of the coconut-tree stretched between two slender poles. The mast is stepped with an outward inclination into one of three or four holes in a narrow shifting board in the bottom of the canoe, and is secured near the top to a slender stick of similar length made ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... those friendly but niggardly Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm bolts into the three-mast schooners. He probably saw stave mills arise in which hundreds of youths got employment while their fathers at home fought stumps, wire worms, drought and the devil to get puny crops at small prices. He saw the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Prussia's teeth such incidents as the conquest of Silesia, the partition of Poland, the Ems telegram, the seizure of Kiaochau. But let us, while admitting our shortcomings in the past, nail our colours to the mast and insist that this war shall never degenerate into one of mere revenge or aggrandisement, that the fate of the nations of Europe shall be decided, so far as possible, in accordance with their own aspirations rather than the territorial ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... main mast.] The 11. of August we had still a Southerly winde, and therefore about noone the Mauritius set saile, and wee thought likewise to saile, but our men were so weake that we could not hoyse vp our anker, so that we were constrained to lie still till men came out to helpe vs, about euening the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... or child who has not sympathized with the poor seaman before the mast, Alexander Selkirk, typified by the genius of Defoe as his inimitable Crusoe, whose name (although one by no means uncommon in middle life in the east of England,) has become synonymous for all who build and plant in a ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the captain, noticing the boy's reflective manner. "A sailor's life is by no means easy, yet a bright, active lad can rise. Many a captain began before the mast." ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... he took my arm and pointed northward. Over the gleaming morning sea rose a purple mountain, shadowed here and there by travelling clouds, and a little red-sailed boat was diving and plunging towards us, with a red flag fluttering on her mast. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... looked round, and half-way up the mast Tricksy was discovered, who having become annoyed at her desertion by Lieutenant Jones, was indulging in an exploring expedition on her own account. Her little round face smiled mischievously from between a large white hat and tumbled ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae |
