"Gunwale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slowly off. The skiff drifted now. Rogers tried to turn to the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll of thunder when it struck the gunwale. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... silently, leaning on the western rail of the bridge as we watched the sun set across that beautiful little water known as Coal Harbor. I have always resented that jarring, unattractive name, for years ago, when I first plied paddle across the gunwale of a light little canoe, and idled about its margin, I named the sheltered little cove the Lost Lagoon. This was just to please my own fancy, for as that perfect summer month drifted on, the ever-restless tides left ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... of the river yell and rave They had no power above the wave, But they heaved the billow before the prow, And they dashed the surge against her side, And they struck her keel with jerk and blow, Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide. She wimpled about to the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind-tossed stream; And momently athwart her track The quad upreared his island back, And the fluttering scallop behind would float, And patter the water ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... miles towards our goal, and the most cautious guess gave us at least thirty miles. The bright sunshine and the brilliant scene around us may have influenced our anticipations. As noon approached I saw Worsley, as navigating officer, balancing himself on the gunwale of the 'Dudley Docker' with his arm around the mast, ready to snap the sun. He got his observation and we waited eagerly while he worked out the sight. Then the 'Dudley Docker' ranged up alongside the 'James Caird' and I jumped into Worsley's boat in order to see the result. It was a grievous ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... violence, while the ship was breaking up with a rapidity and crashing noise, which added to the roaring of the breakers, drowned the voices of the officers. The masts were cut away to ease the ship, and the cutter cleared from the booms and launched from the lee-gunwale. When the long wished-for dawn at last broke on us, instead of alleviating, it rather added to, our distress. We found the ship had run on the south-easternmost extremity of a coral reef, surrounding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... rocked. Another man came creeping forward, holding to the gunwale to steady himself. Stern saw him vaguely through the drifting vapor by the blue-green light of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the sands, the sea washing completely over her. Orders were given to cut away the lanyards of the main and mizen rigging, when the masts fell with a tremendous crash over the larboard-side: the foremast followed immediately after. The ship then fell on her starboard-side, with the gunwale under water. The violence with which she struck the ground and the weight of the guns (those on the quarter-deck tearing away the bulwarks) soon made the ship a perfect wreck abaft, and only four or five guns could possibly be ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... reached the shore. Then the remaining fifteen thousand or more rushed back to their boats, only to find them sunk in the shallow water near the shore—it having been quite easy for eight or ten Hili-lites to sink each boat, by bearing in unison their weight on one gunwale—a thousand or two young Hili-lites having been assigned to that duty. Then the poor wretches who remained threw down their flimsy bows, and fell face-downward on the ground, at the feet of the victors. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... low, so that their oars could reach the water. Sails were used, either red or painted in different stripes, red, blue, yellow, green. These square, brightly colored sails gave the boats a gay appearance which was increased by the round shields which were hung outside the gunwale and which were also painted red, black, or white. At the prow there was usually a beautifully carved and gorgeously painted figurehead. The stem and stern of the ships were high. In the stern there was an upper deck, but ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... people of Mariposa saw and felt that summer evening as they watched the Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunwale with the lifting stroke ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... sickles with long handles, with which they proposed to catch the halyards which held the weight of the heavy leather sails. It was not difficult to do, if, as is probable, the halyards were made fast, not to the mast, but to the gunwale. Sweeping rapidly alongside they could easily cut them; the sails would fall, and ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... SHIP The Gokstad vessel is of oak, twenty-eight feet long and sixteen feet broad in the center. It has seats for sixteen pairs of rowers, a mast for a single sail, and a rudder on the right or starboard side. The gunwale was decorated with a series of shields, painted alternately black and gold. This ship, which probably dates from about 900 A.D., was found on the shore of Christiania Fiord. A still larger ship, of about the same date, was taken in 1904 A.D. from the grave of a Norwegian queen ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... straighten up and look at your hands. They are ruined. You can scarcely relax the crooks of the fingers. The pain is sickening. But there is no time. The skiff, which is always perverse, is pounding against the barnacles on the piles which threaten to scrape its gunwale off. It's drop the peak! Down jib! Then you run lines, and pull and haul and heave, and exchange unpleasant remarks with the bridge-tender who is always willing to meet you more than half way in such repartee. And ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... curve high out of the water, and throws the spray clear of its low body, for the Egyptian loads his boat very heavily, and I have often seen them so deep in the water that a little wall of mud has been added to the gunwale so as ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... afternoon. In the evening he came. I had arranged it with the licensed boatmen; a few pesetas did that. Our boat was nearest the steps. In the dim light of the quay lamp he noticed nothing, but stepped over the gunwale and mentioned the name of his steamer in a quick way, which he thought was that of ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... brutal and obscene jests back and forth. Then there was the huge bulk of the disabled ship, surging madly forward like a hunted creature dizzy and reeling with terror, her spacious decks knee-deep in the water which was incessantly pouring in over her bulwarks as she rolled gunwale-under; and for a background the mountainous seas careering swiftly past, with their lofty crests towering high and menacingly all round the ship, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the Lascar with the big earrings; and Tony Bracknell, leaning on the high gunwale of his father's East Indiaman, the Hepzibah B., saw far off, across the morning sea, a faint vision of towers and domes dissolved ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... graze and tiny fry pick their invisible atoms of food. The elegant shape of this plant with its branching and finely cut leaves, and the inequalities of the ground remind me of the pine-clad hills in miniature. A brilliant king-fisher took the gunwale of the boat as the "base of his operations," and I amused myself all the morning, by watching him catch fish; when one approached the surface he descended with a splash which I imagined would have driven every fish far away, emerging quickly and very seldom without a capture, which ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... great surge, the boat suddenly turned in a boiling eddy, and the first thing anybody knew was that the Tulare was on her side and her crew in the water. Potts was hanging on to the gunwale and damning the others for not helping ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... painful thought, I took to digging away the sand, undermining her thus until she lay so nicely balanced it needed but a push and the cumbrous structure, rolling gently over, lay in the necessary posture, viz: with her starboard beam accessible from gunwale to keel. And mightily heartened was I thus to discover her damage hereabouts so much less than ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... is well tacked commence stretching and pulling the canvas in the middle of the gunwales so as to make it as even and tight as possible and work toward each end, tacking the canvas as it is stretched to the outside of the gunwale. Seam the canvas along the stern and bow pieces as was done on the keelson. The deck is not so hard to do, but be careful to get the canvas tight and even. A seam should be made along the center piece. The trimming is wood, 1/4 in. thick and 1/2 in. wide. A strip of this is nailed along the center ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... with some great thought which had sprung to him from a hastily construed chorus of Euripides. Sometimes he startled the fishermen when he went with them at night by chanting Homer's rolling hexameters through the darkness while the boat lay waiting, borne gunwale down to the black water with the drag of the net ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... usually twelve to sixteen, which the crew ply with a slow rhythmic swing. During the monsoons, when strong winds blow upstream, sails are used instead of oars. The mast is composed of two bamboos lashed together at the top, their lower ends being made fast to the gunwale. On this frame, from bamboo yards curved slightly upwards, is spread a curious combination of six or seven square sails, which, though only of use when running before the wind, enable the boat to travel at a great speed. There are many other kinds of boats in use, all equally ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... near them that the gunwale and the two upper streaks of their boat had been stove by their last whale, and the officer was about to throw all the whaling implements overboard, in order to lighten her, for the crew were desperately bailing out the water, which was pouring in through the broken seams. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... and as there was no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under pieces of canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of frequent twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale at ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... drunkenly across each comber, its loose spritsail out at right angles to it and fluttering and flapping in the wind. The hunter and boat-puller were both lying awkwardly in the bottom, but the boat-steerer lay across the gunwale, half in and half out, his arms trailing in the water and his head rolling from ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... suppose, I was used to my situation; that is to say, the horror and novelty of my condition had abated, and settled into a miserable feeling of despair; so that I was like a dying man who had passed days in an open boat, and who languidly directs his eyes over the gunwale at the sea, with the hopelessness that is bred by familiarity with his dreadful posture. It was some time after the ship had melted into the airy dusk that I seemed to notice, for the first time since I had been in the life-buoy, the lump of blackness at which I had been straining my eyes when the ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... it will be inferred the boat is extraordinarily light, or it could never be got home again—but when twenty-four or twenty-eight barrels, each weighing four to five hundred pounds, are in it, the water comes right up to the gunwale, so an extra planking of a foot wide is tied on in the manner aforementioned, to keep the waves out, and that planking is only half an inch thick. Therefore the barrels are only divided from the seething water by three-quarters ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... I was just sitting down there to enjoy a comfortable pipe when I was startlingly requested by a voice from a caboose behind to move off, as I was obscuring the view of the man at the wheel. After that I perched on the gunwale. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... they had been before shot away, and, imagining she had struck, I gave orders to cease firing; she, however, soon relieved us of our suspense by giving us her broadside: we were so well prepared, and kept up so good a fire, that in a short time after they waved their colours and made signs from the gunwale with their hats that ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... neared the Bar from seaward. The bows, in which a small, withered old man bent double over the oars, cocked up on end. The stern, where a young man stood erect among the lobster-pots, was low in the water. Now, as the nose of the boat grounded, the young man clambered along the gunwale, and balancing for a minute, tall and straight, on the prow, took a flying leap across the wide intervening space of breaking wave and clear water, alighting on his feet, upon the firm ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... looked away. Hard by the boat where there had been but a waste of sea rose a green island. A stretch of pleasant meadow met his eyes. It was so close to him that if he had leaned over the gunwale of the boat he could have laid his hand on the lush grass. Dumbly he wondered where it had been before, how he had come upon it so suddenly, why he had ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... launch is bobbing up and down, its gunwale at one instant level with the gangway-grating, at another, two or three feet below it. At the precise moment when the launch is almost at the top of its rise Dunningham says: "Now, step, please, Mr. Pulitzer." ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... suggested, for cooking-fires. It was also easy to see that these pieces of wood had once been part of a boat, perhaps of a wreck thrown up on shore. The captain approached the pile of wood and picked up some of the pieces. As he held in his hand a bit of gunwale, not much more than a foot in length, his eyes began to glisten and his breath came quickly. Hastily pulling out several pieces from the mass of debris, he examined them thoroughly. Then he stepped back, and let the piece ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... fought against the Government. Their punishment is to be sent to a coral atoll and detained there prisoners. It does not sound much; it is a great deal. Taken from a mountain island, they must inhabit a narrow strip of reef sunk to the gunwale in the ocean. Sand, stone, and cocoa-nuts, stone, sand, and pandanus, make the scenery. There is no grass. Here these men, used to the cool, bright mountain rivers of Samoa, must drink with loathing the brackish water of the coral. The food ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rudder. He sat back in the stern on a crossbeam flush with the gunwale, his feet braced against the ribs on either side and in his hands the rudder lines, one on each side, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... moment's hesitation Martin slid over the gunwale into the sea, and, just as the pirate boats grappled with those of the barque, he and Barney found themselves gliding as silently as otters towards the shore. So quietly had the manoeuvre been accomplished, that ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have helped him; he'd have swamped us in a jiffy if he'd got his nose and forepaws over the gunwale. We chewed dry soda biscuits for three days, and were ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... men, and went each to his place, and straight a torrent of gleaming fish was pouring in over the gunwale of the boat. Such a take it was ere the last of the nets was drawn, as the oldest of them had seldom seen. Thousands of fish there were that had never got ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... guest; And little by little, from one to another, the word went round: "In all the borders of Paea the victual rots on the ground, And swine are plenty as rats. And now, when they fare to the sea, The men of the Namunu-ura glean from under the tree And load the canoe to the gunwale with all that is toothsome to eat; And all day long on the sea the jaws are crushing the meat, The steersman eats at the helm, the rowers munch at the oar, And at length, when their bellies are full, overboard with the store!" Now was the word made true, and soon as the bait was bare, All ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paddle set the chorus, which was taken up by boat after boat. John, stretched at the bottom of a canoe with two wounded Highlanders, wondered where he had heard the voice before. His wits were not very clear yet. The canoe's gunwale hid all the landscape but a mountain-ridge high over his right, feathered with forest and so far away that, swiftly as the strokes carried him forward, its serrated pines and notches of naked rock crept by him inch by inch. He stared at these and prayed for ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 6.30 p. m.; a queer, scattering town on Commencement Bay, at the head of Puget Sound. Very deep water just off shore. Two boys in a sailboat are blown about at the mercy of the fitful wind; boat on beam-ends; boys on the uppermost gunwale; sail lying flat on the water. But nobody seems to care, not even the young castaways. Perhaps the inhabitants of Tacoma are amphibious. Very beautiful sheet of water, this Puget Sound; long, winding, monotonous shores; trees ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... his pole with one hand, the General swung out a long arm, catching the lieutenant hard on one cheek with enough force to send him over the gunwale into the river. The lieutenant splashed, flailing out his arms, until he caught at the pole Drew extended to him. As they hauled him ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... doubled behind a water butt. A shell splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... inviting Mr. Goodfellow to pass his plate for another dumpling. Miss Belcher's voice—as I may or may not have informed the reader—was a baritone of singularly resonant timbre. It sounded through the porthole as through a speaking trumpet, and I ducked and held my breath as the boat's gunwale rubbed twice against the schooner's side ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the boat's gunwale, and thus escaped. Rowing back instantly, however, to the spot where the ship had gone down, they sought eagerly for swimmers. Only three were discovered and rescued, but the others—seventy ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Fatima never coveted admission to the dreadful chamber of Bluebeard as I did to ascertain the secrets of this hidden receptacle. One night Fleming had quitted the barge, and I ascended from my dormitory. Marables was on deck, sitting upon the water-cask, with his elbow resting on the gunwale, his hand supporting his head, as if in deep thought. The cabin-doors were closed, but the light still remained in it. I watched for some time, and perceiving that Marables did not move, walked gently up to him. He was fast asleep; I waited for some little time alongside of him. At last ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gathering his legs together, while he held on to the sides of the dug-out, succeeded in grasping the top of the deep-sea mooring. Then, with the other hand, he raised the board, and transferred it to the gunwale. Sitting upon the improvised seat with his back to the bow, he expressed satisfaction at facing his companion, for one thing, and at being out of the way of the fish in the canoe, for another. Coristine followed suit, and, when his plank was in position, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... sea-captain of that place, whose name is associated for all time with the proud title of 'Discoverer of Canada.' The picture is that of a bearded man in the prime of life, standing on the deck of a ship, his bent elbow resting upon the gunwale, his chin supported by his hand, while his eyes gaze outward upon the western ocean as if seeking to penetrate its mysteries. The face is firm and strong, with tight-set jaw, prominent brow, and the full, inquiring eye ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... all three rose, and without an instant's warning— they could not tell afterwards how it happened—the boat half capsized, and they were in eight or nine feet of water. Baruch could not swim and went down at once, but on coming up close to the gunwale he caught at it and held fast. Looking round, he saw that Benjamin, who could swim well, had made for Miss Masters, and, having caught her by the back of the neck, was taking her ashore. The boatman, who could also swim, called ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... was not the person to undervalue such a catalogue of qualities when presented to her in the concrete. True, on her theory, a Christian young woman ought to be ready in certain circumstances to throw such a lover over the gunwale as ruthlessly as the sailors pitched Jonah headlong. That is to say, a Christian young woman in the abstract ought to be abstractly willing to discard a rich lover in the abstract. But presented in this concrete and individual way the case was different. She was a little dazzled at the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... in this instance, evinced great presence of mind. The instant the boat struck they had sprung on the gunwale next the rock, and by their united weight kept her lying upon it. The water foamed and raged round them with fearful violence. Had she slipped off, they must all have been dashed to pieces amongst the rocks and rapids below; as it was, they managed to maintain ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... making, too, and with wind and tide to help I pulled over the river bar and towards the creek where daily, after hauling the trammel, I bathed from the boat; a delectable corner in the eye of the morning sunshine, paved fathoms deep with round, white pebbles, one of which, from the gunwale, I ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... feet. "They are off!" cried he to the ladies, and after first putting his palms together with a hypocritical look of apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was drawn up ashore, and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow, lighting on the very gunwale. The position was not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the other gunwale; and there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... slowly pacing the deck, with their heads bent forward, forgetful of every thing but themselves; a light step was heard close behind them, and the low rustling of garments. They turned to look, but too late; Florette sprung past them, her foot rested on the gunwale, and with the cry, "I follow you, William!" the form of the girl disappeared over the side of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... presented itself next day. Instead of putting to sea, Mr. Shaw and Captain Magnus hauled the boat up on the beach and set to work to repair it. The wild work of exploring the coast had left the boat with leaky seams and a damaged gunwale. The preceding day had been filled with hardship and danger—so much so that my heart sank a little at the recountal of it. You saw the little boat threading its way among the reefs, tossed like seaweed by the white teeth of gnawing waves, screamed ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased him any more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all the way down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerve about it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats put together, and the half in front didn't fit in with the half behind. As he was about to look into the matter ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the excellent Principal departed, with his rusty narrow-brimmed hat leaning over, as if it had a six-knot breeze abeam, and its gunwale (so to speak) was dipping into his coat-collar. He announced the result of his inquiries to Helen, who had received a brief note in the mean time from a poor relation of Elsie's mother, then at the mansion-house, informing her of the critical situation ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... single blow. The brawny hand had seized the swaying tackle and three seamen were already scrambling into the swinging craft when a revolver cracked; the big leader threw up his hands with a yell of agony and toppled headlong upon the deck. Then a lithe figure vaulted over the longboat's gunwale. One after another three seamen came tumbling out abashed and overawed. The captain regained his feet and senses. The boat was lowered by cooler hands until it danced in safety on the waves, and one after another the women were carefully passed down to the care of him whose stern, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... moment the flapping of the canvas half deafened us. Then suddenly it steadied, and next minute the boat heeled over, gunwale down on the water, and began to hiss through the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... with "Silk Twill" written on one end, and blue paper doors to fold over inside. It had been used as a boat, but condemned as unseaworthy as soon as Dolly could not sit in it to be pushed about, the gunwale having split open amidships. Let us hope this ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... by the young Republic, they have dwelt in small red or white houses on their small holdings along the slopes and levels of the low hills beside the water, where a man may pass with the least inconvenience and delay from his threshold to his gunwale. Not all the houses are small; some are spacious and ambitious to be of ugly modern patterns; but most are simple and homelike. Their gardens, following the example of Sir William's vanished pleasaunce, drop southward to the shore, where the lobster-traps and the hen-coops meet in unembarrassed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... idea of ending the matter by tossing the mutineers overboard. This was joined in by Captain Nicholl, the surgeon, and myself, and in a trice five of the six were in the water and clinging to the gunwale. Captain Nicholl and the surgeon were busy amidships with the sixth, Jeremy Nalor, and were in the act of throwing him overboard, while the mate was occupied with rapping the fingers along the gunwale with a boat-stretcher. For the moment I had nothing to do, and so was able to observe the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... prawns are caught in this way. Prawns are also caught in small kelong with very fine split bambu nets, but a method is also employed in the Brunai river which I have not heard of elsewhere. A specially prepared canoe is made use of, the gunwale on one side being cut away and its place taken up by a flat ledge, projecting over the water. The fisherman sits paddling in the stern, keeping the ledged side towards the bank and leaning over so as to cause the said ledge to be ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... after the fishing-boats left us, and about four in the afternoon, that we saw a brown sail standing towards us from the Islands, and my father set down the glass, resting it on the gunwale, and said: ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dawn, the Frenchman, having meditated on affairs during the night, made a wild dash for freedom. The America, an English 64—double, that is, the Licorne's size—overtook her, and fired a shot across her bow to bring her to, Longford, the captain of the America, stood on the gunwale of his own ship politely urging the captain of the Licorne to return with him. With a burst of Celtic passion the French captain fired his whole broadside into the big Englishman, and then instantly hauled down his flag so as to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... about canoes. After a single tentative trial he jumped lightly to the very centre of his place, with the lithe caution of a cat. Then if the water happened to be smooth, he would sit gravely on his haunches, or would rest his chin on the gunwale to contemplate the passing landscape. But in rough weather he crouched directly over the keel, his nose between his paws, and tried not to dodge when the cold water dashed in on him. Deuce was a true woodsman in that respect. Discomfort he always bore ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensable Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the bottom of the long dugout and the other on the gunwale, swinging in nonchalant unison as their blades moved fore and aft. Under the curving roof of a rough-and-ready cabin, open at the sides to allow free play of air, Schwandorf lolled ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... exclamation of alarm, perhaps called forth by the novelty of the situation and of the peril. Ethan was not entirely satisfied with the movements of the boat under sail, for she careened under the fresh breeze, till her gunwale was within an inch of the surface of the lake. Fanny took the helm, and, as she eased off the sheet, which her previous experience had taught her to do in such an emergency, the boat came up to an even keel, and the confidence of the prairie boy was ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... now not shudder, though ye hear New and alarming tidings from your sire. From this high place beside the suppliants' shrine The bark of our pursuers I behold, By divers tokens recognized too well. Lo, the spread canvas and the hides that screen The gunwale; lo, the prow, with painted eyes That seem her onward pathway to descry, Heeding too well the rudder at the stern That rules her, coming for no friendly end. And look, the seamen—all too plain their race— Their dark ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... everything beyond fifty yards from us. At first it seemed only like a denser wreath of fog; it darkened still more, till it took the aspect of sails; then the hull of a small schooner came beating down towards us, the wind laying her over towards us, so that her gunwale was almost in the water, and we could see the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... each bow, to receive the hooks of the skid; two cross-pieces, of yellow pine, to bear the carriage, so as to carry the muzzle of the howitzer just above and clear of the gunwale and stem. ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... strongly in, and as soon as we felt that the sea had got hold of us and was carrying us in with the speed of a race-horse, we threw the oars as far from the boat as we could, and took hold of the gunwale, ready to spring out and seize her when she struck, the officer using his utmost strength to keep her stern on. We were shot up upon the beach like an arrow from a bow, and seizing the boat, ran her up high and dry, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a large stone under each end of the bark construction, causing it to sag from the middle in either direction into the curve suitable for a canoe. The gunwale which they had constructed previously was now fitted into the bark, and the bark was stitched tightly to it, both at top and bottom, with a further use of awl and tendon, the winding ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... nothing!... Yes, it is—it is something—one knows what—sighted abaft the Ellen Jane, whose steersman catches it with a boathook as the oars we on the beach saw suddenly drop back water—slowly, cautiously—and only wait for him to drag the light weight athwart the gunwale to row for the dear life towards the town. The scattered crowd turns and comes back, trampling the shingle, to meet the boat as she lands, and follow what she brings ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... renewed exertion. He struggled to get in the way of the boat, and succeeded so well that Frank, leaning over the side as far as he dared, was able to seize his outstretched hand and hold it until he could grasp the gunwale himself with a grip that no current could loosen. A glad shout of relief went up from the men at sight of this, and Frank, having made sure that the foreman was now out of danger, seized the oars and began to ply them vigorously with the purpose of ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... the Indians as food, and now attracts vast flocks of waterfowl to feed upon it in the season. In autumn the squaws used to go in their canoes to these natural rice-fields, and, bending the tall stalks over the gunwale, beat out the heads of grain with their paddles into the canoe. It is mentioned among the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... believe, are not numerous. They seemed to be stout well-made men, were naked except round the waists, and some of them had their faces, breasts, and thighs painted black. The canoes were precisely like those of Amsterdam; with the addition of a little rising like a gunwale on each side of the open part; and had some carving about them, which shewed that these people are full as ingenious. Both these islanders and their canoes agree very well with the description M. de Bougainville has given of those he saw off ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... lifted a hand. The next moment, a wave tilted and ran a dozen yards with her, but mercifully passed before it broke. A smaller one curved on the back-draught and splashed in over her gunwale as she took ground. But what knocked the wind out of our sails was this—As the first wave canted her up, two men had rolled out of her like logs; and the others, sitting like logs, had never so much as stirred ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Stonor fastened the end of the line to a tree on the edge of the bank; the other end he made fast to the stern of the canoe—not to the point of the stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was coiled ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... you imagine? I will tell you as soon as I get there. Rushing like mad across the ground,—oh, how pleasant it was to feel the soft soil under my cold feet!—I came to what looked like a dismasted ship, embedded clear up to the gunwale[3] in the ice. There lay the whole deck of a three-masted vessel, unbroken and undisturbed; but, as I soon ascertained, there was no hull underneath, for the deck had evidently been broken off from the lower parts of the ship, and thrown up ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... steady with one hand and maintained their diagonal course toward the farther shore. Sol lifted his rifle from the canoe, and holding it across the gunwale with a single arm took aim and fired. One of the paddlers in the pursuing boat sprang up convulsively, then fell over the side and disappeared. But the boat came steadily on, the paddlers probably knowing that it would be a matter of great difficulty ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... monster flag—lilies of France, gold-wrought on cloth of silk—and Allemand kept beating—and beating—and beating the drum, rumbling out a "Vive le Roi!" to every stroke. Before the keel gravelled on the beach, M. Radisson's foot was on the gunwale, and he leaped ashore. Godefroy followed, flourishing the French flag and yelling at the top of his voice for the King of France. Behind, wading and floundering through the water, came the rest. Godefroy planted the flag-staff. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... dug-out all belong to the first and simplest type, in which there are no artificial parts to fit together. The second type is exemplified by the birch-bark canoe, which has three parts in its frame—gunwale, cross-bars, and ribs—and a fourth part, the skin, to complete it. The third type is distinguished from the second by its keel, as clearly as vertebrate animals are distinguished from invertebrates ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... athwart another vessel. The launch was caught between the two, and it seemed inevitable that our boat should crack like an egg-shell. With my heart in my mouth, I prepared to jump. But with swift precision the constables acted. Holding tight to the gunwale they forced our boat over sideways, and we sidled through at an angle of forty-five ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... seemed to know it. Then young Granton jumped lightly ashore; Mrs. Granton skipped after him. I confess it made me feel rather ashamed to see how clumsily Charles and I followed them, treading gingerly on the thwarts for fear of upsetting the boat, while the artless young thing just flew over the gunwale. So like White Heather! However, we got ashore at last in safety, and began to climb the rocks as well as we were able in ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... short range, and Tom would have been inexcusable if he had missed his aim. The rebel struck his chest with his right hand, and the bowie knife dropped from his teeth; but with his left hand he had grasped the gunwale of the boat, and as he sunk down in the shallow water, he pulled the bateau over on one side till the water poured in, and threatened to swamp her. Fortunately the wounded man relaxed his hold, the boat righted, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... as quickly as they could in the circumstances. Finding that they could easily keep afloat, the non-swimmers had regained their confidence. Piloted by those who could swim, the men ranged themselves along one gunwale of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... doubted for a moment that all was going well, so that it was with no little anxiety that we heard him make the above remark. However, we had no time for question or surmise, for at the moment he spoke a heavy squall was bearing down upon us; and as we were then flying with our lee gunwale dipping occasionally under the waves, it was evident that we should have to lower our sail altogether. In a few seconds the squall struck the boat, but Peterkin and I had the sail down in a moment, so that it did not upset us; but when it was past we were more than half ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... rowed about by boys of his own age filled him with envy. And one of them, when he first caught sight of it, inspired him with a stronger feeling than envy. It was painted white and was gay with blue and red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two boys. One, who sat in the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a little larger than Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept. In the bow was a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him with a rush that it was ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... sloping valley and ran down in a blaze of sunshine to the rippling water,—or through the Narrows, where some breeze rocked the boat till trailing shawls and ribbons were water-soaked, and the bold little foam would even send a daring drop over the gunwale, to play at ocean,—or to Davis's Cottage, where a whole parterre of lupines bloomed to the water's edge, as if relics of some ancient garden-bower of a forgotten race,—or to the dam by Lily Pond, there to hunt among the stones for snakes' eggs, each ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... heard a wild tattoo of drums within the walls. On even keels in the motionless tide the ships took up their moorings; and King Richard, throwing the end of his cloak over his shoulder, jumped off the gunwale of Trenchemer, and waded breast-deep to shore. He was the first of his realm to touch ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... to bestir himself from his position on the weather gunwale, where he crouched dejectedly, letting the stiff breeze dry his spray-soaked garments. He groaned, protested, grunted, and finally swore volubly as Alec prodded him, while Billy hoisted the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... in that boat to make distinction between friend and foe. As one man we fought the element which would devour us. Each took his turn at the bailing, each watched for the next great wave before which we must cower, clinging with numbed hands to gunwale and thwart. We fared alike, toiled alike, and suffered alike, only that the minister and I cared for Mistress Percy, asking no help ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... maddening, and he pulled desperately, first on one oar and then on the other. Around the rocks the waters ran swiftly, and before he knew it there came a crash and his craft was stove in and upset. He clutched at the gunwale of the boat, but missed it, and plunged headlong ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... brooded over the face of all things, adding to the night, blurring the village to a few gleams of fire. On the broad sandy beach he could just see the outlines of the boats and the fishing-nets. He leaned against the gunwale of a pink, inhaling the scents of tar and brine, and watching the apparent movement seawards of some dark sailing-vessel which, despite the great red anchor at his feet, seemed to sail outwards ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... where the olive green hued shell of the floating reptile could be seen, and with two of the men dipping their oars gently to keep the boat in motion, and Mr Rimmer steering, they softly approached, while Smith leaned over the gunwale with his sleeves rolled up over his brawny arms ready to get hold of ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... across the lee-gangway. The stanchions for the man-ropes of the side are unshipped, and an opening made at the after-end of the hammock netting, sufficiently large to allow a free passage. The body is still covered by the flag already mentioned, with the feet projecting a little over the gunwale, while the messmates of the deceased arrange themselves on each side. A rope, which is kept out of sight in these arrangements, is then made fast to the grating, for a purpose which will be seen presently. When all is ready, the chaplain, if there be one on board, or, if not, the captain, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... of ocean about him, Speaking with this one and that, and cramming letters and parcels Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled together Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly bewildered. Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed on the gunwale, One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with the sailors, Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for starting. He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his anguish, Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel is or canvas, Thinking to drown in the sea the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a woman of the same tribe as his mother, and for a while gave up life on the ocean wave; but the growth of his family led him back to his fond pursuit on the briny deep. As he was unable to purchase a boat, with the aid of his brother he built one from keel to gunwale and ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... and he approached and, fatally for himself, harpooned it. When he struck, the fish was approaching the boat; and, passing very rapidly, jerked the line out of its place over the stern and threw it upon the gunwale. Its pressure in this unfavorable position so careened the boat that the side was pulled under water and it began to fill. In this emergency Carr, who was a brave, active man, seized the line, and endeavored to release the boat by restoring it to its place; but by ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of life surge in him, and it was not for himself he thought, but for Fay and the happiness she merited. He went to her, patted the covered head, and tried with words choking in his throat to give hope. And he leaned with hands gripping the gunwale, with eyes wide open, ready ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... and Dan exerted themselves to the utmost; but, short as was the passage, the boat was full almost to the gunwale before they reached the opposite bank, the heat of the sun having caused the planks to open during the months it ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... canoe lurched and swerved, and Lister knew if she swung off across wind and sea she might capsize. He must keep her running and let the combers split against her pointed stern. The combers were getting large and their hissing tops surged by some height above the gunwale, but so long as he could keep her before them they would not come on board. When her bows went up she sheered, as if she meant to shoot across the hollow left by the sea that rolled by. He stopped her with a back-stroke ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... sturdily, ceasing occasionally from their labours to go down and shove the boat further off as the tide fell. At six it was dead low. They had each brought with them a bag with some bread and cheese, and a tin of cold tea, and now sat down on the gunwale of the boat for breakfast. Having finished that meal, they continued their work till nine o'clock, by which time they had got several ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... cried the commander to Mr. Tarbill. There was no need to urge Bob, who had already grasped one side of the gunwale and was helping to push the boat down ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... men slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his two hours of watchfulness ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... stricken with terror. Some rushed into their canoes. Others plunged into the river to swim ashore. The vessel's boat immediately put off to pick up the canoe with the stolen goods. As it was returning, a solitary Indian, in the water, probably exhausted and drowning, grasped the gunwale. The cook seized a hatchet and with one blow, deliberately cut off the man's hand at the wrist. The poor creature, uttering a shriek, sank beneath the crimsoned waves ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... wharf to watch our ship weigh anchor. My mother would wave her handkerchief a moment, and then apply it to her eyes, and then give it another little toss, and then her eyes another touch. I stood beside her, leaning upon the gunwale, with a lump in my throat. Suddenly I realised we were under way. We continued to exchange farewell motions with the three upon the wharf. How small Fanny looked! how slender was Philip! how the water widened every instant ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Boston. There was quite a collection of people, looking on or taking leave of passengers,—the steam puffing,—stages arriving, full-freighted with ladies and gentlemen. A man was one moment too late; but running along the gunwale of a mud-scow, and jumping into a skiff, he was put on board by a black fellow. The dark cabin, wherein, descending from the sunshiny deck, it was difficult to discern the furniture, looking-glasses, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bad cooking and occasional lee-lurches, contrive to eat an enormous meal. Breakfast being despatched, you again go on deck—promenade—gaze on the clouds—then read a little, if perchance you have books with you—lean over the gunwale, watching the waves and the motion of the vessel; but the eternal water, clouds, and sky—sky, clouds, and water, produce a listlessness that nothing can overcome. In the Atlantic, a ship in sight is an object which arouses the attention ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... indeed, a tremendous sea was running, and the wind was blowing with terrible force from the north. Although under but a rag of canvas the brig was pressed down gunwale deep, and each wave as it struck her broadside seemed to heave her bodily to leeward. Malcolm on coming on deck made his way aft and glanced at the compass, and then took a long look over the foaming water towards where he knew the French coast must lie. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... rude rock and bare, All to their private aims alone attend, And only to preserve their life have care. Who quickest can, into the skiff descend; But in a thought so overcrowded are, Through those so many who invade the boat, That, gunwale-deep, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... dancing hilarity of the pollock. It is just a steady down tug that makes the line cut your fingers and likely takes your hand under water. If he is a good one you will need to sit back and snub the line over the gunwale in that first plunge which follows the stab of the hook. Then it is a steady, muscle-grinding pull to get him up. It is a stogy, heavy resistance which he offers. To lift him out of his depths is a good deal like explaining to a middle-class Englishman something that he does not wish to comprehend, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... other the two skiffs started on their risky exit from the grotto, scraping and bumping against the roof with the water on a level with the gunwale; one wave indeed overflowed and soused them, but the next moment they sighted the sky and grazing through the entrance ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... fish. The bar is about a mile wide and the waters covering it 28 1/2 feet deep at low tide, thus enabling sea-going vessels to cross without the aid of tugs—a great advantage to ocean liners and big lumber schooners, which may be seen almost any day either lying at the docks or loaded to the gunwale passing out to sea. ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... officers, the middy hurried off, helping to guide the party, consisting of Don Ramon's followers all but two, and succeeding in reaching the wharf without an adventure, the boat coming up at once on hearing their approach, and in a very short time loaded gunwale down, gliding ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... parted, each to their own fate. Then away they rowed, so hard and fast, that well-nigh the half of the keel slipped away from the ship, and so hard they laid on to the oars that thole and gunwale brake. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... company's gasoline launch, the two friends went put-put-putting outside the harbor, where Roddy made soundings for his buoys, and Peter lolled in the stern and fished. His special pleasure was in trying to haul man-eating sharks into the launch at the moment Roddy was leaning over the gunwale, ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings, and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personage not mentioned in the cure's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence,"—the voyageur's common oath even to this day,—the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A last sign of the cross, and the lithe figures leap light as a mountain cat to their place in the canoes. There are four benches of paddlers, two abreast, with bowman and steersman, to each canoe. One can guess that the explorer and his ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... suite arose and busied themselves in preparing it until 'twas ready and I had a finjan[FN338] worth a treasury[FN339] of money which they filled and passed to me. I took it as I was sitting upon the gunwale of the boat whence it dropped into the stream; and I was sorely sorrowful therefor, because that cup was a souvenir. Seeing this, all in the boat arose and sent for a diver who asked, saying, 'In what place hath the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and dance, and halloo like a madman. One of his shipmates, named Wilkins, remonstrated against such unruly conduct, and received in return a blow on the side of the head, which sent him with great force against the gunwale. The peacemaker, indignant at such unexpected and undeserved treatment, returned the blow with interest. The other inebriate, hearing the disturbance, came to the assistance of his drunken companion. A general fight ensued; some heavy blows were interchanged, and for ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... of course, stands erect in the head of the boat, one knee braced against a support. But Bembo disdained this; and was always pulled up to his fish, balancing himself right on the gunwale. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... are beautiful, whereas these nineteenth century ones are so beastly ugly, ain't they? We have a piece of Edward III., with the king in a ship, and little leopards and fleurs- de-lys all along the gunwale, so delicately worked. You see," he said, with something of a smirk, "I am fond of working in gold and fine metals; this buckle here is an early ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a gnarled hand grasping the latter's gunwale to hold the two together. With some difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in the cockpit, amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper followed, with clumsy expertness bringing the dory's ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... descent upon the coast of Africa. They were brave men, these Mediterranean seamen, and the risks which they ran in their strangely formed, unseaworthy craft were of course much enhanced when they were loaded to the gunwale with stores, provisions, horses, banners, and last, but by no means least, a ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... zinc boat, which was fortunately unhurt. The dingy had lost a mouthful, as the hippopotamus had bitten out a portion of the side, including the gunwale of hard wood; he had munched out a piece like the port of a small vessel, which he had accomplished with the same ease as though it had ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Chinese coolies; and the rush of the wave backwards and forwards at the bottom grew hourly less in the dim light of a couple of engine-room oil lamps whose light just made the darkness visible, the ship all the time rolling like a sodden lifeless log, her lee gunwale under water every time." ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... women, all demurely and plainly dressed, although the most of them were under thirty years of age, stood waiting at the head of the ladder until the cargo was stored, and Howland, sending his assistants back on deck, planted himself upon the gunwale of the boat, and holding out his hand to a stout, solid-looking woman with a young girl beside ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... discovered the submerged canoe directly ahead, and an instant later saw Shad rise to the surface, strike out for it, and catch and cling to the gunwale. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... somethin' black, and there was John Wood's boat runnin' by me before the wind with a rush—and 'fore I knew an'thing he had me by the hair by one hand and in his boat, and we was over the Bar. Now, I tell you, a man that looks the way I saw him look when I come over the gunwale, face up, don't go 'round breakin' in and hookin' things. He hadn't one chance in five, and he was a married man, too, with small children. And what's more," he added, incautiously, "he didn't stop there. When he found out, this last spring, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... built especially to encounter heavy seas, she would very soon have been swamped. It was only by careful steering, indeed, that this could be avoided, while the two boys took it by turns to bail out the water which occasionally came in over the gunwale in rather alarming quantities. Still they did not lose courage. They, however, grew very hungry, and began to look wistfully at the hamper ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Peter Gahan went over to a dirty and dilapidated boat which lay on the slip. They seized her by the gunwale, raised her and laid her keel on a roller. They dragged her across the slip and launched her, bow first, with a ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... a place as any. It dips deeper lower down, but I imagine you'll find it floating out again on the other side of the valley. Runs like the ribs of a ship, with the valley the hull. And the ship's rail, the gunwale in the rim-rock that outlines the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... report, but Dick had just sunk under water and was unhurt. On came the boat, Dick rising just astern of it. In a moment he seized the gunwale and swung the boat around with all his might, at the same time tipping it at one side. There was a cry of alarm, and then some one cried from the ship ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore
... hold onto the dock!" was the additional order, accompanied by a punctuation mark in the form of another bullet which splintered the gunwale of the boat. Looking as they were, into the dazzling eye of the bulb light, the men were uncertain of the number of their assailants: surrender was natural. Cleary's men made quick work of them. The boat from the yacht now hove to by this time, filled with excited ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... going on, Thorwald's men came down with their load, but Thiostolf was not slow in his plans. He hewed with both hands at the gunwale of the skiff and cut it down about two planks; then he leapt into his boat, but the dark blue sea poured into the skiff, and down she went with all her freight. Down too sank Thorwald's body, so that his men could not see what had been done to him, but they knew ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Tiller and Joe Basalt were just at that moment engaged in hauling Mr. Mole into the boat; they had him half way over the gunwale, when the shark made a snap and away went ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the auctioneer desperately. "It was the pride of the show. A real Indian canoe, equipped with gunwale seats and six Indian paddles. And only two dollars offered. Gentlemen, do I hear three? No! Last call! ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... colours are worth notice. The conger-eels are comparatively small specimens. Those in the deep sea sometimes attain a gigantic size. They are able to use their tail as a hand, and have been known by means of it to seize the gunwale of the boat in which they were imprisoned ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... canvas, turn the canoe over. Lay the canvas with the centre line along the keel. Stretch it well by pulling at each end, and tack it through the middle at the extreme ends with a few tacks in a temporary manner. Put in temporary tacks along the gunwale at moderate intervals, stretching slightly, and endeavor to get rid of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the gunwale tipped the boat To straining balance. Everard lurched and seized His wife and held her smothered to his coat. "Everard, loose me, we shall drown—" and squeezed Against him, she beat with her hands. He gasped "Never, by God!" The slidden boat gave way And the black foamy water split—and ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... swung himself over and lowered himself down. The water washed the foot of the wall, and he stepped directly into the boat; which Roger was keeping in its place with a pole, while Pierre held the rope. An exclamation of thankfulness broke from the two men, as his feet touched the gunwale of the boat; and then, without a word, Roger began to pole the boat along against the tide, keeping close to ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... was fairly before the wind, the sails were hauled taut, the boys seated themselves on the windward gunwale, and the race began in earnest. But they soon found that it would be much longer than they had imagined. Instead of the slow, straining motion which they had expected, the Speedwell flew through the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... silence of the shore remained profound. Jerry sniffed Skipper's bare leg as if to assure him that he was beside him no matter what threatened from the hostile silence of the land, then stood up with his forepaws on the gunwale and continued to sniff eagerly and audibly, to prick his neck hair, and to utter ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... invitation, and sprang from the gunwale. They watched the spreading circles that tracked his dive, and marked the white shining streak as it ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... tafferel hot, by the rapidity of the cord gliding over it. Having permitted him to go a certain length, he was again hauled up to the surface, where he remained without offering further resistance, till a boat was lowered, and a strong noose thrown over his head. Being thus made fast to the gunwale of the boat, he was brought round to the gangway, when the end of the noose being cast over the main-yard, he was lifted out of the sea and swung upon the ship's deck. Hitherto he had suffered quietly enough, in apparent stupefaction from the pain of his jaw; but he began now to ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... in the bottom, he tore away fragments of the crumbling bank to fill his frail craft, until he had sunk it to the gunwale, and below the low level of the Marsh. Then, using his hands as noiseless paddles, he propelled this rude imitation of a floating log slowly past the line of vision, until the tongue of bushes had hidden him from view. With a rapid glance at the darkening flat, he then seized ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mak' de camp to-night. To-mor', we run de Chute." He reached for the light pole with which he indicated the channel to the steersman, and beat sharply upon the running-board that formed the gunwale of the scow. Sleepily the five sprawling forms stirred, and awoke to consciousness. Vermilion spoke a guttural jargon of words and the men fumbled the rude sweeps against the tholes. The other three scows drifted lazily in the rear and, standing upon the running-board, Vermilion ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... made reply, and for a time there was silence, save for the swish of the gunwale through the water. But at last ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ernestina. A steamboat of this type has a wide overhang bounded by a stout timber called the "guard." When Evan stood up in his skiff his shoulders were at the level of the guard. But as the ledge it made was only three inches wide and the gunwale rising above it provided no hand hold, it was a problem how ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Little, seizing the gunwale and striking out with strong leg strokes. The seamen joined their efforts, and with twelve expert swimmers thrusting the boat forward, the skipper was dragged out of the tenacious mud with a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... prevented her distinguishing the features of these people of the lake; but that which was apparent to her was the fact that they were not fishermen, nor was their boat a fishing-boat. It was long, and built with the narrowness of a rice-lake canoe, and so low in the water that its gunwale looked to be within an inch of the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and falls in a ridge. At each wave they met—and there was a short, chopping sea—the Pearl shivered from the point of the bowsprit to the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look at each of the vessels in the roads one after another; then they put further out to look ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... reached the place where they had been seen, the heads disappeared, and the men in the boat seemed to be rowing blindly about. The mate stood upright. Suddenly he dropped and clutched at something over the boat's side. The people on the ship could see three hands on her gunwale; a figure was pulled up into the boat, and proved to be Hicks; then Staniford, seizing the gunwale with both hands, swung ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells |
