Definition of "wind-sail" [wind-sail]

• A wide tube or funnel of canvas serving to convey a current of fresh air into the lower parts of a ship. (noun)
• One of the vanes or sails of a windmill. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Well, you must understand that this room was low, scarcely higher than the cabin of a fore-and-after, with no skylights to it, or wind-sail, or port-hole that would open."
• "His mates at the windlass went staggering back from the belch of violently discharged air: it tore the wind-sail to strips, sent stones and gravel flying, loosened planks and props."
• "Amid this chaos, several huge black figures, stripped to the waist, and with wet cloths around their sooty faces, were flinging coal into the furnaces, or stirring the fires with long iron rakes -- now standing out gaunt and grim in the red blaze, now vanishing into the eddies of hissing steam tossed about by the stream of cold air from the funnel-like "wind-sail" serving as a ventilator."