"Windlass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was like the outer diving chamber of a submarine. We were hauled in on a big windlass—driven by gas turbines, I think. Once we were inside, a twenty-yard, counterbalanced wall of rock was lowered across the entrance. Then the water was drained out through a well, and into a subterranean body of water that extends ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... said he, lifting his cap with one hand, and restraining the clanking of a steam windlass with ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... importance, must be next the refectory. The kitchen and offices would be placed on the lowest stage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were two hundred feet below at the landing-place, and all supplies, including water, had to be hauled up an inclined plane by windlass. To administer such a society required the most efficient management. An abbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed an establishment of his own, close by, with officers in no small number; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... self-disgust he kept his cabin, pleading the effects of cramp and exhaustion, and emerged only when it was dark, to drop into a deck chair behind a windlass, and brood upon his sins, staring ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... that smote his ears as he opened his eyes were the rhythmic creak of the mine windlass and equally rhythmic, if less tuneful, chant of the men ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... an aggrieved air. "I'd like to see you stop them, with a rawhide lasso round your neck, and a big Korak hauling like a steam windlass on the other end of it! It's all very well to cry 'stop 'em'; but when the barbarians haul you off the rear end of your sledge as if you were a wild animal, what course would your sublime wisdom suggest? I believe I've got the mark of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... but as much by a new idea that had entered my mind, I stepped upon the staging and glided cautiously aboard. I caught a glimpse of the sailors far off in the forward part of this ship—some seated upon the windlass, others squatted upon the deck itself, with their tin plates before them, and their jack-knives in their hands. Not one of them saw me—not one was looking in my direction: their eyes were too busy with the cook ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... dozed off as he sat on the deck with his back against the bulwark, watching the shore as they drifted slowly past it, and wondering vaguely, how it would all end. They had been anchored but half an hour when the captain ordered the men to the windlass. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... has its well. Sometimes there are only two or three to a block. Sometimes the well is merely a shallow hole, uncemented, to catch the seepage of the upper strata. Sometimes it is a very deep stone-walled cavity. Rarely is there a pump or a windlass or any other fixed ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... had been overlooked by the invaders and the bucket was still fastened to the chain that wound around a stout wooden windlass. Inga took hold of the crank and began letting the bucket down into the well, when suddenly he was startled by a ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tree-trunk swinging upon another tall vertical one forked at the top; a chain depends from one end of the horizontal beam or bar, to which the bucket is attached, whilst the other end is counterpoised by means of stones. Some of the wells are worked with a windlass and fly-wheel, but the one just described frequently ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... means to break out; and this the second lieutenant provided against pretty effectually by placing a large wash-deck tub on the cover and coiling down therein the end of one of the mooring hawsers which stood on the deck near the windlass. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... on board the shouts and songs of the sailors Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the ponderous anchor. Then the yards[39] were braced, and all sails set to the west-wind, Blowing steady and strong, and the Mayflower sailed from the harbor, Rounded the point of the Gurnet,[40] and leaving far to the southward 605 Island ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... went from the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half a mile ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... This was a box like the bed of a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... manuscripts, money, medals, and the like, and perhaps to transmit them to very remote generations. The cables extended downward and connected with another equally large pulley at the bottom of the apparatus, whence they passed to the drum of a windlass held in place by means of heavy timbers. This windlass, which could be turned with two cranks, increased the strength of a man a hundredfold by the movement of notched wheels, although it is true that what was gained in ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... time of intense excitement though for them, and as they watched they saw a windlass turn, and up came the great trawl-irons and the beam, then, dripping and sparkling in the sun, the foot-rope of the trawl-net, and foot after foot emerged with nothing but ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... as if she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I took hold of the handle of the windlass, swung off the great oaken bucket, and watched it descend its often-traveled course, bumping against the wet, slippery rocks with which the well ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... horizontal one the several coils would have pressed together again. The loose roll was therefore slipped over a vertical iron rod fastened into a circular perforated wooden foot. The upper end of this iron rod ended in a ring, in which the hook of a chain or rope could be fastened. With the aid of a windlass the roll was raised or lowered. When placed in the pan with boiling tar, it was left there until thoroughly saturated. It was then taken out, placed upon a table, and the excess of tar allowed to drip off into a vessel underneath. After partially drying, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... own all but exhausted lagoon. At length things became so threatening that I decided to sink a well. Choosing a likely spot near the foot of a precipitous hill, I set to work with only Yamba as my assistant. Confidently anticipating the best results, I erected a crude kind of windlass, and fitted it with a green- hide rope and a bucket made by scooping out a section of a tree. My digging implements consisted solely of a home-made wooden spade and a stone pick. Yamba manipulated the windlass, lowering and raising ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a depth of 200 feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Canon available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method, and although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme might still prove profitable, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... was to be first officer of the Flyaway, as well as pilot, summoned them to the windlass to heave up the anchor; and in a few minutes the yacht was standing down the harbor under all sail. The Teneans gave three rousing cheers, and then distributed themselves in various parts of the deck ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... when I reached the storehouse at Pungo Ferry; and as Sunday is a sacred day with me, I determined to camp there until Monday. A deformed negro held a lease of the ferry, and pulled a flat back and forth across the river by means of a chain and windlass. He was very civil, and placed his quarters at my disposal until I should be ready to start southward to Currituck Sound. We lifted the canoe and pushed it through an open window into the little store-room, where it rested upon an unoccupied counter. The negro went up to the loft above, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... the top step leading down to the water; stand tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim for it. Raise the thing just high enough to ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Judson Eells had taken a good deal for granted when he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... pailfuls over her brick floors as she likes. Then the clear, swift current begins to diminish, and scarcely have you had time to notice the change than it is altogether gone! The women must go back to the well and let the bucket down, and laboriously turn and turn the handle of the windlass till it mounts to the top again. The pretty moist, green herbage, the graceful grasses, quickly wither away; dust and straws and rubbish from the road lie in the dry channel, and by and by it is filled with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... to hearty nature, and the further we go from, the artificial and conventional, the nearer do we come to truth. Truth is indeed at the bottom of this well, and not in the artificial wall that rises above it, nor the buckets that go up and down as caprice or selfishness turns the windlass. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all before it, in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit and the butts of the windlass began to emerge—next the forecastle—the vessel seemed as if shaking herself from the load; and then the whole deck appeared, as she went tilting over the next wave. 'There are still more mercies in store for us,' said Macivor, addressing ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... from the bridge where I am testing the whistle; the tide is rising; the last cases of general cargo are being lowered into Number Two Hold, and from all along the deck rise little jets of steam, for the Mate is already trying the windlass. Once more we are "cleared for sea." In an hour's time the tug Implacable, mingling her frenzied little yelp with our deeper note, will pull us out into the middle of the dock, then round, and slowly through the big ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... point in hickory propagation work consists in the employment of the Spanish windlass for fastening graft and stock together. The old time wrapping of twine or of raffia had to be released in order to allow growth at the point of union of scion and stock. When cord is used it cuts deeply into the new growth, and raffia, which is placed on flat, will be burst open. In ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... rose, making his way forward about the narrow deck-space outside the cabin. Halvard was seated on a coil of rope beside the windlass and stood erect as Woolfolk approached. The sailor was smoking a short pipe, and the bowl made a crimson spark in his thick, powerful hand. John Woolfolk fingered the wood surface of the windlass bitts and found it rough ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hiding their grim hollowness. The well, hospitably placed within arm's reach of the highway, for the benefit of the dead and buried congregation that long ago met and worshipped at Bethesda meeting-house, is stripped of windlass, chain, and bucket. All the outhouses have disappeared, if they ever had an existence; and nothing remains to tell the story of a flourishing era, save a fig-tree, which is graciously green and fruitful in season. This fig-tree has grown to an ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... on. We left behind us an undulating luminous wake, resembling a long bright snake following us, which was gradually in the distance engulfed by the ocean. This luminous track seemed to be reeled off from a windlass at ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... days,' he said, as we followed the throng, still clinging like a barnacle to the side of the Johannes. We spent the few minutes while the lock was emptied in a farewell talk to Bartels. Karl had hitched their main halyards on to the windlass and was grinding at it in an acharnement of industry, his shock head jerking and his grubby face perspiring. Then the lock gates opened; and so, in a Babel of shouting, whining of blocks, and creaking of spars, our whole company was split out into the dingy bosom of the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the wooden tower, a strong penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat. The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar-barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar-barrels could not harm ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... complete rubber suits, hip-boots, rubber coats, and rubber caps. Then they had some queer-looking machines, a windlass, a force pump, grappling irons, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the drift, He has pounded at the face of oozy clay; He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift, He has labored like a demon night and day. And now, praise God, it's over, and he seems to breathe again Of new-mown hay, the ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face, and the veins and muscles ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... adopt that darling also, to which, after some slight hesitation, he consented. Another twelvemonth rolled into eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well with unwonted industry. As the bucket neared the top he reached down and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding it up, explained to the astonished matron: "Look at this, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... resource were a monopoly in his hands. He was silent, and worked to get ready to descend the old air-shaft, with grim set lips. Yet there seemed to be no sense of bustle, only the work was done quickly and orderly, his orders being issued as much by signs as by speech, and soon a windlass was erected with ropes and swing chair fastened, into which he at once leaped, followed by another man. Tools and explosives were packed in and lamps lit and the order ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... anchor; a gruff hail; a laugh; or the hoarse rattle of chain through a hawse-pipe as one of the drifting vessels came to an anchor. Our own lads were very quiet, the watch below having turned in, while those on deck, with the exception of the lookout, had arranged themselves in a group about the windlass, and were conversing in suppressed tones well befitting the exceeding quiet of the night. Lady Desmond, well wrapped up in a fur-lined cloak, occupied a large wicker reclining chair placed close to the after skylight, where ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... and the traitorous Indian stood over the windlass, by means of which the rope was worked, and as I ran to their side, one of the Spanish soldiers uttered a cry of alarm. Instantly all was tumult and confusion. Shots were fired at random, men shouted wildly, "We are betrayed!" while, above all, Jose's voice rang ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... position, and it was seen that her dauntless crew were endeavouring to cut away her masts. "It is the only thing they can do to save their lives," observed Hassall, watching them through his glass. "And see,—yes—there is a woman on board—a lady by her dress. She is clinging to the windlass—probably secured to it." As he was speaking, the mizen-mast came down, followed quickly by the mainmast, which happily fell towards the shore. Again a surge covered the vessel. We feared that all on board would ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... The windlass creaked protestingly and the heavy chain dropped slowly into the river. The barge steered to the center of the channel, gathering speed as it passed over the ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... the canyon, among the mass of rotting plant and through the flowering bushes, we came to a great crazy staging, with a wry windlass on the top; and clambering up, we could look into an open shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the mountain, trickling with water, and lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not. In that quiet place the still, far-away tinkle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and that was why they so often came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher, bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... and sturdy addition to the defences of the capital. A collar of bronze was round the throat of each, and on the collar was a massive chain which led to the wall, where it could be payed out or hauled in by means of a windlass in one of the hidden galleries. So that at ordinary moments the two huge beasts could be tethered, one close to either end of the circus, as the litter of bones and other messes showed, leaving free passage-way between the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... all wished to have a hand in building it, and it remains to this day, a solid wall of masonry, the circle being thirty-four feet deep, eight feet wide at the top, and six at the bottom. I floored it over with wood above all, and fixed the windlass and bucket, and there it stands as one of the greatest material blessings which the Lord has given to Aniwa. It rises and falls with the tide, though a third of a mile distant from the sea; and when, after using it, we tasted the pure fresh water on board the Dayspring, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the chandelier is lighted by a long rod, having at the end a wire, to which is attached a piece of ignited sponge soaked in spirits of wine: the chandelier is raised and lowered at pleasure by a three-ton windlass. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... began Mr. Ackerman, "you must remember that paddle wheels had long been used, for both the Egyptians and the Romans had built galleys with oars that moved by a windlass turned by the hands of slaves or by oxen. Later there were smaller boats whose paddle wheels were driven by horses. So you see paddle wheels were nothing new; the world was just waiting for something that would turn them around. After the Marquis of Worcester ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... over fifteen thousand feet in height, Popocatepetl being the loftiest of them all. Parties ascend on horseback to the snow line, and from thence the distance to the summit is accomplished on foot. Some adventurous people make the descent into the crater by means of the bucket and windlass used by the sulphur-gatherers, but the most inquisitive can see all that they desire from the northerly edge of the cone. The expeditions for the ascent are made up at Amecameca. The time necessarily occupied ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... if he should not like her for a wife? To which the slave very readily replied, 'No, this no my wife; this a white woman—this fit wife for you.' This unlucky wit of the negro's, I fancy, hastened its death, for next morning it was found dead under the windlass." ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... "The windlass," commanded Jarvis. "Some of you bring it up. We'll pull 'em down alright, alright! We'll get ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... to have been very productive. Herring and shad were the chief fish caught and when the run came the seine was carried well out into the river in a boat and then hauled up on the shelving beach either by hand or with a windlass operated by horse-power. There were warehouses and vats for curing the fish, a cooper shop and buildings for sheltering the men. The fish were salted down for the use of the family and the slaves, and what surplus remained ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... they once could trust to serve their eager wish, Shall show no more the golden dust that hides in many a dish; And through the dismal mullock-heaps she threads her mournful way Where here and there some gray-beard keeps his windlass-watch to-day; Half-flood no more she looses her reins as once of old To wash the busy sluices and whisper through the gold. She sees no wild-eyed steers above stand spear-horned on the brink; The brumby mobs she used to love come down no more to drink; Where green the grasses used to twine above ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... nine-pounder), and along by a breastwork pierced with embrasures to the important battery on Day Point, at the extreme south-east. Here five thirty-two pounders—and, three hundred yards away to the west, in the great Windlass Battery, no fewer than eleven guns of the same calibre—had grinned defiance at the ships of France. To-day the grass grew on their empty platforms, the nettles sprouted from their angles ... and the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... line, and Nelson and Bowen, with life-lines about them, bent the stubborn end of it around the windlass. It was heavy work, even for two men, on the tumbling, slippery deck, and, that done, they turned, anxiously, to see how the man in the stern of the tug was making out. He was there, back to, bending the thick stubborn bight about the towing bitts with slow, heavy motions. They saw one great sea ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... But where the hanging and foot walls should have been, fragments of clay, iron, and mica-slate showed that the former lie still deeper. My companion proposed a descent into the shaft by bucket and windlass. I declined, greatly distrusting such deserted pits, especially in this region, where they appear unusually liable to foul. Two days afterwards a Kruboy went down and was brought to grass almost insensible from the choke-damp; his hands clenched the rope so tightly ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to the sloop with the first boatload and there Job Howland set him to work passing water-kegs into the hold. He had had no rest in over twenty hours and his whole body ached as the last barrel bumped through the hatch. All the crew were aboard and a knot of swaying bodies turned the windlass to the rhythm of a muttered chanty. The chain creaked and rattled over the bits till the dripping anchor came out of water and was swung inboard. The mainsail and foresail went up with a bang, as a dozen ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... were absolutely motionless. But the heat and the suffocation in this atmosphere became almost insupportable. The men, with bare heads, and jerseys unbuttoned at the neck, were continually going to the cask of fresh water beside the windlass. Nor was there any change when the night came on. If anything, the night was hotter than the evening had been. They waited in silence what might come ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... evidently led to the front. There was no more than a dim light within, but Copplestone could see that the whole place was falling to pieces. And it was all wrapped in a dead silence. Away out on the quay was the rattle of chains, the creaking of a windlass, the voices of men and shrill laughter of women, but in there no sound existed. And Spurge suddenly stopped his stealthy creeping forward and ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... the kind. The pilot at the helm quietly smoked his pipe, thinking of nothing either past, present, or to come; those of his comrades who were not industriously smoking under the hatches were listening with open mouths to Antony Van Corlear, who, seated on the windlass, was relating to them the marvelous history of those myriads of fireflies, that sparkled like gems and spangles upon the dusky robe of night. These, according to tradition, were originally a race of pestilent sempiternous ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... unsuccessful, it would be necessary to bring the ship back to her present moorings. Two more anchors were next carried outside the passage, which was not more than two hundred feet in length. The chains were attached to the windlass, the sailors worked at the hand-spikes, and at four o'clock in the afternoon the Chancellor ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... all were ready to throw in, and start away at a moment's notice. The man in the "crow's-nest", as they call the cask fixed up at the masthead, was looking anxiously out for whales, and the crew were idling about the deck. Tom Lokins was seated on the windlass smoking his pipe, and I was sitting beside him on an empty cask, sharpening ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... twelve, and the workmen left the pits, with the exception of those in charge of the mines. They ascended by means of little tubs hanging by ropes, and were raised by a windlass. It is a terrible sight to see the men soaring up on the little machine, especially when two or three ascend at once; for then one man stands in the centre, while the other two ride on the edge ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... but as the trailing of the buoys materially impeded our progress, and we had the balloon abundantly at command, either for ascent or descent, we first threw out fifty pounds of ballast, and then wound up (by means of a windlass) so much of the rope as brought it quite clear of the sea. We perceived the effect of this manoeuvre immediately, in a vastly increased rate of progress; and, as the gale freshened, we flew with a velocity nearly inconceivable; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... way, but the captain saw the crash coming, and lashed himself to the windlass, where, drenched and half drowned, he was torn at by the waves which were hurled over the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... was spent in getting out planks and lining the proposed shaft, which was made much smaller than the hole already dug, which extended over the whole of the two claims. The next day a windlass was put in position, and the work began in earnest. At the depth of twenty feet they came upon gravel, a result which greatly raised their spirits, as its character was precisely similar to that in the bed of the stream, and showed that Frank's conjecture was a correct ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... deck of the Swan, the boat was hoisted in, and the men began to heave round the windlass. As soon as the anchor was up, the sails were sheeted home; and the Swan, yielding to the light breeze off the land, began to make her way through the water. Roger, from the poop, waved his cap in reply to the signals of farewell from shore; and then, running down into the waist, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... to be seen. Neither was MacDonald. There seemed to be no one. The day shift were going back in the tunnels below. The windlass handle hung prone as a disused well. It had not flown back broken. The cable had been cut. Then, he heard a groan. It was Calamity lying on her face at the foot of the windlass, weeping and reaving her hair. Stretched on the grass a few paces back from the windlass with two bloody bullet holes ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Joe, there will not," answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... We were at the windlass heaving up the anchor, at the time, and had just struck up a sailor's chanty, which made a good deal of noise, but nothing seemed to disturb Granfa. He slumbered peacefuly through all the rattle of chains, and shouting of commands, so, somewhat subdued, we decided there was ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... hulk we also brought a great number of bolts and other iron-work, a companion ladder, windlass, pump, bowsprit bits, bell, a torn jib, a quantity of cordage, and whatever else we could lay our hands upon, that might have the most remote chance of being of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... cut the dyke in the new shaft at a shallower depth than Dick's Mount of Gold drive, and here Harry expended those turbulent emotions that welled within him, working furiously. Whether handling pick or shovel, toiling at the windlass, or ringing the heavy hammer on the drill, he wrought with a feverish energy that amazed his mates, who ascribed it all to an excusable but rather insane anxiety to test the value of their mine in the mill. For their part they were very well satisfied with the golden ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of the gale nearly the whole length of the hempen cable, of 120 fathoms, was veered out, besides the chain-moorings, and, for its preservation, the cable was carefully "served", or wattled, with pieces of canvas round the windlass, and with leather well greased in the hawse-hole, where the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... exclaimed, as he stepped ashore, "it has taken as much out of me as working a windlass for a day. I am blamed if I did not think the hull boat was coming to pieces. I thought it was all over with us for sure, Harry; when she first felt the rope, the water came in right ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... seemed to be at hand, and the familiars already grasped him rudely to hurl him on the rack, when, as if suddenly inspired by a superhuman strength, the young nobleman dashed the men from him; then, with lightning speed, he seized a massive iron bar that was used to move the windlass of the rack, and in another instant, before a saving arm could intervene, the deadly instrument struck down the Count of Arestino at the feet of the grand inquisitor, who started back with a cry of horror! The next moment the marquis was ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was the only feature in the landscape—a small building with a heap of empty bottles in the immediate foreground, and all round it the grim bush, a vista of weird twisted trees and dull grey earth with scanty grass. At the back were a well, a windlass, and a trough for water, round which about a hundred goats were encamped. Hugh sat and smoked, and looked at the prospect. By-and-by out of the bush came two men, a Chinaman and a white man. The Chinaman was like all Chinamen; the white man was a fiery, red-faced, red-bearded, red-nosed little ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... more than an hour the two boys were wandering about the dock-yards of the sea-port town, and deeply engaged in examining the complicated rigging of the ships. While thus occupied, the clanking of a windlass and the merry "Yo heave O! and away she goes," of ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in shape, and of a dark red-brown color. Will thought them stumpy and heavy-looking; and he did not admire the red sails with crooked gaffs, and smiled at the blue pennants, stretched out on stiff frames that turned with the wind. But when Greta showed him a tiny windlass on the deck, by means of which she easily raised and lowered the mast, he came to the conclusion that a Dutch canal-boat was not to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... shoulders the sailor led them forwards, and as they went she noted that men were hauling on a sail, while other men, who sang a strange, wild song, worked on what seemed to be a windlass. Now they reached a cabin, and entered it, the door being shut behind them. In the cabin a man sat at a table with a lamp hanging over his head. He rose and turned towards them, bowing, and Margaret saw ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... material on fire, from a groove or half-tube to a distance of a quarter of a mile. The propelling force, in default of gunpowder or other explosive, is the recoil of strings of gut or hair which have been tightened by a windlass. There is also the heavier "hurler," which works in much the same manner, but which, instead of arrows, throws stones and beams of from 14 pounds to half a hundredweight, doing effective damage up to a distance of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 25, 1805] 25th of February Monday 1805 we fixed a Windlass and Drew up the two Perogues on the upper bank and attempted the Boat, but the Roap which we bade made of Elk Skins proved too weak & broke Several times night Comeing on obliged us to leave her in a Situation but little advanced- we were Visited by the Black ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... were heard on all sides. The deep-toned chorus of the sailor, the creaking of the capstan, and the clanking of the iron cogs; the "heave-ho!" at