Yardstick

“ The reef-cleats on the topsail-yards are beyond the lifts and braces.
YARD-ARM PIECE. An octagonal piece of timber supplied to replace a yard-arm if shot away. It is one-third the length of the main-yard.
YARD-ROPE. Is only used for temporary purposes; the most usual application of the term is that by which a yard is hoisted for crossing, or sent down. Also, rove for execution. The yard-rope of the lighter yards is the halliards, which, when the yard is crossed, is made into tie and halliards by a peculiar mode of toggling on the halliard purchase, as in the order, "Toggle the halliards!" ”

“ A square yard of solid ground is worth miles of the pitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability to stand still for one second is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the sun shines, and swing up and down, while the waves run hither and thither and toss their white caps, is all well enough to lie in your narrow berth and roll from side to side all night long; to walk uphill to your state-room door, and, when you get there, find you have got to the bottom of the hill, and opening the door is like lifting up a trap-door in the floor ”

“ Cast off the heel-lashing and rig your boom out to the mark, slue the boom with the block up and make fast round the yard. (The easiest way of passing the boom-lashing is to take it over the yard and put a bight up between the head-rope and yard; then take the end back over the yard and boom and through the bight, and haul taut. This may be done twice, if necessary, and then hitch it round all parts, between the boom and the yard.) The boom being rigged out and fast, take the end of your tack down into the top and hitch it to the forward shroud. ”

“ The lifts should be single, and fitted with an eye over the yard-arm, and lead through a single block at the mast-head, and set up by a gun or luff tackle purchase, with the double block hooked to a thimble or turned in at the end, and the lower block to an eye-bolt in the deck. Instead of brace-blocks on the fore and main yards, brace-pennants fitted over the yard-arm with an eye are neater. The latest and neatest style of rigging lower yards is to have a strong iron band with eyes and thimbles round each yard-arm, close to the shoulder ”

“ To send down a royal yard—a topgallant yard—a topgallant mast. To house a topgallant mast. To send down a topmast. To rig in a jib boom.
To send down a Royal Yard.—If the sail is bent to the yard, furl it, making the gaskets fast to the tye. Cast off the sheets and clewlines, and make them fast to the jack. Be careful to unreeve the clewlines through the quarter-blocks. Cast off the parral-lashing. Overhaul the tye a little, and stop it to the yard, just outside of the quarter-block. If stopped too far out, the yard will not hoist high enough to get the lower lift off. ”

“ I was on the fore upper tops'l yard, with Frenchy at the lee yardarm, and Scouse in between me and the mast. We were just passing the last of the sea gaskets, when the lower tops'l yard seemed to lift up in the air with a sudden jump for we were standing on it, instead of on the footropes of the upper tops'l. A great smashing [89] below us, and the loud impact of something big and hard banging against the yard under our feet, sent us clambering to the upper stick for our lives. ”

“ Then haul your bunt well upon the yard, smoothing the skin, and bringing it down well abaft, and make fast the bunt-gasket round the mast, and the jigger, if there be one, to the tye. The glut will always come in the middle of the bunt, if it is properly made up. Now take your weather yard-arm gasket and pass it round the yard, three or four times, haul taut, and make it fast to the mast; then the lee one in the same manner. Never make a long gasket fast to its own part round the yard, for it may work loose and slip out to the yard-arm. ”

“ A drill resembling a dog's hinder leg, never looks well in a garden, and therefore the little gardener must have recourse to his line. This ought to be long enough to stretch quite across his ground, and when he wants to strike a drill, he should stretch it across from path to path, and, taking his hoe in his hand, cut or scrape a little furrow, about three or four inches deep, by the side of his line. In sowing peas and beans, the drills are generally a yard apart, and between them other crops are sometimes sown. ”

“ When the tack is well down, sharpen the yard up again by the brace, top it well up by the lift, reeve and haul out the bowline, and haul the sheet aft.
If the wind is quartering, the mainsail is carried with the weather clew hauled up and the sheet taken aft. With yards squared, the mainsail is never carried, but the foresail may be to advantage, especially if the swinging booms are out; in which case the heavy tack and sheet-blocks may be unhooked, and the lazy sheets hooked on and rove through a single tail-block, made fast out on the boom. ”

“ Then the starboard watch board the main tack, and the larboard watch lay forward and board the fore tack and haul down the jib sheet, clapping a tackle upon it, if it blows very fresh. The after yards are then trimmed, the captain generally looking out for them himself. "Well the cross-jack yard!" "Small pull the main top-gallant yard!" "Well that!" "Well the mizen top-gallant yard!" "Cross-jack yards all well!" "Well all aft!" "Haul taut to windward!" Everything being now trimmed and in order, each man coils up the rigging at his own station, and the order is given—"Go below the watch!" ”

“ The work of the yardmaster is more spectacular than that of the dispatcher. To come down to a congested yard among a lot of discouraged men blocked in without room to sidetrack a handcar is like sitting down to a train sheet with most of the trains tied up for orders. ”

“ Various arrangements of yard tracks are employed, each arrangement being adopted to serve certain purposes and to meet certain conditions of traffic and of form and area of yard space. At the ends of stub tracks a bumping post (q.v.) is a necessary structure to prevent the cars from running off the end of the track. Another essential structure is a turntable for turning locomotives and sometimes cars. Track scales are an important item in railway-yard equipment. ”

“ Thus the garage, to the right of the place we stood when the two cars went out, was only a few feet from us, but in order to reach it we turned in the opposite direction, through an opening in a low stable, passed an enclosed yard full of chickens and ducks, with a pond in the center, and a movable pen containing two sheep busily engaged in cropping the lawn, through another gateway with a crude wooden gate, into another yard with a cow, past the cow, and there, on our left, was the garage, and in it, at the back, stood a third car. ”

“ Four high, square, sun-dried mud walls, with flat roofs, surmounted by battlements and flanked by four towers, as a defence against Turcoman raiders, enclose a small, open, square yard, usually filled with manure and filth of every description. Round the yard are ranged stables, in which are to be found half a dozen of the most wretched specimens of the equine race to be seen anywhere outside of a Spanish bull-ring. ”

“ The practised stockriders, keeping an eye on the trampling multitude, now glide down on either side of the yard, thereby preventing a simultaneous rush at the fence, which, though of unusual massiveness, is barely up to the weight of six hundred bullocks, say three hundred tons, at a high degree of momentum. ”

“ A variety of methods are used by motor truck loggers to get the logs to the landing to be loaded. The larger operations invariably use the high-lead method of yarding as the logs come in quicker and with fewer hang-ups. In a few places the old ground method of yarding with a bull block is still used. The horse team and skid road is used in a small timber where poles and piling are being marketed. ”

“ To play the game you need four smooth, round sticks nearly three-quarters of a yard long. The stick at one end should be just large enough to be grasped firmly by the hand, and should be tapered gradually to the end. ”

“ If you carry a walking-stick only, you may pass within thirty yards sometimes, and they take little notice, provided you use the stick in the proper way. But now lift it, and point it at the nearest rook, and in an instant he is up with a ‘caw’ of alarm—though he knows it is not a gun—and flies just above the surface of the ground till he considers himself safe from possibility of danger. Often the whole flock will move before that gesture. ”

“ Yard-tackles are sometimes hooked to a pendant, which is secured to the top-mast head, and hauled out to the yard-arm by means of a small tackle, until the yard-tackle plumbs the spot where it is wished to work.
YARE [Ang.-Sax. for dexterous or quick] . It was formerly a favourite nautical phrase, as "Be yare at the helm;" and is used by Shakspeare's boatswain in the Tempest.
YAREMLEK. A silver Turkish coin of 20 paras, or 9d. sterling.
YARMOUTH CAPON. A red herring; a bloater.
YARMOUTH HERRING-BOAT. A clincher-built vessel with lug-sails, similar to the drift or mackerel boats. ”

“ The foot is used instead of the yard, as being the most convenient in practice, and is fixed in the minds of the people by constant association with length of foot-rules, size of buildings, doors, windows, etc., all of which are always before us.
For commercial purposes the units are respectively the yard and the mètre. The yard is associated with length of yard-sticks, distance between brass nails on counters, so many finger-lengths by ladies. Probably three fourths of the business of the world is conducted on the yard standard. ”

“ When I got to the door, I found that the barn, to which the waggon, must soon come, lay just to the right, and overlooking the path I must take to the wood. In front of me lay a garden surrounded by a picket fence, to the left of me was a small gate, and that by passing through that gate would throw me into an open field, and give me clear running to the wood; but on looking through the gate, I saw that my captor, being with the team, would see me if I attempted to start before he moved from the position he then occupied. ”

“ Could one have been so situated on one of these hills with nothing to do but witness the two forces making for that fence, the Yankees coming down the hill on their side, moving in line as if on drill, determination on their faces and a quick, steady step without a falter or a quaver—on the other hill a lot of dirty, hungry, footsore, naked and barefoot men lying behind that plank fence awaiting orders. ”

“ Having business, we enter, and find ourselves in a spacious yard. Immediately before us and right across the yard runs a tall scaffolding called a gauntry, carrying on its top two travelling-cranes. On our right a little arm of the river runs up, and the gauntry is carried out into and over the water, allowing the travellers to load and unload with the greatest facility, while on our left are the contractors’ temporary offices. ”

“ As the knack of handling a gun is best gained—not in the field, shooting live game, but through shooting at targets—so may the art of fly casting be more quickly acquired by intelligent practice conducted away from the stream, in the back yard, or any other place roomy enough to swing the rod and a moderately long line. ”

“ The hunter usually takes a green stick about a yard long by two inches thick, and instead of striking a great, swinging blow with both hands, he holds the stick in one hand and strikes a short, quick, though powerful, blow, hitting the brute on the snout close to the eyes. ”

“ We were sending the foreyard aloft, and age and experience said that two double blocks and a fall were the proper tackle to use—no, said Youth, hook on a top block, reeve the end of a small hawser through it, bend on to the yard, and we will take it to the windlass and heave away. ”

“ Then there was a trampling, as of some one in very heavy nailed boots over a paved yard, and after the rattling of bolts, the clang of a great iron bar, and the sharp click of a big lock, a sour-looking man drew back first one gate and then the other, each fold uttering a dissatisfied creak as if disliking to be disturbed. ”

“ Two or more men have leaped a ditch, running across the field from east to west; and the footmarks in the first instance are coming southward, or toward Wardour. These footmarks are within a few rods of the road, as if the parties had suddenly abandoned that highway, fearing observation from travelers. My supposition is, that they approached Wardour Place, keeping to the field, after having leaped the ditch, until the northern boundary of the orchard was reached; here they must have kept close under the wall, until they came to the roadside fence, which they climbed. ”

“ When an alarm strikes in the "watch-room," a bell is started ringing in the quarters of the men, which sends them clattering down the long flight of stairs in their heavy leather boots, while they hastily adjust coats, belts, and helmets. Reaching the yard, each squad breaks up into two detachments, two men, the driver and his aide, running to the stable for the horses, the rest for their respective pieces of apparatus. ”

“ Anyway, the record the yardmen made that night is the record to-day, and in no more than ten minutes there wasn't a car within three hundred yards of the shops.
But while the yard crew worked others were not idle. Regan and Carleton, both of them, had caught the first flash from the windows of the super's room, and they were down the stairs, across the yards and into the game from the start. Joined by the nightmen and the hostlers and the wide-eyed call-boys they tackled the blaze. ”