|
|
|
More "Aft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bridge had been shot away. Her foremost funnel was resting against the second. Her upper deck was so shattered that it could not be crossed, and every man upon it had been killed. An exploding shell had hurled one of the gun-turrets bodily overboard. Fire was raging aft. Her colours had been shot away several times, and hoisted as often. One of the flags was hauled down at about twenty to six, though that at the peak was still flying. She began to fire again with a single ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... the yacht carefully alongside the duck, Sprague twined one foot around the bob-stay, reached over and lifted the bird into the boat. As soon as it was set on deck the duck shook its feathers, gave one defiant waggle of the tail, and paddled aft, remarking: "Quack! quack! qua-a-a-ck!" ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... mice an' men must aft gang," like a balky horse—just opposite to what you want them to. I spoke to my acquaintances in the bar-room easily enough, but when one after one the fellows went up to the door of the ladies' ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends from Carnac to the village of Po. A boat was waiting for us; we entered it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off. Our sailor, an old man with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let his peaceful boat go its own way. There was hardly any wind; the blue sea was calm and the narrow track the rudder ploughed in the waters could be seen for a long time. The old fellow was talkative; ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... consorts three, (The rest had run up the Bay)— There he was, belching flame from his bow, And the steam from his throat's abyss Was a Dragon's maddened hiss— In sooth a most cursed craft!— In a sullen ring at bay By the Middle Ground they lay, Raking us fore and aft. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don Benito's servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his own present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from the effects of his coughing fit, and had ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... "it is too dangerous. You might strike against a rock or be taken by the current. The companion ladder seems to be down on the starboard side. Go aft to it, I will row round the ship and meet ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... and I wake aft,' It's lang since sleeping was fley'd frae me; Gie my service back to my wife and bairns, And a' gude fellows that spier ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... market with a dusty coat, for visiting the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors, for saying things he ought n't when he does speak—till the long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation, 'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's little better than a threshing-mill.' His confusion, however, is neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a round ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... time for peaceful meditation," said the captain; "you git aft and keep a sharp eye abeam, and if you see any boat creepin' through the fog, even if it's an innercent looking fishin' boat, you report it ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... a vast burning-glass; wherefore it was expedient for the two pajama-clad passengers to keep well within the shelter of the bridge-deck awning. Toward sunset, a dense black wall of cloud settled upon the western horizon, aft of us. But suddenly, just at the moment the sun must have been descending below the horizon to the south of it, the black wall of cloud slowly parted, and the opening so made widened until it became an enormous oval, reaching ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... sent on shore with the two boys, and Doyle's native friends clambered up on board from any accessible part of the ship. The beachcomber himself, a wild-looking, dark-skinned ruffian, who had clothed himself in a shirt and trousers, now came aft and again assured the captain that he need feel no alarm at the great number of naked savages who now thronged the deck, from the windlass right aft to the wheel. Perhaps, however, the villain had some feeling of humanity in his vile heart, for seeing the terrified ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... great strength and bulk of frame, weighing fourteen stones; she fell from the pier into the water. Our packet had just arrived from New Holland, and I was forward making the ... rope fast, when our engineer called out 'Jack, Jack, there is a woman overboard.' He ran aft as fast as he could, and when he got there, he saw me overboard. He often used to say, 'I don't know how that little fellow got past me, for I ran as fast as I could, and yet when I got there he was overboard.' I seized this woman with a firm grip, and bore ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... Francisco in the quest. For of course each outgoing ship must be searched. One day I had word that a "windjammer" was about to sail; and racing out to Balboa I was soon set aboard the fore and aft schooner Meteor far out in the bay. When I plunged down into the cabin the peeled-headed German captain was seated at a table before a heap of "Spig" dollars, paying off his black shore hands. He solemnly ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of the awning over the deck, it swept fore and aft like a billow, creating such heat that the spectators were forced to retreat to a still safer distance. From the awning it licked round the masts, climbed them, caught the ropes and flew up them, sweeping out upon the yards to their extreme ends, so that, in a few minutes, the ship was ablaze ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... under our lee, and Conolly being ordered to challenge her in English, the collector, standing up in the stern, touched his hat, and announced his rank. The gangway-ladder was immediately lowered, and three gentlemen ascended the ship's side and walked aft to the poop. I was standing near the bulwark at the time, watching the scene with intense interest. As General Humbert stood a little in advance of the rest, the collector, probably taking him for the captain, addressed him with some courteous expression ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... with a lilac dove This Corsair desperate and daft? Behold the conning tower above The big stern chasers pointing aft! This is not he that saved mankind With pards and pigs from tempests blind, But rather he that forged a flood, And not of water but of blood, And filled with worse than wolves his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... down when we bring the wind farther aft. In the meanwhile, you'd better get your breakfast, and if you come out again, put on one of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... given for all passengers to go aft; and while the lads were wondering what they were so peremptorily sent astern for, they saw two tall spars that had been carried upright at the bow of the boat rigged into the shape of a V upside down, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... sir," struck in Davy, "Maister Trahvers gied me my mait, an' I tuik it, 'cause I hed no sil'er to buy ony: I houp it wasna stealin', sir. An' gien ye wad keep me, ye cud tak it aft o' my wauges ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... went on deck at sunrise he found Helen standing there with Lilian—with Lilian, who, after her day's illness, looked strangely wan and worn, looked like the feeble shadow of the other with her rich carnations, her glowing eyes, her picturesque outlines. Reyburn went aft and took Lilian's hand. "You have been so ill!" he said; and then he looked up and saw again this splendid creature, loosely clad in white, her black hair, unbraided and unbound, flowing in wave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Well, stationed aft where their lordships keep,— Seldom going forward excepting to sleep,— I, boozing now on by-gone years, My betters recall along with my peers. Recall them? Wife, but I see them plain: Alive, alert, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... man from the Orkneys who had been with Jarl Sigurd came aft to us, and stood at the break of the deck to ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... the very day fixed for departure, and the big galleys swept out one by one, close upon each other, till they were outside and hoisted their sails, the sea being very smooth under the land; and when they had run out two or three miles, with the wind aft, they wore ship, one after another, coming to a little, to get their sheets in, and then holding off to jibe the great sails for the port tack, with much creaking of yards and flapping of canvas. Then, as they ran free along the coast to the eastward, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... wandered in and out between the voices of the men and women; and at last a wild mellow tenor, which we discovered after much searching to proceed from the most unlikely-looking lips of an old dry, weather-bleared, mummified chrysalis of a man, who stood aft, steering with his legs, and showing no sign of life except when he slowly and solemnly ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon, To see the rose and woodbine twine; And ilka bird sang o' its luve, And, fondly, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the middle of the night that Bob, working his way aft to get a drink of water from one of the casks, stumbled over part of the sail that was folded in the bottom of the gig. He put out his hands, instinctively, to save himself, but, as there was nothing to cling to, he ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... been keeping out of the way during Miss Trevor's presence on deck—came aft, Leslie gave over the charge of the brig ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... paddles caught her ear, and a steamer blundered past, wallowing clumsily among the waves like a tortoise. It was the Swallow from London. She could see some of its passengers leaning curiously over the aft-rail. A girl in a mackintosh signalled to her, and mechanically she answered the salute with her arm. The officer of the bridge of the Swallow hailed the yacht, but the man at the wheel offered ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... ha'e ye roos'd my rosy cheek, Aft praised my sparkling e'e, laddie, Aft said nae bliss on earth ye'd seek, But love and live wi' me, laddie. But soon those cheeks will lose their red, Those eyes in endless sleep be hid, And 'neath the turf the heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... laziest hour of the afternoon dragging a squeaking cart up and down the wooden deck, to the annoyance of everyone except the fond mother, who encourages it as a sign of genius! Odd one never can travel without at least one child of that sort on board. There's a nice alcove aft behind the smoking-room where we ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... are the Waisters, always stationed on the gun-deck. These haul aft the fore and main-sheets, besides being subject to ignoble duties; attending to the drainage and sewerage below hatches. These fellows are all Jimmy Duxes—sorry chaps, who never put foot in ratlin, or venture above the bulwarks. Inveterate "sons of farmers," ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... aft as she fired her questions at me, and he stood near Miss Edith with his dull eyes fixed upon ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... pockets bulging with sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat like a reflector, and a varnished wand. A goodly steamer guarded my one flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her, illustrative of the Dromedary and patriotism. My other flank was covered by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots persuasion, rosetted like his superior and smoking a cigar to mark the occasion festive. At half-past, having assured myself that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his mission with flattering allusions to the whaleback and the novelty of the construction. The mate—an old man with a patriarchal beard—softened at once, asked them into his own cabin aft, and even brought out a camp-stool for Travis, brushing it with his sleeve before ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... right as to the Stars and Stripes," said Captain Knox. "We don't ask too many questions here as to what folks have been before they come aboard the Molly. If you can obey orders and handle a rope, this is the place for you to make your fortune. Go aft, and Derry Duck our first-mate will find something for you to do in short order. He knows how to take the stiffness out ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... place in the runabout car Tom drew forth a wheel-jack. This he and Dave fitted under an axle, raising the wheel half aft inch off the ground. Dick rapidly remove the tire from that ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... open deck, forward of the bridge, where, as well as aft, the vessel, like many of a bygone type was cut away, leaving the forward and after railings of the promenade-deck, like the barriers of a balcony, for the first-cabin passengers to peer across at ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... crew inside the ship would investigate. Fate was offering the desperate men on the outside another chance. He turned and beckoned to the others and hurried aft toward the regular air-lock, which was operated only from inside the ship. Hastily he placed the men about the ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... o'clock the wind with sudden shift Threw the ship right into the trough of the sea, Which struck her aft, and made an awkward rift, Started the stern-post, also shatter'd the Whole of her stern-frame, and, ere she could lift Herself from out her present jeopardy, The rudder tore away: 't was time to sound The pumps, and there were ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... steamer's side they found a monkey-ladder dangling close above them, and up this the two men crept stealthily. Once on deck they hastened aft to where the Russian pointed ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... noise always considered necessary in those ships when calling the watch, roused me effectively at midnight, "eight bells." I hurried on deck, fully aware that no leisurely ten minutes would be allowed here. "Lay aft the watch," saluted me as I emerged into the keen strong air, quickening my pace according to where the mate stood waiting to muster his men. As soon as he saw me, he said, "Can you steer?" in a mocking tone; but when I quietly ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... quarter-deck, and then the cry: 'Child overboard!' There was but one child, the captain's, aboard. I was sitting just aft the foremast, herring-boning a split in a spare jib. I sprang to the bulwark, and there, sure enough, was the child, going fast astarn, but pretty high in the water. How it happened I can't think to this day, sir, but I suppose ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... side; and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind, fell headlong between the beams to the maindeck below to be slaughtered helpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire from the bulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing on the gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop and forecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and arrows. The fire of the English was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... on deck. He was clinging to a cleat in the rail with a landsman's awkwardness and with the cunning object of proving to the ship that he wasn't to be surprised off his feet another time. He swayed grandly, generously, for'ard and aft, like a metronome set at a large, sweeping rhythm. Every billow shot a flood from stern to bow, and swished past his boots, but he was heedless of that. His head was thrown back, a head of stubborn black curling tufts, and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... was elevated, and an outrageous desire possessed him. His countenance slowly turned hotly red, and slowly a faint tide of color stained Rosemary Roselle's cheeks. She looked away; Elim looked away. He proceeded aft and learned that Bramant's Wharf lay only ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dirty, and the carpet was plentifully sprinkled with tobacco- juice. The captain was very much flustered with his unusually large living cargo, but he was a good-hearted man, and very careful, having, to use his own phrase, "climbed in at the hawse-holes, and worked his way aft, instead of creeping in at the cabin window with his gloves on." The stewards were dirty, and the stewardess too smart to attend to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... following night, I stood my first watch. I remained awake nearly all the first part of the night from fear that I might not hear when I was called; and when I went on deck, so great were my ideas of the importance of my trust, that I walked regularly fore and aft the whole length of the vessel, looking out over the bows and taffrail at each turn, and was not a little surprised at the coolness of the old seaman whom I called to take my place, in stowing himself snugly away under the long-boat for a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... supper—a very short colloquy with his Olimpia. In it he was brought to confess that he had seen his patron that morning. "Well?" had been Olimpia's commentary—a shot which raked the Captain fore and aft. Well, he desperately admitted, there was nothing actually arranged: patienza! His most noble master had been greatly harassed with affairs—the Duke's approaching visit to Rome, the precise forms which must be observed, the punctilios, the hundred niceties of etiquette; "Ah, patienza!" ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her—pink roses by the thousands. They circled her rail like a monster wreath. They hung down from her yardarms, too, in mammoth festoons. And her cargo—forward, it was of watermelons, which were arranged in a huge heap at the prow; aft, her load was books! There were books in red bindings, and books in brown and green. Here and there on the piles of volumes a book would be open, showing attractive illustrations. To judge of the size of the consignment it was evident ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... at the wheel; the captain, lashed aft, was yelling out orders which no one could understand, or, understanding, obey. The night, as yet, was not particularly dark, and I shivered at sight of the white, scared faces of the crew. They could do nothing more; ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... say where he picked up this notion of his about the dead body," continued the captain. "It's not my place to pry into secrets; but I advise you to call the crew aft, and contradict the boy, whether he speaks the truth or not. The men are a parcel of fools who believe in ghosts, and all the rest of it. Some of them say they would never have signed our articles if they had known they were ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... tae, aft I saw Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa Gang gesterin' end to end the ha' In weeg an' goon, To crack o' what ye wull but ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was pointed due westward; and to hinder the craft from veering round, or luffing back into the eye of the wind, her builders had constructed a steering apparatus at the stern. It was simply a very large oar,—one that had appertained to the longboat of the Pandora,—placed fore and aft across the swell of the stern water-cask. It was held in that position by ropes attaching it to the cask, at the same time that they permitted it to play through the water, and perform the office of a rudder. By means of this simple contrivance,—which had been rigged ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... west, it was a fair run to the shelter of the home bay. But Margery was laying the course far to the right, though to do it she was holding the catboat cockpit-deep in the smother and taking the chance of a capsize with every recurring gust. Griswold edged his way aft as ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... had. The center line of the pelorus should also be directly over the keel line of the ship. The inner edge of the metallic ring is engraved in degrees—the 0 deg. or 360 deg. and the 180 deg. marks indicating a fore-and-aft line parallel to the keel of the ship. Within this ring a ground glass dial is pivoted. This ground glass dial has painted upon it a compass card divided into points and sub-divisions and into 360 deg.. This dial is capable of being moved around, but can also be clamped to the ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... sarcastically, as she approached, "what's thet ol' sniffler want? Is day aft' t'morrow th' ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... pay no heed to it. And even as their hands leave the gunwale, the girl goes to the mast, and with the skill and ease of long custom hoists the sail, and so making fast the halliard deftly, comes aft again to ship the steering oar, and seat herself as the breeze wakes the ripples at the bow and the land slips away from her. She has gone, and never ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... out the chorussed cry of the crew pulling together at the braces, until the topsails lay like boards almost fore and aft the ship. And yet her head could not be induced to veer a fraction towards the desired point, but rather fell ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Be back this aft," he said, and rode majestically away up the canyon, where he would be out of the way. For men, too, have their instincts and intuitions, and they are even willing to leave alone that which they cannot remedy and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... or cambered, wings, and published the results in a book entitled Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation. In his youth every crow that flew by presented him with a problem to solve in its slowly moving wings. Prolonged study led him to the conclusion that the slight fore-and-aft curvature of the wing was the secret of flying. But he knew too much to suppose that this conclusion solved the problem. A dozen other difficulties, including the difficulty of balance, remained to be mastered. When German societies for the advancement of aerial navigation began to be formed, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Dalzell, wearing his sword and pulling on his white gloves as he came, appeared, walking aft. There was time only for a smiling nod, for Dave suddenly remembered, with a start that it was time for him to report for ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... misadventure, he shook himself and laughed a sober, contented laugh, found a handkerchief and mopped his face with it, then, with a final approving survey of the lowering and belligerent canopy of wind-cloud that overhung the tortured ocean, permitted himself to be blown aft to the door of the first-cabin smoking-room. Opening this by main strength, he entered. The gale saved him ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... There was no longer the short tug and lurch as she pulled at her painter and fell back; there was no longer the tide sound about the gaunt piles of the wharf. Kirk, a little apprehensive, stumbled aft and felt for the stern-line. It gave in his hand, and the slack, wet length of it flew suddenly aboard, smacking his face with its cold and slimy end. He knew, then, what had happened, but he felt sure that the boat must ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... seen, but the whole was cut away as if done with a blunt-edged tool." A piece of the rock was found wedged in the hole, and had greatly assisted in arresting the influx of water. The sheathing and false keel were very badly damaged, but it was believed that she was not much injured aft, as she made but little water when once the main ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... with Miss Wingate beside her, sat sewing away the early hours of the morning. A tiny blue-check shirt was taking shape under Mother's skilful fingers, and the singer lady was deep in the mysteries of the fore and aft of a minute pair of jeans trousers. The limitations of young Ez's wardrobe had necessitated the speedy construction of one for the little adopt, and Miss Wingate's education along the lines of needle control was progressing at what she considered a ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a good-lookin' drowsy sort of a place, and kinder mixed up lookin' from the aft forecastle, where I stood; but at last the little foot bridge that connected us with the shore wuz took up, the old boat gin a loud yell to skair the children and young folks back from the water's edge, and the boat riders ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... a spade, Captain. You mean he got red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They deserved it too—a pack of incapables. But what would you expect of a committee of men? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh weren't no nearer having a church than when they begun—not so near, for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... early," observed Mr. Whitford, looking in the pilot house from the cabin, just aft of it. "But there is no use waiting around here any more, Tom. They gave us a false ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... to criticism. In our last year the adjutant in my class, who graduated at its head, on the first occasion of forming the battalion, after some moments of visible embarrassment could think of no order more appropriate than "Form your companies fore and aft the pavement." Fore and aft is "lengthwise" of a ship. No humiliation attended such a confession of ignorance—on that subject; but had the same man "missed stays" when in charge of the deck, he would have been sorely mortified. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... squat river boat which had been captured from the Turks took us on board. It burned oil fuel. A single canvas awning with many gaps in it covered the upper deck. The lower deck was nearly taken up by engine and boiler, save for a small saloon aft, and water tanks and a galley forward. Our strength was about 100 men with twenty Indians belonging to the hospital, and there were a few odd details travelling as well and the crowding was considerable. On each side of the steamer ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... that," the officer said, with a smile. "I shall rate you as a first lieutenant and midshipman, all in one; and I may say that I shall be very glad to have a white officer with me. There are one or two spare cabins, aft, and you had better have your traps moved in, at once. I may ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... Twenty-five bags of rice would be coming off in a sampan directly, for stores. All seven-years'-men they were, said Captain MacWhirr, with a camphor-wood chest to every man. The carpenter should be set to work nailing three-inch battens along the deck below, fore and aft, to keep these boxes from shifting in a sea-way. Jukes had better look to it at once. "D'ye hear, Jukes?" This chinaman here was coming with the ship as far as Fu-chau—a sort of interpreter he would be. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... who knew that unless something were done we must be overtaken and killed by these skilled boatmen. Leaving Mavovo to attend to the sail, I scrambled aft, and thrusting aside the fainting Hans, knelt down in the stern of the canoe. There was still one charge, or rather one cap, left, and I meant to use it. I put up the largest flapsight, lifted the little rifle and covered Komba, aiming at the point of his chin. Intombi was not sighted for ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... trade lying at the quayside; at anchor was a barquentine, a big bluff-bellied tramp of a creature, black with coaldust, and beyond her again what was still a rare sight in those parts—a steamer. She was a side-wheeler, with a thin raking funnel, and was square-rigged on her fore-mast, fore-and-aft on her mizzen. A little crowd stood on the end of the quay to stare at her, and it was on her that Ishmael too fixed his eyes; then he scrambled up and made his way diagonally down the cliff to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... "remember one thing. If you was in a ship, fighting that other ship, you wouldn't want just to blaze away at her broadside. No. You'd want to hit her so as your shot would rake all along her decks from the bow aft, or from the stern forrard. You wait a second, Master Jim, till the wind gives her bows a skew towards you, or till her stern swings round more. There she goes. Are you ready? Now, as she comes round; ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... regularly. In crossing the equator we had the usual visit of Neptune and his wife, who, with a large razor and a bucket of soapsuds, came over the sides and shaved some of the greenhorns; but naval etiquette exempted the officers, and Neptune was not permitted to come aft of the mizzen-mast. At last, after sixty days of absolute monotony, the island of Raza, off Rio Janeiro, was descried, and we slowly entered the harbor, passing a fort on our right hand, from which came a hail, in the Portuguese language, from a huge speaking-trumpet, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... though of much greater force than the Buckingham, instead of lying-to for his coming up, made a running fight with her stern-chase, while the two frigates annoyed him in his course, sometimes raking him fore and aft, and sometimes lying on his quarter. At length he came alongside of the Florissant, within pistol shot, and poured in a whole broadside, which did considerable execution. The salutation was returned with equal vivacity, and a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the passengers and John Mangles retired to their cabins. In the forepart of the yacht the man on watch was pacing the deck, while aft, there was no one but ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the stern above the cutter, and ordered it to be lowered; and though his officers urgently dissuaded him from so dangerous an attempt, he determined to hazard it. At this moment the ship made a deep plunge aft, the boat was stove, and the captain left in the water. He was much hurt, and bled profusely, for he was dashed violently against the rudder, and his nostril was torn up by the hook of one of the tackles. But his coolness ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... aftermost guns now took a diagonal direction along[138] the decks of the 'Chesapeake,' beating in her stern ports, and sweeping the men from their quarters. The shot from the 'Shannon's' foremost guns, at the same time, entering the 'Chesapeake's' ports from the mainmast aft, did considerable execution." This describes a semi-raking fire, which lasted four minutes, from 5.56 to 6 P.M., when the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Scotia's food: [wholesome] The sowpe their only hawkie does afford, [milk, cow] That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood; [beyond, partition, The dame brings forth in complimental mood, cud] To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell; [well-saved cheese, And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it good; strong] The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell How 'twas a towmond auld sin' lint was i' the bell. [twelve-month, flax, flower] The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face They round the ingle form a circle wide; The sire turns o'er, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... back ter meet the aft'noon train," said Bill Coombs, their driver. "They won't be any more passingers in this direction, tain't likely, 'cause the houses 'roun' here is mighty scattered an' no one's expectin' nobody, as I know of. But in the other direction from Millbank—Sodd Corners way—I ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... we entered the tropics with a temperature of 80 degrees in the water, and 85 degrees in the air, but as the light head airs blew the intense heat of our two smoke stacks aft, we often endured a temperature of 110 degrees. There were quiet, heavy tropical showers, and a general misty dampness, and the Navigator Islands, with their rainbow-tinted coral forests, their fringe of coco palms, and groves of banyan and breadfruit ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Frst Bismarck proceeding from Cherbourg to New York. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of July, the Fox was cast by a tempest upon the reefs of Newfoundland. The two men jumped into the sea, and thanks to the watertight compartments provided with air chambers fore and aft, it was possible for them to right the boat; but the unfortunates lost their provisions and their supply of drinking water. On the 15th they met the Norwegian three masted vessel Cito, which supplied them with food and water. The captains ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... again rung for the artificers to take their stations in their respective boats. Some demur having been evinced on board about the propriety of working on Sunday, which had hitherto been touched upon as delicately as possible, all hands being called aft, the writer, from the quarter-deck, stated generally the nature of the service, expressing his hopes that every man would feel himself called upon to consider the erection of a lighthouse on the Bell Rock, in every point of view, as a work ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... descriptions of this vessel it is mentioned that she was provided with eight anchors, which seems a great many for so small a ship to carry. The other two vessels were much smaller, and were open except for a very short deck aft. They were each provided with three ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and aft sail" of the present day, the "shoulder" is the foremost upper corner, and the last part of the canvass on which the wind fixes its influence when a vessel is "sailing by the wind," or even "off the wind." The "veriest lout" in the "after-guard" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... parritch, chief o' Scotia's food: The soupe their only hawkie does afford, That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood: The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell, An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid; The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... pirates themselves, still surly from having eaten and drunk too well after the fight of the day before, were quarrelsome and tired and lay about in sprawling groups on the deck far below. Looking aft, Chris saw Simon Gosler hobbling from the Captain's cabin, and Osterbridge Hawsey's graceful, overdressed figure outlined in the doorway. On an impulse, Chris flew down to hear what ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the cat-head to run aft.—Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an awful wave on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht, An Hoescheza darzue; O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht, Werst wol a munter Bue. Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub Liess i brav hoazen ein, Do in den Stal kimt ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... culverins and t'others sakers, and yonder astern two basilisks as shall work ye death and destruction at two or three thousand paces; 'bove deck amidships I've divers goodly pieces as minions, falcons and patereros with murderers mounted aft to sweep the waist. For her size she's well armed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... which had been thus named from the pretty gold-fish which shone afore and aft on her prows, was Hendrik Shippe's best boat, and he had entrusted it to the care of Tobias Jeffers, his ablest boatman. There was not a smarter looking craft in Termonde, nor one better fitted for hard work. It was a pleasure to watch her glide along, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... progress of the boat, the bustle in the saloon, which gradually subsided as the evening wore on; and then his slumber grew deeper. Even the frequent whistling which the ever- increasing fog made necessary only caused him, now and then, to turn uneasily in his berth. His stateroom was well aft, and in his drowsy, half-waking moments, he was conscious that the sea was running heavily. He remembered that the wind had been east all day, and that he had seen the danger-signal ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... taking her seat, with very brief greeting, broke out with the exclamation, 'There he is again!' I did not understand what this meant, but it was soon explained to us that, for a week or ten days past, some person, or figure, or whatever it might be, had been observed walking fore and aft, in front of the house opposite the meeting-house, at a certain hour of the evening, and though many had passed, no one had recognized him, nor did he take any notice whatever of any one whom he met. He was said to wear a pea-jacket ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... said Captain Bird, "and you, Captain Burress, clew him up for'ard. You can stay in the bow, Captain Sanderson, and take the sheet-lines. I'll go aft." ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... his mouth when a rocket shot up over the sea and bursting in a cloud of gold-blue sparks, cast a weird, cold light upon rock and reef and all that troubled sea. And as the rocket fell our big carpenter, Seth Barker, standing aft by the ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... river when they got red hot from chopping. Even in those days they had to watch out for forest fires. The axes were hung on long rope handles. Each axeman would march through the timber whirling his axe around him till the hum of it sounded like one of Paul's for-and-aft mosquitoes, and at every step a quarter-section of timber ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... the canvas she was showing, the vessel was traveling fast through the waves, sometimes completely burying her head under a sea; then as she rose again the water rushed aft knee deep, and Jack had as much as he could do to prevent himself being carried off his feet. Fortunately all loose articles had long since been swept overboard, otherwise the risk of a broken limb from their contact ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... I walked aft to the engineers' mess-room, on the upper deck, and found Blair and the two assistants off duty, seated round the table, not eating, but mute, with their elbows on the table and their heads in their hands, looking each other in the face in grim silence. We had made friends on ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... a gondola by moonlight; one singer placed himself forwards and the other aft, and thus proceeded to St. Georgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe, the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... a huge quid of tobacco which had rested for some time in his mouth, walked the deck a few times fore and aft, gaped as if his jaws were about to separate forever, and then disappeared ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... "Aft I have ridden thro' Stirling town, In the wind but and the weet; But I ne'er rade thro' Stirling town Wi' ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... had worked to perfection. The seven men, still unhurt, were well aft, where Hobson joined them the moment he had pressed the button; but now their troubles began. The dingy in which they had hoped to escape had been shot to pieces, and they dared not try to get their ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... sailors were so frightened that they rushed to the fore and thought that their last hour was come. Fortunately the bear could make no further advance, because the noose that was thrown round his neck had fastened in the rudder. A sailor taking courage, now went aft and killed the bear with the stroke of an axe. The skin was sent to Amsterdam. On account of this occurrence the place was ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the cabin steps yesterday morning, vainly endeavouring to explain that he wanted a cup of tea for his sick wife. And when we were coming out of the harbour at Genoa, and it was necessary to order away that boat of music you remember, the chief officer (called 'aft' for the purpose, as 'knowing something of Italian') delivered himself in this explicit and clear Italian to the principal performer—'Now Signora, if you don't sheer off you'll be run down, so you had better trice up that guitar of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... play to watch the men sitting here and there on deck, or talking idly around the forecastle, while Captain Whidden and the chief mate conferred together aft. I was so much taken with it all that I had no eyes for my own people who were there to see me off, until straight out from the crowded wharf there came a young man whom I knew well. His gray eyes, firm lips, square chin, and broad ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... senseless bartender by the ankles and skidded him out on the barroom floor. The man whom Doc Coffin had addressed as Honey (his other name was Hoke) spread his legs and whistled when he glimpsed the three-inch cut running fore and aft along the top of the bartender's skull. Blood from that cut had dribbled and oozed over the major portion of the bartender's face and shirt. For it had been the bartender's luck to hook his chin on the edge of the lowest shelf when he dropped and ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... indications being for fair weather, Captain Rohmer of the Mercury detailed two of his company to bring the find back to this port, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles. The only man available with a knowledge of the fore-and-aft rig was Stewart McCord, the second engineer. A seaman by the name of Bjoernsen was sent with him. McCord arrived this noon, after a very heavy voyage of five days, reporting that Bjoernsen had fallen overboard while shaking ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... broth; and McClintock strode aft, convinced that he was going to have something far more interesting than books ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... of dead calm, then one or two of a very light, favourable breeze, and yesterday we ran 175 miles with the wind right aft. We saw several ships, which signalled us, but we would not answer, as we had our spars down for repairs and looked like a wreck, and fancied it would be a pity to frighten you all with a ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... an alarm of fire on an emigrant ship in mid-ocean when I was going to New Zealand and the women rushed aft with faces as in a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... open sea that twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch— ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that were made prisoners, they all were put abaft, And we with well-arm'd sentinels paraded fore and aft; We pick'd up all the slaughter'd men, and hove them in the deep, Where, full in number fifty, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... was destroyed. From time to time there were other inventions. As the submarine fleet grew the means of communicating with each other while submerged at sea were perfected. Copper plates were fastened fore and aft on the outside of submarines, and it was made possible for wireless messages to be sent through the water at a distance of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... black and brown passengers, fore and aft, there is a graduated and descending scale of terminology: 1. European, that is, brought up in England; 2. Civilised man; 3. African; 4. Man of colour, the 'cullered pussun' of the United States; 5. Negro; 6. Darkey; ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to the summit of a white-crested sea; now she sunk into the yawning trough below; and ever and anon as she dashed onward in spite of all opposition, a mass of water would strike her bows with a clap like that of thunder, and rising over her bulwarks, would deluge her deck fore and aft, and appear as if about to overwhelm her altogether. A portion of the officers and crew stood at their posts on deck, now and then shaking the water from their hats and coats, after they had been covered ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... The men hurried aft to obey, Frank and Jack in the meantime giving their attention to lowering the boats. This done, all leaped in and rowed in the ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... iron, her bottom flat, and her prow sharp and perpendicular. Her iron, wood work, and engines were brought in a sailing ship to the Amoor and there put together. She had two cabins forward and one aft, all below deck. There was a small hold for storing baggage and freight, but the most of the latter was piled on deck. The pilot house was over the forward cabin, and contained a large wheel, two men, and a chart of the river. The rudder was about the size of a barn ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... habit, which she had procured from England. Nay, in this way, on emergencies," he added, "the young ladies from the country used to come to the balls at Annapolis, riding with their hoops arranged 'fore and aft' like lateen sails; and after dancing all night, would ride home again in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Jim his mate were standing aft, speaking to each other. They were apparently talking about him, for they cast their glances towards where he stood looking round ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Olaf had crept cautiously in from the west—a high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and a little dash would avoid. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... see your state wi' theirs compared, And shudder at the niffer; But cast a moment's fair regard, What makes the mighty differ? Discount what scant occasion gave That purity ye pride in, And (what's aft mair than a' the lave) ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... affected by the action of sea air and water, and the remainder with fabric laced to the framework. Windows and port-holes were provided to give light to the crew, and the controls and navigating instruments were placed forward, with the sleeping accommodation aft. The engines were mounted in a power unit structure, separate from the car and connected by wooden gang ways supported by wire cables. A complete electrical installation of two dynamos and batteries for lights, signalling lamps, wireless, telephones, etc., was ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... sir," was the answer, and Drew went aboard, walked aft, and swung himself down the narrow stairs that led ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to worse; the month's rent took all our cash except a dollar or so, an' the sky looked kind o' squally fore an' aft. Well, I set out one mornin'—that identical unlucky mornin'—determined to come back an' toss some pay into Kitty's lap, if I had to sell my jacket for it. I spied a brig unloadin' coal at pier No. 47—how well I remembers it! I hailed the mate, an' offered myself for a coal-heaver. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... this time they heard the sounds of gun spatter far up above, and mounting rapidly they saw two more Fokker scouts trailing after Byers, who not only mounted still higher, but put Pete at the aft machine gun, taking Miss Aida over ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... time," replied the sailor, once more resuming his hat, and moving a pace or two forward. Then addressing two or three men in the starboard gangway in the authoritative tone of command:—"Bear a hand there, my men, and cast off the lashings of that black Ingian, and send him aft, here, to the officer." ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... that the very same year Ricardo—the physical Ricardo—was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small and extremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between two places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most part he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from time to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, not exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept his eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with his familiar devil. Now and then he would ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... of a motor-boat's engine far astern, and was cheered by the prompt conviction that pursuit was on. Therefore, he made haste to get in touch with the Polly's master. He scrambled inboard along the bowsprit and fumbled his way aft over the piles of lumber, obliged to move slowly for fear of pitfalls, Once or twice he shouted, but he received no answer, He perceived three dim figures on the quarter-deck when he arrived there—three men. Captain Candage was ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... he rakes them fore and aft for their gambling and that sort of thing. But they don't mind it much. They swear by him, for he is really a fine fellow. In sickness or in trouble Father Mike is on the spot. But as to influencing their lives, I fear Father Mike is ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... came into view. She had taken refuge in the cabin of Araujo, and the cabin had just been upset by a powerful blow from the third alligator. Minha was flying aft, pursued by the monster, who was not six ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... pointed due westward; and to hinder the craft from veering round, or luffing back into the eye of the wind, her builders had constructed a steering apparatus at the stern. It was simply a very large oar,—one that had appertained to the longboat of the Pandora,—placed fore and aft across the swell of the stern water-cask. It was held in that position by ropes attaching it to the cask, at the same time that they permitted it to play through the water, and perform the office of a rudder. By means of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... must each look back and see for yourselves, in the aft-light cast by later experience, the mountains and fiery ordeals you made for yourselves out of mole-hills in the matter of heart-break. We, whose hair is white, cannot help you, though we have gone before ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Jack, turning at once—for the cinder-sifter had given him a bright idea; and he went right aft to his comrades. By this time the Frenchmen were busy getting ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to their shoulders and the little procession, guarded fore and aft by a policeman, moved through the sinister shadows of Flying Sparrow street to the clearer heights of "The House of the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... It was too dark for me to see whether he made it or not. I stayed on the yacht for some time, not knowing anything better to do—" Hand allowed himself a faint smile—"and at last, after a hunt, I found that extra boat, stowed away aft. It was very small, and it leaked; probably that was why they did not think of using it. But it was better than nothing. I found some putty and a tin bucket, and got food and a lot of other things, though the boat filled so fast that I had to throw most everything out. But I got ashore, as ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... tow-ropes. But tow-ropes were for the endless up-river journey, when a numerous crew strained day after day along the bank, chanting the voyageurs' songs. Now we were light-manned, two half-breeds and two Canadians to handle the oars in time of peril, and Captain Xavier, who stood aft on the cabin roof, leaning against the heavy beam of the long, curved tiller, watching hawklike for snag and eddy and bar. Within the cabin was a great fireplace of stones, where our cooking was done, and bunks set round for the men in cold weather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... itself heard, as it wandered in and out between the voices of the men and women; and at last a wild mellow tenor, which we discovered after much searching to proceed from the most unlikely-looking lips of an old dry, weather-bleared, mummified chrysalis of a man, who stood aft, steering with his legs, and showing no sign of life except when he slowly and solemnly filled his nose ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... your state wi' theirs compar'd, An' shudder at the niffer[220], But cast a moment's fair regard, What mak's the mighty differ? Discount what scant occasion gave That purity ye pride in, An' (what's aft mair than a' the lave) Your better ...
— English Satires • Various
... alongside the duck, Sprague twined one foot around the bob-stay, reached over and lifted the bird into the boat. As soon as it was set on deck the duck shook its feathers, gave one defiant waggle of the tail, and paddled aft, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... in the air by Bawley and as he descended was caught up again and tossed about on the ground; invariably the brute caught his horns against the large canteen and saved the poor fellow's life. I was obliged to leave the black then aft with the cart, and with Sambo started on for water; travelled and spelled during the whole night and got to the lake early Sunday 29th, party all right; lots of blacks, apparently peaceably inclined. Found that Mr. Hodgkinson and Mr. Middleton had that morning started ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... did not sit down. He chatted for a few minutes on such eminently safe topics as the smooth sea, the superiority of turbine engines in the matter of steadiness, the advisability of lunching in the train after leaving Calais, rather than on board the ship, and soon betook himself aft, there to smoke and chat with some acquaintances whom he fell in with. Dover Castle was becoming a gray blur on the horizon when he spoke ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... for each company. At the signal the companies fell in; the regiments in quarter column. The companies then advanced successively, forming in line abreast their ship, between two gangways—one forward and one aft—along each of which was stretched a chain of men, who thus sent on board, one set the rifles, the other the sea kits and valises, which, passing from hand to {p.093} hand, reached certainly and without confusion the spot where their owner knew ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... answered. The boat dropped alongside and the Earl climbed upon deck. Turning at the top of the ladder, he gave his boatman the order to wait for half an hour, and acknowledging the sentry's salute, made his way aft, and down the companion-stairs to the cabin set apart ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... throughout; from first to last, from beginning to end, from end to end, from one end to the other, from Dan to Beersheba, from head to foot, from top to toe, from top to bottom, de fond en comble[Fr]; a fond, a capite ad calcem [Lat], ab ovo usque ad mala[Lat], fore and aft; every, whit, every inch; cap-a-pie, to the end of the chapter; up to the brim, up to the ears, up to the eyes; as . . . as can be. on all accounts; sous tous les rapports[Fr]; with a vengeance, with a witness. Phr. falsus in uno falsus in omnibus [Latin: false in one thing, false in everything]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... sixteen feet over all, with its mast stepped well forward, of course, carrying a large fore-and-aft sail with gaff and boom. A single person can sail a cat all right; but to get speed out of one, and manoeuver quickly, it takes a sheet-tender ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... his bein' English,' says Hardenberg, 'is only half the hoe-handle. 'Tother half being the fact that the first-named gent is all American. No Yank ain't never took no dust from aft a Englisher, whether it were ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... "You need not use any force!" And putting out his hands, the captain slipped the irons on, and sent him aft to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not to disturb the treasure till fifteen years had gone by, when it was to belong to the survivors. That, having done this, they steered for the Havana, and, after altering their craft to a fore-and-aft schooner, sold her, and shared the money. Being flush, and riotous, and quarrelsome, they soon got a-fighting among themselves; and, within a few months, by the help of the yellow fever, not less than twenty-three out of the whole twenty-five were buried, leaving only this ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... promise—and a few weeks after, having fixed my sister comfortably with a pious milliner, I went to Philadelphia, and there shipped with a temperance captain for a South American port. O Jack, what a blessed voyage that was to me. On the first day out, all hands were called aft to the break of the quarterdeck, when the captain, who was a pious man, told us in a few words, that it was his practice to have "family worship" every morning and evening in the cabin, and he hoped that ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... I've noticed you've a trick of beginning your sentences on that word 'well': it's a habit of mine too, they tell me—as the ladies say ashore, we're going to be worse before we are better, so we'll call those fellows aft a bit and ease the steering. . . . Stay a minute, though, before I call to them. . . . A clever man like you ought to be able to pick up a bit of navigation in a few lessons. While our boats keep together (as, please God, they will to the end) it wouldn't ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he were joined by Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer of the Amenhotep, and together the three tried to hold the boat. Every native had left them. They were obliged to retreat aft to the deckcabin. Placing their backs against it, they prepared to die hard. No one could reach them from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no vi'lence nor bloodshed nor nothin' in any ways disagreeable, and also bein' agreed that we prefers to have this here ship all to our own selves, it have been decided to send you gents, and the ladies and gen'lemen aft, away in the longboat, to go just exac'ly where you bloomin' well likes. There's twenty-eight of yer, all told, includin' the women and kids; and the longboat'll just comfortably hold yer all, with provisions and water for three weeks. Our new skipper, Cap'n Bainbridge, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... In the aft compartment Probos Five had constructed a refrigeration plant. By maintaining a constant degree of frigidity he hoped to deliver a pair of each species of divided trunks to Mercury. He hoped especially to capture a complete set and perhaps a few over to make up for breakage and losses. As ...
— Solar Stiff • Chas. A. Stopher
... out, 'Mr. Robinson, by all that's holy, sir, that vessel there means to run us down! Lads,' I shouted, 'tumble aft quick, and see the boats all ready ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... black ringlet of a young woman, faced his bed-place. Three chronometers ticked him to sleep and greeted him on waking with the tiny competition of their beats. He rose at five every day. The officer of the morning watch, drinking his early cup of coffee aft by the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of the copper ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and splutterings of his captain's toilet. These noises would be followed by a sustained deep murmur of the Lord's Prayer ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... said, and then followed the doctor aft. A basin of soup and a glass of sherry did wonders for the boys, and in an hour they proceeded to the captain's cabin, dressed in clothes which the doctor had borrowed from two of the midshipmen for ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... an unimposing kind of tub, and climbed aboard. On looking aft the first thing that I saw was Stephen seated on the capstan with a pistol in his hand, as Sammy had said. Near by, leaning on the bulwark was the villainous-looking Portugee, Delgado, apparently in the worst of tempers ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... been lang our fae, M'Gill^7 has wrought us meikle wae, An' that curs'd rascal ca'd M'Quhae,^8 And baith the Shaws,^9 That aft hae made us black an' blae, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... could find and recover the anchors on his return, then a very small jib was hoisted, and as it filled two blows with an axe severed the cables inboard. The logs attached to them were thrown over, and the skipper ran aft and put up the helm as the boat's head payed off before the wind. As she did so a wave struck her and threw tons of water on board, filling her deck nearly up to the rails. It was well Joe had ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket-plane which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking her terrific speed to match the slower pace of the gigantic ship of war. Shaped like a toothpick, needle-pointed fore and aft, with ultra-stubby wings and vanes, with flush-set rocket ports everywhere, built of a lustrous silvery alloy of noble and almost infusible metals—such was the private speedboat of the chief of the T. S. S. The fastest thing known, whether in planetary air, the stratosphere, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... been cut; but her master got out his last spare cables and tried to bring her round, while some of his toiling men fell dead at every haul. She began to wind round very slowly; and, when exactly at right angles to Macdonough, was raked completely, fore and aft. At the same time an ominous list to port, where her side was torn in over a hundred places, showed that she would sink quickly if her guns could not be run across to starboard. But more than half her mixed scratch crew had been already killed or wounded. The most desperate efforts of ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... We had strolled aft, and now stopped to watch a tall Jamaica negro—or so we thought him to be—asking Gates for a place in the crew. His clothing was too scant to hide the great muscles beneath, and Tommy ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and ally was to be seen idly lounging in the neighbourhood of a life-buoy suspended against the rails, further aft. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... decks to the nearest rail. He was very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. The deck was deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flag-pole. There he doubled up in limp agony, for the Wheeling "stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. His head ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... the Mississippi River, when, in the absence of a pilot boat or tug, our Captain thought he would try to get in alone, and as a consequence we were soon fast in the mud. The Captain now made all the passengers go aft, and worked the engine hard but could not move her at all. The tide was now low, and there was a prospect that we should have to wait full six hours to get away. We worked on, however, and after a few hours a tug came to our ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... passengers begin to muster on board, their friends clustering round the capsill of the wharf, obstructing the way, the sturdy figure of Mr. Pringle Blowers may be seen behind a spile near the capsill, his sharp, peering eyes scanning the ship from fore to aft. He is not sure she will get off by this route; common sense tells him that, but there exists a prompting something underneath common sense telling him it's money saved to keep a sharp look-out. And this he does merely to gratify that inert something, knowing at the same time ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to a water-cask. In the bustle, however, he managed to slip the book into the mate's hand, and the thing was done. The surgeon was sent for and they got him up on deck, where, while his hurts were being looked to, he had the satisfaction of seeing the mate go aft and then into ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... in my description the green ribbon. And forthwith he took the conductor under hand, and I felt, through all the storm of French which followed, that he raked him fore and aft. Presently he returned ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the brain of the ship, Miss Baring. We are always wide-awake here. My quarters are farther aft. I think I can find a chair for you if you care to sit down while ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... mast-head, and the pressure on the ships remaining undiminished during the day. Just as I had ascertained the utter impossibility of moving the Hecla a single foot, and that she must lie quite aground fore and aft as soon as the tide fell, I received a note from Captain Hoppner informing me that the Fury had been so severely “nipped” and strained as to leak a good deal, apparently about four inches an hour; that she was still heavily pressed both upon the ground and against ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... sunrise, gazing from this hill;) Again 'tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with daybreak, Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me, Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman Looms in the mist, with brow elate and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... here now and I don't mean to let you escape," laughed the other in response; "in my cabin—its aft there under the break in the poop, you'll find some more overalls, put them on and then I'll set you ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was a cheerful companion at first, but gradually he grew melancholy, and at times inapproachable. One day John met him at the gangway, and he took the young man's arm and, leading him aft, said: ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... gentlemen had been long enough deprived of fresh meats to make them cast lickerish glances towards their hard-skinned friend, and there was a great smacking of lips the day before he was killed. As I walked aft occasionally, I heard them congratulating themselves on their prospective turtle soup and forcemeat balls; and one of them, to heighten the luxury of the feast, ate nothing but a dry biscuit for the twenty-four hours preceding, that he might be prepared to devour his ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... mixed or transposed; and I am saved the trouble of keeping a laborious watch. Each insect can hatch at its own time, in my presence or not: I am sure of always finding it in its place, in its proper order, held fast fore and aft by the cotton barrier. A cork or sorghum-pith partition would not fulfil the same purpose: the insect would perforate it and the register of births would be muddled by changes of position. Any reader wishing to undertake similar investigations will excuse these ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... nine, the bell again rung for the artificers to take their stations in their respective boats. Some demur having been evinced on board about the propriety of working on Sunday, which had hitherto been touched upon as delicately as possible, all hands being called aft, the writer, from the quarter-deck, stated generally the nature of the service, expressing his hopes that every man would feel himself called upon to consider the erection of a lighthouse on the Bell Rock, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now bore Bremilu, the strong, and Zangamon, most expert of all the fishermen. Slung in the baggage-crate aft lay a large seine, certain supplies of fish, weed and eggs, and—from time to time noisily squawking—some half-dozen of the strange sea-birds, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... through the pulley blocks, the new ropes and gear creaking under the strain of a boat laden with people, and the crew calling to the sailors above as the boat tilted slightly, now at one end, now at the other, "Lower aft!" "Lower stern!" and "Lower together!" as she came level again—but I do not think we felt much apprehension about reaching the water safely. It certainly was thrilling to see the black hull of ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... leather facings are set thick with buttons and rosettes; the pommel is encased in silver; the corners of the aprons are tipped with silver; the stirrups are faced and edged with silver half an inch thick, elaborately chased and carved. The saddle-tree is hung with silver rings, fore and aft, to answer all the requirements of the vaquero in lacing up his riata. The girth, which passes under the horse's belly and cinches the saddle in place, is woven of hair from horses' manes by a native artisan, and is fully eight inches broad, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... of the water about her had changed from a slap to a gliding ripple. There was no longer the short tug and lurch as she pulled at her painter and fell back; there was no longer the tide sound about the gaunt piles of the wharf. Kirk, a little apprehensive, stumbled aft and felt for the stern-line. It gave in his hand, and the slack, wet length of it flew suddenly aboard, smacking his face with its cold and slimy end. He knew, then, what had happened, but he felt sure that the boat must still be very near the wharf—perhaps drifting up to ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... the oars, and rowed quietly to a large barge, fifty yards from the bank, on which a light was burning. Taking pains to prevent the boat striking her side, they stepped on board, fastened the head rope, and proceeded aft. A light was burning in the cabin and, looking through a little round window in the door, they saw three boatmen sitting there, smoking and playing cards. They opened their knives, slid back the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... betook himself to the big telescope. Right enough: Per was sitting aft, and he saw Madeleine jump down into the boat. On the forward thwart there sat a male creature, dressed in homespun, with a yellow sou'wester ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... into his weather-beaten face came an expression of glad welcome. Out of the mairie gate and into the sleepy warmth of the street lounged a huge dark-brown-and-white collie. The don stretched himself lazily, fore and aft, in true collie style, then stood gazing about him as if in search of something of interest to occupy his ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... afterwards we saw our game standing in for the bay with all the sail she could make, and she came innocently into our very mouths, for we lay still till we saw her almost within gunshot, when, our foremost gears being stretched fore and aft, we first ran up our yards, and then hauled home the topsail sheets, the rope-yarns that furled them giving way of themselves; the sails were set in a few minutes; at the same time slipping our cable, we came upon her before ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... "best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee." I feel more like a mouse caught in a trap than a man, just now. I have been thinking of nothing else all summer but the delightful time I should have with you and your mother in Paris. It is my sabbatical year at Wellington, which means a fine long holiday, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... by moonlight; one singer placed himself forwards and the other aft, and thus proceeded to St. Georgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe, the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned; but, according ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... down from the buckboard and mount the saddle, a little awkward at first whether to put the right knee fore or aft, from her Eastern training to a side saddle; and side saddles in the range country are rare as low neck gowns and tuxedo coats; but once she had caught the far stirrup, riding was riding. She had the pace, and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... very early," observed Mr. Whitford, looking in the pilot house from the cabin, just aft of it. "But there is no use waiting around here any more, Tom. They gave us ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... don' know as I could 'scribe 'im perzacly; but I'd know 'im, no matter where I sot eyes on 'im, and I know'd 'im the nex' time I see 'im. Well, sah, dat aft'noon, mars'r Mainwaring an' de folks had gone out ridin', an' I was roun' kind o' permiscuous like, an' I see anoder kerridge way down de av'nue by de front gate, an' I waited, 'spectin' maybe I'd see dat man again. While I was waitin' by de front dooh, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... dost thou so rejoice in air? Not air that nourishes and braces, Such as one finds in watering-places, But air to chill a polar bear— Malignant air at sixty miles an hour That rakes the carriage fore and aft, Wherein we cower; Not air at all, but sheer revengeful draught! How canst thou like it? Say! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... tire or cloy. Nor are their loudest clamours more, Than as they're relish'd, sweet or sour; 910 Like musick, that proves bad or good; According as 'tis understood. In all amours, a lover burns With frowns as well as smiles by turns; And hearts have been as aft with sullen 915 As charming looks surpriz'd and stolen. Then why should more bewitching clamour Some lovers not as much enamour? For discords make the sweetest airs And curses are a kind of pray'rs; 920 Too slight alloys for all those grand Felicities by marriage ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... still some time in the middle of the room, where she had whipped the two bitches, to recover herself of her fatigue; and Safie called to her, "Dear sister, will you not be pleased to return to your place, that I may also aft my part?" "Yes, sister," replied Zobeide; and then went, and sat down upon the sofa, having the caliph, Jaaffier, and Mesrour, on her right hand, and the three calenders, with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... to be so served are seized by the wrists, to ropes stretched fore and aft on the second deck for the officers, and before the mast for the sailors; and after much mummery and monkey tricks, they are let loose, to be led after one another to the main mast, where they are made ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... this: We are done with those old Gods for always. They seem worn out, if one may judge from Their present lack of usefulness in Atlantis, and, anyway, there will be no room for Them on the Tin Islands.—Let go those warps there aft, and shove her head out.—We are under weigh now, my lord, and beyond recall, and so I am free to tell you what we have decided upon for our religious exercises. We shall set up the memory of a ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... saft, and I wake aft, It's lang since sleeping was fleyed frae me; Gie my service back to my wyfe and bairns, And a' gude fellows that ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... went back to my boat, made some coffee over a spirit-lamp, devoured a few biscuits, and stretched myself aft, to smoke and gaze at the stars. The earth was a mere shadow, formless and silent, and empty, till a bullock turned up from somewhere, quite shadowy too. He came smartly to the very edge of the bank as though he meant to step on board, stretched ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Admiral abandoned his burning ship, the last time taking up his post in the island battery Tre Kroner. Each time one of the old hulls was crushed, a Briton pushed into the hole made in the line and raked the remaining ones fore and aft until their decks were like huge shambles. The block-ship Indfoedsretten bore the concentrated fire of five frigates and two smaller vessels throughout most of the battle. Her chief was killed. When the news reached head-quarters ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... for, brought no relief. The gale continued with unabated violence. The sea struck so hard upon the vessel's bows that it rose in great quantities, or, as Ruby expressed it, in "green seas", which completely swept the deck as far aft as the quarter-deck, and not unfrequently went completely over the stern of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... ship. The positions of the guns are as follows: Four of 27 centimeters in the central battery, two on each broadside; three 27 centimeter guns on the upper deck in barbettes, one on each side amidships, and one aft. The 14 centimeter guns are in various positions on the broadsides, and the machine guns are fitted on deck, on the bridges, and in the military tops, four of them also being mounted on what is rather a novelty in naval construction, a gallery running round the outside of the funnel, which was ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... found at that late period. And as luck would have it, six of Mr. Cooke's ten guests had left but a day or so since, and among them had been the only yacht-owner. None of the four that remained could do more than haul aft and belay a sheet. But the Celebrity, who chanced along as Mr. Cooke was ruefully gazing at the graceful lines of the Maria from the wharf and cursing the fate that kept him ashore with a stiff wind blowing, proposed a way out of the difficulty. He, the Celebrity, would gladly sail ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... either side; and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind, fell headlong between the beams to the maindeck below to be slaughtered helpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire from the bulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing on the gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop and forecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and arrows. The fire of the English was as steady as it was quick; and though three-fourths of the crew had ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... on, "is a submersible, not a diving, submarine. That is to say, the rudder guides it and changes the angle of the boat. But the hydroplanes pull it up and down, two pairs of them set fore and aft of the centre of gravity. They lift or lower the boat bodily on an even keel, not by plunging and diving. I will now set the hydroplanes at ten degrees down and the horizontal rudder two degrees up, and the boat will submerge to a depth ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... fossa is altogether behind the cerebral fossa, or, in plainer terms, the division between the big brain (cerebrum) and the little one (cerebellum) is vertical, the two brains lying on a level plane fore and aft instead of overlapping. The brain itself is highly convoluted. The nasal aperture, or olfactory fossa, is very large, and is placed a little below the brain-case. Few people who are intimate with but the external ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... big's a mack'rel kit. Finally, they pulled up to her fore—chains and clum aboard of her. I never see a ship abandoned at sea, myself, but I ain't no doubt but what it made 'em feel kind o' shivery when they looked aft along her decks, and not a soul in sight, and every-thin' bleached, and gray, and iron-rusted, and the riggin' all slack and white's though it had been chawed, and nothin' left of her sails but some old rags flappin' like a last year's scarecrow. They ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... "Hi, Sylvanus, come aft here to your dog watch," cried the captain, and The Crew retired, while his superior officer and Wilkinson came forward. The former went down into the hold, leaving the dominie free for conversation with his friend. "It's all up again, Wilks," said Coristine sadly; "those two girls were on ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... completed, the hissing sound of the waste-steam pipe ceased, this force being once more applied to its right use; the paddles began to move, the lashings were cast off, and away the boats darted from each other with startling rapidity; the Columbus, with the gale aft, rushing down the great bay of the Chesapeake, and the Washington breasting its force right ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... ran round to the cabin-doors. There were four men steering; the wheel had broke out of the poor fellows' hands, and knocked them over,—broken their limbs, I believe. I was stooping to pick them up, when a sea came into the waist, and then aft, washing me in through the saloon-doors, among the poor half-dressed women and children. Queer sight, Lieutenant! I've seen a good many, but never worse than that. I bolted to my cabin, tied my notes and gold ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... had our beautiful balcony to sit in. In all respects, indeed, our accommodations were very superior to what we had found in the boat which brought us from New Orleans to Memphis, where we were stowed away in a miserable little chamber close aft, under the cabin, and given to understand by the steward, that it was our duty there to remain "till such time as the bell should ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the black lashes, and a bushy beard and mustache that covered the whole lower part of his face. He was tall and powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, thrown carelessly upon his black hair. His name was George Talboys, and he was aft-cabin passenger on board the good ship Argus, laden with Australian wool and sailing from ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... When a good-sized porcupine has really made up his mind to go somewhere he may be slow, but it takes more than a punch with the end of a stick to stop him; and this Porky had fully determined to go aft and get ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... succeeded in conserving sufficient steam to crawl up river, the tide had turned and the Maggie could not buck the ebb. McGuffey declared a few new tubes in the boiler would do the trick, but on the other hand, Mr. Gibney pointed out that the old craft was practically punk aft and a stiff tow would jerk the tail off the old girl. In despair, therefore, Captain Scraggs had abandoned bay and river towing and was prepared to jump overboard and end all, when an opportunity offered for the freighting ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... little later when she saw him taking his bag "aft." That meant he was to be treated as an officer. There is all the difference in the world on a sailing ship, whether a man bunks "forward" or "aft." In the latter case he is either an officer or a passenger, and in the former case he is classed as a member of the crew, a "foremast ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... spar deck to some passer-by. Then to the forward deck: the sky half covered with scudding clouds, the stars bright in the intervals, the wind whistling a regular blow that tries one's ears, the constant swish as she settles down to a sea; and, looking aft, the funnel with a wreath of smoke trailing away off into the darkness on the starboard quarter; the patch of white on the funnel discernible dimly; the masts drawing maps across the sky as one looks up; the clank of shovels coming up through the ventilators,—if you have ever been there, ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... Send Tugwell aft; pass the word for Dan Tugwell. Captain, there's a family of that name there—settled as long as we have been at Mevagissey. Ah, that sort of thing is a credit to the place, and the people too, in ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... furder and furder from us, and at last he got clean agin the jamb o' the chimney, and then he looked up wild, as if he was a looking at the sky, and directly he spoke. 'This'll be a stiff blow,' says he. 'We're struck aft, and we'll be in the trough of the sea in a minute! God help us all!' And with that he began to climb up the shelves o' the cupboard, as though he was a climbin' into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... on giving me explanations about the sail, and which was a lug-sail, what was meant by fore-and-aft rig, and a dozen other things, showing me the while too ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... crowns their simple board, The halesome parritch,[18] chief o' Scotia's food: The soupe their only Hawkie[19] does afford, That 'yont the hallan[20] snugly chows her cood:[21] The dame brings forth in complimental mood, To grace the lad, her weel-hained[22] kebbuck,[23] fell, An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid; The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How 'twas a towmond[24] auld, sin' lint was i' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... you, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that my official position demands—" M. Roussillon began; but he was fastened upon by two guards, who roughly hustled him aft and bound him so rigidly that he could scarcely move ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... long, and eight broad. It was what was called a bateau, which was flat-bottomed, and was but one foot in depth. There was one mast, and a blanket sail, which was available when the wind was directly aft. There was no cabin. A mere awning sheltered partially from wind ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... thousand pounds sterling. She had come home from the island of St. Helena, with convoy, and was now proceeding up the river, to be given in charge of the prize agents in London. Not only her hold, but even her main deck, as far aft as the mainmast, was filled up with her cargo; in short, she was a very valuable prize, and although when I came on board the pepper made me sneeze for ten minutes, the officer in charge told me very truly that she was a prize "not to be sneezed at." She was manned by a lieutenant ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... I hear the auld cock craw; Fu' aft I've banned him for his din, An' wauk'nin' o' us a'! But welcome noo's his lichtsome cry Sin' bed-fast I ha'e been, It tells anither nicht's gane ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... to burst upward, reaching out angry fingers of shattered rock as they ripped by, rocking and bucking with the blasts. Tulan's viewer swivelled aft to hold the scene. Secondary blasts went off like strings of giant firecrackers. Great black-and-orange fungi-like clouds swirled upward, dissipating fast in the thin atmosphere. Then Tulan spotted what he was looking for: three small ships flashing over the area, ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... his blood was up. He took stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow, and set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly a kind of race competition - almost race hatred - sprang up. We jeered the Samoan. Sale declared it was the trim of the boat: 'if this lady was aft' (Tauilo's portly friend) 'he would row round Frank.' We insisted on her coming aft, and Frank still rowed round the Samoan. When the Samoan caught a crab (the thing was continual with these wretched oars and rowlocks), ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the force were river steamboats, whose machinery was protected with cotton, and their stems shod with one-inch iron, clamped in place by straps of the same material extending a few feet aft. Thus strengthened, it was hoped that with the sharpness of their bows and the swiftness of the current they could, notwithstanding the exceeding lightness of their structure, penetrate the hulls of the United States ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... board was very fair. Patsey occupied a roomy cabin aft, the rest slept in a large cabin forward; for before the troubles began, the majority of people travelling from Paris down to Rouen or Havre went by water, and although the boats were mainly constructed for the carriage of merchandise, the conveyance of passengers ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... taught-rigged hermaphrodite, or brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it; it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... cartridges. Down both sides of the vessels they passed, in rapid regular files, pouring into the boats. Their guns were taken as they stepped upon the stairs, and passed down to them as soon as they were embarked. Some took places at the oars; the rest filed in fore and aft. It must have been an amazing spectacle to the enemy to witness these stirring and formidable preparations for finishing the work the gunboats had begun. The troops were jubilant, and eager ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... concussion of which shook the Valley City, which was a short distance off, as if there were an earthquake in the locality. Presently it was reported that the Otsego was lost, two torpedoes, one before and the other aft, striking her simultaneously, and sinking her to the bottom of the river. From some fortunate occurrence, the Wyalusing had passed safely over the place where the Otsego ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... "New York" is, as usual, of pine, painted white and relieved with tints and gold. The interior is finished in hard-wood cabinet work, ash being used forward of the shaft on the main deck, and mahogany aft and in the dining-room. Ash is also used in the grand saloons on the promenade deck. One feature of these saloons especially worthy of note, is the number and size of the windows, which are so numerous ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... she crooned a broken song of the whaling days, concerning the "rolling Mississippi" and the "Black Ball line." Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire himself began to make concentric circles on my breast with his heavy hand, so that I was beset fore and aft by the most tender and friendly advances of the Marquesan race. Never was hapless ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... with the utmost regret I have to inform your Lordship that being ready for sea early this morning, the foreigners refused heaving up the anchor in consequence of arrears of pay and prize-money, and to my great surprise many of the natives also came aft. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... our sailors, handcuffed and shackled, musing in a French prison on the bypast days of Camperdown, and of Lord Rodney breaking through the line; with all their fleets sunk to the bottom of the salt sea, after being raked fore and aft with chain-shot; and our timber, sugar, tea and treacle merchants, all fleeing for safety and succour down to lodgings in the Abbey Strand, with a yellow stocking on the ae leg and a black one on the other, like a wheen mountebanks. Little could they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... adventurers approached they could see that the vessel was now a mass of flames. The wind was driving the fire toward the forecastle, and the crew had sought refuge aft. But this expedient could not last long, for, already the tongues of fire were licking the sides of the craft and coming nearer and nearer the seemingly doomed men. The vessel was a ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... enemy's large ship, the Florissant, though of much greater force than the Buckingham, instead of lying-to for his coming up, made a running fight with her stern-chase, while the two frigates annoyed him in his course, sometimes raking him fore and aft, and sometimes lying on his quarter. At length he came alongside of the Florissant, within pistol shot, and poured in a whole broadside, which did considerable execution. The salutation was returned with equal vivacity, and a furious engagement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... this the square-cut wings formed almost a continuous plane, rigidly fixed to the central body, which consisted of a shaped girder. These wings were built up of five transverse bamboo spars, with two shaped ribs running from fore to aft of each wing, and were stayed overhead to a couple of masts. The tail, consisting of two discs placed crosswise (the horizontal one alone being movable), was carried high up in the rear. With the exception of the wing-spars, the whole framework was built of white pine. The wings in this machine ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... heart watching my belongings come aboard and chiding my weakness of will which prevented me from uttering the few words that would put a stop to it. As for the half-dozen men who were now carrying the luggage aft into the cabin, they were unlike any concept I had ever entertained of sailors. Certainly, on the liners, I had observed nothing that ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... frequently adopted in subsequent years by captains in the merchant service when racing, which always created excitement amongst the crew; the order was given to knock the wedges out of the deck coamings, ease the strain off the fore and aft stays, and when it was judicious to do it the pinch on the main rigging was also eased to give the masts more play. The windjammer seamen knew when this order was given that they were in for a time of "cracking on," and really enjoyed both the sport ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Had I heard of the railway accident? Yes, I had. I had been in it. Instantly I was surrounded by individuals who raked me fore and aft with questions. I could not endure it; my nervous energy, I realized, was exhausted, and having given a brief outline of the disaster, I fled down the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... interior accommodations. There is a spacious ward-room, nine or ten feet in height, besides a private cabin for the commander, and sleeping accommodations on an ample scale; the whole well lighted and ventilated, though beneath the surface of the water. Forward, or aft (for it is impossible to tell stem from stern), the crew are relatively quite as well provided for as the officers. It was like finding a palace, with all its conveniences, under the sea. The inaccessibility, the apparent impregnability, of this submerged ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my way aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism," was my private comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... water it was hard to imagine. Moored along the side of the Westminster Pier was, if not the Great Eastern, at all events as large a steamer as it was practicable to bring there. Awnings were stretched both fore and aft above decks, the snowy whiteness of which would have done no discredit to a man-of-war. In the bows of the boat a band was pouring forth all sorts of popular melody, inciting the fashionable crowd to "Haste to the Wedding," "Down among the Coals," "When Johnny ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers' deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phoenicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into the melee, laying ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... man-of-war. The one they sung was peculiarly musical, although not refined; and the chorus of "Oh! Sally Brown," was given with great emphasis by the whole crew between every line of the song, sung by an athletic young third mate. I took my seat on the knight-heads—turned my face aft—looked and listened. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the blow, about five in the afternoon, our mizzen-mast, in a heavy lurch to windward, went by the board. For an hour or more, we tried in vain to get rid of it, on account of the prodigious rolling of the ship; and, before we had succeeded, the carpenter came aft and announced four feet of water in the hold. To add to our dilemma, we found the pumps ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... amen!" said Tom Coxswain. "There was a woman in our aft-scuppers when I went a-whalin in the little 'Grampus'—and Lord love you, Pumpo, you poor land-swab, she WAS as pretty a craft as ever dowsed a tarpauling—there was a woman on board the 'Grampus,' who before we'd struck our first fish, or biled our first blubber, set the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved about with a noiseless and swift efficiency; he rolled and cased the jib, and then, with a handful of canvas stops, secured and covered the mainsail and proceeded aft to the jigger. Unlike Woolfolk, Halvard was short—a square figure with a smooth, deep-tanned countenance, colorless and steady, pale blue eyes. His mouth closed so tightly that it appeared immovable, as if it had been carved from some obdurate material that opened for the necessities of neither ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not permit of forcible objection to the adoption of defensive methods by such vessels. The Italians, in particular, displayed a resolute spirit. Diplomatic hints had no weight at Rome and one after another the Italian liners came into New York with trim three-inch pieces fore and aft. They had a most suggestive look and were manned by crews trained in the navy. Not since the days of open piracy had armed merchant ships been seen in American waters. Their presence recalled the time when every ship that sailed was prepared to fight or run ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... say, at if ivvery body's testimonial cost' em as mich as tha's cost me to-day, ther isn't quite as mich profit in 'em as some fowk think; an' unless ther's a lot ov Annani-asses amang my customers, th'aft abaat th' warst bargain i'th' donkey line at aw've seen for some time, for aw cud a bowt a horse wi' th' brass at ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... body was soon within it. The sailors were so frightened that they rushed to the fore and thought that their last hour was come. Fortunately the bear could make no further advance, because the noose that was thrown round his neck had fastened in the rudder. A sailor taking courage, now went aft and killed the bear with the stroke of an axe. The skin was sent to Amsterdam. On account of this occurrence the place was ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley, And lea'e us naught but grief and pain, For ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... above showed that some fearful disaster had occurred. Instantly Miss Lacy made a rush for the deck to learn what it meant. Quick as were her movements, she found the ship was already sinking. Going aft was like climbing a steep hill, but she saw that one portion was high above water, and she struggled bravely to reach it. But, so rapidly did the Quetta go down that she had hardly gone forward, when the steamer was swallowed ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark plates, which was hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... in daylight, off a powerfully engined sixty-foot, thirty-ton craft. He pays the seine out over a roller on a revolving platform aft. His vessel moves slowly in a sweeping circle as the net goes out,—a circle perhaps a thousand feet in diameter. When the circle is complete the two ends of the net meet at the seiner's stern. A power winch hauls on ropes and the net closes. Nothing escapes. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very singular thing happened. The mate—this one with the sharp eyes—is a quiet chap; seldom speaks to me except on business. He was standing aft that evening, and suddenly, without ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... unlike that of a butterfly or dragon fly, long and slender, consisting of a rectangular frame with canvas stretched over it, and a seat for two just aft of the engine and controlling levers. Back of the seat stretched out a long framework, and at the end was a curved plane, set at right angles to it. The ends of the plane terminated in flexible wings, to permit of their ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... sight was truly gratifying; the cattle were ranged on each side of the gun-deck, fore and aft, and not confined in separate stalls; but so conveniently stowed, that they were a support to each other. They were well provided with mats, and were constantly cleaned; and when the ship tacked, the cattle which were to leeward were regularly laid with their heads to windward, by people ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... wi' theirs compar'd, An' shudder at the niffer[220], But cast a moment's fair regard, What mak's the mighty differ? Discount what scant occasion gave That purity ye pride in, An' (what's aft mair than a' the lave) Your better art ...
— English Satires • Various
... and weighed 800 pounds, and was two feet two inches in diameter. One of these huge shots, to the astonishment of our tars, stove in the whole larboard bow of the Active; and having thus crushed this immense mass of timber, the shot rolled ponderously aft, and brought up abreast the main hatchway, the crew standing aghast at the singular spectacle. One of these guns was cast in brass in the reign of Amurath; it was composed of two parts, joined by a screw at the chamber, its breach resting against massy stone work; the difficulty of charging ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... above the cutter, and ordered it to be lowered; and though his officers urgently dissuaded him from so dangerous an attempt, he determined to hazard it. At this moment the ship made a deep plunge aft, the boat was stove, and the captain left in the water. He was much hurt, and bled profusely, for he was dashed violently against the rudder, and his nostril was torn up by the hook of one of the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... looked fore and aft over the wrecked decks with a curious smile as if he had come ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... brought him to London, and his earnestness and ability in that line procured for him the privilege he sought. As member of the incorporated society that passes upon the qualifications of candidates it was my pleasure to sit in judgment on him; we raked him fore and aft but, bless you, he stood squarely on his feet ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... a battered old schooner and his passengers clambered aboard. There was a tiny cabin aft and on it, sheltered from the night dew by a loose fold of the mainsail, were two sleeping men. The new-comers followed Morin down into the evil little cabin, where he warned them ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Nort, and a desperate chance at that. But maybe we can do it! Did you ever read Kipling's 'Drums of the Fore and Aft'?" ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... the carpet was plentifully sprinkled with tobacco- juice. The captain was very much flustered with his unusually large living cargo, but he was a good-hearted man, and very careful, having, to use his own phrase, "climbed in at the hawse-holes, and worked his way aft, instead of creeping in at the cabin window with his gloves on." The stewards were dirty, and the stewardess too smart to attend to the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... breakage. These keels are of a very ancient model,—perhaps the oldest extant in England: they are even said to be of the same build as those in which the Norsemen navigated the Tyne centuries ago. The keel is a tubby, grimy-looking craft, rounded fore and aft, with a single large square sail, which the keel-bullies, as the Tyne watermen are called, manage with great dexterity; the vessel being guided by the aid of the "swape," or great oar, which is used as a kind of rudder at the stern of the vessel. These keelmen are an exceedingly hardy class of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... crew—some quite youthful persons—thought it was a shame to let themselves be thus left astern by everybody. They had, indeed, no special advantage or profit to expect from the voyage, but at last the inaction became intolerable, and they conceived the daring resolve of sending a youth aft to beg the captain to ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... stepped aboard the black, ominous, oily D'Estang, made his way aft and clambered down the companion ladder. There was the usual Sunday morning gathering of young officers from the boats of the flotilla. The smoke, mainly from pipes—three weeks having elapsed since pay day—was ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... weighing fourteen stones; she fell from the pier into the water. Our packet had just arrived from New Holland, and I was forward making the ... rope fast, when our engineer called out 'Jack, Jack, there is a woman overboard.' He ran aft as fast as he could, and when he got there, he saw me overboard. He often used to say, 'I don't know how that little fellow got past me, for I ran as fast as I could, and yet when I got there he was overboard.' ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... waked him, which put him in a main high passion, and he swore woundily at the lieutenant, and called him lousy Scotch son of a whore (for, I being then sentinel in the steerage, heard all), and swab, and lubber, whereby the lieutenant returned the salute, and they jawed together fore and aft a good spell, till at last the captain turned out, and, laying hold of a rattan, came athwart Mr. Bowling's quarter: whereby he told the captain that, if he was not his commander, he would heave him overboard, and demanded satisfaction ashore; whereby in the morning watch, the captain ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the space between the Rhinds boat and the Pollard craft had been covered. By this time two men were observed aft on the "Zelda," their gaze ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... from aft to make sure that none of the quartette was lost. He took Laddie and Vi below with him after a time and the two older children were left alone. They found seats in the lee of what the ship's men called "the house" and sat down to rest and talk. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley, And lea'e us naught but grief ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... distance from both ends of the canoe. The yard, also, is slung precisely in the middle; and while the tack of the sail is made fast at one extremity of the hull, the opposite corner, or clew, to which the sheet is attached, hauls aft to the other end. Shrouds extend from the mast-head to the gunwale of the canoe; besides which, slender backstays are carried to the extremity of the out-rigger; and these ropes, by reason of their great spread, give such powerful support ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... on to the pier at Dover she dared not look back at the white cliffs, but kept her eyes resolutely seaward. The wind was high, and she heard that the crossing would be rough. Caesar was close behind her, and she caught a glimpse of him going aft as she made her ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... all passengers to go aft; and while the lads were wondering what they were so peremptorily sent astern for, they saw two tall spars that had been carried upright at the bow of the boat rigged into the shape of a V upside down, and set on either side of the craft, the lower ends resting on the sand-bar ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Mississippi River, when, in the absence of a pilot boat or tug, our Captain thought he would try to get in alone, and as a consequence we were soon fast in the mud. The Captain now made all the passengers go aft, and worked the engine hard but could not move her at all. The tide was now low, and there was a prospect that we should have to wait full six hours to get away. We worked on, however, and after ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the fright, an' as thin as a greyhound with the runnin' by the marnin; he'd addle the eggs so the cocks an' hens wouldn't know what they wis afther wid the chickens comin' out wid two heads on them, an' twinty-seven legs fore and aft. And you'd start to chase him, an' then it'd be main-sail haul, and away he'd go, you behint him, till you'd landed tail over snout in a ditch, an' he'd be back in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the rails; and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... depth, which was between twenty and thirty in many places, we supposed that there must be near four thousand. At the same time, there were round the trading place at the tent, and straggling about, at least as many more; and some of us computed, that, aft this time, there were no less than ten or twelve thousand people in our neighbourhood; that is, within the compass of a quarter of a mile; drawn together, for the most part, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... head- over-heels in that particular game. When Lucy Mokunui passed me, I stole a look at her. She was beautiful. She was beautiful by our standards, as well—one of those rare blossoms that occur but once in generations. And she, of all women, was doomed to Molokai. She straight on board, and aft on the open deck where the lepers huddled by the rail, wailing now, to ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... when she saw him taking his bag "aft." That meant he was to be treated as an officer. There is all the difference in the world on a sailing ship, whether a man bunks "forward" or "aft." In the latter case he is either an officer or a passenger, and in the former case he is classed as a member of the crew, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... Bismarck proceeding from Cherbourg to New York. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of July, the Fox was cast by a tempest upon the reefs of Newfoundland. The two men jumped into the sea, and thanks to the watertight compartments provided with air chambers fore and aft, it was possible for them to right the boat; but the unfortunates lost their provisions and their supply of drinking water. On the 15th they met the Norwegian three masted vessel Cito, which supplied them with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... a boat in this sound; the puffs come so violent that before anybody could take in her sail she would to a certainty be overset; even ships, in my opinion, would do well before they enter this sound to take in all their small sails and keep all hands at the braces fore and aft as well as hands by the top-sail halyards, and it is necessary to handle the yards quick otherwise a large vessel will be sure to rub sides with ye rocks if it has blown fresh outside all day...The kangaroo seems to be most plentiful at this time in the north-eastern ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... wanted, are laid along the gunwales; when set up, they stand abreast of each other in the fore part of the canoe, and seemed to be secured by one set of shrouds, with a stay from one mast head to the other. The sail is extended between them; but when going with a side wind, the lee mast is brought aft by a back stay, and the sail then stands obliquely. In other words, they brace up by setting in the head of the lee mast, and perhaps the foot also; and can then lie within seven points of the wind, and possibly nearer. This was their mode, so far as a distant view would admit of judging; ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... passengers, after the bustle of lunch and arranging their staterooms; had settled into their deck chairs and were telling each other how much they loved the ocean. Captain Scottie had taken his afternoon constitutional on his private strip of starboard deck just aft the bridge, and was sitting in his comfortable cabin expecting a cup of tea. He was a fine old sea-dog: squat, grizzled, severe, with wiry eyebrows, a short coarse beard, and watchful quick eyes. A ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser Panther swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant outlines of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the engine through, and try the steam-taps, without taking off the whole of the cabin. The cabin is kept in place by the funnel, which slips off just above the roof. The slit in the cabin top just back of the hatch is where your engine lever comes through. The bitts, B, fore and aft, are made of Spanish cedar, running through the deck to the hull. Your tiller may be made of steel wire running through the head of the rudder-post, which is made of iron wire; the man who makes your engine will ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow, and set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly a kind of race competition - almost race hatred - sprang up. We jeered the Samoan. Sale declared it was the trim of the boat: 'if this lady was aft' (Tauilo's portly friend) 'he would row round Frank.' We insisted on her coming aft, and Frank still rowed round the Samoan. When the Samoan caught a crab (the thing was continual with these wretched oars and rowlocks), we shouted ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gods—well, I have laid my ideas before the fellows here, and they agree to this: We are done with those old Gods for always. They seem worn out, if one may judge from Their present lack of usefulness in Atlantis, and, anyway, there will be no room for Them on the Tin Islands.—Let go those warps there aft, and shove her head out.—We are under weigh now, my lord, and beyond recall, and so I am free to tell you what we have decided upon for our religious exercises. We shall set up the memory of a living Hero on earth, and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... came down, and reported that the distant vessel appeared to be a large fore-and-aft ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... are busy preparing their respective canoes for their run to Fernan Vaz through the creek. Their canoes are very fine ones, with a remarkably clean run aft. The Pere's is quite the travelling canoe, with a little stage of bamboo aft, covered with a hood of palm thatch, under which you can make yourself quite comfortable, and keep yourself and your possessions ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... stand upright here in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and aft in a similar slope to that at either side; the length of it doubtless tallied with the frontage of a single house; and when I had clambered over the southern extremity into a precisely similar valley ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... in front of Mother Mayberry, who, with Miss Wingate beside her, sat sewing away the early hours of the morning. A tiny blue-check shirt was taking shape under Mother's skilful fingers, and the singer lady was deep in the mysteries of the fore and aft of a minute pair of jeans trousers. The limitations of young Ez's wardrobe had necessitated the speedy construction of one for the little adopt, and Miss Wingate's education along the lines of needle control was progressing at what she considered a ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "Yes, aft' a fashion; but 't wasn' the ol' fashion. A studen' an' a married man's two differen' things. I took Mrs. Lorimer everywhere an' to show her grat'tude she took me in han'." And Lorimer's own laugh rang out merrily at what seemed to ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... now swept over the deck. Brigond started aft, but Gaspard sprang before him. "Stand back!" he called. "Where you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the top of the submarine and used for observation purposes in case the big periscope was destroyed. From time to time there were other inventions. As the submarine fleet grew the means of communicating with each other while submerged at sea were perfected. Copper plates were fastened fore and aft on the outside of submarines, and it was made possible for wireless messages to be sent through the water at a distance of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley; An' lea'e us naught but grief and pain ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... of mice and men gang aft agley,'" said her husband suavely. "Evadne's mental strength cannot fail to be developed by intercourse with such a clever man. We must not allow the culture of the body to occupy so prominent a place in our thoughts that we forget the ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... old pair of elastic-side boots intended for female wear. The elastics were clean gone, and his feet would have come out at every step had not, luckily, the tabs remained. These he had lashed together, fore and aft, round his ankle, for, being a riverside boy, he ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... from the upper deck of the ship to her keel, and slope aft to facilitate release. Having completed with fuel at Bruges, we took in a store of provisions and Alten went up to the Commodore's office to ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... Tombs, with a momentous air. "And I'll come. I may be a little late in gett'n' there, faw I've got to hitch up aft' a while and take Mother Tombs to spend the day, both of us, with our daughters, Mrs. Hamlet and Lazarus Graves. I don't reckon anybody else has noticed it but them, but, John, my son, Mother Tombs an' I will be married jess fifty years to-night! However that's neither ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... out to the open sea that twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch— ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... distinguish no sign of the boatman left in charge, but, even as I lay there, breathless and uncertain, he suddenly revealed his presence by lighting a lantern in the stern. The illumination was feeble enough, yet sufficient to expose to view the small, unprotected engine aft, and also the fact that all forward of the little cockpit in which it stood, the entire craft was decked over. The fellow was busily engaged in overhauling the machinery, leaning far forward, his ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... was racing across country with the whole town and the Uncle Tommers astern of me, and a string of dogs stretched out ahead fur's you could see. 'Way up in the lead was Booth Montague and the bloodhounds, and away aft I could hear Jonadab ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was not forgotten, for he gave it a wistful glance in passing; but the wind drawing aft, our sail was set, and stopping was beyond all question. We continued our course without any interruption until we arrived at the mouth of the river, when a sudden puff took a fancy for R——'s renowned ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... followed Germany's financing of the War share Michael's perplexity. Brag is a good dog: but it does not do as a foundation for credit. Gold at Spandau was trumpeted for years as a "war chest"; but when the "best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley," especially when a war does not end, as it should, after a jolly march to Paris in six weeks, through a violated and plundered Belgium, then comes the rub—and the paper which puzzles Michael. A German, possibly Dr. Helfferich, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... of the ship, where a clear view for taking bearings can be had. The center line of the pelorus should also be directly over the keel line of the ship. The inner edge of the metallic ring is engraved in degrees—the 0 deg. or 360 deg. and the 180 deg. marks indicating a fore-and-aft line parallel to the keel of the ship. Within this ring a ground glass dial is pivoted. This ground glass dial has painted upon it a compass card divided into points and sub-divisions and into 360 deg.. This dial is capable of being moved around, but can also be clamped to the outside ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... agape, The menfolk nudged and laughed, But none could find a likelier story For the strange craft. With fear and death and desolation Rigged fore and aft. ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... up in this country that I ever found," replied the miner. "We shall be lucky if we can get along without a 'carry.' First thing we've got to know is how much water we're drawing on each boat fore and aft. Gerald, you're nominated boat measurer, and you can take Pepper with you. You will find two or three lumber gauges in the dunnage in the rear boat. Each of you take one, and let me know at once what each boat is drawing. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... shall not enter, Scroll in hand, the common heart— Stopped at surface: since at centre Song should reach Welt-schmerz, world-smart!" "Enter in the heart?" Its shelly Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft! Such song "enters in the belly And is ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... desire to get at the tubular wooden flag box that some gay colours may deck our mast in entering a new harbour, this will be found inside the space aft of the caboose; and again, by reaching the arm still further into the hollow behind our seat, it will grasp the storm mizen, a strongly made triangular sail, to be used only in untoward hours, and for which we must prepare by lowering the lug mizen, and shifting the halyard, tack, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... had Theriere known it he was very near death that moment when a summons from Skipper Simms called him aft and saved his life. Then the mucker, unseen by the officer, approached the girl. In his heart were rage and hatred, and as the girl turned at the sound of his step behind her she saw them mirrored in his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... skipper has a good name; so we shall have a better class of passengers, I expect, than usually voyages with convict ships; and besides the passengers there will be the officer of the convict guard, and a surgeon, so we shall be pretty full aft." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... if you think so we will say nothing more about it. I thought perhaps you would like to have him aft with you." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... man, certainly not more than five feet high, about three or four and twenty years of age, dressed with great care, with his trousers sticking to his legs, with a French chimney-pot hat on his head, very much peaked fore and aft and closely turned up at the sides. He had a bright-coloured silk handkerchief round his neck, and a white shirt, of which the collar and wristbands were rather larger and longer than suited the small dimensions of the man. He wore a white greatcoat tight buttoned ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... a hanging lantern, lit it, and passed out into the gangway. Another lamp hung from the companion hatch to light the tenants to the lower deck, whence he descended. This deck was divided fore and aft by a partitioned passage,—the lofts or apartments being lighted from the ports, and one or two by a door cut through the ship's side communicating with an alley on either side. This was the case ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the other. He uses, as a rule, the left hand side. He grasps the blade right hand at the top, left hand a foot or more down, and then reaching the paddle forward, he digs it into the water with a strong, firm grip, keeping it perpendicular and drawing it aft. When the paddle is abreast his erect body, he suddenly turns the blade so as to bring the flat against the body of the canoe. This acts at once as a lee board and a rudder. With these graceful movements ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... to send all hands aft," went on Mr. Baker; "and tell one of the youngsters to bring a good lamp here. I want ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... be done in personal decoration with advertising placards; and the lofty mural crown of the president urged the public on both sides to Use Plug Cut. The picador's pasteboard horse was attached to his middle, fore and aft, and looked quite the sort of hapless jade which is ordinarily sacrificed to the bulls. The toro himself was composed of two prisoners, whose horizontal backs were covered with a brown blanket; and his feet, sometimes bare and sometimes shod with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... or fifteen miles a day is doing well—very well. From a slight eminence at one side of the way we may stand and see the slowly creeping line of wagons and stock, for many miles fore and aft, as they bend their way in and out, around and over the surface of knolls and flats, hillocks and gullies. From a distant view they seem not to be ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... Sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty revolutions at last, my little engine tears away. The even black rope comes straight out of the blue heaving water; passes slowly round an open-hearted, good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet diameter; aft past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong; through a gentle guide; on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body and says, 'Come you must,' as plain as drum can speak: the chattering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... craft Lay calmed, old JASPER toddled aft. "My mind misgives me, sir, that we Were wrong about that selvagee— I should restore it." "Good," said the Captain, and that day Restored it to the maintop-stay. Well-practised sailors often make A much more serious ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... summoned from below, and the boys remained aft recalling to mind all they had studied ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... began to develop themselves: the regiment of soldiers whom we were transporting picturesquely breakfasted forward, and the second-cabin people came aft to our deck, while the English engineer (there are English engineers on all the Mediterranean steamers) planted a camp-stool in a sunny spot, and sat down to ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... it is not always pleasant. In heavy weather the stern of the ship has an unwholesome knack of jumping into the air and shaking itself like the tail of a dog. It is disconcerting, to say the least of it, particularly when the water sweeps its way aft along the upper deck in solid masses which no so-called ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... sea now struck the vessel, swept the deck fore and aft, and carried overboard five of the crew, who instantly sank to rise ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... bar, seized the senseless bartender by the ankles and skidded him out on the barroom floor. The man whom Doc Coffin had addressed as Honey (his other name was Hoke) spread his legs and whistled when he glimpsed the three-inch cut running fore and aft along the top of the bartender's skull. Blood from that cut had dribbled and oozed over the major portion of the bartender's face and shirt. For it had been the bartender's luck to hook his chin on the edge of the lowest shelf when he dropped and he ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... upon her companion. "Color!" she exclaimed, but she did not finish her remark, for Ralph came running aft. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... bows, and the shot crashed through the timbers of the Portuguese ship. The reason for this delay was, that the pirate waited till the sun was up to ascertain if there were any other vessels to be seen, previous to his pouncing on his quarry. The Portuguese captain went aft and hoisted his ensign, but no flag was shown by the schooner. Again whistled the ball, and again did it tear up the decks of the unfortunate ship: many of those who had re-ascended to ascertain what was going on, now hastily ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... on. Neither Guy nor Melton could sleep, but sitting aft on camp stools they talked in whispers of the dread events they had witnessed, and of ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... there is a pair of you," said the first lieutenant, turning aft and walking away; after which Tommy and I went down the companion ladder as fast as we could, and in a few seconds afterwards were sitting together on the same ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... knew that the Coast Guard vessel was a converted whaler, it had never fixed itself in his mind that the Bear was a sailing vessel with auxiliary steam, and that she was handled as a sailing vessel. Barkentine-rigged, with square sails on the foremast and fore-and-aft rig on her main and mizzen, Eric found later by experience that her sailing powers were first-class. His delight in the handling of the ship added to his popularity with his brother officers, all of whom, as older men, had been ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... turned so that it was broadside to the distant submarine. Not only its conning tower was now visible, but a long black object fore and aft ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... harts for cooling streams— Yet half afraid to venture for the draught; A go-between, yet blundering in extremes, And tossed along the vessel fore and aft; Now shrinking back, now midst the first he seems, Patriot by force, and courtisan[*D] by craft; Quick without wit, and violent without strength— A disappointed Lawyer, at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the peak down when we bring the wind farther aft. In the meanwhile, you'd better get your breakfast, and if you come out again, put on one of the coats you'll ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... cadets all troop down to the middle deck, where they form in line, two deep, all along the deck; the port watch in the fore part of the ship, and the starboard watch farther aft. This division into two parts, starboard watch and port watch, is to accustom them to the idea of the whole ship's company being always ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the Englishmen who saw the first part of the engagement from the shore, the Emden was cut up rapidly. Her forward smokestack lay across the deck, and was already burning fiercely aft. Behind the mainmast several ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... floats, anyhow," remarked the professor. "Row out and fasten cables fore and aft," he went on, turning to the two machinists. In a few minutes the Porpoise was fastened to a small dock with strong ropes the two young men had carried out to her ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... a-side, and one twenty-four forward and one aft. There'll be some chips flying if we meet him, but we'll do our best to close his fist and stop his grabbing. You're wanting to get back? Come over day after to-morrow and give me a hand. I'll be glad of your help;" and ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... paddle-wheels. The exterior of the "New York" is, as usual, of pine, painted white and relieved with tints and gold. The interior is finished in hard-wood cabinet work, ash being used forward of the shaft on the main deck, and mahogany aft and in the dining-room. Ash is also used in the grand saloons on the promenade deck. One feature of these saloons especially worthy of note, is the number and size of the windows, which are so numerous as to almost form one continuous ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... prisoners; but was content to admire them from a distance—as, indeed, did the rest of the crew—retiring from time to time behind convenient shelters to hide their indecorous mirth. During the afternoon it may be said that Mr. Sturge's troupe had the deck aft of the forecastle to themselves. Being unacquainted with naval usage, they roamed the poop indifferently with the main deck, no man forbidding them, while Captain Crang and Mr. Wapshott slumbered below; the one of set purpose, in the hope of recapturing ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... turning at once—for the cinder-sifter had given him a bright idea; and he went right aft to his comrades. By this time the Frenchmen were busy getting the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... mate in distress was not welcome to the half of it. As to the Polls, the less said the better. I've been a true consort to my Phoebe since she agreed to look to me for signals. Those are my papers, all clear and aboveboard. If I'm summoned aft this very night by the great Lord High Admiral of all, I ain't afeared that He'll clap me into the bilboes, for though I'm only a poor sailor man, I've got His promise in this here book, and I'm not afraid of His going ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rows of white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots across the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent-pouch on the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with black fleshy 'horns' fore and aft." ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... of another form, indeed; Built for freight, and yet for speed, A beautiful and gallant craft; Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast, Pressing down upon sail and mast, Might not the sharp bows overwhelm; Broad in the beam, but sloping aft With graceful curve and slow degrees, That she might be docile to the helm, And that the currents of parted seas, Closing behind, with mighty force, Might aid and not ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... A small merchant vessel with two masts, particularly distinguished from other vessels with two masts by the form of her mainsail, which is bent to the whole length of her yard, hanging fore and aft, and inclined to the horizon at an angle of about 45 deg. Few vessels are now rigged in this manner, and the name is rather ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of Bui, and his forecastle man. Yet another of the men to Bui was Havard the Hewer; even stronger was he, and a man of great valour. During this struggle the men of Eirik went up aboard Bui's ship, & made aft to the poop, towards Bui, and Thorstein Midlang struck him full across the nose, cleaving asunder the nose-piece of his helmet, ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... became evident that the cabin must soon go to pieces, and indeed it was scarcely tenantable then. The crew were collected in the forecastle, which was stronger and less exposed, the vessel having settled by the stem, and the sailors had been repeatedly ordered to go aft and help the passengers forward, but the peril was so great that none obeyed. At length the second mate, Davis, went himself, and accompanied the Italian girl, Celesta Pardena, safely to the forecastle, though with great difficulty. Madame Ossoli went next, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... for tea, so we brushed ourselves hastily and went over to the legation to find a large crowd of dusty people assembled, in the beautiful, spacious drawing-rooms. Every one was talking politics, discussing the situation fore and aft, and, as usual, arriving nowhere. At the end of an hour there was a stir caused by the arrival of C——, one of the young, important Members of Parliament. He stood surrounded by an enquiring group, hands hidden up the capacious sleeves of his crackling brocade coat, while he ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Princess Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A," but the Army through all its barracks and canteens knows them now as the "Fore and Aft." They may in time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them "Fore and Aft" does so at the risk of the head which ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Watling's Island and steamed into story-land. On the white-scrubbed deck aft of the wheel-house Carl sat with his friends of the steerage—sturdy men all, used to open places; old Ed, the rock-driller, long, Irish, huge-handed, irate, kindly; Harry, the young mechanic from Cleveland. Ed and an oiler were furiously debating ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... weighted the heavy end, leaving the other pointing upstream. To this last had been tied the grapevine. When the drifting raft reached the sapling, the Indians concealed in the willows pulled hard on the improvised rope; the end of the sapling stuck up like a hook, and the aft was caught and held. The killing of the helmsman showed the Indians' foresight; even had the raft drifted on downstream the brothers would have been helpless on a craft they could not manage. After all, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... then. I had her before matrimony, and I will have her after it. No, Tom, I am not ungrateful; fore or aft, she shall be retained. She shall never say that I acted unhandsomely by her, especially as she has become a good girl and repented. I know I did her injustice about the player-man. On that point she has thoroughly satisfied me, and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a word, slipped into my dressing-gown, and with Platts passed aft along the deserted deck. The sea was as calm as a great lake. Ahead, on the port bow, an angry flambeau burnt redly beneath the peaceful vault of the heavens. Platts nodded absently in the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... largest of the gunboats (of which there are four) belonging to the Sarawak Government. She is about 200 tons, schooner rigged, and carries two 32-pounders, fore and aft. Her accommodation, state rooms and saloon, are forward, a good plan in the tropics, as the smell of steam and hot oil from the engine-room are thus avoided, and it is also cooler than aft when the vessel is under weigh. The quarters of the crew are aft; and I ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... of disorder, one of the boats being purposely left hanging vertical with only one end lowered. Meanwhile the submarine closed. Several shells from her gun hit the after part of the Dunraven, causing a depth charge to explode and setting her on fire aft, blowing the officer in charge of the after gun out of his control station, and wounding severely the seaman stationed at the depth charges. The situation now was that the submarine was passing from the port to the starboard quarter, and at any moment ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... me soul'll go on cussin' 'im till the ind av doom." He shook his fist again, becoming more derisive: "Look at his head, now! If 'tain't the shape av a rotten pear may I be shot for a spy!—mind ye how it slopes up to a p'int, both fore-and-aft, and ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... of the great nautical prototype, the water-fowl, than the requirements of speed have permitted in the carrying trade of more recent years. That she was of the "square rig" of her time—when apparently no use was made of the "fore-and-aft" sails which have so wholly banished the former from all vessels of her size—goes without saying. She was too large for the lateen rig, so prevalent in the Mediterranean, except upon her mizzenmast, where it was ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... night, not a cloud or feather of one; a big moon, and dead-calm sea; just a slight, even roll; we have sat over pipes after tea, chatting of old days, and present things, and the mysterious future, sitting right aft on the poop, with the ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... found a monkey-ladder dangling close above them, and up this the two men crept stealthily. Once on deck they hastened aft to where the Russian ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
