Learn the ___ (get a basic understanding)

Usage examples of ropes.

Hannibal now fetched the elephant, while the others secured pulleys to both ends of the long pole, and reeved ropes several times back and forth between them.

The elephant continued to draw on the rope, and the pole rose, all its pulleys and ropes rattling, until it was at the vertical, when its butt end slid down firmly on the length of spike.

Hannibal was under it, at the center pole, warping onto cleats there the ends of the ropes that had done the raising of pole and roof.

Roozeboom was going about the outside, checking the ropes from roof to stakes, here and there tightening one or easing another to get the tension equal all around, then giving every rope an extra half hitch and tidily belaying the loose end so it would not be tripped over.

Captain Hotspur ran to the outside with a garter, merely one of the fluffy pink ropes Edge had earlier seen.

It evidently loosed some crucial hitch or warp among the many ropes and pulleys of the center pole, because the bail ring came with a rasping rush down the length of that pole, and the whole vast extent of roof canvas came with it.

Still chanting the heeby-weeby, they quickly undid the ropes at the bail ring where all the canvas pie-slice points converged, then undid the lengths of the seams down to the eave edges.

They did not bother to unlace the ropes from the grommets one by one, as they had so painstakingly laced them together, but simply pulled a rope end so it whipped out of a series of grommets in one yank.

He gestured to the ropes that ran from the ground stakes up to the tent roof eaves.

Curiously, the ropes were more slender than the usual circus ropes, and of finer fiber, and seemed to be a net of some sort.

From that, on fewer but heavier ropes, depended the oblong wicker gondola, commodious enough for two persons but a snug fit for three.

But the men made sure that the seam-binding ropes were reeved only loosely, and the guy ropes left slightly slack.

But, if and when the rain ceased, the canvas and ropes would dry and tighten and the pavilion would assume its proper perky shape all on its own.

Edge gave Hannibal the responsibility of staying awake all night, in case the rain stopped before morning, to keep watch that the shrinking ropes did not yank the surround of stakes right out of the ground.

As they breasted the hill, they could see that the balloon was securely tethered by four ropes pegged about the ground where its basket rested.