United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It seemed to Cléo as she lay with her head on the hard sailcloth and her body on the hard sand, covered with the oilskin coat which she had taken off to use as a blanket, that through the league long rumble of the surf she could hear him grumbling still. She did not care. Hard though the floor was she did not mind, she was chloroformed. Chloroformed by the air of Kerguelen.
"Jack proceeded to clean the skin as well as he was able; then procured from the nail-chest some long flat-headed nails, and inserted them closely through the long pieces of skin he had cut for collars; he then cut some sailcloth, and made a double lining over the heads of the nails; and finished by giving me the delicate office of sewing them together, which I could not but comply with.
It showed how clogged I was by sombre thought that I had not seen them, for in a moment they swept in full sight. I crowded the woman down in the canoe, and covered her with sailcloth. Then I hailed the canoes with a long cry, "Tanipi endayenk?" which means, "Whence come you?" and added "Peca," that they might know I called in peace. The canoes wheeled and soon hung like water birds at our side.
Their sails either because sailcloth was scarce, or because they thought canvas too weak for the strain of the winter storms were manufactured out of leather. Such vessels were unwieldy, but had been found available for voyages even to Britain. Their crews were accustomed to handle them, and knew all the rocks and shoals and currents of the intricate and difficult harbors.
The east verandah, sacred to his own privacy, puffing out of cheeks, and other signs of perplexed thinking, was fitted with stout blinds of sailcloth. The north verandah was not a verandah at all, really. It was more like a long balcony. It did not communicate with the other two, and could only be approached by a passage inside the house.
In the mean time we walked over to Tent House to see the state of things, and found that winter had done more damage there than at Falcon's Nest. The storm had overthrown the tent, carried away some of the sailcloth, and injured our provisions so much, that great part was good for nothing, and the rest required to be immediately dried.
These are random examples, and I do not claim that they are typical. They are, on the other hand, not exceptional. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of the English commercial policy towards Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wool, cotton, sailcloth, sugar refining, shipping, glass, the cattle and provision trade, were all deliberately strangled.
What it meant she could not tell, but in another moment the Scarrowmania's whistle shrieked. A gray shape burst out of the vapor and grew with astonishing swiftness into dim tiers of slanted sailcloth swaying above a strip of hull that moved amid a broad white smear of foam.
The wind was fairly fresh up there, and overhead, there sounded the flap, flap of sailcloth flying in the wind; but since we had left the deck, there had been no other sound from above. Now, abruptly, there came again a wild crying from the darkness over us. A strange, wild medley it was of screams for help, mixed up with violent, breathless curses.
It had not crossed his mind until he went in pursuit of them that if they visited the shop they must perforce be brought face to face with Willie's latest invention still in its embryo state; and it was evident that in the pride of entertaining such distinguished strangers the little old man had also forgotten it, for as Bob entered he caught sight of him fumbling awkwardly with a piece of sailcloth snatched up in a hurried attempt to conceal from view this last child of his genius.
Word Of The Day