"Windlass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old grade and the cuts indicating the line along which ran the early cars on stones in which grooves were cut for the guidance of the wheels instead of the steel rail and the flange wheel of the present day. These early cars were drawn by mules, after they had been pulled by a windlass up the cliff from the boat landing at Frankfort. The mules and the rock rails were soon replaced by two locomotives and iron rails. One engine brought the train from Frankfort to a point half way, by noon, and after the passengers had eaten dinner at Midway, the other engine took the ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... 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 ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... of the boats were fired with cord wood purchased of the planters and delivered on the bank of the river. All boats plying on the Missouri River at that time were flat bottom with paddle wheel at the stern. Two long heavy poles were carried at the bow and worked with a windlass, being used to raise the bow of the boat when becoming fast on a sand bar. The pilot was obliged to keep a continuous lookout for these bars, as the channel was ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... And she, the friend 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 ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... down many trees for rollers; we dug and graded the beach. Then, having altogether unloaded her and built a high cache of poles and a platform for her stuff, and having chopped the ice from all around her, we rigged a Spanish windlass and wound that boat out of the water with the half-inch cable she carried, and up on the ways and well into the mouth of the little creek. Then we levelled her up and thoroughly braced her and put her canvas cover all over her, and she lay there until ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... old well there,' said the sexton, 'right underneath the belfry; a deep, dark, echoing well. Forty year ago, you had only to let down the bucket till the first knot in the rope was free of the windlass, and you heard it splashing in the cold dull water. By little and little the water fell away, so that in ten year after that, a second knot was made, and you must unwind so much rope, or the bucket swung tight and empty at the end. In ten years' time, the water fell again, and a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... assailants and dashed in at the castle gate. A crowd of their assailants were close upon their heels. Walter glanced round; dashing across the courtyard he ran through some passages into an inner yard, in which, as he knew, was the well. The bucket hung at the windlass. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... our 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 first ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Manuel, who, had given the crew some very acceptable hot cakes for supper, was sitting upon the windlass, earnestly engaged, with his broken English, recounting an adventure he had on the coast of Patagonia, a few years previous, while serving on board a whaleman, to a shipmate who sat at his left. It was one of those incidents which frequently occur ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... 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 and gummy. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... immaterial), privileged above the rest, having "all nights in"—that is, not having to stand watch. The mate, Victor, who is to see many adventures before reaching New York again, was born and bred on shipboard. He was in perfect health, and as strong as a windlass. When he first saw the light and began to give orders, he was at San Francisco on the packet Constitution, the vessel lost in the tempest at Samoa, just before the great naval disaster at the same place in the year of 1889. Garfield, the little lad above ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the head and shove me into the water again. As long as my secrets were my own, I had still something left within me, but now I am quite empty. There is a canvas by an Italian master, showing a scene of torture—a saint whose intestines are being torn out of him and rolled on the axle of a windlass. The martyr is watching himself grow thinner and thinner, while the roll on the axle grows thicker.—Now it seems to me as if you had swelled out since you began to dig in me; and when you leave, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... 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 look so placid ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... pitched into the seething deep. Yard-arms came splintering to the deck. There was a roaring of waters over us, under us, round us—then M. de Radisson, Jean, and I went slithering forward like water-rats caught in a whirlpool. My feet struck against windlass chains. Jean saved himself from washing overboard by cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog and muttering to himself: "To be snuffed out like a candle—no—no—no, my ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... There was a windlass bolted to the rock, with which she drew the skiff beyond the reach of the waves. Nimbly then she climbed the reef till she reached the door of the tower. A few seconds later all the fishermen saw the warm, yellow glare of the light ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... wholly to a species of Unio which abounds over a 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 ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... 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 gates, into the locks. The hatches are already on the after combings, and sailors ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... skates, what'll we have left? Anyhow, the main question is how'll we land Gunterson?" Sternberg persisted. The mind of this large man moved as slowly as a house in a small town being transported from one lot to another by one mule, a rope, and a windlass. McCoy's mind more resembled ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... can be put through without much trouble, I reckon," Perk was assured by the confident one. "I think if you investigate you'll find they've got some sort of winch, a bit like the old-fashioned windlass we used to wind up whenever we pulled the old oaken bucket up from the country well. Let's take a peek ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... a 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 ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... 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 it at random in these songs, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... adventure to the children of Wistaria Terrace. There, any day, you might see a coachman curry-combing his satin-skinned horses, hissing between his teeth by way of encouragement, after the time-honoured custom. Or you might see a load of hay lifted up by a windlass into the loft above the stables. Or you might assist at the washing of a carriage. Sometimes the gate at the farther side of the stable was open, and a gardener would come through with a barrowful of rubbish to add to the accumulation ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... suppose I am going to bring my ropes, my windlass, and set it up, and go down there with my boy and let myself be bitten, perhaps, by your cursed dog for the pleasure of giving it back to you? You should not have ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the crew in sacks and threw them into the sea. Maria, too, took her part in these affairs, and once stabbed to the heart, with her own little dirk, the captain of a Liverpool brig, the Lion, and on another occasion, to indulge her whim, a captain and his two mates were tied up to the windlass while Maria shot them with her pistol. Maria always wore naval uniform, both at sea and when in port; in fact, she entered thoroughly into ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... discoveries of the greatest 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 a pile of planks and unused partitioning, that helps to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... interpretation of the theatre," Shakespeare's work is, for the rank and file of mankind, "a deep well without a wheel or a windlass." It is true that the whole of the spiritual treasures which Shakespeare's dramas hoard will never be disclosed to the mere playgoer, but "a large, a very large, proportion of that indefinite all" may be revealed to him on the stage, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the forest fell on her, mournful like a winding sheet. The bushes of the bank tapped their twigs on the bluff of her bows, and a pendent spike of tiny brown blossoms swung to and fro over the ruins of her windlass. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... minute before he heard that peculiar sound of heavy blocks working, cheep, cheep, cheep. He made out clearly the tall pointed lateen sails of the felucca rising from her decks, and then the sound of the windlass working reached his ears; while a breeze, not felt below and every moment increasing, fanned his cheeks. He hurried back as fast as he could to the boat. As he sprang on board, he exclaimed, "The felucca is under weigh, and there's ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the ship, and disappeared further 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 stern of ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... miles of plank road and driving it through the pulsating heart of a colored camp-meeting. The calf had forgotten to remember the well, and while my respected sire was chasing the kettle to the bottom, the calf was chasing him. Half a dozen robust neighbors armed with a windlass and a two-inch rope dragged the youthful ox and his unfortunate companions from the pit, and the volunteer fire brigade was sent for to turn the hose on them. I haven't forgotten the sequel to this little story; but it would not ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... at the well. It was an old-fashioned open one, with a chain and windlass. Aunt Lucy was peering anxiously down its mouth, from which a ladder was sticking. Just as I got there Gussie emerged from its depths with a triumphant face. Her skirt was muddy and draggled, her hair had tumbled down, and she held a dripping ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 that moments are ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... description of the mechanical equipment of this era we are largely indebted to Agricola. He classifies hauling machines into four types; the ordinary bucket windlass, the piston (suction) pump, the chain of dippers, and the rag and chain pump. Although the first three had been known in antiquity, and the last perhaps a century before his time,[6] their use in mining would appear to date from the mid-14th century or later. His is not an historical ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf
... metal edges, to a loutish youth in a ragged shirt and bare legs. The cabin, partly covered, was filled with bagged bales; a small space had been left for the steersman, and forward the deck was littered with untidy ropes and swab, windlass bar ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... figure, by the wheel, with his face darkened and roughened by cold and stinging brine. There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the windlass, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-grey sea opened up beyond them beneath the dripping jibs. Then the bows would go down again, and all that was visible was the fore-shortened slope of deck and the breast of the big undulation that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been for the windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its monotonous dead level. And, when ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 they ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of meeting various acquaintances here in camp—the friends to whom he had said he was going that day to the "See Saw" property, far over the Mahogany range, near the Indian reservation. He determined to go. Perhaps the shack and the shaft-house on the claim, with the windlass and tools included by Briggs in the bill of sale, might ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the Rack. 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 ankles, ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... 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 ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... at 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... factory at the princely salary of fifty cents a week. His business was to lower great packages of boxes from the upper story to the ground floor. He thought how delightful it would be to go down himself on the rope. One day he induced a small boy who worked near, pasting, to mind the windlass while he descended by hanging on above the usual pits of boxes. The sensation was novel and pleasing and it became exciting when the boy above leaned over and shouted: "The boss is coming, look out for yourself. I'll have to go." An instant later ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... gigantic rabbit burrow, with hundreds of tents and huts dotted about among the heaps of rubbish; dark evergreen forests in the distance, and, above all, the great volcanic mountain of Buninyong towering far aloft—these are the "Black Hills of Ballarat;" and that windlass at that shaft's mouth belongs ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... tail of murky smoke, was a beautiful little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where you perceive that red glare—the flame of a smelting furnace—there was an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse stood, on that rocky point, they have got a crane and a windlass. Now, turn to this other side. The road you saw to-day, crossed with four main lines, cut up, almost impassable between mud, rubbish, and fallen timber, with swampy excavations on one side and brick-fields on the other, led—ay, and not four years ago—along ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... 