the windlass, and the grating of the huge anchor-chain, as link after link rasped through the rusty ring—sounds that warned us to make ready ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... its windlass of hard teak charred but otherwise uninjured. It was a different case with the rope. The fibre had smouldered badly; it would be unwise to attempt to raise ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... when new squads of prisoners arrived, supplied them with bread and water as they halted in front of her house, which they were compelled to do for hours, waiting the routine of being mustered into the prison. They were not allowed to leave their ranks, and she would turn an old-fashioned windlass herself for hours, raising water from her well; for the prisoners were often twenty-four to forty-eight hours on the railroad without rations ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... were produced. The prize fell to Tim, and he leaned against the windlass and slowly poured the ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... clang of the bucket against the stones, the rumble of the windlass, and then Dilly came in with a brimming bright tin dipper. She offered it first to the parson, and though she refilled it scrupulously for each pair of lips, it seemed a holy loving-cup. They sat there in the darkening room, and Dilly "stepped round" ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... the Retriever. With a hammer he knocked out the stopper; the starboard anchor dropped and the red rust flew from her hawsepipe as the anchor chain screamed through it. With his hand on the compressor of the windlass, Matt Peasley snubbed her gently to the forty-five fathom shackle, cast off his jib halyards to let the jib slide down the stay by its own weight, raced aft, and gently lowered the spanker as the American barkentine ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... across the river Plies the little mercy-craft, While from ambushed gun and quiver On it falls the fatal shaft. Trembling from the burning village, Still the terror-stricken fly, For the Indians' love of pillage Stays the bloody tragedy. At the windlass-bar bare-headed— Bare his brawny arms and throat— Brave and ready—grim and steady, Mauley ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... had done in stationary chassis assembling was an average of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experiment of drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers traveled with the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along the line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we elevated the assembly ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... a few turns on the windlass, and as the bag came up, two terrapin of the then common diamond-back variety rolled on ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... wheel is propelled horizontally by a lever worked by a horse. The primary gear impels a pinion keyed to the shaft of a windlass, upon which is wound the elevating rope, whenever the clutch, A, is made to operate through the cord and lever, B. This cord runs over a pulley on the under side the wood framework at C, and its further end may be held in the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Rimrock Jones, the follower after big dreams, sat silent, balancing the sack of ore in a bronzed and rock-scarred hand. He was a powerful man, with the broad, square-set shoulders that come from much swinging of a double jack or cranking at a windlass. The curling beard of youth had covered his hard-bitten face and his head was unconsciously thrust forward, as if he still glimpsed his vision and was eager to follow it further. The crowd settled down and gazed at him curiously, for they knew he had a ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... as an auxiliary, a seventy-horse-power engine was installed. This is a good, strong engine. I ought to know. I paid for it to come out all the way from New York City. Then, on deck, above the engine, is a windlass. It is a magnificent affair. It weighs several hundred pounds and takes up no end of deck-room. You see, it is ridiculous to hoist up anchor by hand-power when there is a seventy-horse-power engine on board. So we installed the windlass, transmitting power to it from ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... before you reach bedrock?" I said, "About 65 or 75 feet." "Well," said he, "by —— you have got more pluck than any man I ever saw." He went on and so did I, and I have not seen him since. It took me about two weeks to get so that I could not throw the dirt to the surface, then I had to make a windlass, get a tub and rope, and hire a man to help me at eight dollars a day, and 50 cents a point for sharpening picks. These things completed and in operation, I was able to make two or three feet per day, and we finally reached the bedrock at a depth of 97 feet. The last two feet in the ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... throughout; scarce a sound proceeding either from the ships inshore, or those out in the offing; not even the rattle of a chain dropping or weighing anchor, the chant of a night-watch at the windlass, or the song of jovial tar entertaining his messmates as they sit ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... to see me about that windlass?" he remarked. "But first," he added, as Drew was about to reply, "won't ye have ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... of the running gear, and the halliards had been severed and lay on the deck, ready to be taken on shore with the other loot littered about, though the sail itself had not been damaged. The jib and staysail, also, I could not hoist: they were lying in a heap on the windlass with a dead nigger on top, and, further aft, were another two of the gentry, one dead and one with a smashed thigh bone. I slung the wounded man overboard to the sharks, and then began to consider what was best to do. The niggers, I felt certain, would not tackle the cutter again, when ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... East Indiaman. No pains were spared to picture the tempest and its most striking effects. The clouds were movable, painted upon a canvas of vast size, and rising diagonally by means of a winding machine. The artist excelled in his treatment of clouds, and by regulating the action of his windlass he could direct their movements, now permitting them to rise slowly from the horizon and sail obliquely across the heavens and now driving them swiftly along according to their supposed density and the power ascribed to the wind. The lightning quivered through transparent places ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of the junk, beside the cumbersome rudder windlass, leaning nonchalantly against the great carved rail, were Captain Nathan Falk and Chief Mate Kipping. That the slow craft could not cross our bows, they saw as well as we. Indeed, I question if they cared a farthing whether they sighted ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... come to an end finally, and at last the sun shone, the windlass clanked and we were underway. The long delay seemed to have broken our little schooner's spirits, for after being out three or four hours we had gone but as many miles, and ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... its immense platform, its enormous oval wrought-iron receiver, which a rope running on a pulley firmly fixed in the ceiling easily raised and lowered by means of a windlass—all these thousand and one contrivances which I had so laboriously prepared in spite of the railleries of those who envied me, and which I felt desolate at seeing unemployed, were going to find their use! Unexpected circumstances had arisen at last to procure ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... altitude of two thousand feet the observer 'phoned down to the men at the windlass to stop. A stiff wind was blowing, but the "sausage" behaved itself well until, as the observation officer turned to Dennis with a cheery laugh, something passed screaming ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... than he had before conceived. He was invited to get into a rough square bucket, in which there was just room for himself and another to stand; he was specially cautioned to keep his head straight, and his hands and elbows from protruding, and then the windlass began to turn, and the upper world, the sunlight, and all humanity receded from ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... They carried me on their broad shoulders, stuffed me with lollies and made a general pet of me. Without the quiver of a nerve I swung down their deepest shafts in the big bucket on the end of a rope attached to a rough windlass, which brought up the miners and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sudden flying-out of an anchor; and a marine of the Fury suffered in a similar manner when working at the capstan; but, providentially, they all escaped with severe contusions. A more serious accident occurred in the breaking of the spindle of the Fury’s windlass, depriving her of the use of the windlass-end during the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... said, "cannot a gentleman ask me to dinner, or cannot I ask myself, without you putting your spoke in the windlass, you vagabond?" ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... from other kinds of comedy—(1) in having no proper plot; (2) in not being presented primarily on the stage; (3) in having but one actor. Eudicos imitated the gestures of boxing; Theodorus the creaking of a windlass; Parmeno did the grunting of a pig to perfection. Any one who raised a laugh by such kinds if imitation was properly said mimum agere. Mimes are thus defined by Diomedes (p. 491, 13 k), sermones cuiuslibet et molus sine reverentia vel ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... mine, however, had paid very well all through. The method of working in deep ground was determined by roadways running north and south. The soil was hauled up to these roadways, and taken to the sorting tables. The roadways decaying shortly after exposure to the atmosphere, a system of hand windlass was adopted, which worked very well for a time until horsewhims were adopted in 1873. The depths of the mines increasing, horsewhims had to give ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... his broad face with the towel, she seized a heavy iron tea-kettle, and carried it to the well, which, surrounded by plantain and dock leaves, was near a corner of the house. She had some little difficulty in managing the windlass, and when the old mossy bucket fell with a dash into the water twenty feet below, it made her start and shiver all over as ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... unnecessary to explain that, with one or two exceptions, the gold in Alaska is obtained by placer-mining. This consists simply in making a shaft to bedrock[80] and then tunnelling in various directions. The pay dirt is hauled out by a small hand-windlass and piled up until it is washed out. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Joseph Ladue, for the following description of the various ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most struck ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... fighting, but when they puts me in charge of this here craft on wheels, with neither spars nor yet oars to work it, and tells me to navigate it, I ain't exactly sure of my soundings. It seems to me that there ought to be a windlass to draw her up. Bust my stays if I can make out how I'm to make ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... house, he had just gone out to draw a pitcher of water. Mammy stopped to get a drink, and John Jay leaned up against the well-shed. The rumbling of the windlass and the fall of the bucket against the water below aroused him somewhat, and by the time he had swallowed half a gourdful of the cold well-water he was ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... from a long cable, formed of two conducting wires, which winds around a windlass with metallic journals which are electrically insulated. These journals communicate, through the intermedium of two friction springs, with the conductors on the one hand and, on the other, with the poles of an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... and Peter had turned in for the night, which was very dark, with the wind off shore. They heard the skipper go on deck, but were soon asleep again. Not long after this they were awakened by the sound of the windlass. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... water in a blue tumbler, brought by the meek wife. The galerie just now was scattered with the husband's appliances for making Perique tobacco into "carats"—the carat-press. Its small, iron-ratcheted, wooden windlass extended along the top rail of the balustrade across one of the galerie's ends. Lines of half-inch grass rope, for wrapping the carats into diminished bulk and solid shape, lay along under foot. Beside one of the doors, in deep hickory baskets, were the parcels ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... they will at least be not a little amused by the apt performance of a docile ass, whose task it is to draw up water from a well 300 feet deep! This office he performs by treading rapidly inside of an immense windlass-wheel (15-1/2 feet in diameter,) whereby he gives it the necessary rotatory motion. The natural longevity of these patient laborers is here exemplified by the instances on record; one done the duty for above 50 years, another 40, ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... on deck, the mate stretched me out on the windlass and commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on the windlass, I might have been taken for a sailor with the gout. While this was ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... streaks that bothered the eyes like the glare of intermittent flash-lamps; by turns granting us the vision of a sick sun that leered and fled, or burying all a thousand fathom deep in gulfs of vapours. At no time could we see the trawler though we heard the click of her windlass, the jar of her trawl-beam, and the very flap of the fish on her deck. Forward was Pyecroft with the lead; on the bridge Moorshed pawed a Channel chart; aft sat I, listening to the whole of the British Mercantile Marine (never a keel less) returning to England, and watching ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... sheets hang down from the other side with which the sail is turned to this or that side, according to the direction of the wind. The sail is half the width of the ship, and the mast is large and high. The sail is raised by means of a windlass, which contrivance is used also for a capstan. The rigging is made of reeds and grass, which grow wild. The mast is stepped about two-thirds of the length of the ship nearer the prow, in order that the ship may pitch forward. The foremast is not stationary, being moved to port or starboard, ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... considerable area of soft bottom, under a depth of 2 to 10 feet of water. Many were taken with a boat dredge; more were scooped up with long-handled dip nets of special construction. Finally a wide, flat dredge was made, to be drawn by a windlass on the shore and manipulated by means of poles from a ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... breath; and I thought I read, at the bottom of the water, characters of fire traced upon the letter the queen had touched. Then, scarcely knowing what I was about, and urged on by one of those instinctive impulses which drive men to destruction, I lowered the cord from the windlass of the well to within about three feet of the water, leaving the bucket dangling, at the same time taking infinite pains not to disturb that coveted letter, which was beginning to change its white tint for the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it will be easy for you to train to Falmouth. We will go by Monmouth and then turn back through the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitive coal mines still worked by two men and a boy with a windlass and a pail. Perhaps we will go through Cirencester. I don't know. Perhaps it is better to go straight to Bath. In the very heart of Bath you will find yourselves in just the same world you visited at Pompeii. Bath is Pompeii ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... you have goaded me; he was as merciless as you have been merciless. We were in the shrubbery at the end of the lime-walk. I was seated upon the broken masonry at the mouth of the well. George Talboys was leaning upon the disused windlass, in which the rusty iron spindle rattled loosely whenever he shifted his position. I rose at last, and turned upon him to defy him, as I had determined to defy him at the worst. I told him that if he denounced me to Sir Michael, I would declare him to be a madman or a liar, and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... it a 5 ft. log similarly notched, so making a frame like a large Oxford picture frame. Continue this by piling one set above another till the desired height is attained, and on the top construct a rough platform and erect your windlass. If you have an iron handle and axle I need not tell you how to set up a windlass, but where timber is scarce you may put together the winding appliance described in the chapter headed "Rules ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the Marquesan fashion, and set so closely together that any one would think she was meant for a Greenland whaler. Then there is another thing about her that you will notice, and which makes me feel sure that she was built by a whaleman, and that is the carvings of whales on each end of the windlass barrel, and on every deck stanchion there are the same, although you can hardly see them now—they are so much covered up by yearly coatings of paint for over ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... His mates at the windlass went staggering back from the belch of violently discharged air: it tore the wind-sail to strips, sent stones and gravel flying, loosened planks and props. Their shouts drawing no response, the younger and nimbler ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... ends of the iron pipe. Bore one to fit a nail, which may be held in a small retort clip, and fasten a stout wire crank handle into the other one. Support the neck of the handle by means of a second clip. In this way we easily get a sort of windlass quite ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... the windlass, Early in the morning, we slipped from Plymouth Sound, All for Adventure in the great New Regions, All for Eldorado and to sail the world around! Sing! the red of sun-rise ripples round the bows again. Marchaunt Adventurers, O sing, we're outward bound, All to stuff the sunset in our old ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... stretched between two trees and angling at forty-five degrees. This caught the radiating heat from the fire and flung it down upon the skin. Another man sat on a sled, drawn close to the blaze, mending moccasins. To the right, a heap of frozen gravel and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismal groping for the pay-streak. To the left, four pairs of snowshoes stood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the stamped snow of the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... of screw steamers sounded the death-knell of the shanty. Aboard the steamer there were practically no sails to be manipulated; the donkey-engine and steam winch supplanted the hand-worked windlass and capstan. By the end of the seventies steam had driven the sailing ship from the seas. A number of sailing vessels lingered on through the eighties, but they retained little of the corporate ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... walking a considerable distance, then the horses were left in the shade while we scrambled down the steep hill-side covered with sharp-edged, broken rock, about mid-way down which is the mouth of the cave, yawning like a narrow, open well. Above this a stout windlass has been arranged ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... came this morning in a 'tramp' from South America. One of them, a boa constrictor, got loose and coiled around a windlass. The cook was passing and it caught him. He fainted with fright and the beast squeezed him to death. It's a fine story—lots of amusing and dramatic details. I wrote it for a column and I think they won't cut it. I hope not, anyhow. I ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Persian, who is really a marvellous expert—when he chooses to use his skill—at conveying water where Nature has not provided it. I watched some men making one of these kanats. They had bored a vertical hole about three feet in diameter, over which a wooden windlass had been erected. One man was working at the bottom of the shaft. By means of buckets the superfluous earth was gradually raised up to the surface, and the hole bored further. The earth removed in the excavation ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... leafless olive-tree I saw a group of people kneeling around a newly opened well. I asked a man who was digging beside the dusty path what this might mean. He straightened himself for a moment, wiping the sweat from his brow, and answered, sullenly, "They are worshipping the windlass: how else should they bring water into their fields?" Then he fell furiously to digging again, and I passed on into ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the well there," the Fizzer says as unconcernedly as though he turned on a tap. But the well is old and out of repair, ninety feet deep, with a rickety old wooden windlass; fencing wire for a rope; a bucket that the Fizzer has "seen fit to plug with rag on account of it leaking a bit," and a trough, stuffed with mud at one end by the resourceful Fizzer. Truly the Government is careful for the safety of its servants. Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... shine is; The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the States, each for itself—the moneymakers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the hammering hoofs too late. Two gongs boomed in the rock. The windlass creaked. Five seconds too late Jaimihr gathered up his reins, spurred, wheeled, and shouted to the men behind him. The great gate rose, like the jaws of a hungry monster, and the nine—streaking too fast down far too steep a slide to stop themselves—burst ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... protested, "you'll break your neck some day going down that Bad Step. I really think Hugh should have a windlass at the top and let people down by a rope. Now look alive, Rose, and get your sketch begun; I can see the gentlemen are all impatient to be off. And mind you have Mr. Moore rolling up a cigarette: it ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... down and opened out into the valley. In the olden days the approach to these caverns was not through the house, but through the side of a deep well sunk in the court yard, which communicates through a subterranean passage with this well. Those seeking entrance were let down by a windlass into the well in the court yard, and drawn up by a windlass into this cavern. There was no such accommodation at present, but we were told some enterprising tourists had explored the lower caverns. Pleasant kind of times those old days ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the speed to about twelve knots—not more, or you will tear the windlass out of the barque. Steer straight out between those two bergs, and remember ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... groan. The face of his friend, by torchlight above the wall, had struck him dumb. Now that he spoke, his companions saw, exposed in the field to the view of the nunnery, a white body lying on a framework as on a bier. Near the foot stood a rough sort of windlass. Above, on the crest of the field, where a band of men had begun to scramble at the sentinel's halloo, there sat on a white pony the bright-robed figure of the tall ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... cutting-tackle was then attached. This consisted of an arrangement of pulleys depending from the main-top, with a large blubber-hook at the end thereof. The cutting was commenced at the neck, and the hook attached; then the men hove on the windlass, and while the cutting was continued in a spiral direction round the whale's body, the tackle raised the mass of flesh until it reached the fixed blocks above. This mass, when it could be hauled up no higher, was then cut off, and stowed away under the name of a "blanket-piece." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Yankees, with revolvers and Mexican knives—the garb of 'bouncers' in those days—jumped the second hole of the Britishers, dismantled the windlass, and Godamn'd as fast as the Britishers cursed in the colonial style. The excitement was awful. Commissioner Rede was fetched to settle the dispute. An absurd and unjust regulation was then the law; no party was allowed to have an interest in two ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Commandant Mougin provides the armor with a disk, c, of heavy rolled iron, which contains two symmetrical apertures. This disk is movable around a horizontal axis, and its lower part and its trunnions are protected by the sloping mass of concrete that covers the head of the casemate. A windlass and chain give the disk the motion that brings one of its apertures opposite the embrasure or that closes the latter. When this portion of the disk has suffered too much from the enemy's fire, a simple maneuver ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... and roused the town. Crowds came from Coketown. Rope and windlass were brought and two men were lowered into the pit. The poor fellow was there, alive but terribly injured. A rough bed was made, and so at last the crushed and broken form was brought up to the ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of Rokuro-Kubi can scarcely be indicated by any English rendering. The term rokuro is indifferently used to designate many revolving objects—objects as dissimilar as a pulley, a capstan, a windlass, a turning lathe, and a potter's wheel. Such renderings of Rokuro-Kubi as "Whirling-Neck" and "Rotating-Neck" are unsatisfactory;—for the idea which the term suggests to Japanese fancy is that of a neck which revolves, and lengthens or retracts according to the direction of the revolution.... ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... on my father's wharf—what on the deck of the sloop while he moored his dog to the windlass for a beating—what he flung back while she gathered way—strangely moved Tom Tot, who hearkened, spellbound, until the last words of it (and the last yelp of the dog) were lost in the distance of North Tickle: it impelled the old man (as he has said many ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... pieces of pig iron, etc. An anvil stands in the open, too, and several working stools. From behind the house, jutting out diagonally, a wooden wagon is visible. The left front wheel has been taken off and a windlass supports the axle. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the well, and way down we could hear an awful splashing. Sailor Bill yelled down, "Look out below; stand from under; bucket coming!" With that he loosed the windlass. In a few seconds a spluttering voice from the depths yelled up to ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... to Hell-house Yard this time of night!" said Mr Nixon. "I'd as soon think of going down the pit with the windlass turned by ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... foot on the lower round of the ladder, paused, and slowly ascended a dozen steps. Here he paused again. All at once the whole shaft was filled with the musical vibrations of a woman's song. Seizing the rope that hung idly from the windlass, he half climbed, half swung himself, to ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass slowly removes the front of the altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man: the pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... stood in dense groves about painted funnels, and men swarmed over huge wharves like ants over a crust of bread; up and round the final, great sweeping bend of the river, the Alethea made her sober way, ever with greater slowness; until at length, in the rose glow of a flawless evening, her windlass began to clank like a mad thing and her anchor bit the riverbed, near the left bank, between old Forts Isabelle and Tete de Flandre, frowned upon from the right by the grim pile of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... felt the vine give, as if uncoiling itself from a windlass. Down, down he fell until his feet touched the soggy earth of the island. Still the vine uncoiled; the island crashed into the boulder. Desperately Piang tried to climb the vine, but its slackness offered no resistance. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... glad enough to be quit of him so soon, but I noticed that, as I stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream. On this bird, I deemed, he meant to try his skill ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling, sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some eighty feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lantern at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer, he perceives a small inner inclosure, surrounded by a dwarf fence; an upright stand, with a movable top, sheltering a collection of thermometers; and here and there ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... tillage of wheat, and an interminable woods. In a half hour I rode into the familiar yard; but the place was so ruined that I hardly recognized it. Not a panel of fence remained: the lawn was a great pool of slime; the windlass had been wrenched from the well; a few gashed and expiring soldiers lay motionless beneath the oaks, the fields were littered with the remains of camps, and the old dwelling stood like a haunted thing upon a blighted plain. The idlers, the teamsters, and the tents were gone,—all was silence,—and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... by soaking in the quicksand overnight, we changed our tactics. While we were tying up the steer's tail and legs, McCann secreted his team at a safe distance. Then he took a lariat, lashed the tongue of the wagon to a cottonwood tree, and jacking up a hind wheel, used it as a windlass. When all was ready, we tied the loose end of our cable rope to a spoke, and allowing the rope to coil on the hub, manned the windlass and drew him ashore. When the steer was freed, McCann, having no horse at hand, climbed into the wagon, while the rest ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... occupied after the ill-starred family left it, was destroyed by fire a few years before the time of the picnic excursion. Near the low foundation walls of blackened stone stood the wooden curb surrounding the mouth of a deep well. The old windlass, below which a leaky bucket still swung, was kept in repair by unknown hands. Upon looking for the man whom Eva had discovered, Mrs. Arlington saw leaning upon the curb, in a posture of meditation, a figure which both she and her husband recognized. There ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... becalmed and practically surrounded by a powerful British fleet, by "kedging"—in other words, sending a row-boat out with an anchor, which was dropped as far ahead as the boat could take it, and the ship pulled up to it by means of the windlass. As soon as the British saw him doing this, they tried it too, but Hull managed to get away from them by almost superhuman exertions. He served in the navy for many years after his memorable victory over the Guerriere, but never achieved ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... and hired a sampan boatman to put him aboard a certain vessel whose familiar rigging had quickly caught his eye. Her gaskets were off, her sails unfurled; she was just starting back to the United States. As he came closer, a crowd of sailors sprang upon the forecastle head, and the windlass-bars rose and fell as the anchor was torn from ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London |
