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There is the "catapult," which shoots a giant arrow, sometimes tipped with material on fire, from a groove or half-tube to a distance of a quarter of a mile. The propelling force, in default of gunpowder or other explosive, is the recoil of strings of gut or hair which have been tightened by a windlass.
So good was the progress made that by five p.m. we were busy at the head, while the last few turns of the windlass were being taken to complete the skinning of the body. With a long pent-up shout that last piece was severed and swung inboard, as the huge mass of reeking flesh floated slowly astern.
Just take a grip like a brave man, heave away wi' the force of a windlass, an' don't stop for my yellin'." Thus adjured, Thursday October took the pincers, and gazed with a look of great anxiety into the cavernous mouth that Adams opened to his view. "Which one is it, father, asked Toc," rolling up his shirt sleeves to the shoulder and displaying arms worthy of Vulcan.
Both men and women stand from daylight until dark walking on a sort of a windlass turning an endless chain with buckets on it, one end of which is in the canal and the other end up on the bank, pumping the water up to flood the rice fields or irrigate the growing crops. No people toil harder or more earnestly than do these simple people.
"Aboard the Padang!" shouted Rolfe. "Catch my lines, will you? We're adrift." "Sheer off," came back the answer, and the voice was full of menace. "Anchor, you no-sailor! Fight your own troubles." "By Godfrey, I'll fight some o' you, soon's I get fast," roared the mate furiously, and stumbled to the windlass.
A few minutes later he heard the wheezy chug, chug, chug of the old gold dredge at McCoffin's Bend. It would be the Betty M., of course, with old Andy Duggan at the windlass, his black pipe in mouth, still scooping up the shifting sands as he had scooped them up for more than twenty years.
The tide was so strong that when a sufficient quantity of cable was run out, the attempt to "check her," and to "bring up," resulted in capsizing the windlass, and causing, for a few minutes, a sense of indescribable confusion.
If a modern sculptor were to come and say, 'Very well, but where can one find subjects for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats and chimney-pot hats? I would tell him to go to the docks of a great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway.
Got all traps, pans, shovels, picks, cradle, tub, windlass, barrow. Long Aleck chap that attacked you was my mate; he's turning teamster. Take me on, an' here's my hand. We're made for a pair. Burton stopped for lack of wind. He jerked his words with a slight nasal intonation, and his manner and his action indicated a characteristic impetuosity.
Against their lurid background dark figures were bending and straining, twisting and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass, to the rhythm of an eternal clank and roar. "I guess hell must look something like that," said a voice. McMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen had shifted in his seat and was staring out into the fiery waste.
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