"Cordage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fanegas of rice, one thousand five hundred earthen jars of palm wine, two hundred head of salt beef, twenty hogsheads of sardines, conserves and medicines, fifty quintals of powder, cannon-balls and bullets, and cordage and other supplies, the whole in charge of the captain and sargento-mayor, Joan Xuarez Gallinato—who had now returned from Jolo and was in Pintados—with orders and instructions as to what he was to do, namely, to take that help to Terrenate, to the Portuguese fleet which he would ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... of the McKay Cordage Factory in Chicago. Promises to return to Exeter when he has made his "pile" ($100,000). From present indications, the ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... her, if you will, at liberty to start from it in terror and scramble up a companion ladder to an open deck, and pick her way through shrouds and a bare headway of restless sprits above, and Heaven knows what of coiled cordage and inexplicable bulkhead underfoot, to some haven where a merciful old mariner, alone upon his watch, shuts his eyes to his duty and tolerates the beautiful girl on deck, when he is told by her that she cannot sleep for the rats. Make the weather ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... trunk makes poles for tents; the leaf-stalks make many kinds of basket and wicker work, walking-sticks and fans; the leaves themselves are made into bags and mats; and the fibers at the base of the leaf-stalks are twisted into cordage for tents and harness. The sap of the tree, drawn from a deep cut in the trunk near the top, after standing a few days, becomes a sweet and pleasant liquor. Cakes of the fruit pounded and kneaded together "so solid as to be cut with a hatchet," are carried by ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing to alter the color but the shadow cast by ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... business confidence increased greatly. Money rates advanced. Security values fell; imports greatly exceeded exports. Silver certificates were at 83. Something was about to snap in the general business machine. National Cordage broke from 57 to 15-1/2 on May 1st, receivers were appointed, and the panic of 1894 had declared itself and grew worse on the 4th and 5th. Call money rose to 40%. June witnessed great distress in business circles. On the 27th the Government of India stopped ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran: But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man, And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the sea The doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery, And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps, And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps: So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hall Did the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... of the herring fishery was to commence a few days after the occurrences last recorded. The boats had all returned from other stations, and the little harbour was one crowd of stumpy masts, each with its halliard, the sole cordage visible, rove through the top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail, tanned to a rich red brown. From this underwood towered aloft the masts of a coasting schooner, discharging its load of coal at the little quay. Other boats lay drawn up on the beach in front ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... to see them side by side! he, a Don Quixote, with cordage instead of lines in his mahogany face, and clothes hanging upon him; she, smooth, duck-like, delicious, and bright as an opening rose fresh ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... writhing piece of cordage showed up hard and clear under the vivid light which spluttered and flickered from the highest portion of the forecastle. Beyond the doomed ship, out of the great darkness came the long, rolling lines of big waves, never ending, never tiring, with a petulant ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lead it astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has its soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north. In the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus, against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water, wood; against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the shadows, its light; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... nothing more at Chatham's left to burn, The Holland squadron leisurely return; And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles, To Ruyter's triumph led the captive Charles. The pleasing sight he often does prolong, Her mast erect, tough cordage, timber strong, Her moving shape, all these he doth survey, And all admires, but most his easy prey. The seamen search her all within, without; Viewing her strength, they yet their conquest doubt; Then with rude shouts, secure, the air ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the watchers noted the steady downward progress of the Mercury's spars and cordage past the now struggling form of the woman, victims of alternate dismay and hope as they saw the body now fouled by some portion of the complicated net-work of standing and running gear between the main and mizzen masts, and anon drifting clear of it again. A few ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... large. Of these, the Indians dug out canoes forty or fifty feet long. Sometimes there were fleets of a hundred and fifty at their villages. We saw every kind of tree fit for ship-building. There is also plenty of hemp for cordage, and tar could be ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... shall recount a tithe of its other uses? Of course, the nude man under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this. He does without a mattress, and has no use for a door mat. But he cannot do without cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost stop. Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or tether the cow, or let down the bucket into the well? What would all the boats do that traverse ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... is the sap of the tree; and its top furnishes a most delicious dish, called palm-cabbage. The trunk supplies fire-wood, and timber for building fences. From the fibres of the wood is manufactured a strong cordage, and a kind of native cloth; and the leaves, besides being used for thatching houses, are converted into hats. If nature had given the inhabitants of Africa nothing else, this one gift of the palm-tree would have included food, drink, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... the ocean is terrific; but, on the whole, it is capricious, rather than malignant. The night that is before us promises to be just such a one as Sir Gervaise Oakes delights in. He is never happier than when he hears a gale howling through the cordage ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been swelled to an unexpected size, I am reluctantly compelled to omit some few Sections, such as those treating of elastic and other Gums, Resins, &c.; on tropical Fruits; and on textile substances and products available for cordage and clothing. The latter section, which includes Cotton, Flax, Jute, &c., and embraces a wide and important range of plants, I propose issuing in a separate volume at an early date, with a large fund ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... fishing village of West Bay, where the railway terminates. The church of St Mary is a handsome cruciform Perpendicular building. The harbour is accessible only to small vessels. There is some import trade in flax, timber and coal. The principal articles of manufacture have long been sailcloth, cordage, linen and fishing-nets. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... quarterdeck, leaning against the rail, watching a shoal of flying fish passing at a short distance. In the noise and confusion, caused by the sudden squall, the creaking of cordage, the flapping of sails, and the shouts of the officer to let go the sheets, the fall of the soldier was unnoticed; and Charlie was startled by perceiving, in the water below him, the figure of a ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... frigate were to be divided into two equal parts, one for the government, the other for the owners of the vessels. Four schooners sailed from St. Louis, and in a few days reached their destination: they brought back to the colony a great quantity of barrels of flour, salt, meat, wine, brandy, cordage, sails, &c. &c. This expedition was terminated in less than twenty days. As the schooners arrived in the Senegal, the proper way would have been to unload them, and deposit the things saved, in a magazine, till the arrival of the French Governor, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... roots half as many tubers as an ordinary crop of potatoes. The tubers, being abundant in the market-gardens, are to be had at little more than the price of potatoes. The fibres of the stems may be separated by maceration, and manufactured into cordage or cloth; and this is said to be done in some parts of the north and west of France, as about Hagenau, where this plant, on the poor sandy soils, is ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... time. Then, with a sort of fierce sobbing groan, wrung from the very depths of his despairing grief, he turned resolutely away, and sprang off the vessel. Standing at the extreme edge of the pier, he let slip the last rope that bound her,—her sails filled and bulged outward,—her cordage creaked, she shuddered on ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage—the arm of a derrick sliced a slow arc across the blue sky ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... there was no strain upon the cables in consequence. Neither did the rapid tides affect the craft, which lay in an eddy that merely kept her steady. The gale came howling over the Hermits, but was so much broken by the rocks as to do little more than whistle through the cordage and ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... shock. I closed my eyes, and held my breath hard. The explosion was so close, that the pieces of shell seemed driven across my face, and my ears quivered with the sound. I looked at Lowe, to see if he was struck. He had sprung to his feet, and clutched the cordage frantically. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys, parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless anchors, chafed cordage, battered speaking-trumpets, and marine glasses almost contemporary with the Ark. Sellers of mussels and clams squatted beside their heaps of shellfish and yawped their goods. Seamen rolled by with tar-pots, smoking ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... ship. They took a large galley, and filled it with combustibles of every kind. They loaded it first with light dry wood, and they poured pitch, and tar, and oil over all this wood to make it burn with fiercer flames. They saturated the sails and the cordage in the same manner, and laid trains of combustible materials through all parts of the vessel, so that when fire should be set in one part it would immediately spread every where, and set the whole mass in flames at once. They towed this ship, on a windy day, near to the enemy's works, and on the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a howling, And the poodle-dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers, whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his balloon. The immediate cause may have been a leaky valve permitting the gas to escape, or a faulty air-pump which made prompt filling of the ballonet impossible. But the effect of these flaws was to deprive the balloon of its rigidity, cause it to buckle, throwing the cordage out of gear, shifting stresses and strains, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... an entrance, therefore threw himself off it to seek another, and betook himself to the windows below. Through that of Angus's room, he caught sight of a floating anker cask. It was the very thing!—and there on the walls hung a quantity of nets and cordage! But how to get in? It was a sash-window, and of course swollen with the wet, therefore not to be opened; and there was not a square in it large enough to let him through. He swam to the other side, and crept softly on to the roof, and over the ridge. But a broken slate betrayed him. The woman saw ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the sides, and closes far astern: The silent oars now dip their level wings, And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave. Others, afraid of tardiness, return: Now, entering the still harbour, every surge Runs with a louder murmur up their keel, And the slack cordage rattles round the mast. Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears Had Gebir risen ere the break of dawn, And o'er the plains appointed for the feast Hurried with ardent step: the swains admired What so transversely could have swept the ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... showed not only his adroitness, but his determination, he next caused his men to acquiesce in the scuttling of the ships which had conveyed them to Mexico! After saving the cordage, rigging and everything else that might be useful, which was carefully stored away in the little fort rapidly building, the vessels were destroyed beyond repair. Before this was done, Cortes offered to reserve one ship for certain malcontents and partisans of Velasquez in which they might ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles that are made from the bamboo;" and in China, to sum up the whole, as Barrow observes, it maintains order throughout the Empire! (Ava Mission, p. 153; and see also Wallace, Ind. Arch. I. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Juliana, two years provisions, viz 295,344 pounds of flour, 149,856 pounds of beef, and 303,632 pounds of pork, for the settlement; a supply of clothing for the marines serving on shore, and for those belonging to the Sirius and Supply; together with a large quantity of sails and cordage for those ships and for the uses of the colony; sixteen chests of medicines; fifteen casks of wine; a quantity of blankets and bedding for the hospital; and a large supply of unmade clothing for the convicts; with an ample assortment of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... been made already; these are the more convenient, because they will not split if thrown upon banks or against rocks. These gelves have given occasion to the report that out of the cocoa-tree alone a ship may be built, fitted out with masts, sails, and cordage, and victualled with bread, water, wine, sugar, vinegar, and oil. All this indeed cannot be done out of one tree, but may out of several of the same kind. They saw the trunk into planks, and sew them together with thread ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... fortnight looking after the riggers, and seeing that everything was done in the best manner. He was, however, somewhat angry to find that Alice's face and figure were constantly intruding themselves into the cordage and shrouds. "I am becoming a regular mooncalf," he said angrily to himself. "It is perfectly absurd that I can't keep my thoughts from wandering away from my work, and for a girl whom I can hardly dare hope to win. I shall be very glad when we are off to sea. I'll then have, I won't say something ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... us duly thankful. Amen!" His countenance became animated again. "Try them biscuit. I made 'em this morning 'twixt Marcy Coe selectin' that piece of gingham for a new dress and John Peckham buying cordage for his smack. But they warmed up ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... although the night proved very dark, his anxious eyes were never turned from the English coast. Unusual fatigue and want of sleep now and then overpowered him, and his senses swam in a wild and snatching slumber; but from this he would start, crying out and clinging to the cordage, as the feverish dream of an instant presented him with the swelling canvas of a fast-sailing ship, which came, suddenly bursting through the gloom of midnight, alongside of his own. Morning dawned, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... flew over the waves, to all seeming with the same hunted rapidity as the moon rushed through the heavens,— and so far, though her masts bent reed-like in the wind, and her sails strained at their cordage, she had come to no harm. Tossed about as she was, rudderless and solitary, there was something almost miraculous in the way she had weathered a storm in which many a well-guided ship must inevitably have gone down. The purple pall with its heavy fringe of gold, that shrouded the coffin ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... iron with a noble level breeze, and the ship was making a speed which would hardly have disgraced an Atlantic liner of the modern day. She made a prettier sight than any steam-driven craft ever made, or ever will make; and she carried a better music with her in the taut wind-smitten cordage of the shrouds and the deep organ hum of ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... is my daily thought,' said Louis. 'If I could have tried my plan of weaving cordage out of cotton-grass and thistle-down, I think I could ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... said I; so watching an opportunity to do so unobserved, for I supposed they might have laughed at me, I stepped quietly into the coupe; and amid the creaking of cordage, and the thumping of feet on the roof, fell as sound asleep as ever I did in my life—these sounds coming to my muffled ears, soft as the echoes on the Rhine. When it was that I awoke I cannot say; but as I rubbed my eyes ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... bows or flew over the quarters, to stream down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard thumping of the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against the cordage. Night fell. There was a retributive glee in the whistle of the mocking wind through the rotten rigging, and the ship's timbers groaned to the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... a bark of dead men's bones And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long severed, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... once bounded out, and, followed by his companions, raced madly for the place. The bridge was but a slight affair, a native structure formed of a couple of long bamboo poles with cross pieces lashed into place by native cordage. ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... and thrives Upon uncertainty—and makes it, too, With all its pains to shun it. I could bind Myself, methinks, with but the twentieth part Of all this cordage, sirs.—But every man, As they say, to his own business. You ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... woman was not idle, so far as her new interests were concerned. She had asked questions, inquiring the names of things and their uses until she knew them intimately. The ropes and stays, from a mass of complex, meaningless cordage, had resolved themselves into individual units, each of which had its use and its purpose; the compass was no longer a mystery, and, during a lull in the drizzle, when the sun had come out on the fifth day, Harriet was permitted to take an observation ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... lay, motionless; hull and spars painted dark against the sunset sky; her rigging, to the finest cordage, traced in exquisitely distinct lines upon that shining background—a picture of exceeding loveliness ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of the Shadows said: "Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead; But when they hear my fatal gateway clang Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang. They see the smoke of home above the trees, The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze; The beaten path that wanders to the shore Grows dear because they shall not tread it more, The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes, And in ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... in my ears to shut out the howl of the wind and the waves. I couldn't keep my thoughts away from Faith. Oh, poor girl, this wasn't what she'd expected! As plainly as if I were aboard-ship I felt the scene, the hurrying feet, the slippery deck, the hoarse cries, the creaking cordage, the heaving and plunging and straining, and the wide wild night. And I was beating off those dreadful lines with them, two dreadful lines of white froth through the blackness, two lines where the horns of breakers guard the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... sufficiently to encourage our Captain to venture out, and we were soon battling with the rolling waves, far out of sight of land. For awhile the novelty of the scene fascinated me. I was at last on the ocean, of which I had heard, read and imagined so much. The creaking cordage, the straining engine, the plunging ship, the wild waste of tumbling billows, everyone apparently racing to where our tossing bark was struggling to maintain herself, all had an entrancing interest for me, and I tried ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... terrace of dirty tawny brick, its green verandas and jalousies, which lend quite a tropical air. Behind them, in shelter, are little dark squares, of a darker stone, with glimpses of the sea and packets just at the corners. Indeed, at every point wherever there is a slit or crevice, a mast or some cordage is sure to show itself, reminding us how much we are of the packet, packety. Ports of this kind, with all their people and incidents, seem to be devised for travellers; with their flaring lights, up-all-night hotels, the railway winding through the narrow streets, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... fragments, spars and barrels, and to these many persons were clinging. Hugh had managed to secure a piece of broken mast with spars attached, and with its aid he supported the mother and child until an iron-bound cask, caught in the cordage, struck him heavily in the darkness. The mother heard him groan, and his grasp loosened, "Quick!" he said hoarsely; "I cannot hold you. I must fasten you with these floating ropes; I am badly hurt, but I think I can hold ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... beam, to draw 2-1/2 feet water. Carpenters tools, including hatchets and long saws. Iron work and nails. Pitch and oakum. Cordage rigging, and sails. 2 Boat compasses. 2 Spying-glasses for day or night. 2 Small union flags. 6 Dark lanterns. 2 Tons of Carolina rice. Cooking utensils. ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... azure radiance trembles on her sides; The lunar rays in long reflection gleam, With silver deluging the fluid stream. Levant and Thracian gales alternate play, 710 Then in the Egyptian quarter die away. A calm ensues; adjacent shores they dread; The boats, with rowers mann'd, are sent ahead; With cordage fasten'd to the lofty prow, Aloof to sea the stately ship they tow; [4] The nervous crew their sweeping oars extend, And pealing shouts the shore of Candia rend: Success attends their skill! the danger's o'er! The port ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... entirely shot away; the main and foremast, and the fore and main yards wounded in several places by large shot; many of her shrouds, stays, and back-stays shot away, besides those which had been knotted and stoppered in the action; all her spare cordage was expended in reeving running rigging, and she had three feet water in the hold. The loss of men in both ships was remarkably small. The Amazon had three killed, and fifteen badly wounded; and the Indefatigable, though she had ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... another, the forecastle carried away, the decks opening, bales, chests, cordage, stores of all sorts tossed high up on the shore, more dead bodies—chiefly of men, for they had some time before given up to the few women and children the now capsized and shattered boats. All along the shore, as far as eye could see, the beach was composed of a heterogeneous mass of enormous ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... upon the Roman coasts, when the Norther lashes to foam the Gulf of Lyons, when the humid east wind of Syria is driving them off shore, everything combines to make life on board a modern galley a hell of misery and discomfort. The creaking of the blocks and cordage, the loud cries of the sailors, the horrible maledictions of the galley slaves, the groaning of the timbers, mingled with the clank of chains and the bellowings of the tempest, produce sentiments of affright in the most intrepid ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... describing the passage of the great frigate through the narrow channel, gives every detail with such vividness and power that the most unimaginative cannot merely see ship, shore, and foaming water, but almost hear the roaring of the wind, the creaking of the cordage, and the dashing of the waves against the breakers. As he read on the listener's interest kept growing until he was no longer able to remain quiet. Rising from his seat he paced up and down the room furiously ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... little barque amid all the wild commotions of the sea, sometimes driven before the wind, sometimes stripped of every rag of canvas, sometimes beating helpless in the trough of the waves, rights herself when the storm is over, repairs her masts, re-strings her cordage, puts forth again sail after sail; and with a sure hand at the helm and a moderate breeze in her canvas, rises white and strong against the blueness of sea and sky, triumphant over all the assaults of external nature, animated by human will and courage, the most indomitable ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... do with the aid of the old sails on board the brig, reserving the new ones and such canvas as he could find for the making of a suit of sails for the proposed new boat. He accordingly got out all the old sails, and deposited them on the deck of the catamaran, together with a quantity of cordage, blocks, and other gear, a crowbar, pickaxes, hammer, and shovel, an axe, and a number of miscellaneous odds and ends that he thought would be useful, and conveyed the whole to the shore. Then entering the woods, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... deck—second and third class passengers are fighting for prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among the elite, and garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground between it and ours. A passage, which promised fair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... could perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board, and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the hatches from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly—"we are captured by a——." A sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, told of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early rope-makers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were twisting themselves into cordage. But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful.... Then the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers of ships, ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... usefulness. Without the help of any other, one may build and furnish out a ship for sea, with every thing requisite. Of the body of this tree may be made timbers, planks, and masts; its gum may serve for paying the bottom; the rind of the same tree will make sails and cordage; and the large nut, being full of kernel and pleasant liquor, will serve those who navigate the ship both for meat and drink, as also ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... value and to fetch high prices for use in the arts and in medicine. For example, the cargo of the last vessel that arrived in Port Jackson from the Navigator Islands, during our stay, consisted partly of cordage of different degrees of thickness, made from a plant peculiar to those islands, the nature of which is such that, we were assured, it is almost indestructible by water and the humidity of the atmosphere; whilst its toughness makes ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... suggest. About 11 P. M. the sky began to darken in the south, and the crew were called up, and all the sails hauled in, except the foresail, brigantine, top-sail, and jib-boom. At midnight the wind freshened, and before long the cracking of the masts, and the rattling of the cordage, and groaning of the timbers, awakened the passengers, who speedily made their appearance on deck— at least Paganel, Glenarvan, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Representeth the Holy Rood, Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung Is the mind of man, that round and round Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound! And the rope, with its twisted cordage three, Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity Of Morals, and Symbols, and History; And the upward and downward motions show That we touch upon matters high and low; And the constant change and transmutation Of action and of contemplation, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... staunch ship, one loud, awful, undying shriek, mingled with a prolonged relentless hiss. No gathering strength, no languid fainting into momentary lulls, but one protracted gigantic scream. And this was not the whistle of wind through cordage, but the actual sound of air travelling with tremendous velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was the sea running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole surface was caught ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... ridicule, and to do his soul much good. All souls were dear to her. What was the consequence? He went about with his mint, and relieved poor people, and gratified his mania at the same time. His face began to beam with benevolence and innocent self-satisfaction. On Richard Hardie's all was cordage: and deep gloom sat on ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Legislature passed an Act prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors to the Indians. In 1802, the Legislature of Upper Canada, as had that of Lower Canada, passed an Act appropriating L750 to encourage the growth of hemp, in order to render England independent of Russia in the supply of hemp for cordage for the navy, as was being rapidly the case in the supply of timber to build ships. As obstructions on the St. Lawrence rendered communication more difficult between Upper and Lower Canada than with Albany and New ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... offered. Whatever might have been the failings of the settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine stared ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... broken joints of bamboo, which the Malays use to carry their water in, some worn out cordage and a coconut, which had perhaps been left behind by accident. The traces appeared to be of so recent a date, that we conjectured the fleet was but a short distance to the eastward of the islands, and as the easterly monsoon had commenced, we were naturally in daily expectation ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... push their canoes into the thick masses of the rice, bend it forward over the side with their paddles, and then beat the ripe husks off the stalks into a cloth spread in the canoe. After this, it is rubbed to separate the grain from the husk, and fanned in the open air. It is then put in their cordage bags and packed away for winter use. The grain is longer and more slender than the Carolina rice—it is of a greenish-olive color, and, although it forms a pleasant article of food, it is far from being particularly nutritive. The Indians are fond of it in the form of soup, with ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... water on the 17th of March were taken up the 27th of July, when we found that the thick vegetable of the fibres had rotted away, but still they were covered with an hard woody substance, from which we have ineffectually tried to separate the flaxy part, which I have no doubt would make good cordage, canvas, and linen, as it appears to be of a fine and strong texture. Some lines were made of it, which were tolerably strong and good; but the want of a method to separate the woody part from the flax, will be a great hindrance to its being ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... Age, 7000?-5500 B.C. Graves, square pits. Red faced, and much coarse brown pottery. Buff with red painting of cordage, spirals, and ships. Pot forms copied from stone. Some pots globular with wavy ledge handles, changing to cylinders with wavy band. Slate palettes in all ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... at once gave orders to heave overboard all the spare spars and the hencoops, together with enough of cordage for the construction of a raft. This was promptly done, and the raft was sufficiently far advanced in the course of an hour to admit of the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... sizes, from the man of war to the small fishers' boat, which lay sailorless, and rotting on the lazy deep. The emigrants embarked by hundreds, and unfurling their sails with rude hands, made strange havoc of buoy and cordage. Those who modestly betook themselves to the smaller craft, for the most part achieved their watery journey in safety. Some, in the true spirit of reckless enterprise, went on board a ship of an hundred and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... following articles: Three yards of thick heavy canvas; some duck which he had purloined; a large roll of sewing thread, ditto; a thick pea jacket which I had abandoned at the boats, and had, at his request, given to him; and various other old pieces of canvas and duck; also a great part of the cordage of one of the boats, which ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... pale, and almost fainted, as the heavy bottle, without a break, pirouetted down between sails and cordage, and seeking an opening in the gunwale of the boat flopped into six ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... surrounding country is arid and sterile, producing scanty crops of barley, Indian corn and pease. The cochineal insect is found on the cactus which grows in abundance in the vicinity, and the town is known throughout Ecuador for its manufacture of boots and shoes, and for a cordage made from cabuya, the fibre of the agave plant. Ambato was destroyed by an eruption of Cotopaxi in 1698, and has been badly damaged two or three ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North Pole—any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads, might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of the equipment, did not look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the British Navy.—Miss Dawe is about a portrait of sulky Fanny Imlay, alias Godwin: but Miss Dawe is of opinion that her subject is neither reserved nor sullen, and doubtless she will persuade the picture to be of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... may know, we had all left our landsmen's fears far south of Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuous world where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest day and the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the cries of sailors, the creaking of cordage, and the puff! puff! of the ferry-boats. On the bastions of the fortress opposite, a bugler was standing. Twice the mellow notes of the bugle came faintly over the water, then a great gun thundered from the ramparts, and the Belgian ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... state of nature. We are informed by Mr. Dohiogost, a Polish writer, that his countrymen make their hives of the best plank, and never less than an inch and a half in thickness. The shape is that of an old-fashioned churn, and the hive is covered on the outside, halfway down, with twisted rope cordage, to give it greater protection against extremes of heat and cold. The hives are placed in a dry situation, directly upon the hard earth, which is first covered with an inch or two of clean, dry sand. Chips are then ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... looked about me for a line which I might throw. Cordage there was in abundance, but it was broken or fastened to something, or too heavy to handle. I remembered, however, seeing a coil of small rope below, and hastening down, I brought it on deck, took the coil in my right hand, and stood ready to hurl it when the ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Why do you not say that at the same time I commissioned large numbers of fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-shells from the shore, smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the tentacles of cuttlefish, shingle, straws, cordage, not to mention[13] worm-eaten oyster-shells, moss, and seaweed, and all the flotsam of the sea that the winds drive, or the salt wave casts up, or the storm sweeps back, or the calm leaves high and dry all along our shores? For their names are no less suitable than those I mentioned above ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... to the use of canvas, cables, and cordage made of hemp grown in the United States in the equipment vessels of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... is given them, and cover earth with eddying blasts. East wind and west wind together, and the gusty south-wester, falling prone on the sea, stir it up [86-120]from its lowest chambers, and roll vast billows to the shore. Behind rises shouting of men and whistling of cordage. In a moment clouds blot sky and daylight from the Teucrians' eyes; black night broods over the deep. Pole thunders to pole, and the air quivers with incessant flashes; all menaces them with instant death. Straightway Aeneas' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... now fallen to its usual level, the intermediate ground was perfectly dry. He had been absent for some time. The mate directed the rest of the party to collect all the spars, planks, and cordage they could find. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... to weather the south-east end of Mowee in heavy weather, the leach ropes of the main topsail and two topgallant sails gave way, and the sails were blown to pieces. Cook says, "neither the cordage, canvas, nor indeed hardly any other stores used in the Navy, are equal in quality to those in general use in the merchant service"; and he relates how such failures have constantly resulted in "infinite trouble, vexation, and loss." He illustrates his complaint by the fact that rigging, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... time, not many years ago, when this now common and often troublesome weed was imported from India and tenderly cultivated in flower gardens. In the Orient it and allied species are grown for their fiber, which is utilized for cordage and cloth; but the equally valuable plant now running wild here has yet to furnish American men with a profitable industry. Although the blossom is next of kin to the veiny Chinese bell-flower, or striped abutilon, so common in greenhouses, its ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... of confinement. Those masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become restless at the slightest hint of the wind's freedom. However tightly moored, they range a little at their berths, swaying imperceptibly the spire- like assemblages of cordage and spars. You can detect their impatience by watching the sway of the mastheads against the motionless, the soulless gravity of mortar and stones. As you pass alongside each hopeless prisoner chained to the quay, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... frequently moored for the night off his island, and partook of such entertainment as he could supply. He sent his fish to market when he caught more than he could consume, and he and his children made ropes and cordage, for which also he had a ready sale on the river. Pending this communication, he prepared me a substantial supper, to which I did ample justice, and then shewed me, at my request, to a small, neat chamber, where I sought and found the repose ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... this 'wah-tap,' [Footnote: Asclepia paviflora.] (wood-thread,) and they prepare it by pulling off the outer rind and steeping it in water. It is the larger fibres which have the appearance of small cordage when coiled up and fit for use. This 'wah-tap' is very valuable to these poor Indians. There is also another plant, called Indian hemp, which is a small shrubby kind of milk-weed, that grows on ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... produces the invaluable cocoa-palm, most parts of which have their commercial value, the areca palm which produces the betel-nut, the gomuti palm from whose strong black fibres they make ropes, cordage, and strands for capturing the alligator; the jaggary-palm, from which sugar is made, as well as a fermented beverage; the nibong palm, which grows round the Malay kampong, and is used for their gridiron floors and for the posts of their houses; the dwarf-palms which serve no other purpose ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the same family, among others one in particular, the fruit of which produces a very useful oil. Further on, Herbert remarked the lardizabala, a twining shrub which, when bruised in water, furnishes excellent cordage; and two or three ebony trees of a beautiful black, crossed with ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... no easy task to undo Scood's knot, but he worked at it, and, as he did so, wondered whether it was possible to make use of the cordage of the boat to take up and let down to the imprisoned pair, but he was fain to confess that, even doubled, there was nothing sufficiently trustworthy for the purpose; and, after throwing in the line, he gave the boat ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a gnarled hand grasping the latter's gunwale to hold the two together. With some difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in the cockpit, amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper followed, with clumsy expertness bringing the dory's painter with him and hitching it to a ring-bolt abaft the rudder-head. Then, pausing an instant to stare into the East with somber eyes, he shipped the tiller and bent to the halyards. As the sail rattled up, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display is there; only samples of the business, whatever it may chance to be,—such, for instance, as three or four tubs full of codfish and salt, a few bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper wire hanging from the joists above, iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall, or a few pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. A neat girl, glowing with youth, wearing a white kerchief, her arms red and bare, drops her knitting and calls her father or her mother, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... agitation, I sprang upon deck, and contemplated with horror the frigate winging its way upon the waters. The winds pressed against the sails with great violence, strained and whistled among the cordage; and the great bulk of wood seemed to split every time the surge broke upon its sides. On looking a little out to sea I perceived at no great distance on our right, all the other ships of the expedition, which quieted me very much. Towards ten in ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for the largest cordage company in the whole country—a company with an employees' list of two thousand names, and an annual output of $10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with clams, which (through the utilization ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... has not even excluded from the benefit of these reductions the very countries under whose simultaneous enactments, of a hostile character, she is at this moment suffering: these advantages will be enjoyed by the tar and cordage of Russia; by the corn and timber, the woollens, linens, and hosiery of northern Germany; by the gloves, the boots and shoes, the light writing-papers, the perfumery, the corks, the straw-hats, the cottons and cambrics, the dressed skins, the thrown silk, and even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... 'Neath rustling leaves and grape-empurpled vine, And led by craft in artless pride make known The lustrous lurements of their gorgeous zone, As in the field some skilful ranger sets The fraudful cordage of his specious nets, Places some fragrant viand in the snare, And captive takes the unsuspicious hare; So the bold strangers with superior will Lay their base plans with disingenuous skill, Ope their ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... If more money was needed, the rates could be raised at any time. But early in the debate a member from Pennsylvania moved an amendment adding a number of articles to the specified list. They included beef, butter, candles, soap, boots, steel, cordage, nails, salt, tobacco, paper, hats, shoes, coaches, and spices. "Among these," said he, in explaining his motion, "are some calculated to encourage the productions of our country and protect our infant manufactures." At once, members from States which did not produce these ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... admiration of my technical knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and. I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish main, echoing through remote ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... staginess. One may answer that Keats meant it to be stagey: that he deliberately surrounded the quest of the false Melancholy with those paste-board 'properties'—the bark of dead men's bones, the rudder of a dragon's tail 'long severed, yet still hard with agony', the cordage woven of large uprootings from the skull of bald Medusa'—in order to make the genuine Melancholy more effective by contrast.[1] Yet, as Mr. Bridges points out, the ode does not hit so hard as one would expect: and it has seemed ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cold day, and the winds whistled through the cordage of the shipping and came moaning up, beating against the corked windows; but it was of no use they could not get in, for Nannie had stuffed the cotton in all the cracks as tight as she could, so that ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... to the effect that the Battalion was in possession of every article enumerated in A.F.G. 1098 (Mobilisation Store Table). This document contained such items as "screws, brass, buckle roller 1 in. x 7/8 in.—2" "awls, brad—1;" "cordage, tarred spun yarn,—lbs. 14," and other luxuries which had long been considered superfluous, and mostly lost in the Salient. We had been told to indent for anything we wanted in the way of clothing or equipment, so that there was some consternation on the arrival of a new and fierce Deputy ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... of the old ferry boat showed it to be in pretty good condition, the sand with which it had been filled keeping it very perfectly. We found two oars in the sand under the boat, and looked up some poles to assist us in navigation. Our cordage was rather scant but the best we could get and all we could muster. The boat was about twelve feet long and six or seven feet wide, not a very well proportioned craft, but having the ability to carry ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... should say. Nothing could have held the tent with those ropes gone. It showed that the cordage had been cut by someone very familiar with the canvas. Almost a breath of wind would have caused the whole big top to collapse, and then a lot of people might have been killed. Well, the season is almost at an end now. If we are lucky we shall ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... expeditions were fitted out in ships of clumsy construction and bad sailing qualities. The timbers were fastened with wooden pins and leathern thongs, and the crevices were caulked with moss. Occasionally the cordage was made from reindeer skins, and the sails from the same material. Many ships were wrecked, but this ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... used all the iron and brass that could be obtained, and then melted down vases and statues of the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior pointing of silver and gold. In the same manner, when the supplies of flax and hempen twine for cordage for their bows failed, the beautiful sisters and mothers of the hostages cut off their long hair, and twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for propelling the arrows which their husbands and brothers made. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not the fury and the ire Of these huge storms, of wind, of rain and hail, Now was it dark, now shone the lightning fire, The wind and water every place assail, No bank was safe, no rampire left entire, No tent could stand, when beam and cordage fail, Wind, thunder, rain, all gave a dreadful sound, And with that music deafed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters. But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven—then paused an instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... how soon Monson would take to fooling with his bags, and find out he owned so much lead pipe. But I heard him banging one of the negroes, and judged he was cheerful yet. I went up on deck and lay down on some cordage. Monson ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... to the little craft in the offing, and found in the diminutive cabin eight FIRST-CLASS NEGRO passengers, while in the vessel's hold, reclining upon the cargo, were four white men who were voyaging SECOND class. The cordage of the little craft was rotten, and the sails nearly worn out, yet all these people were cheerful, and willing to put to sea as soon as the young skipper would dare to venture out ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... somewhere under the bulwarks amidships, trying to get an odd wink if the seas that were shipping in as the ship's bows fell would let them. Not a sound was to be heard save the whistle and screech of the wind through the cordage, and the creak of a block occasionally aloft; and I was looking out at the weather, wondering how soon the next squall would tackle us, when my arms were seized by somebody behind me, who held them down close to my sides, and a gag of a reef-knot or some piece of rope ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... pressure of the following wind. Great waves with white crests pursued her, and as they neared her stern it seemed to Wulf that they must inevitably fall over and crush her. The spray torn from the crest by the wind filled the air. The wind shrieked in the cordage, and the vessel creaked and groaned as she rolled from side ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... increased in fury, and it soon became evident that neither sails nor cordage could long withstand the strain to which they ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... far as human noise was concerned, was as still as death. Even the soldiers below, finding no attention paid to their cries, had subsided into comparative quiet. The silence was broken only by the creaking of cordage, the dashing of water against the bows, and the groaning of the timbers. Ever and anon Hornigold's deep voice, crying "Larboard" or "Starboard" as the case might be, rolled along the deck to the watchful men gripping the wheel. Suddenly the old ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and the sail was spread between the masts: The sail, which I preserved, and which is now in my possession, is made of matting, and is as neat a piece of work as ever I saw: their paddles were very curious, and their cordage was as good and as well laid as any in England, though it appeared to be made of the outer covering of the cocoa-nut. When these vessels sail, several men sit upon the spars which hold the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... manure, and by cow-penning, enriched several spots where they raise Indian corn, potatoes, pumpkins, turnips, etc. On the highest part of this sandy eminence, four windmills grind the grain they raise or import; and contiguous to them their rope walk is to be seen, where full half of their cordage is manufactured. Between the shores of the harbour, the docks, and the town, there is a most excellent piece of meadow, inclosed and manured with such cost and pains as show how necessary and precious grass is ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... rendered had been "doctored." Uncle Lance paid little attention, though he heard, but the other visitors remonstrated with Annear. This only seemed to make him more contentious. Finally matters came to an open rupture when Annear demanded that the cordage be cut on certain bales to allow him to inspect them. Possibly he was within his rights, but on the Nueces during the seventies, to question a man's word was equivalent to calling him a liar; and liar was a fighting word all over the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... had to visit was that at which he had the longest task to perform. It was at a ship-chandler's in Tower Street, a large and dingy house, the lower portion being filled with canvas, cordage, barrels of pitch and tar, candles, oil, and matters of all sorts needed by ship-masters, including many cannon of different sizes, piles of balls, anchors, and other heavy work, all of which were stowed away in a yard behind it. The owner of this store ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... ugly, always dusty, always noisy, usually in a town. The windmill stands high and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would paint a steam mill; a picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure. Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted several in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... cabin takes up a large part of the hold. There are two doors forward. The one to the left opens into the galley, and the one to the right opens into the forecastle, where there are three berths for the crew, a few ship's stores, piles of cordage, tackle, chains, etc. The berths, of course, will not be occupied this trip, as we plan to be out only a few hours, and the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... delicious and healthful when eaten shortly after it is separated from the tree. The wood of the kernel could be polished, and converted into bowls, that were ornamental as well as useful. The husks made a capital cordage, and a very respectable sail-cloth, being a good substitute for hemp, though hemp, itself, was a plant that might be grown on the prairies to an almost illimitable extent. The leaves were excellent for thatching, as well as for making brooms, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... met with a bark laden with ropes and tackle for ships, which he boarded and searched, and found in her 80 lb. weight of gold, and a crucifix of gold with goodly great emeralds set in it, which he took, and some of the cordage also for his own ship. From hence we departed, still following the Cacafuego; and our General promised our company that whosoever should first descry her should have his chain of gold for his good news. It fortuned that John Drake, going up into the top, descried her about three of the ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... was not long before a new difficulty began to appear. It was now the day of the trust in all its watery magnificence. Coal, iron, steel, oil, machinery, and a score of other commercial necessities had already been "trustified," and others, such as leather, shoes, cordage, and the like, were, almost hourly, being brought under the control of shrewd and ruthless men. Already in Chicago Schryhart, Hand, Arneel, Merrill, and a score of others were seeing their way to amazing ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... moment he was lifted on to Cardo's shoulder, whooping with delight, and for the next hour, the laugh was loudest and the fun most furious where Cardo and his little friend were located. Before long, however, the storm was upon them. Masts creaked and cordage rattled; the sails had been lowered, and everything made safe, and Captain Owen, standing on the bridge, looked energetic, and "fit" to fight with the storm-fiend. The ladies soon retired, and many of the gentlemen ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... awoke and heard the groaning of timbers and the creak of cordage he knew at once that they were under way and he was glad. The events of the night before passed rapidly through his mind, but they seemed vague and indistinct. At first he thought the vision of St. Luc on the cliff in the storm was but a dream, and he had to make an effort ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... surviving long after the stately merchant marine had vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune in recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stem, sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for anything ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the foremast broke off close to the deck and went over the side, carrying the boat and men along with it. Our oar got entangled with the wreck, and Jack seized an axe to cut it free, but, owing to the motion of the ship, he missed the cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling in the surf, and all the sailors tossed ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... undid the shutters, scaring the red-breast away; and then tramped about in their heavy boots and chatted in contented voices, and began to wrap up the stove once more in all its straw and hay and cordage. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... her at all. He laughed weakly at the recollection, for she had been as innocent of garb as Eve before the fig-leaf adventure. Squat and lean at the same time, asymmetrically limbed, string-muscled as if with lengths of cordage, dirt-caked from infancy save for casual showers, she was as unbeautiful a prototype of woman as he, with a scientist's eye, had ever gazed upon. Her breasts advertised at the one time her maturity and youth; and, if by nothing else, her sex was advertised by the one article of finery with ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... in port, Rent cordage, shattered deck; Torn sails, provision short, And only not a wreck; But all the joy upon the shore, To tell our ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Accident on board the Discovery. Mowee, one of the Sandwich Islands, discovered. Intercourse with the Natives. Visit from Terreeoboo. Another Island, called Owhyhee, discovered. The Ships ply to Windward to get round it. An Eclipse of the Moon observed. The Crew refuse to drink Sugar-cane Beer. Cordage deficient in Strength. Commendation of the Natives of Owhyhee. The Resolution gets to Windward of the Island. Her Progress down the South-East Coast. Views of the Country, and Visits from the Natives. The Discovery joins. Slow ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr |
