"Taffrail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her masts were checked with age and, where our craft showed polished brass, she long ago had resorted to white paint. At the same time, she gave the impression of aristocracy—broken-down aristocracy, if you choose. No bunting fluttered at her masthead, no country's emblem waved over her taffrail, and the only hint of nationality or ownership was a rather badly painted word Orchid on her name plate. Taken altogether, she ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... with a sickening swoop and the sound of thunder. A great, gray-and-white wall boiled and raced over her bows. Ellinwood leaped for the weather-rigging and the other two clutched the wheel as they stood waist-deep in the surge that roared over the taffrail and to leeward. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... perhaps; but here was the last day of the voyage, and she hadn't yet found courage to ask him. Great as had been the joy of discovering his name on the passenger-list and seeing his friendly bearded face in the throng against the taffrail at Cherbourg, she had as yet said nothing to him except, when they had met: "Of course I'm ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. He moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressed venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'! Look at their press—look at their corruption—their ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 16', about due east of the Azores. The air is mild and warm; the sky is azure, and the sea intensely blue. How different from the weather in the English Channel only a short week ago! Bugs are now discarded, and winter clothing begins to feel almost oppressive. In the evenings, as we hang over the taffrail, we watch with interest the bluish-white sparks mingling with the light blue foam near the stern—the first indications of that phosphorescence which, I am told, we shall find so bright in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... spars of a vessel suddenly rose like a phantom out of the fog at their side. The half disciplined foreign crew uttered a cry of rage and trepidation, and huddled like sheep in the waist, with distracted gestures; even the two men at the wheel forsook their post to run in dazed terror to the taffrail. Before the mate could restore order to this chaos, the Excelsior had drifted, with a scarcely perceptible concussion, against the counter of the strange vessel. In an instant a dozen figures appeared on its bulwarks, and dropped unimpeded upon the Excelsior's deck. As the foremost one approached ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... weight underslung to keep it upright, and a tin can, painted white, set on a short spar in one end of the keg. A light line was attached to a bridle, and the mark lowered over the stern, where it rode, bobbing in the tail of the schooner's wake, thirty fathoms from the taffrail ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... engaged, some fishing with patient assiduity, others, grouped into small knots, listening to prosy yarns; while a few were prostrated round the decks in attitudes of perfect abandonment or sleep. The officers were leaning over the taffrail, trying, with a sportsman-like anxiety worthy of better prey, to hook a shark, which was slowly meandering under the stern; or looking contemplatively into the dark-brown waves, either watching the many forms of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... sympathy which are endured in the pursuit of pleasure. There was just room on deck for me to sit on a box, and the obliging, gentlemanly master, who, with his son and myself, were the only whites on board, sat on the taffrail. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... interest and beauty. The sunsets were lovely, and the phosphorescent light in the water at night especially so. The wake of the ship was luminous for a long distance, and the crests of the waves shone all around us. Once I was leaning over the taffrail late in the evening, when a shoal of fish passed. There were thousands of them, and each one was a living, moving centre of light. Bottle-nosed whales gambolled around us when we were within a few hundred miles of Labrador, and later on "schools" of porpoises occasionally visited ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... And now the sea broke most surprisingly all round us, and a large tumbling swell threatened to poop us; the long-boat, which was at this time moored astern, was on a sudden canted so high that it broke the transom of the Commodore's gallery, and would doubtless have risen as high as the taffrail had it not been for this stroke which stove the boat all to pieces; but the poor boat-keeper, though extremely bruised, was saved almost by miracle. About eight the tide slackened, but the wind did not abate; so that at ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... were divided from the slaves' by the thinnest of wooden partitions. By day, indeed, these officers, as well as the chaplain, had the use of the Commodore's room, a fairly spacious chamber in the stern, shaped on the outside like a big cradle, with bulging windows and a couple of lanterns on the taffrail above, that were lit when evening closed in. But at night, or in foul weather, M. de la Pailletine reserved this ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo of straining ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the bottom of it, and peered over the deck of the steamer. Then he hauled on the painter till he brought the little craft up to the taffrail, where with no little difficulty he cast off the rope. He could see the soldiers on the upper bank, and those on the forward part of the steamboat; but they were all too busy to bestow any attention upon him. The current bore the tender ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic |
