Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 4, 2025
"Gentlemen," continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, "if any one here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so." The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder, and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a cataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand trickle through till the last grain drops.
I then proceeded to Stow-hill, and first paid my respects to Mrs. Gastrell, whose conversation I was not willing to quit. But my sand-glass was now beginning to run low, as I could not trespass too long on the Colonel's kindness, who obligingly waited for me; so I hastened to Mrs.
The line was divided into twelve or more parts; the end with the board attached was thrown overboard, and, as the line ran out, a seaman held up a little sand-glass shaped like an hour-glass. By it the number of knots or divisions run out were easily measured, and the number of miles the ship sailed over in one hour was ascertained, and the distance made good each day calculated.
"Did the sand run through the glass in exactly thirty seconds?" "Yes." "Are you sure that the sand has not worn the hole between the globes?" "Yes." "Have you proved the sand-glass by the oscillations of a bullet?" "Suspended by a rope yarn drawn out from the top of a coil of soaked hemp? Undoubtedly." "Have you waxed the yarn lest it should stretch?" "Yes." "Have you tested the log?"
There was a log-reel and line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within two leagues and a half of the true position.
It was marked for a now useless 28-second sand-glass, which Captain Swarth replaced by a spare chronometer, held to his ear in the companionway. It ticked even seconds, and when twenty-eight of them had passed he called, "Stop." The markings on the line that had slipped through the mate's fingers indicated an eight-knot speed.
An invisible hand had turned upside down the sand-glass of eternity, and the centuries which had fallen one by one, like the hours, in the solitude of the night, were falling once more.
"Are the boys gone already?" he asked, almost as he opened his eyes. "No, they are all asleep in a corner," answered the porter. "Asleep!" cried Zorzi, in sudden anxiety. "Wake them, Pasquale, and see whether the sand-glass has been turned and is running, and whether the fire is burning. The young good-for-nothings!" "I will wake them," answered Pasquale.
A small shot will kill a man as well as a large bullet, a small leak let alone will sink a ship, and a small, and especially a secret and spiritual sin, will cost a man his soul. 'Remember, also, your shortening sand-glass. On the day when John Gordon was born a sand-glass with his name written upon it was filled, and from that moment it began to run down before God in heaven.
They are not apt to miss her, with a compass in the captain's boat." "Aye, there'll be noise enough. Plaguey queer, eh, Jack, to be a-loafin' with nothing to see, like your head was wrapped in a blanket. They ought to fetch alongside Blackbeard in a half-hour. Go turn the sand-glass in the cabin."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking