"Binnacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a tin of vaseline, and coated the poor man's hurts as well as I could. Then, as he still groaned, though more feebly, I got out my phial of morphia and a needle. As I held the bottle against a sort of binnacle-light by which Macnaughten sat steering, I caught his eyes staring down on me, quiet and solemn. I tell you, that man was ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Beneath the storm their shatter'd navies groan; The trembling deep recoils from zone to zone— Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke, The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke; Tom from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew, And gripes and lashings all asunder flew; Companion, binnacle, in floating wreck, With compasses and glasses strew'd the deck; The balanced mizen, rending to the head, 460 In fluttering fragments from its bolt-rope fled; The sides convulsive shook on groaning ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... They did all they could to keep her Head to the Sea, and setting up a small Jury-mast, to which they clapp'd a Top-gallant-yard, we again scudded, altogether ignorant where we were; for a Sea which pooped us the second Day, had carried away the Binnacle with the Two Compasses; and they either had not, or knew not, where to find another. We left our selves to the Mercy of the Sea and Wind, for we had no other Party to take; and tho' the former run Mountain-high, yet finding the Ship made no Water, the Captain apprehended no Danger, but that of being ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... shall," said Mark, rather despondently; and, tucking his glass under his arm, he went aft again toward where he could see the faint glow from the binnacle light shining up in ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... buckets of the paddle wheels began to turn; and La Luz, long, low, narrow, and a racer, moved noiselessly out into the bay. A few yards only, and the loungers on the wharf could neither see nor hear her. Except for the muffled binnacle light, there was neither a ray nor a spark. The anthracite gave almost no smoke. The hull, hardly three feet above water amidships, was "Union color," and invisible at night. The waves slipped over her like oil, without the sound of a splash, almost without breaking. She glided along more ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... new from the electric illumination of the hold, the blackness was positive, with the palpable quality of an element, relieved alone by the dull glow of the binnacle housing the gyroscope telltale, from which the faintest of golden reflections struck back to pick out a pair of seemingly severed fists gripping the handles of the bridge steering wheel with a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to darken the decks. The running lights of red and green were still in the lamp room, and, except for a soft, rosy glow from the binnacle-bowl, there was a blackness of night throughout the upper part of the ship. Cigars and pipes and cigarettes had been tabooed, and doors were opened in the deck houses only after the inside lights had been lowered ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... shone. The vessel was heeling slightly in the crisp evening wind, her full, rounded sails rustling overhead, her cordage creaking, foam at her forefoot and her wake stretching backward toward the land she was leaving. Her skipper stood aft by the binnacle, feeling, with a joy quite indescribable, the lift of the deck beneath him and the rush of the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... day after we were at sea, I saw a group of savages lying round the binnacle, all intently occupied in observing the phenomenon of the magnetic attraction; they seemed at once to comprehend the purpose to which it was applied, and I listened with eager curiosity to ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... the picturesque shores of Java and Sumatra. Impenetrable darkness shrouds both earth and sea, and only by the light of the electric flash is the mariner shown how to keep off land, and with shortened sail holds on his way. On board of all vessels, on binnacle, masts and spars are hung lighted lanterns in order to avoid collision with each other, for in the thick darkness that envelopes all around, no object can be discerned at a distance of three yards. In the meantime the wind pipes ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... went to his cabin, and Scott walked aft to the compass abaft the mainmast. The binnacle was lighted, and he looked into it. The course was all right, though the ship yawed a good deal in the trough of the sea, the gale pelting her squarely on the beam. Though it was not an easy thing even for a thorough ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... looked at the clock. 'What do you think of that?' she said. 'Ten minutes to three, and I'd just got to sleep!' I growled about the light, and she put it out, after she had thrown on a wrapper. The room was dark when she opened the door. There was a little light in the chart-room, from the binnacle lantern. The door at the top of the companionway was always closed at night; the light came through the window ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to take his cue when she expressed curiosity concerning the duties of the officer of the watch. And coming up at about two bells for a turn round the deck and a few breaths of fresh air before dressing for dinner, Lanyard saw them on the bridge, their heads together over the binnacle—to the open disgust of the man at ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... didn't, eh? Well, say, I'm one of the yachtiest yachters that ever jibbed a gangway. Not that I do any sailin' exactly; but I guess Sadie and me each paid good money for our shares of club stock, and if that ain't as foolish an act as you can find in the nautical calendar, then I'll eat the binnacle boom. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... explained the circumstances of the bet with Bagnigge. Parliament was to adjourn in ten days; the season would be over! Bagnigge was lying ill chez lui; and the five-and-twenty thousand were irrecoverably his. And he vowed he would buy Lord Binnacle's yacht—crew, captain, guns ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indeed. I doubt, to be sure, whether the severe tenue du bord requires that the seaman should be always furnished with those ferocious weapons, which in sundry maritime manoeuvers, such as going to sleep in your hammock for instance, or twinkling a binnacle, or luffing a marlinspike, or keelhauling a maintopgallant (all naval operations, my dear, which any seafaring novelist will explain to you)—I doubt, I say, whether these weapons are ALWAYS worn by sailors, and have heard that they are commonly and very sensibly too, locked up until they are ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... gets in five hours of the country that we was going to introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over to the starboard binnacle and recollects ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry |
