"Middle watch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In the middle watch Williams, the Chief Engineer, reported that his pumps were choked and that as fast as he cleared them they choked again, the water coming into the ship so fast that the stoke-hold plates were submerged and water gaining fast. I ordered the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... his rising up they halted, and when he advanced they made way for his passage down to the tents. He had his gun in his hand but forbore to fire lest there should be Esquimaux in the neighbourhood. During Mr. Wentzel's middle watch the wolves appeared repeatedly on the summit of the hill, and at one time they succeeded in driving a deer over the precipice. The animal was stunned by the fall but, recovering itself, swam across the stream and escaped up the river. I may remark here that at midnight it was tolerably ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... was very quiet. A gentle breeze was blowing, and the sky was of the usual "Trade" character, that is, a dome of dark blue fringed at the horizon with peaceful cumulus clouds, almost motionless. I turned in at four a.m. from the middle watch and, as usual, slept like a babe. Suddenly I started wide awake, a long mournful sound sending a thrill to my very heart. As I listened breathlessly other sounds of the same character but in different tones joined in, human voices monotonously intoning in long drawn-out ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... one go upon deck in the middle watch of a still night, with naught above him but the silent and solemn skies, and naught around and beneath him but an interminable waste of waters, and with the conviction that there is but a plank between ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... up his habit, so he used to fish at night, and all night long, out of the fore-chains; but it so happened that the ship's corporal caught Jack in the middle watch, and reports him ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... see them as the bird sees them, with no spiritual vision, with no self-consciousness, with no power to refer or to interpret. It is sad that so many of those who have marvellous experiences have nothing else; while those who are sensitive and imaginative live circumscribed. What does the middle watch mean to an average seaman? But occasionally the sailor is a Joseph Conrad or a John Masefield. Then the visions of splendour and the glorious voices of nature are seen and heard not only by the eye and the ear, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone, and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a belaying-pin. You don't know, you haven't a guess. How would you like to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your duty to do, and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get a knife ripped into you as you come out of your state-room, or be sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get tripped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... just at break of day that the Spaniards who had to keep the morning watch having woke up, as people generally do at that hour at which they expect to be called, dressed themselves and came on deck, imagining, and very truly, that those of the middle watch had fallen asleep, but little imagining that the deck was in possession of Englishmen. Mesty and the others retreated, to allow them all to come up before they could perceive them, and fortunately this was accomplished. Four men came on the deck, looked round ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... middle watch, the captain came on deck, and took to walking up and down with the second mate. The night was clear, though dark. The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... company, we steered south-south-east, to go round Antonio, and so to Jamaica, (our cruise being out) with our fingers in our mouths, and all of us as green as you please. It happened to be my middle watch, and about three o'clock, when a man upon the forecastle bawls out: "Breakers ahead, and land upon the lee-bow;" I looked out, and it was so sure enough. "Ready about! put the helm down! Helm a lee!" Sir Hyde hearing ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... the Andromeda's seventeenth day at sea had brought the equator very near. At dinner on the previous evening—in honor of the owner's niece fashionable hours were observed for meals—Mr. Watts mentioned, by chance, that the Cross had been very distinct during the middle watch, or, in other words, between midnight and 4 a.m. Iris at once expressed a wish to see it, and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... At sea each man gets four and six hours' rest each alternate night—that is, if he keeps the first watch of the night, 8 to 12 p.m., his resting hours are from 12 to 4. At 4 he has to rise again and scrub decks, whereas if he is in his hammock from 8 to 12, then he keeps the middle watch, returning to his rest at 4. Let us imagine the ship at sea. It is midnight. The bell is struck. Immediately is heard a deep bass voice to and fro the lower deck— "All the starboard watch! Heave out! heave out! heave out! Show a leg! show a leg! All the starboard Watch! Show ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... of the storm was terrible enough, its fierceness did not come to its height till about one o'clock in the middle watch. Long before then the sea had grown mountainous, and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was sickening and affrighting. The heads of the Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with the blue and yellow phosphoric fires ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... had the middle watch that night, and of course I was on deck from midnight until four in the morning. It proved misty most of the watch, and for quite an hour we had a light drizzling rain. The ship, the whole time, was close-hauled, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... chanced to put into port at a place called Bruton, where there is an inn that will compare with most, and the skipper is a wench with a glib tongue and a merry eye. I was drinking a glass of spiced ale, as is my custom about six bells of the middle watch, when I chanced to notice a great lanky carter, who was loading up a waggon in the yard with a cargo o' beer casks. Looking closer it seemed to me that the man's nose, like the beak of a goshawk, and his glinting eyes with the lids only half-reefed, were known to me, but when I overheard him ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle |
