"Luff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anchor under-weigh!" The captain loudly cried; "Ho! lubbers brave, belay! belay! For we must luff for ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... he cried. "She's gone—Luff her, I tell you!" He sprang back, jamming the tiller from him. "Let her out, Andy, ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... I will luff," he cried, in great distress. And he ran to the helm and turned the rudder. But the boat scarcely obeyed it, being impeded by the net which kept it from going forward, and prevented also by the force of the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to bed early, and Fernando slept soundly. It was Terrence who awoke them and said it would not do to be late. He had engaged a sailor called Luff Williams to take them in his boat to the spot, a long sandy beach behind a high promontory some five or six miles from the city. The spot was quite secluded, and Terrence declared it a love of a place ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... thick about us, and several had passed through our sails before we tacked. Immediately we came into the Queen Charlotte's wake we tacked, lay up well for the enemy's rear, and began a severe fire, giving it to each ship as we passed. My Lord Howe in the Charlotte kept his luff, and cut through their line between the 4th and 5th ship in the rear. We followed, and passed between the 2nd and 3rd. The rest of the fleet passed to leeward. Their third ship gave us a severe broadside on the bow as we approached to pass under her ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... at the helm, in an instant passed a rope round his waist and stood at his post, hoping to luff the vessel up so as to receive the blow on her bows; but the roaring sea came on too rapidly—down it broke on board the vessel, driving against the foresail like a battering-ram. Over it passed, and the schooner in an instant lay on her beam-ends, ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... recollect how we used to skylark in the lee scuppers with those jolly fellows, Buntline and Reeftackle, until the Luff had to hail, and send a Middy with his compliments to the gentlemen of the larboard watch, and to say, that if quite agreeable to them, less noise would be desirable? I say, Jack, you seem to have forgotten all these funny times in the Alert. Cheer up, man; don't be downhearted. Give ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... when all my work was over and I was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book was to slide, the falls of the tackles were stretched forward, and all hands tallied on, and bowsed away upon them until the book was well entered, when these tackles were nippered, straps and toggles clapped upon the falls, and two more luff tackles hooked on, with dogs, in the same manner; and thus, by luff upon luff, the power was multiplied, until into a pile in which one hide more could not be crowded by hand a hundred or a hundred and fifty were often driven by this complication of purchases. When the last luff ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... with the niceties of that delicate craft; smarting eyes, chafed hands, and dazed brain all pressed into the service, whilst Davies, taming the ropes the while, shouted into my ear the subtle mysteries of the art; that fidgeting ripple in the luff of the mainsail, and the distant rattle from the hungry jib—signs that they are starved of wind and must be given more; the heavy list and wallow of the hull, the feel of the wind on your cheek instead ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, Its plangor and surge; The awful biting sough Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff, That veer and luff, ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... get in with us? Luff her in, Jim!" With this the girl and her companion, a boy of twelve years old, bare of leg and freckled of face, brought the boat around, and Flint climbed aboard with rather a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... and the spray flew over her bows as she met the sea. But the strange vessel was no less weatherly, and kept pace with us, and now Eric was bearing down on us more or less, sailing a little more free than we, though he also had to luff somewhat to keep near us, taking a long slant across our course as ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... don't know vot I should do. My boys go on the public school, and they speak American just so goot as you. Oh, I vant man lets me luff America. But papa he says it is an Unsinn; you got the money, he says, nobody should care if you are American or Old Country people. I should vish I could ride once in an automobile! But—I am so 'shamed, so 'shamed that ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... drew near a crisis. We had been obliged to luff a little, in order to clear a reef that even Marble admitted lay off Montauk, while the Leander had kept quite as much away, with a view to close. This brought the fifty so near us, directly on our weather ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... out to Archie and tells him to heave the tins of opium into the quarter-boat, and he did, and 'Now get into her,' I says, 'and pull for the beach.' And they did, me staying aboard the Hattie to luff her for them to get away. And then I cut the stays'l free and gave the Hattie her wheel again, and when she was going full-tilt I jibed her over, and she had everything on, and it was blowing blue devils, and only one thing ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... gentlemen," he continued, "you shall have her build, as justly as if the master-carpenter had laid it down with his rule. 'Remember to bring a muff of marten's fur from America, for Mrs. Trysail—buy it in London, and swear'—this is not the paper—I let your boy, Mr. Luff, stow away the last entry of tobacco for me, and the young dog has disturbed every document I own. This is the way the government accounts get jammed, when Parliament wants to overhaul them. But I suppose young blood will have ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... struggles and eventual death Australia has had to rely on the report of the only survivor, the faithful Jacky-Jacky. They reached Shelburne Bay, where one of the men accidentally shot himself, and became so weak from loss of blood that it was impossible for him to move. As another man, Luff, was sick, Kennedy left the third man, Dunn, to attend to his two comrades, and pushed on alone with the native boy. He had actually gained the Escape River, within sight of Albany Island, when his fate ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the mast; these bellowing and pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with barbarous and unknown sounds. The officer on duty, in his turn, roaring out these words, starboard! larboard! hoist! luff! tack! which the helmsman repeated in the same tone. All this hubbub, however, produced its effect: the yards were turned on their pivots, the sails set, the cordage tightened, and the unfortunate sea-boys having received their lesson, descended ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... me a prayer or so; she's the strictest kind. Now I'll luff, there is a lull comin'; peskiest storms that have lulls in 'em. You don't hear a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... of our nation's natal day At the rise and set of sun, Shall boom from the far north-east away To the vales of Oregon. And ships on the seashore luff and tack, And send the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the premises. Stand up, you rascal. What have you done with the pewter? Ah, crushed out of all shape and use. That's what Molly Luff sed of her new bonnet when she sat down on it—Lawk, a biddy! Who'd ha' ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... 'tis a wolf's world and goes cautious accordin'. I didn't make it, an' don't like it, but I'm here, an' I'm a wolf like the rest. A wolf's world! Ah-ha! You bites or gets bit down here. Teeth for you an you've no teeth o' your own. Janet Luff's baby, says you? But a dollar a tooth; an'—I keeps my teeth; keeps un sharp an' ready for them that might want t' bite me in my old age. If I was a fish I'd be fond o' angle-worms; bein' born in a wolf's world, with the soul of a wolf, why, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... more westerly after we rounded the point, which made our progress slow and tedious; the more so, as we had every minute to luff for one piece of ice and to bear up for another, by which much ground was ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... up, and see what you can make of them." "Upon deck there; I see a whole fleet of twenty sail coming right before the wind." "Confound the luck of it, this is some convoy or other, but we must try if we can pick some of them out." "Haul down the studding-sails! Luff! bring her to the wind! Let us see what we ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... following persons: Mr. E.B. Kennedy (leader), Mr. W. Carron (botanist), Mr. T. Wall (naturalist), Mr. C. Niblet (storekeeper), James Luff, Edward Taylor, and William Costigan (carters), Edward Carpenter (shepherd), William Goddard, Thomas Mitchell, John Douglas, Dennis Dunn (labourers), and Jackey-Jackey, an aboriginal native of the Patrick's Plains tribe, of the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... adapted himself to a certain part in life—who had ceased to grow, in a word—was named a character; while one remaining in a state of development—a skilful navigator on life's river, who did not sail with close-tied sheets, but knew when to fall off before the wind and when to luff again—was called lacking in character. And he was called so in a depreciatory sense, of course, because he was so hard to catch, to classify, and to keep track of. This middle-class notion about the immobility of the soul was transplanted ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... was careless, or had bad eyesight; and the mate, knowing this, was constantly going forward himself. I was leisurely going along the deck, when I heard him sing out,—"A sail on the starboard-bow! Luff!—luff all you can!" I sprang forward. The ship was nearer to us than he supposed. Right stem on she came, towering like a huge mountain above us. In an instant the brig's bows were cut down to the water's edge. I sung out to those on deck to follow ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... all dead men;—Luff, I say!' shouted I. I might as well have called to a millstone. Tom was in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... should see more of the world—I mean the solar system—and, by enlarging the parallax, be able to measure the distance of a greater number of fixed stars. Put your helm hard down and shout 'Hard-a-lee!' You see, there is nothing simpler. You keep her off now, and six months hence you let her luff." ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... 'Luff, you lubber,' cried an Irish voice that was Smee's; 'here's the rock. Now, then, what we have to do is to hoist the redskin on to it and leave her there ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... mainsail are given in Fig. 169. For mast hoops we used curtain rings. Five were attached to the sail along the luff, and one was fastened with a piece of leather to the end of the gaff. We used a different scheme for holding the boom to the mast. The forward end of the boom was flattened at the sides and a couple of cheek blocks were bolted on, forming ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... water or provisions, and but six tons of ballast on board, she was thrown over almost instantly, so far as to refuse to obey her helm, the pressure of the water on the lee bow rather inclining her to luff; seeing which, I directed the helm to be put down, hoping that I might luff and shake the wind out of her sails, until the force of the squall should be spent. The quartermaster at the helm had hardly time to obey this order, before the brig was on her beam ends, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... did not possess that peculiar and common form of vanity which makes a man sensitive about doing badly what he has never learned to do at all. He laughed when Ruggiero advised him to luff a little, and he did as he was told. But Ruggiero came aft and perched himself on the stern in order to be at hand in case his master committed another flagrant breach ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... have had a rough awakening from my dream. As I was sitting at 11 A.M., looking at the map and thinking that my cup would soon be full—we had almost reached 78 deg.—there was a sudden luff, and I rushed out. Ahead of us lay the edge of the ice, long and compact, shining through the fog. I had a strong inclination to go eastward, on the possibility of there being land in that direction; but it looked as if ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... reached for his, and he felt in her quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the yards," shouted Crow foot; "that's it steady—luff, my man;" and the danger was so imminent that even the studding—sail haulyards were not let go and the consequence was, that the booms snapped off like carrots, as we came to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Not till she's gone a mile. Not without they rip the masts out of her. That officer ought to have known that trick. That will be a lesson to you, Mr Jim. If ever you're in a little ship, and you get chased by a big ship, you keep on till she's right on top of you, and then luff hard all you know, and the chances are you'll get a mile start before they come round ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... off, and took the wind so far on the beam that she buried her scuppers deep in the waves. The order to "touch her up," or luff her up into the wind, so as partially to spill the sail, was given to ease off the tremendous pressure. The Josephine minded her helm, and luffed so that she ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... With clear water under our keel we passed shoal and reef and low-lying island. Now we saw a Tonquinese trader running before the wind, a curious craft, with one mast and a single sail bent to a yard at the head and stiffened by bamboo sprits running from luff to leech; now a dingy nondescript junk; now in the offing a fleet of proas, which caused us grave concern. But in all our passage only one ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes |
