What is "grapnel"

Usage examples of "grapnel".

He freed one hand from the wall and weaseled it into the thread glove clipped to a carabinier sling, then began rhythmically swinging the grapnel back and forth.

Drumfishers shoved for elbowroom to lay out grapnels and chains that would bind the two ships for boarding.

Both ropes were spliced onto both suits, so it was never clear which grapnel took hold.

Every other gun of the starboard batteries was fired, directly at the French gunports, then, while swivels, slingpieces, and other smaller ordnance swept the decks from rails to both castles and fighting-tops, with arquebusiers and archers adding their ounces of lead and feathered shafts to the deadly sleet, brawny arms whirled the grapnels about to gain momentum, then hurled them across the narrow space to thud onto decks and sink their points deeply into rails and coamings, ladders and woodwork.

Every other gun of the starboard batteries was fired, directly at the French gunports, then, while swivels, sling pieces, and other smaller ordnance swept the decks from rails to both castles and fighting-tops, with arquebusiers and archers adding their ounces of lead and feathered shafts to the deadly sleet, brawny arms whirled the grapnels about to gain momentum, then hurled them across the narrow space to thud onto decks and sink their points deeply into rails and coamings, ladders and woodwork.

With a deafening din of metal on metal, a muscular smith worked at a small forge on deck, straightening blades of swords, cutlasses, boarding pikes and the like, restoring proper curve to the hooks of grapnels and boathooks and speedily fashioning odds and ends of needed hardware from bits of scrap metal.

The catamarans swept in on either side, throwing grapnels pronged with wood and stone.

Wrought-iron grapnels came upward at the ends of knotted ropes, and the warriors behind them.

Armored Americans stabbed and shoved and tried to cut the grapnels free, but the ropes were wound with metal wire for several feet down from the loops that held them to the iron hooks.

Hearing no noise from below other than the distant fighting, Donbago leaped up and ran to the back lip of the tower, pulling free the grapnel.

Grapnelled between her two capturers, the Greek galley wallowed half-sinking in the water.

Stephen's hard suit clanged hard against the deck and grapnel: he wasn't a spacer, not really, and the flat illumination between the stars made it difficult to judge distance.

Stephen's hard suit clanged hard against the deck and grapnel: hewasn't a spacer, not really, and the flat illumination between the stars made it difficult to judge distance.

About twelve o'clock on the night of September 15, the pinnace came to a grapnel off the float by the fort in Coupang Bay.

Then, seeing that the enemy had gotten their arms above deck, and were making ready to make a fight of it, he followed up his words by casting a grapnel upon the poop of the Rhodians, who were making great way.