The electric light went out suddenly, and two enormous waterspouts broke over the bridge of the frigate, rushing like a torrent from
stem to stern, overthrowing men, and breaking the lashings of the spars.
You fix iron hoops up over the boat, and stretch a huge canvas over them, and fasten it down all round, from
stem to stern, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, and it is beautifully cosy, though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.
Not an elk, a wolf, or any other animal, could appear on the hills, but the boats resounded with exclamations from
stem to stern,"voila les Sioux!
But there was no answering sound, and a moment later I had felt from
stem to stern and found the boat deserted.
Two heavy javelins, missing Dian and Juag by but a hair's breadth, had sunk deep into the bottom of the dugout in a straight line with the grain of the wood, and split her almost in two from
stem to stern. She was useless.
She was a big, flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear, clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared from
stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard.
For half an hour the awful suspense endured, and then with a terrific crash the vessel struck, shivering and trembling from
stem to stern.
From
stem to stern silence possessed the vessel--as silence possessed the sea.
"We had better be going together over the ship, Captain," said the senior partner; and the three men started to view the perfections of the Nan-Shan from
stem to stern, and from her keelson to the trucks of her two stumpy pole-masts.
I signaled back to Olson: "Let 'er go!" The U-33 trembled from
stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube.
I think that we should have succeeded, even though the ship was wracked from
stem to stern by the terrific buffetings she received, and though she were half submerged the greater part of the time, had no further accident befallen us.
Wanderers have increased in number; ships leave the Thames for distant regions, carrying from
stem to stern no other cargo; the bells are silent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets; they are used to it and have grown worldly.
Each carried a strange banner swung from
stem to stern above the upper works, and upon the prow of each was painted some odd device that gleamed in the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance at which we were from the vessels.
No more, at least, than from
stem to stern of the ship.
Suddenly, without warning, the cabin roof shot up into the air, a cloud of dense smoke puffed far above the Kincaid, there was a terrific explosion which shook the vessel from
stem to stern.