"Gunwale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the boat, he will take you and Miss Grahame ashore, while I make all fast here. If you will take his hand, and be careful to step in the middle of the boat. In the MIDDLE of the boat, Miss Everton! Ah!" For Madge, with an airy leap, had alighted full on the gunwale. Down went the boat; the girl tried to regain her balance, but in vain, and after a few moments' frantic struggle, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... 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
... unfaded are those When I've seen life compact in some perfect body, The living God made manifest in man: A diver in the Mediterranean, resting, With sleeked black hair, and glistening salt-tanned skin, Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense hands, His torso lifted out of the peacock sea, Like Neptune, carved in amber, come to life: A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised Like a bronze Osiris against the lush, rank green: A fisherman dancing reels, on New Year's Eve, In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... remarked John, dropping down in the boat with a sigh of content as the sail filled and they glided forward. "I don't know that I want anything better than this." He leaned against the gunwale and regarded Sylvia, who was sitting beside the mast. The morning stars shone in her eyes. "Miss Sylvia looks as if she agreed with ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... nor answered, but, as the boat rose and fell on the short sea raised by the first of the breeze, the face kept mopping and mowing at us over the gunwale. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... drawing of goblins and ghosts. I sat forward in the boat with the ranks of singing, paddling blacks behind me. From the moment we started and until I landed, the boys kept up an incessant chanting. One of their number sat forward and pounded the iron gunwale with a heavy stick. When he stopped pounding the paddlers ceased their efforts. The only way to make the Congo native work is to provide ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... not only loaded the boat they came in, but on the principle of in for a penny, in for a pound, had also taken possession of one of the company york boats, and had loaded it to the gunwale. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... forty-fold as swift as sight or thinking, so that he stood in the deep seas to the armpits, and his head and shoulders rose like a high isle, and the swell beat and burst upon his bosom, as it beats and breaks against a cliff. The boat ran still to the north, but he reached out his hand, and took the gunwale by the finger and thumb, and broke the side like a biscuit, and Keola was spilled into the sea. And the pieces of the boat the sorcerer crushed in the hollow of his hand and flung miles away into ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... give us a long drag," said the master, as he stood balancing himself on the clumsy elects in the bows of the boat, using his lance as an adept in saltation poises his pole on the wire, the water curling fairly above the gunwale forward, with the rapid movement of the boat; "I would haul up alongside, and give him the lance, did I not distrust them flukes. I believe he ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... world like ants about a broken nest, hailing and crying on us to return. We were still in both the lee and the shadow of the rock, which last lay broad upon the waters, but presently came forth in almost the same moment into the wind and sunshine; the sail filled, the boat heeled to the gunwale, and we swept immediately beyond sound of the men's voices. To what terrors they endured upon the rock, where they were now deserted without the countenance of any civilised person or so much as the protection of a Bible, no limit can be set, nor had they any brandy left to be their consolation, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sea, Ridge barely succeeded in clutching a gunwale and pulling himself aboard, amid chuckles of laughter from the crew. His ducking had not improved his personal appearance, and as he now sat in the bow of the boat dripping water from every point, he formed an object for so much rude wit and coarse merriment, that upon ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... altogether naked like 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 ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 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 of rudder he was ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... monkey with a pouch about its neck ran up the anchor rope and pausing on the gunwale, sniffed at the pungent flower smell that it now knew meant sleep for all the sailors. Then it bounded toward ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... air. These he had cut into arbitrary patterns known only to himself, and was now sewing as a long shapeless sort of bag or sac to a slender beech-wood oval. Later it was to become a birch-bark canoe, and the beech-wood oval would be the gunwale. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... "Cumberland" was sunk by the iron-clad rebel ram "Merrimac," going down with her colors flying, and firing even as the water rose over the gunwale. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... hills of water, swelling and sinking, with black valleys between. Agatha remembered a story she had read or heard in her childish days, of some wrecked sailor lad, doomed to death by his mates because the boat was too full for safety, who asked leave to sit on the gunwale until after the curl of the wave, and then quietly dropped off into the smooth ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and she is carried by a swift chute into great waves to the right, where she is tossed about and Bradley is knocked over the side; his foot catching under the seat, he is dragged along in the water with his head down; making great exertion, he seizes the gunwale with his left hand and can lift his head above water now and then. To us who are below, it seems impossible to keep the boat from going under the overhanging cliff; but Powell, for the moment heedless of Bradley's mishap, pulls with all his power for half a dozen strokes, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... too," he said good-humouredly, "have been put on half-pay, but your half-pay can hardly give you enough to buy tobacco! Here, corporal!" and he tried to force the gold coin into the young man's closed hand, which rested on the gunwale of the gig. ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... coffins in the service. He had not pulled more than a cable's length from the ship, when a shark, nearly as long as the gig, came up swimming with great velocity after them; and as he passed, the animal shouldered the boat, so as nearly to upset it: as it was, the boat took in the water over the gunwale. As the animal appeared preparing for another attack, the captain thought it advisable to pull alongside, and go on shore in the cutter instead of his own boat; and on this large boat the shark did not make a ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... very enviously; and for the moment wished that he, too, were a boy, whom she need not take seriously. There was no sleep for him. He sat on the narrow seat encircling the stern, with his back against the gunwale, where, on the one hand he could watch the steersman elevated on his little platform, while on the other side he was prepared for any demonstration from the bow. The steersman was Natalie's humorous breed; his name was Aleck. Nick Grylls and Hooliam were together somewhere ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in each canoe for repairs, which ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... had lost his head. He got ready for a jump; the boat lifted, and he sprang; the backwash pushed her out, and the man's left foot only just touched the gunwale. He screamed like a woman, gripped vainly at the air, and rolled under. A sea drove his head against the ship's side; the boat swung with tremendous force. Scraunch! and the poor fellow was gone, with his head crushed like ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... exertion in the bloom of her cheeks! Then the pride with which she saw her little vessel cutting through the water!—how she tightened her lips with a joyous determination as the sheets were hauled close, and the gunwale of the small boat heeled over so that it almost touched the hissing and gurgling foam!—how she laughed at Duncan's anxiety as she rounded some rocky point, and sent the boat spinning into the clear and smooth waters of the bay! Perhaps, after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... troopship. No heed being taken of signals to keep further away, the sentry on duty was instructed to fire a rifle shot across the bow of the small craft. This proved most effective, and everyone roared with laughter when the stout fisherman hastily dived below the gunwale out of sight and forced the terrified small boy to take the helm and steer away out of danger. In spite of this, however, preliminary bargaining went on with other boats' crews and first impressions were gained of the ways and manners of the gentle ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... rapidly. It had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk had been able to pass on account of its lighter draft. Soon the stranded boat began to list over, and the twenty-eight men aboard had to sit on the gunwale. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... were in bloom. A broken Venus, presiding over a dusty fountain, made the centre of the cortile, and there a strapping girl from the campagna was busy trimming the stalks of a bunch of roses. The signorina had not arrived; Lawrence lounged against the gunwale of a gondola, which lay on one side of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... amidships over her bottom and she was lugged, by her painter, towards the bow of the yacht where, with much grating of windlasses and of temperaments and voices, an anchor was very gently lowered into her and rested on the old sail. The anchor was so immense that it sank the dinghy up to Her gunwale, and then she was rowed away to a considerable distance, a chain grinding after her, and in due time the anchor was pitched with a great splash into the water. The sound of orders and of replies vibrated romantically over the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... shyly at the fountain of learning, and Father Le Jeune relates of the dusky scholars that one ran away, two ate themselves to death, a fourth was kidnapped by his affectionate parent, and three others stole a canoe, loaded it to the gunwale with such commodities and food as they could lay hands upon, and escaped up the river. The indefatigable Jesuits, however, were not to be discouraged, and they still wrote with delight of their savage province. Their ardent Relations were sent regularly to ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... meantime, the gaffer had recovered his weapon, and as the big fish was brought to the side of the boat, he struck again, this time succeeding in holding against the rush of the fish, though he was pulled elbow-deep into the water. Then, standing on the gunwale, the gaffer lifted the head of the tuna and tilted the boat over as far as was safe, sliding in the fish as he did so, accompanied by the cheers of Colin. As soon as the tuna was fairly secure, a big square of canvas was thrown over it to keep it from pounding and threshing in the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... low voice—he was holding the gunwale of the boat and he did not look at her; "Elizabeth, all I want money for is to give you everything you want." She was silent. He made the skiff fast and followed her up the path to the little inn on the bank. There were some tables ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... 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)
... and there, and peering out from the shadows, he soon made out the form of a man seated on the gunwale at the front, doubtless in quest of coolness. He was smoking a cigarette and something in his appearance was so familiar that the deserter ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... 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 brightness ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... gunwale and was dragged on behind the Duchess. At first the canoe tipped and threatened to turn over; Purt slipped along to the stern, and there got a grip on both sides, and so trailed ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... extending an arm in the direction she wished the vessel to go, and, her task completed, she wrapped her blanket round her active little body, scarcely shrouded in the striped twill shirt that constituted her sole attire, and, sinking down in the waterways under the lee of the gunwale, was soon sound asleep—a sensible proceeding, which, as soon as everything was secured, we hastened ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... well enough—" said the man at the net, setting himself astride the gunwale to listen, with the net ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and wisely have ye prayed; I bid you 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 limbs gleam from out their snow-white garb; Plain too the other barks, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... twins hoisted themselves over the gunwale of the launch as handily as boys, and the next time Hester Grimes was dragged in. And a madder girl than Hester it would ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... as he sat thus, wondering mostly at the boat, for it was a marvel to all of us. Sharp were her bows and stern, running up very high, and her high stem post was carved into the likeness of a swan's neck and head, and the wings seemed to fall away along the curve of the bows to the carved gunwale, that was as if feathered, and at last the stern post rose and bent like a fan of feathers to finish all. Carved, too, were rowlocks and the ends of the thwarts, and all the feathered work was white and gold above ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... 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 ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was a narrow clip." As ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... enough, it's near the surface and it's as good 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 ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... rising and sinking with the heaving surges, and swashing the waters at every heave. It was with difficulty held to the rocks by a boat hook, for the current rushed furiously round the point. The veteran hoisted one end of the lumbering sea chest on the gunwale of the boat, and seized the handle at the other end to lift it in, when the motion propelled the boat from the shore, the chest slipped off from the gunwale, and, sinking into the waves, pulled the veteran headlong after it. A loud ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... draught of rum, neat, brought his saturated brain to overflow, and before we had gone a mile he was so drunk that I had to guide the oars from behind to insure their taking the water. Then he broke out into singing, beating time on the gunwale of the boat with such violence that it menaced capsizing every minute, and to all my remonstrances he replied by ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... hung over Long Island, and concealed the movements of the Americans, the atmosphere was clear on the New York side of the river. The adverse wind, too, died away, the river became so smooth that the rowboats could be laden almost to the gunwale; and a favoring breeze sprang up for the sail-boats. The whole embarkation of troops, ammunition, provisions, cattle, horses, and carts, was happily effected, and by daybreak the greater part had safely reached the city, thanks to the aid of Glover's Marblehead men. Scarce anything was abandoned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig in her arms. Strange packages of tapa cloth were carried out; bundles of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor, a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage. These were all thrown in, and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the river till they reached the water's edge, and then followed this. In a few minutes, to their delight, they came upon a boat. The bow was hauled a few feet out of water, and a rope, doubtless attached to a heavy stone anchor, stretched from its bows. This they cut, put their shoulders to the gunwale, and soon had her afloat. Then they scrambled in, put the oars out cautiously, and began to row. Both had had some practice at the exercise, and it was not long before the boat grounded on ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... towed well as long as the sea was smooth, and at first no discomfort was felt. Then a continued spell of bad weather ensued, and a driving rain, which found its way under the covering boards and along the gunwale of the ship, caused great unpleasantness. Worse was to follow, for it began to blow very hard, and the Brunswick set off at high speed, dragging the little brig mercilessly through the heavy seas which almost enveloped her. The sight evoked much amusement among the passengers on board the big ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... 