"Steersman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sting, stitch, stock, stockade, stocking. STIGAN, to ascend—stair, staircase, stile, stirrup, sty. STRECCAN, to stretch—stretch, stretcher, straight, straighten, straightness, outstretch, overstretch. STYRAN, to steer—steer, steerage, steersman, stern (the hind part of a ship), astern. STYRIAN, to stir—stir, bestir. SUR, sour—sour, sourish, sourness, sorrel, surly, surliness. SWERIAN, to swear—swear, swearer, forswear, answer, unanswered. SWET, sweet—sweet, sweetbread, ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... on our way home from Troy, on good terms with one another. When we got to Sunium, which is the point of Athens, Apollo with his painless shafts killed Phrontis the steersman of Menelaus' ship (and never man knew better how to handle a vessel in rough weather) so that he died then and there with the helm in his hand, and Menelaus, though very anxious to press forward, had to wait in order to bury his comrade ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... seized his glass and turned it toward the island. The sombre shades of twilight had already gathered over the scene; but he saw through them quite distinctly a boat pulled by four men, while a fifth sat in the stern holding the tiller. The steersman kept the small island between them and the vessel Captain Parson ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... and transferred him again, this time to a man named Brown. Brown had a berth on the fine new steamer Pennsylvania, one of the handsomest boats on the river, and young Clemens had become a fine steersman, so it is not unlikely that both men at first were ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... following wind, a great bellying sail behind, and all around wet air and splashing grey sea, the stem ploughing it up silver and white and green, and away aft under the bend of the sail there would be Jason and the steersman, possibly Medea, with the curl out of her hair, and perhaps just a touch of the golden fleece, just a fleck of pale yellow to enliven the minor tints! Round the bows there would be men listening to the song, watching the stem pound into the green hollows—now, I remember! I have seen ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... armament is one or two six-pounders in the bow, one four-pounder stern-chaser, and a number of swivels, besides musketry, spears, and swords. The boat is divided into three sections, and fortified with strong planks, one behind the bow, one amidships, and one astern, to protect the steersman. The women and children are crammed down below, where the unhappy prisoners are likewise stowed away during an action. Their principal plan is boarding a vessel, if possible, and carrying her by numbers; and certainly if a merchantman fired ill, she would ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... and donned his armour of war; and they cried aloud, wondrously eager. And he drew his sword from the sheath and cut the hawsers at the stern. And near the maiden he took his stand ready armed by the steersman Aneaeus, and with their rowing the ship sped on as they strained desperately to drive her clear ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... was great confusion. The steamer was right upon us, and I heard the order given to stop the paddles. In the same moment I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on the prisoner's shoulder, and the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of a shrinking man in the galley. Still in the same moment ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... have induced any mariner to land upon so unpropitious a spot, hemmed in as it was on every side, and apparently affording no outlet but that by which they had entered—the trackless and illimitable ocean. Without a moment's deliberation, however, the steersman, who had guided his boat into the creek, sprang lightly to the shore: another followed; while the third, folding himself in the capacious cloak his leader had thrown off, resumed his place, as if resolved to take his rest, at least ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... stood near the binnacle talking to the steersman, a sturdy middle-aged sailor, whose breadth appeared to be nearly equal to ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... realise the nerve this requires. Seats had been roughly put in for us to sit on, otherwise, as a rule, except for the oarsmen's bench and the barrels, these boats are absolutely empty. Our friend, the steersman, sat at the bow, and with a sort of oar, held in position by a rope of plaited straw fixed a little on one side, guided the fragile bark. First we had to go into a lock. Any one acquainted with a nice wide shallow Thames lock may think he knows all about such matters; ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... whittler. Hawthorne quotes a little transcendental advice given to him by the maker of the boat: "In paddling a canoe, all you have to do is to will that your boat shall go in any particular direction, and she will immediately take the course, as if imbued with the spirit of the steersman." Hawthorne then adds this sober postscript: "It may be so with you, but it is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... they came from all their valleys to the yellow sands of Pagasai. And first came Heracles the mighty, with his lion's skin and club, and behind him Hylas his young squire, who bore his arrows and his bow; and Tiphys, the skilful steersman; and Butes, the fairest of all men; and Castor and Polydeuces the twins, the sons of the magic swan; and Caineus, the strongest of mortals, whom the Centaurs tried in vain to kill, and overwhelmed him ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... unutterable that made [Ant. 10. Of day and night division, From vision on to vision, 379 From dream to dream, from darkness into shade, From sunshine into sunlight, moves and lives The steersman's eye, the helming hand that gives Life to the wheels and wings that whirl along The immeasurable impulse of the sphere of song Through all the eternal years, Beyond all stars and spheres, Beyond the washing of the waves of time, Beyond all heights where no thought else may climb, Beyond the darkling ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... applies: As in pursuit along the aerial way, With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey, Each motion watches of the doubtful chase, Obliquely wheeling through the fluid space; So, govern'd by the steersman's GLOWING hands, The regent ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to all of us to be out thus in the freedom of the night and the sea—not least to the great noble-headed hound sitting up on his haunches, keen and watchful by the steersman's side. What a strange waste of a life so short to be sleeping there on the land, when one might be out and away on such ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... minutes later Lavinia saw his trim brown launch, with its awning and steersman in gleaming white, rushing through ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the trough of a losing fight. But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by consistent, cool resolve. Those who worked with him feared him, and in so doing learnt the habit of his ways. The steersman, with one eye on the binnacle, knew always where to find him with the other; for Luke hardly moved during his entire watch on deck. He took his station at the starboard end of the narrow bridge when he came on duty, and from that spot he rarely moved. These little things betray a man, if one only ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... their short voyage he entered into some conversation with the steersman, who was also owner of the boat, a jolly old man, who had occasionally been engaged in the smuggling trade, like most fishers on the coast. After talking about objects of less interest, Brown endeavoured to turn the discourse ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... approached, the steersman in the first canoe stood up to look over the course. The sea was high. Was it too high? The canoes were heavily loaded. Could they leap the waves? There was a quick talk among the guides as we slipped along, undecided which way to turn. ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the boat stationary, backing water. The steersman's left hand played with the tiller-rope, and the boat edged slowly to the shore. There was a grating thrown out over the water from the parapet of the river-wall, to the side of which was attached a boat-ladder, now slung up, for no boat's crew ever stopped here at this ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a small steamer from Ghoole was taking on a cargo of potatoes and beets. Some barges laden with wood were being pulled through the locks by men harnessed to a long tow rope, and a savage dog on one of these barges menaced me with dripping fangs and bloodshot eyes when I stopped to talk to the steersman, who sat on the tiller smoking a short, evil-smelling pipe, while his "vrouwe" was hanging out a heavy wash of vari-colored garments on a line from the staff on the bow to a sweep fastened ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... aft, and with one or two masts for showing signals, for they never hoisted a sail. Two huge paddle-boxes towered above the deck amidships, the wheels being of enormous size. No structure of any kind encumbered the deck. Even the steersman stood unsheltered at a wheel in the bow. They were painted dark gray, and at night could slip unseen along the water within a stone's-throw of the most watchful lookout on a man-of-war. They burned great quantities of a kind of coal that gave out no smoke, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The steersman answered with firmness, but with great civility of expression, that his orders were positive to bring no more than four into the island, but he offered to row back to obtain a revisal of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... to load and reserve fire," said the captain; "and hand me a musket, Fred. Load again as fast as I fire." So saying, the captain took aim and fired at the steersman of the largest boat, which pulled ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... we found it was a French merchant-ship of three hundred tons, homeward-bound from Quebec, in the river of Canada. The master gave us a long account of the distress of his ship, how the fire began in the steerage by the negligence of the steersman; but, on his crying out for help, was, as everybody thought, entirely put out: but they soon found that some sparks of the first fire had gotten into some part of the ship, so difficult to come at, that they could not effectually quench it; and afterwards ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... having accepted the proposal, the Moor left his companions to accompany us as far as the river Senegal, from which we were yet two good leagues. There happened a circumstance in the forenoon which had like to have proved troublesome, but it turned out pleasantly. The steersman of the Medusa was sleeping upon the sand, when a Moor found means to steal his sabre. The Frenchman awoke, and as soon as he saw the thief escaping with his booty, rose and pursued him with horrid oaths. The Arab, seeing himself followed by a furious European, returned, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... seventy-six benefices, M. de Tressan dreamed of the cardinal's hat, and aspired to obtain it from the Court of Rome at the cost of a persecution. The government was at that time drifting about, without compass or steersman, from the hands of Madame de Prie to those of Paris-Duverney. Little cared they for the fate of the Reformers. "This castaway of the regency," says M. Lemontey, "was adopted without memorial, without examination, as an act of homage to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... itself cannot even in early life accept the capture of the Portuguese carrack. Marryat drew on his recollections of the time when he was a midshipman with Cochrane in the Imperieuse, for the figure of the old steersman, who sticks to his post under the fire of the Avenger. He had seen the mate of a Spanish trading ship behaving in just that way when attacked by boats from the Imperieuse. When he was asked why ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... not," answered the steersman of the Black Hawk, who was dividing his attention between managing the craft and firing ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... had to be faced, and when these were contrary it required no small strength to pull their heavy boats against them hour after hour, and mile after mile, to say nothing of the management of the cumbrous steering-oar, twenty-seven feet in length, to handle which the steersman had to stand upright in ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... nervous shock. We knew on the top of the hill that a fearful storm was raging, but we did not see the white boat flying like a bird over the seven great rollers, or there would have been no sleep for us that night. The crew never forgot it, nor the calm pluck of their steersman the Bishop. I must confess that an attack of fever was the result of all this exertion when he joined ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... last-century Chart! Though the conning may be smart, and the steersman play his part, Palinurus-like, Whilst they trust to your vain vellum, which is almost sure to sell 'em, even DAVY JONES can tell 'em, they may sink or strike. Hooray, King Death, hooray! Who says we've had our day! Pass the rum and let's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... in her when the first canoe came under her hand. It was quite easy to manipulate the painter-rope. The stem had a notched knob provided for this very purpose, and there was a stern-post against which a steersman might press a paddle and thus swerve the canoe in any direction. But it was slow work. The craft were moored without any semblance of order, yet Suarez was forced to secure them in a definite sequence, or a string of half-a-dozen ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... "Whee yo ee.—Whee yo ee." The steersman gave "Whee," and was followed by the other men with a repetition of ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... none of the boys felt any touches of seasickness now, and many of them were walking up and down the deck, some taking their comfort under awnings spread aft near the cabin companion, and some being on the bridge watching the steersman or looking out to sea in search of sails or noting the flight of the gulls and other seabirds or studying the movements of the dolphins playing around the bow, there being many ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... the hour of retribution had arrived. Dionysus assumed the form of a lion, whilst beside him appeared a bear, which, with a terrific roar, rushed upon the captain and tore him in pieces; the sailors, in an agony of terror, leaped overboard, and were changed into dolphins. The discreet and pious steersman was alone permitted to escape the fate of his companions, {128} and to him Dionysus, who had resumed his true form, addressed words of kind and affectionate encouragement, and announced his name and dignity. They now set sail, and Dionysus desired the pilot to land him at ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... incoming billow the lifeboat was seen perched, with the men laboring at the oars to keep it steady, and the steersman standing at his post, every muscle strained to hold the ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... so that if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six oars, and her crew were the captains of the tops, the primest seamen in the ship, and the steersman no less a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... flat country with a rake of more than a league of water. As soon as everything was snug on board, the boat was lowered, and we pulled ashore, our new officer, who had been several times in the port before, taking the place of steersman. As we drew in, we found the tide low, and the rocks and stones, covered with kelp and seaweed, lying bare for the distance of nearly an eighth of a mile. Leaving the boat, and picking our way barefooted over these, we came to what is called the landing-place, at high-water mark. The soil ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of Girtham,—We have embarked upon a stormy sea of speculation, on a voyage of grand discovery, and the dangerous waves of adverse criticism, and the deceptive under-current of prejudice, often make the steersman's lot by no means an enviable one. But our vessel is sound and perfectly equipped, and therefore I do not fear to guide her across ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... the fire, for, although smoke was oozing out by the binnacle, it would be a good while before this part could be ablaze. There was no one by the wheel. The perfect calm that had continued since near morning rendered a steersman superfluous, and the wheel stood idle and neglected. The compass was gone. It was it I had observed in ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... built on a curved keel, was narrow, had a sharp stem and stern, was decked from end to end, low forward and much raised aft, and had a long deck cabin: the steering apparatus consisted of one or two large stout oars, each supported on a forked post and managed by a steersman. It had one mast, sometimes composed of a single tree, sometimes formed of a group of smaller masts planted at a slight distance from each other, but united at the top by strong ligatures and strengthened at intervals by crosspieces which made it look like a ladder; its single sail was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... shore to visit Guacanagari, whose residence was four or five leagues from the port of St Thomas. After his return to the ships, he went to bed, the weather being quite calm, as he had not slept during two days and a night. The weather being so fine the steersman left the helm in charge of a grummet, although the admiral had expressly commanded, whatever should be the weather, that he who was entrusted with the helm should never leave it to any other person. In truth, no danger was apprehended from rocks or shoals; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... sternmost end a sort of high poop-deck passes from side to side, on which the steersman takes his post. He holds in his hand an oar or paddle, which consists of a pole ten or twelve feet long, carrying at its extremity a circular disc of wood about a foot or a foot and a-half in diameter. The oars used by the six hands who pull the masullah boat are similar to that held ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... stationary, the Bottle, I am sorry to say, kept going Round. All the excursionists except myself got half seas over, and when we resumed our voyage the steersman had fallen asleep, so the vessel left a Wake behind her which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... wasn't a crevice, she could run the passage a night like this," Captain Glass remarked regretfully, as he watched the wheel lashed hard down by the steersman. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... chose the latter, recovered his balance with an easy grace, punctiliously saluted the tiny flag of the Zaire as he whizzed past her, and under the very eyes of Hamilton, with all the calmness in the world, took the wheel from the steersman's hand and ran ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Roman or Egyptian, and half of foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a storm and fight, but tastelessly bedizened with classic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins, strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward to wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his race, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the tiller from the steersman, and bade him go below and fill himself. Will Cary went down, and returned in five minutes, with a plate of bread and beef, and a great jack of ale, coaxed them down Amyas' throat, as a nurse does ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... chain of islands behind, and one morning struck out from the shore into the waste of waters, the prows of the canoes turned westward, the steersman guiding our course by the sun. For several hours we were beyond view of land, with naught to rest the eye upon save the gray sea, and then, when it was nearly night, we reached the shore, and beached ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... he, "Rupe was too valuable to be shot down for missing a man with a knife. Such a canoe-steersman as Rupe never was known before or since: he knew every rock in every rapid from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... captain, steersman, and ballaster of our vessel. We struck our bargain with him at once, and at once proceeded to make preparations. Chiefly we prepared by stripping ourselves bare of everything except "must-haves." A birch, besides three men, will carry only the simplest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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 pigs of Taiarapu raised their snouts in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rowers. Twang! sung their war-bows the song of the cord, and the air was full of hissing whispers of Death as their shafts hurtled past. Round and round the two galleys circled in a strange dance, each steersman striving to bring his craft bows on, so as to ram and crush the other, while they lurched in the cross-seas, and rolled till they dipped in tons ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... long and silently watching the progress of the vessel, had forgotten there was any such being as a steersman to direct her. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Factory. From Le Grand Diable's former association with the North-West Company it was probable he would be in Robertson's brigade. Among the voyageurs of both companies there was not a more expert canoeman than this treacherous, thievish Iroquois. As steersman, he could take a crew safely through knife-edge rocks with the swift certainty of arrow flight. In spite of a reputation for embodying the vices of white man and red—which gave him his unsavory title—it seemed unlikely that the Hudson's ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... hand his poppies shed; Each head, by Dulness render'd fit Sleep and his empire to admit. Through the whole passage not a word, Not one faint, weak half-sound was heard; Sleep had prevail'd to overwhelm The steersman nodding o'er the helm; The rowers, without force or skill, Left the dull barge to drive at will; 1030 The sluggish oars suspended hung, And even Beardmore held his tongue. Commerce, regardful of a freight On which ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... paddle," Harry said, as he pulled one out from below the network, "there is not a moment to lose. Keep your eyes open, chief." Again the boat moved down the stream. With four paddles going the steersman had somewhat more control over her, but as she flew down the seething water, glanced past rocks and sprang over falls, Tom expected her to capsize every moment. At last he saw below them a stretch of quiet water, and two or three minutes later they were floating upon ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... She didn't seem particular where she went, or whether she started again or stopped for good after getting stuck. Her machinery sounded like a chapter of accidents and was always out of order, but she got along all the same, provided the steersman kept her off ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... Racing is the popular sport of crew rowing or sculling, where each college appoints a crew of eight strong scull pullers or oarsmen and one small coxswain or steersman to pilot a long narrow boat called a skiff or shell. The coxswain calls the strokes and is generally the coach and commander of the crew. Unlike in a canoe, the pullers face backwards, and the one nearest the coxswain is called the "stroke oar", because all the other oars watch ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... formed a plan of insurrection, and executed it with success. Four of the French mariners being below deck, three aloft among the rigging, one at the helm, and another walking the deck, Brian, who headed the enterprise, tripped up the heels of the French steersman, seized his pistol, and discharged it at him who walked the deck; but missing the mark, he knocked him down with the but-end of the piece. At the same time hallooing to his confederates below, they assailed the enemy with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the bark that now pursues its course, Rock'd in the cradle of these storm-tost waves! Nor helm nor steersman here can aught avail; The storm is master. Man is like a ball, Toss'd 'twixt the winds and billows. Far or near, No haven offers him its friendly shelter! Without one ledge to grasp, the sheer smooth rocks ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... which now did as it liked. Some of the small craft got up into the willows and waited; some seemed to narrowly escape being crushed against a wall on the opposite bank. The bright white sails of a yacht shook and quivered as its steersman tried all he knew to coax his vessel an inch more into the wind out of the monster's path. In vain! He had to drop down the stream, and lose what it had taken him half an hour's skill to gain. What a pleasing monster to meet in the narrow arches of a bridge! The man in charge leaned ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... bank, either to help haul upon a line, or, in the case of the younger children and the dogs, simply to walk in order to relieve the craft of their weight and also for safety's sake, should the canoe overturn. The greatest danger is for the steersman to lose control and allow the canoe to get out of line with the current, as the least headway in a wrong direction is apt to ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Jews the physical or Semitic characters are apparent to the eye even of the uninitiated Gentile. In the Jewish people we see Nature steering one of her cargoes of differentiated humanity between the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern sea of industrial civilization. And race instinct is her steersman. ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... strongly built, wooden skiffs with three water tight compartments in each; one amidships, one fore and one aft, with decks flush with the gunwales. There was room between the middle and end compartments for the oarsmen to sit. The man who worked the steersman's oar sat on the rear compartment. In these compartments were packed all the dunnage, clothing, food, tools, surveying and geological instruments and cameras. Each man was allowed about fifty pounds of personal luggage. Everything that water ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... a temperature far above the normal, or he must certainly have become exhausted in a short time. As it was, he clung to his ring till near noon, when, cautiously peering above the gunwale, he saw the sloop's deck empty save for a steersman, half asleep in the hot sun by the tiller. With a great wrench of his arms the ex-buccaneer lifted himself over the stern and slipped as quietly as he was able into the boat's bottom. There he lay breathless, listening for sounds of alarm aboard the sloop. None came and after a ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... common belief, an idea. Ideas are related to feeling—to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill's valuable treatise Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d ed., 1882, a work of which we have made considerable use—as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steam which drives it forward. Thus the history of humanity has been determined by the history of man's intellectual convictions, and this in turn by the three familiar stages in the theory of the universe. With the development from ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a couple of hours passed, with Mark's steersman gradually edging the schooner nearer to the stranger, which, having the advantage of the wind, glided down to them, evidently meaning to speak ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... She was now motionless and we had to row to her. Just then day broke, a beautiful quiet dawn with faint pink clouds just above the horizon, and a new moon whose crescent just touched the horizon. 'Turn your money over, boys,' said our cheery steersman, 'that is, if you have ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... before we reached Toledo one of the drivers left, and the steersman employed our boy William, with the consent of the captain. I told George to tell William I wanted to see him at the expiration of the time set for him to drive. He came into the cabin, while the other passengers were ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... up! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip— Till clomb above the eastern bar The horned Moon, with one bright star Within ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... manoeuvres, to preserve the ship from impending destruction; but all was of no avail, we were hard on a lee shore, to which the howling tempest was impelling us. About this time I was standing near the helm, and I asked the steersman if there was any hope of saving the vessel, or our lives. He replied, "Sir, it is a bad affair, no boat could live for a minute in this sea, and in less than an hour the ship will have her broadside ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... drew the attention of all the natives. They called out Eige-ea Eige, and hastened to give place to the new-comers. The canoe, rowed by ten men, large and elegantly embellished with muscle-shells, soon approached us. The heads of the rowers and of the steersman were decorated with green boughs, probably in ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... say that the dead steersman has been reverently removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward till death, a steadfastness as noble as that of the young Casabianca, and placed in the mortuary ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the top of a slope; and when all is ready, the gentleman sets the affair in motion by a vigorous kick from his rudder leg. Of course the velocity increases as they rush down the slope; and unless he is a skilful steersman, they may have a grand upset or be embosomed in a drift; however, the toboggin and its freight generally glides like an arrow from the summit, and has received impetus enough to carry it a long distance over the smooth surface ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... stream, Jasper," said the man of the woods to the young mariner of the lake, who had dispossessed Arrowhead of his paddle and taken his own station as steersman; "let it go down with the current. Should any of these infarnals, the Mingos, strike our trail, or follow it to this point they will not fail to look for the signs in the mud; and if they discover that we have left the shore ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... generous and so penetrating with their sublime meaning, all on board the ship looked and listened with amazement. The hands of the steersman held the wheel listlessly. Brandon's own soul was filled with the fullest effects. He stood watching her figure, with its inspired lineaments, and thought of the fabled prodigies of music spoken of in ancient story. He thought of Orpheus hushing ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman sprang up the ladder. "Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have you ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the following morning, Jack mounted the steersman's seat, and sent the Terror rolling to the place where the bandits were ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... of the two Cupbearers. Songs of the Church. Sound the Loud Timbrel. Sovereign Woman. So Warmly We met. Spa, The Wellington. Speculation, A. Speech on the Umbrella Question. Spring and Autumn. Stanzas. Stanzas from the Banks of the Shannon. Stanzas written in Anticipation of Defeat. Steersman's Song, The. Still, like Dew in Silence falling. Still Thou fliest. Still When Daylight. St. Jerome on Earth. Stranger, The. St. Senanus and the Lady. Study from the Antique, A. Sublime was the Warning. Summer Fete, The. Summer Webs, The. Sunday Ethics. Surprise, The. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the ship which hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that got ashore we hung next morning. But Trail was in the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... day, .. but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, griping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... slight leak also, nothing dangerous in a stanch vessel, but an added straw, which might prove the last in this straining wrestle with wind and sea, and she did not answer her rudder as her steersman could have wished. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... The steersman, on hearing this, made a hasty signal to his men to back their oars, and hold off from the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the gunwale of the ship. The cabin had four windows on each side, a companionway fore and aft, and a sort of look-out or conning tower forward, which, the professor explained, was the place for the steersman. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... are driving at, Bill. Next the steersman got down with the mumps, then you took the shingles, and another sailor got lumbago, while the third mate had to crawl around with a boil on his foot as large as a cabbage. I heard about that affair—read about it in the last monthly number of the Gasman's Gazette—how the ship had to sail itself ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... the mile," said the designer to the steersman; and he pulled out his watch with exactly the same look of calm interest he showed when presiding over the trial of the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... quickly, frequently broke the monotony of the trip. One moment the Casco would be sailing along easily and the "next moment, the inhabitants of the cabin were piled one upon another, the sea was pouring into the cockpit and spouting in fountains through forgotten deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his life in a halo ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... chance. One tremendous pull from Trinity, and half that distance has disappeared. Another such stroke, and you are aboard of them. Hurrah! a bump—a bump! Not so. Caius is on the look-out; and with a skilful inclination of the rudder, the steersman makes his boat fall off—just the least bit in the world, but enough—Trinity overlaps, but does not touch. Another moment, and Trinity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... made. You are an AEolian harp—the sound is delightful, whatever breath of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock—I turn whichever way the wind blows, and try to point right, but at the same time I creak, so that it hurts my own ears and those of other people. I am content if now and then a steersman may set his sails rightly by my indication; though after all, it is all the same to me. I will turn round and round, whether others look at me or no—What ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time I saw him, and how I was startled at his eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship's helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a sarcastic tone, which must not be taken as seriously unfriendly. "His voyage homeward," says Mr. Glover, "was adventurous." It is a pity that space cannot be found for a full citation of Synesius's enthralling narrative. His Jewish steersman is an entertaining character. There were twelve members in the crew, the steersman making the thirteenth. More than half, including the steersman, were Jews. "It was," says Synesius, "the day which the Jews call the Preparation [Friday], and they reckon the night to the next day, on ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... ledge of the same aspect, lies still farther seaward; consequently the course of a careful pilot, is to hold his way free through the channel between them. If a lands-*man may be permitted to make an observation on a nautical point, I would say that our steersman kept the peak of the Corbiere exactly on a level with the adjacent precipices, till we were directly abreast of the headland, and then stood abruptly in-shore till within a few fathoms of the cliffs, under the shadow of which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... night, Professor Hartt heard his Indian steersman telling the Indian boatmen a story in order to keep them awake. This Indian steersman was full of these stories, but, for a long time, Professor Hartt found it impossible to coax this steersman to tell him another. He discovered that the Indian myth is always related without ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... steersman said finally, "I've told ye all I can tell ye. That other schooner that had a tug to sta'bo'd like this, the Marlin B., got a bad name from the Georges to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Middlesex Canal," a pamphlet published in 1830, it appears that boats were required to be not less than 40 ft. nor more than 75 ft. in length and not less than 9 ft. nor more than 9-1/2 ft. in width. Two men, a driver and steersman, usually made up the working force; the boats, however, that went up the Merrimac required three men, one to steer, and two to pole. The Lowell boats carried 20 tons of coal; 15 tons were sufficient freight for Concord; when the water in the Merrimac was low, not more than 6 or ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... lives of twenty cats," growled the captain, as he turned to give directions to the steersman, which brought the gun-boat still closer to the enemy. The effect of a well-delivered volley at this shorter range was to cut the fastenings of the three prows, thus ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... The forecastle and poop were very high, and the appearance of height was still further increased by the figurehead—the neck and head of a swan—and by a tail that rose from the stern-post, over the steersman's head. Both head and tail were richly gilt; indeed, the whole vessel was gaudily painted. All round the gunwales, from stem to stern, hung a row of shining red and white shields, which resembled the scaly sides of some fabulous creature, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his fervent lips, More keen than a sword's edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on the plunging ships. The pilot is he of their northward flight, their stay and their steersman he; A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength to constrain the sea. And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand as a bird in the toils; For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man's, whom he slays ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not do the work—Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us towards the port May dash us on the shelves.