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 prospects, and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... 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 camp ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... Both should have long black hair flowing over the shoulders. The canoe should move very slow, and should be seen in motion when the curtain rises; and to have it move in a steady manner, the ropes should be attached to a windlass below the stage. The scene must be illuminated by a green fire burned at the side of the stage opposite the entrance of the canoe. Music ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... around as one gets nearer and nearer the bays and cliffs of this lonely island; and now one hears the sound of breakers on the rocks. Hamish and his men are on the alert. The topsail has been lowered. The heavy cable of the anchor lies ready by the windlass. And then, as the Umpire glides into smooth water, and her head is brought round to the light breeze, away goes the anchor with a rattle that awakes a thousand echoes; and all the startled birds among the rocks are calling through the night—the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... brow, The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound, And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round; All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare, Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... me on," Shorty complained, when, at the end of an hour, he surveyed the result of their toil—a windlass in the corner of the cabin, with an endless rope ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... now the fatal moment 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 again powerless and secure ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... work all day blasting and digging, and d—ning one of our new claims—"Dashaway"—which I don't think a great deal of, but which I am willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12 a feet. We are following down under the ledge, but not taking it out. If we get up a windlass to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and see whether it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the aforesaid chamber, and wound up at the other end by a four lever windlass, worked ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... sounds 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 who ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... me, my thoughts touched upon other happenings of that boyhood voyage—the long, tedious beat through the straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward to visit me ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but actually was raised every evening and lowered every morning. By thus renewing the custom of the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... meaning 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 ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... lightly on the other side, and open it. He steered the financier gingerly round the planes, past the propelling and steering fans, and got him into the car. He set him well forward in the bows of it, and began to let the rope unwind from the windlass which moored the flying-machine. All the while he heard the steady snores of Herr Schlugst, sleeping ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... polishing 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 if she ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... as it was, I was sorely bruised by the fall, and didn't recover myself for full ten minutes after. Then I discovered that I was sitting in a large wooden trough, hooped with iron, and supported by two heavy chains that passed over a windlass, about ten feet ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the other with a sneer. He drew his moulinet from his girdle, and fixing it to the windlass, he drew back the powerful double cord until it had clicked into the catch. Then from his quiver he drew a short, thick quarrel, which he placed with the utmost care upon the groove. Word had spread of what was going forward, and the rivals ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley— All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... in, and the weather became cold, the water was abandoned, and so the yacht was pulled out upon the stocks by means of a rude windlass. Here, covered with a large canvas, she remained during the long winter months, safe from the driving storms which often raged ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... 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 given ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... ship and shore amuse me. Seeing horses and cattle swimming to and from the vessel, their noses projecting over the sides of rowboats, is interesting. Even trained circus animals are subject to this moist ordeal. By crude tackle and steam-turned windlass, suspended in midair, the poor beasts find ship asylum a most welcome port of entry. One passenger is both amusing and annoying. This odd-geared Teuton hails from Hamburg. Like most stuttering unfortunates, he is a chronic talker. He stutters garrulously in several tongues. There are serious ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... 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 was ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... 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 had made his steam fountain ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... I was a little girl back on the farm in the Souris Valley, I used to water the cattle on Saturday mornings, drawing the water in an icy bucket with a windlass from a fairly deep well. We had one old white ox, called Mike, a patriarchal-looking old sinner, who never had enough, and who always had to be watered first. Usually I gave him what I thought he should have and then took him back to the stable and watered the others. But one day I was feeling real ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... complete rubber suits, hip-boots, rubber coats, and rubber caps. Then they had some queer-looking machines, a windlass, a force pump, grappling ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... or days a dry thing to put on. Captain Fitz Roy gave up the attempt to get westward by the outside coast. In the evening we ran in behind False Cape Horn, and dropped our anchor in forty-seven fathoms, fire flashing from the windlass as the chain rushed round it. How delightful was that still night, after having been so long involved in the din of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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. Slowly the island began to tip, to slide over the falls, and Piang ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... the sides trickled into these runnels and supplied the basins with drinking water. The mangers have holes bored in the stone through which passed the halters. There are indications that the cattle were hauled up by means of a windlass. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... off, through a trampled 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 ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... contrivances, fastened over the head and shoulders, air-tight, and provided with oxygen sufficient to last for an hour or more. The men who wore them sat in a big bucket which was let down the shaft with a windlass, and every now and then they pulled on a signal-cord to let those on the surface know they were alive. When the first of them came back, he reported that there were bodies near the foot of the shaft, but apparently all dead. There was heavy black smoke, indicating a fire ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... ominous-looking bundle, leads the way out of the Schachtmeister's office to another portion of the same building. Here are heaps of dark grey "macadamised" stones;—silver and lead ores just raised from the pit; over whose very mouth we are unknowingly standing. A windlass is in the centre of the chasm; and it is by means of this windlass that the metalliferous substance is raised to the surface in square wooden boxes. Here the dressing of the ores commences; boys cluster in all directions, under the wooden shed, and in oilier sheds beyond ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... washing our heads and faces with it. The machine weighed forty pounds, and might contain about a moderate pail-full; but the pressure of the column of water over it was such, that six sailors with a windlass were hardly able to draw it up. We made an attempt to sink it to a thousand fathoms' depth, but the line broke, and we lost the machine; fortunately, however, we were ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... ground below. Look round; see the immense quantity of heaps, and the extent of ground they cover, almost as far as the eye can reach up the lead, and imagine the busy scene which the place must have presented in the earlier days of the rush, when each of these shafts was fitted with its windlass, and each mound was covered with toiling men. In one place a couple of engine-sheds still remain, a gaunt erection supporting the water-tanks; the poppet-heads towering above all, still fitted with the wheels that helped to bring the gold to the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... sturdy Welshman—Jonas Evans by name—a Methodist of the Lady Huntingdon connexion. The other, Jim Larkins, was Canadian born, the son of a neighbouring farmer. About four o'clock in the morning they emerged from their spruce booth and began hauling with their rude windlass upon the seine, heavily laden ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... into 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 of the water-drops was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the entrance Jose 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, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... 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, the roll was spread ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... the discussion they had that evening around the windlass on this subject. Some held that it was absurd to blame men for not being able, "when p'raps they couldn't if they wor to try." Others thought that they might have tried first before saying that "p'raps they couldn't." One ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... to turn on the next and go. Yet he went not. Under the dusty front windows of the counting-room the street was roaring below. Just beyond a glass partition at his back a great windlass far up under the roof was rumbling with the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through the glass, take a herring from ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... excavated material is hoisted out of the well in buckets made by the Variety Iron Works, of Chicago. For caissons which are not specified to go to rock it is considered more economical to do the hoisting by windlass derricks operated by hand. These derricks have four 66-in. legs and a 36-in. top piece. When the caissons go to rock the hoisting is done by power, so-called "cable set-ups" being used in most cases. To illustrate this method the following account of the foundation work for the Cook ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... reigns 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 squatted around ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 of the two—he was a mere boy, for all his amazing growth ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... silkworm oaks, whose tender shoots and new twigs, of every hue, were allowed to bend and to intertwine in such a way as to form two rows of green fence. Beyond this fence and below the white mound, was a well, by the side of which stood a well-sweep, windlass and such like articles; the ground further down being divided into parcels, and apportioned into fields, which, with the fine vegetables and cabbages in flower, presented, at the first glance, the aspect of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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 ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... herself led him to a rude ladder which admitted to a room above, evidently added, by some Saxon lord, to the old Roman pile. The ladder showed the precaution of one accustomed to sleep in the midst of peril, for, by a kind of windlass in the room, it could be drawn up at the inmate's will, and, so drawn, left below a dark and deep chasm, delving down to the foundations of the house; nevertheless the room itself had all the luxury of the time; the bedstead ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... therefore took with me one of the best of the crew, and carried the end of a rope cable with us up to the mainmast head, and clenched it round the mast, while it was badly springing. We then took the cable to the windlass and hove taut, and thus effectually secured the mast.... We were then drifting directly on shore, where the cliffs were rocky, abrupt, and almost perpendicular, and were perhaps almost 1,000 feet high. At each blast of lightning we could see the surf break, whilst we heard the awful ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... about the matter, not liking to interrupt Tim Rooney, when the boy himself the next instant satisfied my curiosity by going up to the ship's bell, which was suspended in its usual place, under the break of the forecastle, just above and in front of the windlass bits away forward; when, catching hold of a lanyard hanging from the end of the clapper, he struck four sharp raps against the side of the bell, the sound ringing through the air and coming back distinctly to us aft on the poop. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... notches in it 6 ft. apart opposite the ends of the shaft, lay across 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
... 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
... with them. With tight-fitting halters, and the exercise of much-muscle, he was able for a time to make them "gee" and "haw." But not for long. When they outgrew his ability in free-hand drawing, he rigged an upright windlass on each side of his wagon-box, and firmly attached a line to each. When the team was desired to "gee," he deftly wound up the right line on its windlass, and vice versa ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen many a steam-boat aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn-crib; so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and fetched him home with the windlass. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... snakes that 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 need ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... steamer Pioneer, which on three consecutive occasions attacked the Yeh T'an when at its worst, and, though steaming a good fourteen knots, failed to ascend. She was obliged to lay out a long steel-wire hawser, and heave herself over by means of her windlass, the engines working at full speed at the same time. Hard and heavy was the heave, gaining foot by foot, with a tension on the hawser almost to breaking strain in a veritable battle against the dragon of the river. Yet so complete are the changes which ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... uttered 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 ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... this particular pile-driver had not the usual stationary steam-engine accompanying it, the great iron weight which was dropped upon the piles to drive them into the river bed was elevated by means of a windlass and mule power. The weight, once lifted, was released by means of a trigger connected by a cord with a post, where a man driving the mule around could pull it. The ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... wharf, I removed the saddle, and placing a strong rope round his neck, had it attached to the windlass, not to drag him on board, but to make him feel if he refused to advance that he was powerless to resist, an indispensable precaution in breaking horses. Once and once only he attempted escape; he reared and threw himself, but finding the strain irresistible, he yielded ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that what they had done had produced an unfavourable impression upon the crew. Many of the men were friends and admirers of Brace, and, along with him, disapproved altogether of the conduct of the officers, so that in the forecastle and around the windlass there was a good deal of disaffected talk after this event, often spoken loudly enough. Brace, by his behaviour in leaping overboard to the rescue, had gained favour—for true courage always finds admirers whether they be rude or ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... the man replied. "I was at the windlass when they shouted up to me to go up and fetch them a bottle of rum. They had just struck it rich, and wanted a drink on ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... a storm, and so, after weeks of listless waiting, doing nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a very gale of bustle comes on. 'Sail ho!' comes from the lookout aloft. 'One point off our starboard bow!' 'Man the windlass and up anchor!' shouts the officer of the deck, as the strange sail bears down steadily toward us, finally showing signals which tell us she's a friend and brings a mail. The Iroquois steams out ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... so," Bristles hastened to admit, as he cast a quick glance at the almost ropeless wooden windlass; "don't you see the bucket's away down? Whoever it is, Fred, they just can't climb up again. It takes you to get on the inside track ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... 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; ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the cables being entwined round each other. When mooring, unmooring, and as may be necessary, cables are temporarily secured by "slips" shackled to eye or ring bolts in the deck (see ANCHOR). The cable is hove up by either a capstan or windlass (see CAPSTAN) actuated by steam, electricity or manual power. Ships in the British navy usually ride by the compressor, the cable holder being used for checking the cable running out. When a ship has been given the necessary cable, the cable holder ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, an orange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men and boys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundred feet to the platform above with a windlass. As we came along, a handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large block of stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in the rear; and she stopped to look at us. We stopped, and looked at her. This attracted the attention of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Man the windlass, lads!" cried the captain. "Mister Binks, brace round the head-yards, and up with the jib as soon as ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... who in Saigon act as stevedores, appeared to him so lazy, so intolerable. Sometimes he felt as if, seeing or guessing his impatience, they were trying to irritate him by moving the bales with the utmost slowness, and walking with unbearable laziness around with the windlass. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Naturae." Roger Bacon even went to the extent, however, of declaring that man would some time be able to fly. He was even sure that with sufficient pains he could himself construct a flying machine. He did not expect to use explosives for his motor power, however, but thought that a windlass properly arranged, worked by hand, might enable a man to make sufficient movement to carry himself aloft or at least to support himself in the air, if there were enough surface to enable him to use his lifting ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... them freely, and continuing them till he reaches a point where he wishes to bring the water out upon the surface of the plain. Here and there, at the foot of his shafts, he digs wells, from which the fluid can readily be raised by means of a bucket and a windlass; and he thus brings under cultivation a considerable belt of land along the whole line of the kanat, as well as a large tract at its termination. These conduits, on which the cultivation of the plateau ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... to take up the slack of the stern-line on the windlass, sir," he shouted to the skipper, who was walking around on top of the house. "That girl can't haul her ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... sailing on salt water, and I understand 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 ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... woman answered, 'If you fail to draw water out of the well you must fling yourself into it.' For answer Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering it as fast as it would go; then he set both hands to the windlass ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman |
