‘In order to hew any piece of timber to its proper bevel, it will be necessary, first, to make one side fair, and out of winding; a term used to signify that the side of a timber should be a plane. If this side be uppermost, and placed horizontally, or upon a level, it is plain, if the timber is to be hewed square, it may be done by a plummet and line; but if the timber is not hewed square, the line will not touch both the upper and lower edge of the piece; or if a square be applied to it, there will be wood wanting either at the upper or lower side. This is called within or without a square. When the wood is deficient at the under-side, it is called under-bevelling; and when it is deficient in the upper-side, it is called standing-bevelling: and this deficiency will be more or less according to the depth of the piece; so that before the proper bevellings of the timbers are found, it will be sometimes very convenient to assign the breadth of the timbers; nay, in most cases it will be absolutely necessary, especially afore and abaft: though the breadth of two timbers, or the timber and room, which includes the two timbers and the space between them, may be taken without any sensible error, as far as the square body goes. For as one line represents the moulding-side of two timbers, the fore-side of the one being supposed to unite with the aft-side of the other; the two may be considered as one intire piece of timber.’ _Murray’s Ship-building._ BIGHT, _balant_, (_bygan_, Sax. to bend) the double part of a rope when it is folded, in contradistinction to the end: as, her anchor hooked the _bight_ of our cable, i.e. caught any part of it between the ends. The _bight_ of his cable has swept our anchor; that is, the double part of the cable of another ship, as she ranged about, has entangled itself under the stock or fluke of our anchor. BIGHT, _anse_, is also a small bay between two points of land. BILANDER, _bilandre_, Fr. a small merchant-ship with two masts. The BILANDER is particularly distinguished from other vessels of two masts by the form of her main-sail, which is a sort of trapezia, the yard thereof being hung obliquely on the mast in the plane of the ship’s length, and the aftmost or hinder end peeked or raised up to an angle of about 45 degrees, and hanging immediately over the stern; while the fore end slopes downward, and comes as far forward as the middle of the ship. To this the sail is bent or fastened; and the two lower corners, the foremost of which is called the tack, and the aftmost the sheet, are afterwards secured, the former to a ring-bolt in the middle of the ship’s length, and the latter to another in the taffarel. The main-sails of larger ships are hung across the deck instead of along it, being fastened to a yard which hangs at right angles with the mast and the keel.