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 the ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... be made five feet in length, or, rather, five feet of the barge should be seen; the remaining portion of it is presumed to extend behind the scenes. It should be built in the form of the Venetian boats, with the prow running up a foot above the gunwale, and turning over in the form of a scroll. The barge can be framed out of light strips of wood, and covered with canvas; the exterior should be painted in showy colors; the scroll can be covered with gold paper; a wreath of flowers should be painted around the edge of the ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... at the oars, he saw. And beside him stood Moto, manning the steering oar. On the opposite gunwale perched ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or foot-spars, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a tremendous snarl, and he saw it no more. On another occasion, he was one of three men sent with despatches to some Indian port in a boat, which, oversetting in the open sea in a squall, left them for the greater part of three days only its upturned bottom for their resting-place. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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, close to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... at last, and lifted the unfortunate girl, insensible and helpless as a log, over the gunwale. ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... me," chimed in 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 ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... 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 between us and ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... opportunity of ascertaining the name of the vessel, which proved to be the Mercury of Bristol. They were now also able to realise more fully than they had yet the tremendous strength of the gale and power of the sea; the unfortunate barque careening gunwale-to under the pressure of the wind upon her scanty canvas, whilst the sea deluged her decks fore and aft; the whole of her lee and a considerable portion of her weather bulwarks having already been carried away, together with ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the gunwale on all fours, and let himself go with a splash, which I thought every man in the ship must have heard. He fell on his back, with his arms in the air, grasping somewhat in them, which I thought was some man who tried to hold him. Yet I had not seen one come aft. Then there seemed ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... Melville water, and here it fell calm. I now began to feel uncomfortable, for the air was close, and dark clouds appeared rising in the north-west. The wind began to blow in gusts; a sudden puff, curling the waters, would strike the boat and make her heel over until her gunwale kissed the wave, as with a sudden start she rushed forward under the impulse of the blast. I was now making homeward. The heavens became black with angry clouds; the wind first sighed and moaned like a reluctant Spirit ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... first imagined her to be, yet not deeper than might be accounted for by her carrying a heavy cargo; her covering-board seemed to be about eighteen inches above the water, and I therefore had no difficulty in clambering in over her bulwarks from the gunwale of the boat, of course taking care to carry the end of the boat's painter on board with me. Making this securely fast to a cleat in the bulwarks, I glanced fore and aft to see whether I could discover any indication of the presence of human beings on board; but the deck appeared to be deserted; ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... distant sail were yet lightened by the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock, from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly see the boat. One of the occupants—a lady—wore a dark hat with a scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening up the sail, ready to catch the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... get south of Hatteras, which is located on the North Carolina coast in a region of storms and local disturbances. The canoe, though heavily laden, behaved well. I now enjoyed the advantages resulting from the possession of the new canvas deck-cover, which, being fastened by buttons along each gunwale of the canoe, securely covered the boat, so that the occasional swash sent aboard by wicked tug-boats and large schooners did not annoy me or ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... an English gentleman; and partly, because he was not an Italian; for, by this time, I had imbibed a strong prejudice against the common people of that country. We embarked in the morning before day, with a gale that made us run the lee-gunwale in the water; but, when we pretended to turn the point of Porto Venere, we found the wind full in our teeth, and were obliged to return to our quarters, where we had been shamefully fleeced by the landlord, who, nevertheless, was not such an exorbitant ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... important to 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
... way it seemed to shrink from the rocks; and the unpleasantly suggestive bend-up of the ribs when the bottom grounded upon a log. It was a new world for him. Quonab taught him never to enter the canoe except when she was afloat; never to rise in her or move along without hold of the gunwale; never to make a sudden move; and he also learned that it was easier to paddle when there were six feet of water underneath ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to emphasize this assertion, the laugh of Inez was heard at that moment as she came bounding up the steps of the cabin, and ran toward the bow, where the giant negro, Pomp, was leaning against the gunwale, his arms also folded, and an expression of contentment ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... rotten from the gunwale to the keel, Rat riddled, bilge bestank, Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel And drag her oozy flank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel As she thumped onward with her ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... up close, and the foot of the stairs set inside the gunwale. The oomiak was about twenty-seven feet in length by six in width. Like the kayaks, it was covered with seal-skin; or perhaps it might have been the hide of the walrus. The framework was composed of both bone and wood ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... back into the depths of cloudy dissolution. Still it was growing lighter, and the man who was on the outlook became less anxious in his forward gaze, and less frequent in his calls to the helmsman. I was lying half over the gunwale, looking into the strange-coloured water, blue dimmed with undissolved white, when a cry from Charles made me start and look up. It was indeed a God-like vision. The mist yet rolled thick below, but away up, far away and far up, yet as if close at hand, the clouds were ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... water pressed heavily all along its side, and then seemed to be engaged in heaving it over, so that when Murray thrust one hand down over to his left he found that the stream was rippling within an inch of the gunwale, and in another few moments would have been over ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... observed, rose slowly to his feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale just above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead silence fell. Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like the slow agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at last they formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... swim a stroke," groaned the man, as he pounded his left hand against the gunwale until the blood came through the abraded skin. Plunged in darkness again, the man, whom Rose had called unimaginative, suffered all the untold agony of soul which had been hers during the moment in which she had been forced to make up her mind and carry out the act, only his anguish was the more ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... appeared to take no heed. Not so the boat-boys, who were anxious to be off. At last we started, and I soon had my revenge. As we drew near the shore the rollers became higher and higher, and I perceived that my gentleman clutched the gunwale of the boat very tightly, and when the first wave that showed signs of breaking overtook us, he grew very white in the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... hampered her, and she could do little more than keep herself up. In a few moments Will reached her, and Archie brought the boat around, so there were but a few strokes to swim before they could reach the oar which Edna and Eunice had seized and held out. By this they drew themselves up to the gunwale of the boat. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... to be a whale boat. On she came, steering for our ship, which, as we had the British flag flying, was easily distinguished from the American's. The crew were lying along on the thwarts, the heads of two of them just raised above the gunwale, as if their eyes were directed towards us; one man only was sitting up steering, and he was leaning back seemingly in an exhausted state. I looked at him several times through my glass till the boat ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... is your chance to enter the world of the dead in good company," he laughed. He stood guard over the gunwale until Leif and the other ten men of the boat's crew were ready to go down; pounding the poor wretch's fingers when he attempted to climb back, while a row of grinning faces mocked him ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... wonderful as well as savoury? To enjoy it to perfection, extricate the creature from his lurking place far down in the blue crevice of the coral, with a fish-spear. Don't experiment with your fingers. On the gunwale of your boat divest it of its slender black spines, and with a knife fairly divide the spheroid body, and a somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... frightened him, though he could not swim a stroke. More than once Ruggiero allowed him almost to upset the boat in a squall, and more than once, when, steering himself, and when there was a fresh breeze, drove her till the seas broke over the bows, and the green water came in over the lee gunwale—just to see whether the Count would change colour. In this, however, he was disappointed. San Miniato's temper might change and his tastes might be as variable as the moon, or the weather, but his face rarely expressed anything of what he felt, and if he felt anything at such ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... on board the Nemorosa (for so the yacht was named) partook of the same mingled nature. We were scarcely within hail of that great and elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale under and churning the blue sea to snow, before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a great crowd of seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the few who manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some lingua franca incomprehensible to me. All eyes were directed on the ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... asked ye not to come into my barque. If ye hang to the gunwale, is it my fault an ye be drowned in my ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the brig slowly began to gather way. I could not understand what they were up to; but the boatmen, who were quick fellows, took the matter into their own hands, and began to pass in my boxes over the gunwale—the brig lying very low in the water—as we moved along. This brought the mate to the side again, with a rattle of curses and orders to stand off. And then Captain Chilton came along himself—having finished whatever he had been doing in the way of thinking—and ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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 still further ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... various purposes, 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 ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... clustered on the beach or waded into the water to their knees. The first blows were being struck, and here and there the bodies of the dead and wounded rolled in the surf. One fair-haired invader lay across the gunwale of a boat, the manner of his death told by the arrow that transfixed his breast. In the air, leaping past him into the water, sword in hand, was Billy. There was no mistaking it. The striking blondness, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... into the water of the tiny canoe. It was a dug-out, as ancient and dilapidated as its owner, and, in order to get into it without capsizing, Daughtry wet one leg to the ankle and the other leg to the knee. The old man contorted himself aboard, rolling his body across the gunwale so quickly, that, even while it started to capsize, his weight was across the danger-point and counterbalancing the canoe ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... shivering flutter and a sudden violent jerk the sail was run up; and, careening gunwale-to, away dashed the lively boat ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... themselves in various ways, some cooking and some washing, whilst other some walked about the island for solace, and the crew fell to eating and drinking and playing and sporting. I was one of the walkers; but as we were thus engaged, behold the master, who was standing on the gunwale, cried out to us at the top of his voice, saying, "Ho there! passengers, run for your lives and hasten back to the ship and leave your gear and save yourselves from destruction, Allah preserve you! For this island whereon ye stand is no true island, but a great fish stationary ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nearly in the same point from which it had blown in the morning, and they were obliged in consequence to pursue a zig-zag course, tackling from one shore to the other. It blew fresh, and the little vessel, gunwale down, with the water sometimes pouring over the lee side, flew like a bird. They had run two-thirds of the distance, nor was the sun yet set, when the wind, which, till then, had blown pretty steadily, began to intermit and come in flaws or puffs, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Speedwell 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 water like a duck, mounting every little swell in fine style, and rolling the foam back ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... canoe!" cried 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! ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... was more grinding of the gunwale of the boat amongst the boughs, the water came swishing in over the side, and directly after the frail vessel partly turned over, with her keel lying sideways ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... 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 waves at a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... making desperate efforts to climb into the boat. His rope is held as tightly as possible, but the beast swims frantically from one side to the other, endeavoring to climb aboard. His knees thump the boat, and his chin occasionally rests on the gunwale, but active interference thrusts him back. In the meantime, the current is taking the boat well down the river, but we are not alarmed, for we have a good half-mile stretch, with convenient sandy places on the north side, on which to land. Now ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... mist 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 as each ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... shaped like the gondola, but smaller and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or ferro which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just raised above the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike movement of the gondola. In one of these boats—called by him the Fisolo or Seamew—my friend Eustace ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... thwart and leaning with both arms on the weather gunwale, turned his head lazily. "Not a ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them coming through the mangroves, and an oar strike on a gunwale, and Miss Lackland laugh, and I knew everything was all right. We pulled on board without a shot being fired. And, by God! she had made the books come true, for there was old Kina-Kina himself being hoisted ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... awkward dhoneys, built at Jaffna, and manned by Tamils, are imitated from those at Madras; while the Singhalese dhoney, south of Colombo, is but an enlargement of the Galle canoe with its outrigger, so clumsily constructed that the gunwale is frequently topped by a line of wicker-work smeared with clay, to protect the deck front the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the Paracura, after a fish which abounds in these waters. A rough image of that denizen of the southern deep was cut upon the gunwale. ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... But his low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the remaining correspondent clambered aboard. Rasmunsen was over the eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb fingers to bend the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... to listen, and I heard a whole skyful o' French up in the fog—and a high bow come down on top o' the smack. I hadn't time to call or think. I remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the gunwale pushing against the ship's side as if I hoped to bear her off. Then the square of an open port, with a lantern in it, slid by in front of my nose. I kicked back on our gunwale as it went under and slipped through that ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 launched ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... 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 the men in their own boat were ignorant of their absence. In a few minutes ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 escape ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... saying good-bye. And from the boat's gunwale she flung me buoyantly, "If I'm caught I'll say it was you I went off with. They won't mind ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... ones as curiously carved, painted, and even gilded, as some of those one sees at Dort and Rotterdam. They have no deck—for a ridge of rafters covers the goods, and the boatmen move about on ledges at the gunwale. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... a little dory from the boathouse and rowed out to the clipper. The wind had shifted to the southeast, but still there was not enough of a sea to give them any trouble; and in a few minutes they were under the bows of The Southern Cross. Dan hailed a seaman who was leaning over the gunwale and watching them with idle curiosity. If the man replied in French, it was in a variety of that tongue that Tom's limited attainments did not understand, and, annoyed by the incomprehensible replies, he asked for "le captaine". ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... little sail, and then we rounded the Ness and got out into Hoy Sound. The wind was westward, and the current in our favour, so that we had a grand sail across the sound to the Kame of Hoy—Robbie at the tiller, and I sitting near him on the windward gunwale. How our boat danced along and curtsied on the green curling waves! How her bows lifted and fell and sent a belt of foam alongside and away behind us in a bubbling track! O, it was glorious, that sail across to Hoy! Sitting there in the sunshine, the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... bottom of his own skiff, and it was being towed out to sea by a second boat manned by two lusty foreigners. In its stern-sheets sat the old man holding a cocked revolver, from which he threatened to put a bullet through Peveril's head if he lifted it above the gunwale. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... 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 finally, at the end ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... the cooking operations—Godfrey took his place in the stern, jibed the sail, which had before been on the port quarter, over to starboard, brought her head somewhat to the north of west, and hauled in the sheet. Lying over till the water nearly touched her gunwale, the light little craft would have gone speedily along had it not been for the drag of the boat astern. This, however, towed lightly, for she was loaded with but a very small proportion of the weight she would carry. Godfrey judged, by the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... and, at the same time, I felt a hatred of your father enter my heart, of which, during his life, I never could divest myself. It was as I supposed; your father had recognised me, and the following morning he came up to me as I was leaning over the gunwale amidships, and addressed me,—'Jackson,' said he, 'I am sorry to find you in this situation. You must have been very unfortunate to have become so reduced. If you will confide your history to me, perhaps I may, when we arrive in England, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... helped them, and with a few mighty strokes of the oar the boat was carried beyond the reach of the rollers, and a few minutes later, submerged to her gunwale, grounded upon a narrow strip of gravelly beach on the western side of the Duck's Head, and Skipper Zeb carried Violet ashore, while the other half drowned and half frozen ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... for no further invitation, and sprang from the gunwale. They watched the spreading circles that tracked his dive, and marked the white shining streak as it darted past, under ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... white horses' were now upon them, their streaming manes enveloping the gunwale, and Maxwell gave himself up for lost. The lugger shivered, then grated violently. 'What's yon?' he ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... 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 ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... any of the others. In the first place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely overloaded. Five grown men, and three of them—Trelawney, Redruth, and the captain—over six feet high, was already more than she was meant to carry. Add to that the powder, pork, and bread-bags. The gunwale was lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and at 'em!" cried the lieutenant, mad with rage, as the gunwale of his boat swung over. "Their blood be upon their own heads; draw your hangers, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ahead, and blew freshly down through the wilderness of islands, sweeping between granite shores along many and many a winding channel; the boat careened almost to her gunwale, yielding easily at first, but holding hard when well down, as good boats will; the waves beat saucily against her, now and then also catching up a handful of spray, and flinging it full in our faces, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various |