—The steersman's part is vigilance, Blow it or rough or smooth. Fortunes of Nigel. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... sentimental, Jack," replied Gascoigne; "but she is no more free than she was when at anchor, for she now is forced to act in obedience to her steersman and go just where he pleases. You may just as well say that a horse, if taken out of the stable, is free, with the curb, and his rider ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... patient, bold; The stokehole's heat and the crow's-nest's cold, The choking dusk of the noisome mine, The northern blast o'er the beating brine, With dogged valour they coolly brave; So on rattling rail, or on wind-scourged wave, At engine lever, at furnace front, Or steersman's wheel, they must bear the brunt Of lonely vigil or lengthened strain. Man is in charge of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... encourage vigilance it was determined, that the first discoverer of land should receive three reals and a pot of arrack. On the 4th November they saw patches of duckweed and a seal, and inferred their vicinity to land. The first pilot, Francis Jacobzs, on the 7th, supported by the advice of the steersman, thus delivered his opinion:—"We should keep to the 44 deg. south latitude, until we have passed 150 deg. longitude; then make for latitude 40 deg. south, and keeping in that parallel to run eastward to 220 deg. longitude, and then steering northward search with the trade wind ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... didn't remind Jimmy of a buckwheat cake. It made him think instead of a slowly turning wheel in the pilot house of a rotting old riverboat, a big, ghostly wheel manned by a steersman a century dead, his eye sockets filled ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... in Macbeth was ruthlessly struck out as containing an obvious allusion to the steersman of St. Peter's bark. Finally, bored and bothered by the political and theological Dogberrys of the day, with their inane prejudices, their solemn stupidity, and their entire ignorance of the conditions necessary for the growth of sane and healthy art, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... was then within half pistol-shot, and her forward guns were beginning to bear. From his station on the quarter-deck Barney shouted to his steersman in ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... not without great difficulty, in the face of such a sea. The men stoutly took their oars, casting a look forward at the rocks, then at the quay, and on the face of their young steersman. Little they guessed the intense emotion that swelled in his breast as he took the helm, to save life or to lose it; enjoying the enterprise, yet with the thought that his lot might be early death; glad it was right thus to venture, earnest to save those who had freely trusted to him, and rapidly, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... without bringing any plan to maturity. He gazed at the burning embers as if in a reverie, and as he gazed he thought he had seen, either by actual vision or by the 'second sight,' in which he was a firm believer, the form of a canoe with a single sable steersman coming to his rescue. He felt tempted to communicate the vision to his sleeping partner; but, thinking it unkind to disturb her slumbers, he desists from his resolution, reclines on the ground, and without intending it, he falls fast asleep. But imagine his astonishment and alarm when he came ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... use in the changeable mountain rivers. They were a canoe-shaped open boat, sixty feet long by eight wide, and were pushed up the stream by quants or poles. They required a crew of five men,—four to do the poling, and a steersman. In the swiftest "chutes" they carried a line ashore and made fast to a tree, then warped the boat up to quieter water and resumed the poling. Each boat would carry eight tons, and, compared with teaming over roads of which ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... A steersman who has captured a very curious specimen carries it off carefully to press between the leaves of his signal-book, like a flower. Another sailor, passing by, taking his small roast to the oven in a mess-bowl, looks at him ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... to thy question concerning Menelaus, he left Troy in my company, as I told thee, and we sailed together as far as Sunium. There Menelaus lost his steersman, who was visited by Apollo with sudden death, as he sat by the helm; so he remained there to bury his comrade. But his misfortunes were not yet over; for when he reached the steep headland at Malea a violent storm arose, and parted his fleet. Some ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... that stood Close by the yellow beach. The ocean calm'd, The Epidaurian god his father's fane Now leaves; a deity to him close join'd Thus hospitable found: the sandy shore Ploughs in a furrow with his rattling scales: Then, in the steersman confident, he rests On the high poop his head, till they approach Lavinium's city, and her sacred seat, And Tiber's mouth. The people rush in heaps, And crowds of matrons and of fathers rush, Confus'dly hither; even the vestal maids Who guard the sacred ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... better hand than I was, and he therefore took the office of steersman. The water was as smooth as glass, and we made rapid progress, and did not discontinue our exertions, except now and then resting for a few moments, till the morning dawned, when we could hardly distinguish ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... came over in the boat it was manned by four oarsmen and one steersman, and as passengers, Norris, an Englishman and myself, and brought over a mail. We landed at Cobb Neck. Morris said he would start back from the ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... galionji^, marine, jolly, midshipman, middy; skipper; shipman^, boatman, ferryman, waterman^, lighterman^, bargeman, longshoreman; bargee^, gondolier; oar, oarsman; rower; boatswain, cockswain^; coxswain; steersman, pilot; crew. aerial navigator, aeronaut, balloonist, Icarus; aeroplanist^, airman, aviator, birdman, man-bird, wizard of the air, aviatrix, flier, pilot, test pilot, glider pilot, bush pilot, navigator, flight attendant, steward, stewardess, crew; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... steersman, up with your helm, and shave past as close under his stern as you can without touching. Starboard gunners, be ready to pour your shot into his stern as we pass! Musketrymen and archers, pick off ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... suggestion with approval. Usually—for the craft, though, sturdy, was a small one—he was his own steersman and engineer. Now, he could enjoy the luxury of a crew, and the driver, who was a fairly good mechanic, was quite competent to handle ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Colfax, born a Sims but living it down and feeling that never more than at this minute, when rudely the steersman's helm had been snatched from his grasp, was there greater need that he should be a Colfax through and through——"but, Mr. Lobel, it was my idea that up to this point anyway the action should be played with restraint to sort of prepare the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... me. They are mostly men from near the first Cataract above Assouan, sleek-skinned, gentle, patient, merry black fellows. The little black Reis is the very picture of good-nature and full of fun, 'chaffing' the girls as we pass the villages, and always smiling. The steersman is of lighter complexion, also very cheery, but decidedly pious. He prays five times a day and utters ejaculations to the apostle Rusool continually. He hurt his ankle on one leg and his instep on the other with a rusty nail, and they festered. I dressed them ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... left the rest of our luggage for him to bring along. We boys walked the eleven miles up the canal to Lumberville, towing the barge. It was a tiresome task; but we divided the work into two-mile shifts, two boys towing at a time and then each taking a mile ride as steersman in the boat. It was about noon when we arrived at Lumberville, and then we had to unload our boat before we could haul it out of the canal and down to the river. The river on the Jersey side of the ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... now was bright golden again, and the air felt delicious; but I began to wish that we were at our journey's end, and pointing ahead I tried to learn from our steersman how much farther he was ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... that breaks over a ship and gives the sailors no respite Amycus came on at Polydeuces. He pushed in upon him, thinking to bear him down and overwhelm him. But as the skillful steersman keeps the ship from being overwhelmed by the monstrous wave, so Polydeuces, all skill and lightness, baffled the rushes of Amycus. At last Amycus, standing on the tips of his toes and rising high above him, tried to bring down his great fist upon the head of Polydeuces. The hero swung ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... so expert a Thames waterman, that he was quite able to manage the boat without a steersman, and Charley was nearly his equal. But there is some amusement in steering, and Katie was allowed to sit between ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... must be strained to the limit. Forward the boat was a mere smudge, the men curled up asleep and no longer visible. All that stood out with any distinctness of outline was the lug sail, stiff as a board. I endeavored to turn my head, without disturbing the slumbering girl, to gain view of the steersman. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... phrase. Down by the outrigger canoes, where they lay hauled out on the sand, he saw men and women, Kanakas, reclining languorously, like lotus-eaters, the women in white holokus; and against one such holoku he saw the dark head of the steersman of the canoe resting upon the woman's shoulder. Farther down, where the strip of sand widened at the entrance to the lagoon, he saw a man and woman walking side by side. As they drew near the light lanai, he ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... no second Alan, and no second shipwreck and spare yard to be expected now; and I saw myself hoe tobacco under the whip's lash. The thought chilled me; the air was sharp upon the water, the stretchers of the boat drenched with a cold dew; and I shivered in my place beside the steersman. This was the dark man whom I have called hitherto the Lowlander; his name was Dale, ordinarily called Black Andie. Feeling the thrill of my shiver, he very kindly handed me a rough jacket full of fish-scales, with which I was glad to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sea had if anything increased. The Nina was now in the greatest danger. Any one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it had broken fairly across her, would have sunk her; and she went swinging and staggering down into the great valleys and up into the hills, the steersman's heart in his mouth, and the whole crew in an extremity of fear. Columbus, who generally relied upon his seamanship, here invoked external aid, and began to offer bargains to the Almighty. He ordered that lots should be cast, and that he ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... not wonderful, when you come to think of it, for it was in a boat that they found themselves. A queer boat, with high bulwarks pierced with holes for oars to go through. There was a high seat for the steersman, and the prow was shaped like the head of some great animal with big, staring eyes. The boat rode at anchor in a bay, and the bay was very smooth. The crew were dark, wiry fellows with black beards and hair. They had ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... clean the engine, and while one of the boys kept the launch in the middle of the river as it drifted, with an oar, the others rolled up their sleeves, and with the knowledge gained from their aeroplane motors, aided the steersman to disconnect and clean the machinery. Meantime the engineer arrayed ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... forest into the starlit area of the tiny lake. The great canoe was low in the water; for heaped in the centre of it was what was evidently a pile of freight, with two men in front and two behind. The steersman swung the prow around and on they went up the Wolverine without a pause in the sweep of the paddles or the swing ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... keep it in control. A watchman crouched in the meagre shade of a fan-like structure overhanging the bow deck. The roofing and the floor, where exposed, were clean, even bright; in all other parts subject to the weather and the wash there was only the blackness of pitch. The steersman sat on a bench at the stern. Occasionally, from force of habit, he rested a hand upon the rudder-oar to be sure it was yet in reach. With exception of the two, the lookout and the steersman, all on board, officers, oarsmen, and sailors, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... instruments, medicine, and almost every article indispensible for the success of our enterprise. The canoe being under sail, a sudden squall of wind struck her obliquely, and turned her considerably. The man at the helm, who was unluckily the worst steersman of the party, became alarmed, and instead of putting her before the wind luffed her up into it. The wind was so high that it forced the brace of the squaresail out of the hand of the man who was attending it, and instantly upset the canoe, which would have turned bottom upwards but for ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... and dark, illumined only by an extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship; everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so soft and so subdued that one might have thought that he feared to awake the men of the watch, or that he himself was half asleep. We did not weary of listening to him, for his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... decked ship was built, and her sides were paid, inside and out, with the mineral pitch, or bitumen, with which the country abounded; the vessel's seaworthiness was tested, the cargo was stowed away, and a trusty pilot or steersman appointed. ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... way in, Long John stood by the steersman and conned the ship. He knew the passage like the palm of his hand, and though the man in the chains got everywhere more water than was down in the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy? Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal, Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos), She would turn a new side to her mortal, Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman— Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, Blind to Galileo on his turret, Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal— When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better! Proves she like some portent ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Steersman then, and gazing Upon the west, cried, "Spread the sails! Behold! 3200 The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing Over the mountains yet;—the City of Gold Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Stow! Make fast and belay—Heisa! Heisa! One long pull! One long pull! Young blood! More mud! There, there! Yellow hair! Great and small! One and all!" The "yellow hair" refers to the fair-haired Norsemen. What the master told the steersman might have been said by any skipper of our own day: "Keep full and by! Luff! Con her! Steady! Keep close!" But what he told the "Boatswain" next takes us back three hundred years and more. "Bear stones and limepots full of lime to the top" (whence they would make it pretty hot for an enemy held ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... 26. Then the steersman threw the ship's tents aside, that the princes' people might awake, and the noble chiefs the dawn might see; and the warriors hauled the sails up to ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... wonderful speed and skill. While a man with a boat-hook, to which a long 'towing-line' is attached, stands in the bow of the galley punt and hooks it into anything he can catch, perhaps the bight of a rope hung over the steamer's side, the steersman has for his own and his comrades' lives to steer his best and to keep his boat clear of the steamer's sides, and of her deadly propeller revolving astern, while the bowman pays out his towing-line, and others ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... few years of quiet pleasure. They might never spread their sails together again; wider and wider would the distance grow between them; higher and higher would swell the waves as they sped on their separate courses; the one light and buoyant with her freight of noble hopes and dauntless steersman at the helm, the other without sail or ballast, drifted about at the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... priest always remains by the steersman, to ward off the spells of the sea demons." Ladro paused, pointing overside. "See," he said in a pleased tone, "here is ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... utmost care in the middle of the boat, is firmly tied; the other end is fastened to the bottom of the boat. Thus prepared they row in profound silence, leaving the whole conduct of the enterprise to the harpooner and to the steersman, attentively following their directions. When the former judges himself to be near enough to the whale, that is, at the distance of about fifteen feet, he bids them stop; perhaps she has a calf, whose safety attracts all the attention of the dam, which is a favourable circumstance; ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... forthwith got, and being, like most of the women of the island, not altogether without nautical skill, she rowed some distance out to sea, and then hoisted sail, and cast away oars and tiller, and let the boat drift, deeming that a boat without lading or steersman would certainly be either capsized by the wind or dashed against some rock and broken in pieces, so that escape she could not, even if she would, but must perforce drown. And so, her head wrapped in a mantle, she stretched herself weeping on the floor of the boat. But it fell out quite otherwise ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... launch split her way swiftly toward the north. By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys—that of bending others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... he with whom Ye come, your trusty sire and steersman old: And that same caution hold I here on land, And bid you hoard my words, inscribing them On memory's tablets. Lo, I see afar Dust, voiceless herald of a host, arise; And hark, within their grinding sockets ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... Ben Gibson's boat, of which old Tom was steersman. He would handle the iron too, for as I have said, Ben was just as green in the actual practice of whalemanship as I was myself. We raced with the other boats for the nearest prize, which proved to be a husky bull, longer than the ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... we were close upon him; now, in obedience to the steersman, the boat sheered out a bit and we were abreast 25 of his laboring flukes; now the mate hurls his quivering lance with such hearty good will that every inch of its slender shaft ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Turner, an engineer and two assistants, two steersman and a cook—eight men all told—formed the crew of the aeronef, and proved ample for all the maneuvers required in aerial navigation. There were arms of the chase and of war; fishing appliances; electric lights; instruments ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... mountains is fairer than the sea. And so the scudding Snowflake flies with the wind astern, And through the boding twilight are blown the shrilling tern. The light is on the headland, the harbor gate is wide; But rolling in with ruin the fog is on the tide. Fate like a muffled steersman sails with that Norland gloom; The Snowflake in the offing is neck and neck with doom. Ha, ha, my saucy cruiser, crowd up your helm and run! There'll be a merrymaking to-morrow in the sun. A cloud of straining canvas, a roar of breaking foam, The Snowflake and the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... the helm, and at first made the usual miscalculations of an unexperienced steersman; but Fanny soon instructed him so that he steered very well, and she went forward to her couch. In a whisper she said the prayer which she never omitted, and covering herself with blankets, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... reading lamp and the fine sense of authority. He would stand upon the bridge for hours, with folded arms and impassive face, staring ahead as the oily waters moved slowly under the bow of the stern-wheeler. Now and again he would turn to give a fierce order to the steersman or to the patient Yoka, the squat black Krooman who knew every inch of the river, and who stood all the time, his hand upon the lever of the telegraph ready to "slow" at the first sign ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace, so as readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds. Quitting that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; and employing this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... second time he hit the bird, and struck it to the deck.... This strange fact made him uneasy, and he thought it betokened danger; he went to the binnacle, saw the course he was steering, and without any particular reason he ordered the steersman to alter the course ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... watching anxiously. As soon as Bert had steered over to the left his sled began to go faster, as the snow was packed better there. He was fast catching up to Danny, when one of the boys on that bob, looking back, saw it, and warned the steersman. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... Commonwealth, of 20 peice of Ordnance. then hee tooke our master, merchant and ten seamen more out of our Ship and left seven of us aboard and soe went aboard his man of war againe and ordered the Dutch Steersman, whome hee left with Eleven Dutchmen more on board of our Ship, to Steere after the man of War, and in case wee should bee parted by weather to Saile with our Ship to the Groyne in Galecia, as the said Steeresman informed ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... hurrying aft. Ere meeting them midway, Israel, quick as lightning, cast off the two principal halyards, thus letting the large sails all in a tumble of canvass to the deck. Next moment one of the officers was at the helm, to prevent the cutter from capsizing by being without a steersman in such an emergency. The other officer and Israel interlocked. The battle was in the midst of the chaos of blowing canvass. Caught in a rent of the sail, the officer slipped and fell near the sharp iron edge of the hatchway. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville |
