Already I was level with the top-hamper of the masts to either side.

Well, you won't make land or anything else in a thousand years once you get all your top-hamper piled down on deck.

He can scarcely fly or pursue his common daily round with any pleasure to himself, encumbered by a yard of tail and all this top-hamper.

Instead, the yacht's comparatively large top-hamper acted as a veritable sail which the wind used to swing the ship around broadside.

The Gull's top-hamper billowed out.

Furl all your top-hamper, please, Mister Tyler.

Masts and yards were always stepped and stowed, to decrease the top-hamper, give the ships every yard of speed under oars that they could make.

CAPTAIN (throwing his eye over the top-hamper).

However, on 7 February, orders came from Washington that the reduction of the top-hamper had been abandoned and Lafayette was to sail on 14 February as planned.

I joined them, The nor'easter screamed in the top-hamper and the old reciprocating steam engine thumped its steady, heavy heart- beat underfoot as we listened to the gossip of the coast.

Quite a lot had been accomplished; already a mixed party was heaving the clot of top-hamper off at an angle from the destroyer where it wouldn't be a danger when they got under way again.

"Yet with such a top-hamper and the possibility of thick weather ..." A double flash of lightning startled the dancers and a first swathe of warm rain untuned the fiddle-strings. '

Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky- scraping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been.

The mast fell, the foremast, with all its cumbering top-hamper on the bridge, which was in an instant blotted out of existence, together with the little band of gallant men who stood on it, true to their last duty.

At last I approached the faint descending gossamers of the rigging, cables that sometimes caught the starlight, sometimes vanished in the darkness or against the towering bank of silver that was the top-hamper of the deck beyond.

I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, the foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like--like a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas."