Belay

“ Footnote 18:
� 'Robans:' rope-bands, pronounced roebins, are small cords, used to fasten the upper edge of any sail to its respective yard.
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Footnote 19:
� 'Braces slack:' because the lee-brace confines the yard so that the tack will not come down to its place till the braces are cast loose.
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Footnote 20:
� 'Taught,' 'tally,' and 'belay:' taught implies stiff, tense, or extended straight; and tally is a phrase particularly applied to the operation of hauling aft the sheets, or drawing them towards the ship's stern; to belay, is to fasten. ”

“ On the face of the ridge that bounds the Needle Gully below us two parallel cracks run up steeply about a yard 160 apart. They are so closed, and they run so obliquely up the wall, that good foothold is impossible in either, and handhold of even moderate quality requires much seeking. Nevertheless, they are both of immense importance, and are capable of giving all the required aid. The leader should here be joined by the second, and should belay himself to the highest effective part of the broken rock below him. ”

“ Louis was received. This letter I carefully preserved, and it will be given with these papers. The box was of iron, carefully locked, and of such weight as to render it a safe depository for articles of value. I placed it in a safe and secure place, where it could not be disturbed until such time as it should be demanded by its owner. The letter alluded to above was the last communication I ever received from Beale, and I never saw him again. I can only suppose that he was killed by Indians, afar from his home, though nothing was heard of his death. ”

“ Time—time is nothing. Time is only what we make it. An hour in a dungeon might be an eternity, while a million years in the Levachan of the Hindoo would seem but a summer's day.”
8
Continuing their walk, they followed an avenue of dazzling beauty, which led to a green hill overlooking the town, upon which stood a temple of transcendent splendor. The sunlight flashed upon its marble walls and chevaux de frise of minarets. Paul was filled with amazement, and demanded an explanation. ”

“ My fingers floated off the studs, I hung as if I were annihilated, and at last very softly and gently I came against the bale and the golden chain and the crowbars that had drifted to the middle of the sphere.
I do not know how long that drifting took. In the sphere, of course, even more than on the moon one's earthly time-sense was ineffectual. At the touch of the bale it was as if I had awakened from a dreamless sleep. I immediately perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive I must get a light or open a window so as to get a grip of something with my eyes. ”

“ The mainspring being broken in his mind,
A clock himself, if one were so inclined,
That stood at twenty minutes after three—
The reason being for this, it might be said,
That things in death were neither clocks nor people, but only dead. ”

“ The clock in the neighbouring church-tower began to strike, and its dismal metallic sound trembled and wept, flying away into the void, and being lost in the maze of silently whirling snowflakes. I began to count the strokes, and went into a fit of laughter. The clock struck 15! The belfry was old, and so, too, was the clock, and although it indicated the right time, it struck spasmodically, sometimes so often that the grey, ancient bell-ringer had to clamber up and stop the convulsive strokes of the hammer with his hand. ”

“ In ancient books the word cloche simply stands for a bell,—the monks being accustomed to ring a bell at certain periods marked for them by their sun-dials or hour-glasses, and 'What's o'clock?' in old writers is often merely equivalent to the inquiry, 'What hour was last struck by bell?' The word horologe or hour-measurer of course equally applied to the sun-dial, the clepsydra, and the clock, and this convertibility of terms makes it all the more difficult to trace the point at which the newer invention began. ”

“ The clock-bell, in particular, now drew attention. Under a patient chisel, the latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the cloudings incident to casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now revealed. Round and round the bell, twelve figures of gay girls, garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral ring—the embodied hours.
"Bannadonna," said the chief, "this bell excels all else. No added touch could here improve. Hark!" hearing a sound, "was that the wind?"
"The wind, Excellenza," was the light response. "But the figures, they are not yet without their faults. ”

“ Angela hung her head and made no answer, and the clock above them boomed out the hour, raising its sullen note in insolent defiance of the silence. What is it that is so solemn about the striking of the belfry-clock when one stands in a churchyard at night? Is it that the hour softens our natures, and makes them more amenable to semi- superstitious influences? ”

“ Let me illustrate my case by analogy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows. ”

“ Whereupon Monsieur went frantic. "Stop the clock—nevaire!—what crime to think of!—the clock must not stop till he stop himself!"
"All right, Monsoor, you can explain all that to Mr. Alan Craig. The clock, like everything else here, belongs to him now,—and I happen to have a headache this morning."
"Hah! you have rejoice at the return of the young Mr. Craik," said Guidet, controlling himself and sympathetically considering Caw's red eyes and husky voice. "Good!—but you look upon the wine when he was wheesky, and there is not so much jolly good fellow in the morning—eh, Mr. Caw?" ”

“ The Man Animal and Nature's Timepieces The story of the watch that you hold in your hand to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race. When our earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succession of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning of time-reckoning and time-measurement. ”

“ The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, and the chimes await their appointed time to fly—wild prisoners—by twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives—one or twelve taking wing—they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; they are delivered from the close hands of this actual present. Not in vain is the sudden upper door opened against the sky ”

“ From that time on, the important improvements of clockwork were chiefly made in two directions—those of the mechanical perfection of the escapement and the compensation for changes of temperature.
There is a little world of invention and discovery behind the face of the clock which beats so steadily on your mantel. Look within if you will, and see the compact mechanism with its toothed gears, its coiled spring, or its swinging [91] pendulum, in which the motion of the cathedral lamp is harnessed for your service,—nothing in that grouping has merely happened so. ”

“ The ten o'clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells. It's very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time. There it goes! ”

“ All the talk of the farm-servants was upon subjects ominous of death. One said that he had heard Lion, the big watch-dog, howl long and loud before daylight; another that he had seen a corpse candle as he went homewards the previous evening; a third that she had seen her mistress all in white at her bedside, looking beautiful; a fourth that she had heard a raven croak; in short, if sighs and wonders could kill poor Mrs Prothero, there was little chance for her life. Where every one was usually so busy, so full of energy and spirit, there was more than a Sabbath calm. ”

“ In the middle of the lawn stood the devoted Beale, a little more flushed than I had seen him hitherto, parleying with a burly and excited young man without a coat. Grouped round the pair were some dozen men, young, middle-aged, and old, all talking their hardest. ”

“ Time had laid aside its wing, and put on shoes of lead. She flew no longer, but walked like an aged woman. How long an hour seems, when you count the seconds! How terribly a day stretches out when, with wakeful but wearied eyes, you long for its close! ”

“ As thus he called together the articles of his Calvinistic creed, the bell of the great clock (a token seldom silent in such narratives) tolled three, and was immediately followed by the hoarse call of the sentinels through vault and gallery, up stairs and beneath, challenging and answering each other with the usual watch-word, All’s Well. Their voices mingled with the deep boom of the bell, yet ceased before that was silent, and when they had died away, the tingling echo of the prolonged knell was scarcely audible. ”

“ For, of course, when my experience that afternoon on the train flashed through my mind, I guessed at once that the solution of the mystery was in all probability merely a phonographic device for announcing the hour. Nevertheless, so thrilling and lifelike in effect were the tones of the voice I had heard that I confess I had not the nerve to light the gas to investigate till I had indued my more essential garments. Of course I found no lady in the room, but only a clock. ”

“ The mist of the evening and of the night from dripping and thin had grown dense and whitened with the morning, so that to every soldier a new despair and a new bewilderment were added from the very air, and the blind fog seemed to make yet more obscure the obscure designs of their commanders. ”

“ Just before midnight a bell-man goes about the streets to give
warning of the hour when the spirits will arrive.
"They will sit where we sat, and will talk of us as we talked of
them: in the gray of the morning only will they go away." ”

“ CLOCK About Clocks
“LOOK at my new wrist-watch! Mom gave it to me for my birthday—isn’t it a beauty?” said the boy named Billy. “Radium dial ’n all; I can see what time it is in the dark. Handy when I’m on hikes, no more stopping to scratch matches. Stem winder ’n everything.”
“Goodness, Billy,” said Big Sister. “Anyone would think to hear you that there never was a watch like that of yours. We all have watches.”
Billy grinned. “Well,” he said, “I’ve wanted it so long. A fellow needs something to tell time by. Who discovered how to tell time anyhow?” ”

“ Inventing and whittling faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All flesh is grass." ”

“ Once long ago I stood in this cave and warned you! You are at the crossroads of a branching future! If you take the right turn now you will live to become me. But, if you take the wrong turn—'
"He straightened, and pointed with his gloved forefinger into the shadows behind me. 'It is there—at your back! When you turn you will see the shining web which it uses to dissolve Time! All over this valley the creature has thrown a Time-dissolving web of force!' ”

“ Bell. I haven't got a 'who.' Still anonymous is the slayer. But I'll swear I've got his character."
"Have you, though!" said Bell. "Tidy fellow! Don't make a mess! Remember that face?"
"Oh, I said he was mad."
"Well, I'm not yet. I'm only feeling what I can feel." He began to examine the burnt paper. "Letters mostly. Some stoutish paper. Some stuff looks a bit like a note-book. That's all we'll get out of that."
"Well, except the one thing. Whoever did that was clearing up. Clearing up something that might have left traces that might have been dangerous. ”

“ Alas, how seldom is anything done in proper time and season! Either too fast, or too slow, is the clock of all human dealings; and what is the law of them, when the sun (the regulator of works and ways) has to be allowed for very often on his own meridian? ”

“ On some tall building in a distant city, a time-ball hangs suspended at the top of its pole, and people pause to look up at it. They hold their watches in their hands. Upon the tick of noon, an impulse will come from the observatory, and the ball will drop. Then those who have been looking will set the hands of their watches and pass on. ”

“ And I can stop clocks.
Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. ”

“ The clock strikes with a steady pulse, though sometimes it seems in a fever—sometimes in a fit. At any rate we have some fixed standard to correct the calculation of our waking time; but in dreams the standard itself is visionary. ”

“ The face of the clock. The hands, like black daggers, had pointed to ten minutes of one. Ten minutes of life! Ten minutes to live! Or—less?
Silence, broken only by the reluctant click-clack, click-clack of the rosewood clock. ”

“ In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the foe, thus!”—and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.
“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.
“True,—but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old.” ”