holy-stone

"Suppose you holy-stone these decks while I try it."

Frontier Boys on the Coast or in the Pirate's Power Wyn Roosevelt

Long before the morning broke, Tom and Juarez, hauled out of their resting place, were set to scrubbing the decks and rubbing them down with holy-stone.

Frontier Boys on the Coast or in the Pirate's Power Wyn Roosevelt

The latter resembled the modern disciples of R [= a] m [= a] nuja and revered the holy-stone, appealing for authority to the Upanishads and to the Bhagavad Git [= a], the Divine Song.

The Religions of India Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow Edward Washburn Hopkins 1894

Mr. Martin has flogged the steward, who had neglected to holy-stone the binnacle and paint the dead-lights.

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales Ambrose Bierce 1878

It was necessary to get up hot temper, else there was no knowing how far he would go; so I returned him his presents, and told the sheikh, instead of giving four, to fling six cloths in his face, and tell him that the holy-stone story was merely a humbug, and I would take care no more white men ever came to see him again.

The Discovery of the Source of the Nile John Hanning Speke 1845

The sloop-of-war and the Revenue cutter, its companion, had been lying at anchor some hundred yards from the end of the pier, and every now and then the sailor glanced at the trim vessels with their white sails and the sloop's carefully-squared yards -- all "ataunto," as he termed it -- and more than one sigh escaped his lips as he thought that never again would he tread the white deck that he helped to holy-stone, let alone show that he was one of the smartest of the crew to go up aloft.

The Lost Middy Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap George Manville Fenn 1870

She might have survived the strict purity of all things, the deck lines whiter than Parian marble, the bulwarks brighter than the cheek-piece of a grate, the breeches of the guns like goodly gold, and not a whisker of a rope’s end curling the wrong way, if only she could have espied a swab, or a bucket, or a flake of holy-stone, or any indicament of labor done.

Mary Anerley Richard Doddridge 2004

a grate, the breeches of the guns like goodly gold, and not a whisker of a rope's end curling the wrong way, if only she could have espied a swab, or a bucket, or a flake of holy-stone, or any indicament of labor done.

Mary Anerley : a Yorkshire Tale 1862

"'' Ave they tried holy-stone? 'ses a voice from a bunk.

Light Freights 1903

"I 'm blest if I like this orderin' business," said one grizzled seaman; "they said he was h-- l on orders, but what I shipped for was prize money and a chance to get a lick at them bloody Britishers; not for to clean brass work, an 'scrape spars, an' flemish down, an 'holy-stone decks, which he won't let us spit terbacker on.

For Love of Country A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution Cyrus Townsend Brady 1890