United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At the distance of about a mile lay the armed vessel so often alluded to; her light low hull dimly seen in the hazy atmosphere that danced upon the waters, and her attenuated masts and sloping yards, with their slight tracery of cordage, recalling rather the complex and delicate ramifications of the spider's web, than the elastic yet solid machinery to which the lives of those within had so often been committed in sea and tempest.

Wilder grew the night, and more tempestuous the sea, while the sky became a mountainous landscape of black and white clouds fitfully illumined by the moon, which appeared to run over their fleecy pinnacles and sable plains like some scared white creature pursued by invisible foes: The vessel on which the corpse of Lotys lay, palled in purple, and decked with flowers, flew over the waves, to all seeming with the same hunted rapidity as the moon rushed through the heavens, and so far, though her masts bent reed-like in the wind, and her sails strained at their cordage, she had come to no harm.

I have often observed, on eating twenty or more of these at a time, that the urine becomes as red as blood, but without producing any evil consequence. We found nothing of value in Realejo, except 500 sacks of flour, with some pitch, tar, and cordage.

The monster, however, sat in the midst of the stalwart cordage of his web, right over the doctor's head; and he looked, with all those complicated lines, like the symbol of a conjurer or crafty politician in the midst of the complexity of his scheme; and Septimius wondered if he were not the type of Dr.

They would have seen pieces of timber, black and charred with fire; fragments of broken spars, with sails and cordage attached and trailing after them; here and there a cask or barrel, sunk to the level of the surface by the weight of its contents; pieces of packing-cases, torn asunder as if by some terrible explosion; cabin-chairs, coops, oars, handspikes, and other implements of the mariner's calling, all bobbing about on the bosom of the blue deep, and carried hither and thither by the arbitrary oscillations of the breeze.

On the other hand, when cordage was to be bought for the British vessels after the hurricanes of 1780, the merchants of the island, he said, alleged that there was none there; although, when he took the island soon afterwards, many hundred tons were found that had been long in stock. Rodney and Vaughan moved promptly. Three days after their orders arrived, they sailed for St. Eustatius.

The hemp employed in the manufacture of the patent cordage is generally selected for its length of fibre, and lightness or whiteness of colour; and when whale-lines are made, only the very finest lots of hemp procurable at the time are used; but the charge for spinning them is increased to six dollars a pecul, the extra labour being so considerable, that even with the additional charge, the maker, Mr.

Another added, "that the state of his revenues never, in fact, had been more flourishing; that, independent of a furnished account of from three to four millions, it was really wonderful to find France unencumbered with any urgent debts; but that this prosperous condition was approaching its termination, since it appeared that with the year 1812 a ruinous campaign was to commence; that hitherto, war had been made to support the expense of war; that we had every where found the table laid out; but that, in future, we could no longer live at the expense of Germany, since she had become our ally; but, on the contrary, it would be necessary to support her contingents, and that without any hope of remuneration, whatever the result might be; that we should have to pay at Paris for every ration of bread which would be consumed at Moscow, as the new scenes of action offered us no harvest to reap, independent of glory, but cordage, pitch, and shipping-tackle, which would certainly go but a small way towards the discharge of the expenses of a continental war.

While all this turmoil and confusion was going on above on deck with the ship labouring and straining through the heavy seas that raced after her as she ran before the wind, one every now and then outstripping its fellows and breaking over her quarter or stern-rail with a force that made her quiver from end to end, and "stagger like a drunken man," as the Psalmist has so aptly described it, the thud of the heavy waves playing a sort of deep bass accompaniment to the shrieking treble of the wind as it whistled and wailed through the shrouds and cordage, and the ragged remnants of the torn topsail flapping against the yard, with the sound of a stock-driver's whip, in a series of short, sharp reports those below in the cuddy were far from having a pleasant time of it; for, they were almost in the dark, the captain having caused the companion-hatch to be battened down, and a heavy tarpaulin thrown across the skylight to prevent the tons of water that came over the poop at intervals from flooding the saloon as the waves swept forward in a cascade of foam.

Once or twice he expressed a half-formed determination to pull to her in one of the light boats, in order to look after her safety in person, and then he abandoned it, as he witnessed the rising of the sea, and the manner in which the massive raft caused the cordage by which it was held to strain.