"Skipper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a lingua franca of many tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a free or common accent among English-speaking men who follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New England Port; from a cockney skipper, even a Scotsman sometimes learns to drop an h; a word of a dialect is picked up from another band in the forecastle; until often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask for the man's place of birth. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he, "so now march. I'll wait for you here, and we'll go on board together; for old Bloater the skipper says he'll certainly ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The skipper predicted like a prophet. The ship was in the bay, and it was midnight or nearly so; for certain stars had climbed into certain quarters of the sky, and after their fashion were ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... at 'Frisco," began Draper. "She was a big, skysail-yarder loading grain at Oakland, and as the skipper had offered me second mate's berth, I went over and sized her up. She seemed all right, as far as man may judge of a ship in port—nearly new, and well found in gear and canvas, which the riggers had rove off and bent. Her cargo of grain was nearly in, and there would ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... especially of the class of bricklayers, are no great readers, otherwise we might suspect that the feat of the skipper-boys had conveyed some inspiration to Steeple Jack. Who is Steeple Jack? asks some innocent reader at the Antipodes. He is a little spare creature who flies his kite over steeples when there is anything to do to them, and lodging ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... he was a boy, he had buried the ship's officer under a pile of rocks, managed to survive by himself because he had applied the aids in the boat to learn how. This morning he had been hunting a strong-jaw, tempting it out of its hiding by a hook and line and a bait of fresh killed skipper. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... the cold, we was noticing how Phil was sailing that three-cornered sneak-box—noticing and criticising; at least, I was, and Cap'n Jonadab, being, as I've said, the best skipper of small craft from Provincetown to Cohasset Narrows, must have had some ideas on the subject. Your old chum, Catesby-Stuart, thought he was mast-high so fur's sailing was concerned, anybody could see that, but he had something ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 'm big fella fight. Two, three white men shoot like hell. We no fright. We come alongside, we go up side, plenty fella, maybe I think fifty-ten (five hundred). One fella white Mary (woman) belong that fella ship. Never before I see 'm white Mary. Bime by plenty white man finish. One fella skipper he no die. Five fella, six fella white man no die. Skipper he sing out. Some fella white man he fight. Some fella white man he lower away boat. After that, all together over the side they go. Skipper he sling white Mary down. After ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... of our worthy and able skipper, we landed on the soil of the giant Republic at Jersey city, where the wharves, &c., of the Cunard line are established, they not having been able to procure sufficient space on the New York side. The first thing we ran our heads ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... day or two after the vessel got to sea the mates got better and went to duty, and the skipper seemed to take a pleasure in abusing and worrying them, although it was evident from their appearance that they had suffered severely from the swamp fever, and had not been ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... Mr. Softleigh one morning to a jovial, weather-beaten skipper, "you have seen many wonderful sights ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... growled the skipper, moving up and taking a look, "it p'ints d'rectly to labbard, an' there's the sun, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... captain agreed blandly, while Liane confirmed his statement with many rapid and emphatic nods. "Mr. Monk, the owner, is my first cousin. Fortune has been less kind to me in a worldly way; consequently you see in me merely the skipper ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... first!" agreed the skipper of the disabled craft. "Hit a submerged log," he explained to Tom, as the work of rescue proceeded. "Stove a hole in the bow, but we stuffed coats and things in, and made it a slow leak. Kept the engine going as long as we could, but I thought no one would ever come! Lucky ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... it wailed, the wind it moaned, And the white caps flecked the sea; "An' I would to God," the skipper groaned, "I had not ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... afterwards harbor-master and head pilot. At the age of fifteen he went to sea, and passed his mate's examination four years later. He spent two years in New Zealand, and from 1886-90 he went on voyages to the Arctic Sea as skipper of a Tromsoe sloop. He is married, and has ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... uncomfortable feeling that, unless he trod delicately, the decks would crumble away and deposit him in the bosom of the Mediterranean, Reginald was fairly happy. A ready wit and a dignified bearing combined to cloak his lack of seamanship and kept the skipper in a fit state of humility ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... "By displaying a light the skipper avoided a collision." To avoid is to shun; the skipper could have avoided a collision only by ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... delegated to the duty of skipper, rolled down the float with the gait of an old sailor, ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... he heard what had happened, he readily agreed to give us a passage in the Aguila. We must be prepared to rough it, he said. The schooner had no accommodation for passengers, but she was a sound boat, and the Chilian skipper was a trustworthy sailor. Then he sent to his warehouse for some extra provisions, and afterwards introduced us to the captain, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... was gone to get news. The ships were watched anxiously by thousands of eyes, and boats put out all along the coast to inquire; and within two or three hours the pinnace was back again in Rye harbour, with news that set bells ringing and men shouting. On Wednesday, the skipper reported, there had been an indecisive engagement during the dead calm that had prevailed in the Channel; a couple of Spanish store-vessels had been taken on the following morning, and a general action had followed, which again had been indecisive; but in which the English ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Andrews a French barber- surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the great Cardinal Beaton; I have shaken a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France after the '15; I was in a West India merchant's office, perhaps next door to Bailie Nicol Jarvie's, and managed the business of a plantation in St. Kitt's; I was with my engineer-grandfather (the son-in-law of the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we may perhaps try to run alongside for a while, but the immense drag of her four towers of canvas soon draws her clear, and she speedily looms once more like a cloud on the horizon. Good-bye! The squat collier lumbers along, and her leisurely grimy skipper salutes as we near him. It is marvellous to reflect that the whole of our coal-trade was carried on in those queer tubs only sixty years ago. They are passing away, and the gallant, ignorant, comical race of sailors who manned them has all but disappeared; the ugly ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that the colors would ever float victorious, and said that he did not doubt it, and then our skipper made a little speech in reply. The affair wound up with a round of cheers and general congratulations. The flags were handsome, and, as it came to pass, they flaunted amid ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Captain Dixon was always self-confident. That glass of champagne from the Senator's hospitable bottle made him feel doubly capable to-night to take his ship out into the open Atlantic, and then to bed with that easy heart which a skipper only knows ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... are called pilots, and visits cruises. Conversely, land words have sea meanings, and a 'planter,' which meant in the eighteenth century a fishing settler as opposed to a fishing visitor, meant in the nineteenth century—when fishing visitors ceased to come from England—a shipowner or skipper. The very animals catch the infection, and dogs, cows, and bears eat fish. Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the main-spring of the history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its staple, ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... shook his head. Having no hat, he was able to do this, and it gave him some dialectical advantage over his skipper. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... away in the locker of "The Aquidneck," together with a straw-covered flask and a volume of Omar Khayyam, Flint bade a cheerful good-bye to Marsden, who stood rolling up his shirt-sleeves, and giving copious advice. The amateur skipper cast off from the little dock, lowered the centreboard, and stretched himself lazily in the stern, with one hand on the tiller. Peace was in his heart, and a pipe in his mouth—what could man ask ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... forming them with Titanic thoughts, and endowing them with Titanic voices, has rendered it indispensable for all the little fellows of the present time to be prodigiously Titanic too. Did you ever hear the skipper of a steamer bellowing and roaring through a speaking-trumpet, when his ordinary voice could have had no effect amidst the awful noises of a hurricane, and the sea and the breakers under his lee? Nothing could be fitter than his attitude on the creaking paddle-box, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Autumnal day, when he found himself becalmed off a small island not down on the chart, the skipper felt no little uneasiness. He paced his deck impatiently, occasionally turning his eye to every quarter, surveying the horizon for some sign ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... sinking rapidly by the head, with the twisting sidelong motion that was soon to aim her on her course two miles down. Murdock saw the skipper swept out; but did not move. Captain Smith was but one of a multitude of lost at that moment. Murdock may have known that the last desperate thought of the gray mariner was to get upon his bridge and die in command. That the ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... words were an unspeakable relief to our hero, who was well aware that the working of the rocket apparatus required a slight amount of knowledge, and who felt from his manner and tone that the skipper was a thorough man. He glanced upwards as he hauled in the line, assisted by his companion, and saw that a stout rope with two loops on it had been fixed to the stump of the mast. Just as he noted this with satisfaction a large block with a thin line rove through it emerged from the boiling ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... distinction from the coasters, which are fit for the open sea. They will carry from twenty-five to fifty cords of wood, on which a profit is expected of a dollar and upwards. They have usually about three hands, the captain, or skipper, included. The men used to be hired, when I entered the business, for eight or ten dollars the month, but they now get nearly or quite twice as much. The captain usually sails the vessel on shares (unless he is himself owner in whole, ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... are gondolas. Our skipper is called a gondolier. Every other skipper is called something worse than that if he gets in our skipper's way. I respect a man's calling; that is, if he follows ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... Sharpe declined, with regret, on the score of duty. And as the cocked hat went down the side, after saluting him politely, he could not help thinking to himself what a difference between a real captain, who had something to be proud of, and his own unlicked cub of a skipper with the manners of a pilot-boat. He told Robarts the next day: Robarts said nothing, but his face seemed to turn greenish, and it embittered his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... certain Hopperdown, who had been boatswain on the Bonny Lass at the time that she so regrettably lost her passengers overboard. He too had been at Leeward Island, and may have somewhat wondered and questioned as to the happenings during the brig's brief stay there. He saw and recognized his old skipper hobbling along the Bristol quays, and perhaps from pity took the shabby creature home with him. Hopperdown dealt in sailors' slops, and had a snug room or two behind the shop. Here for a while the former Captain Sampson dwelt, and after a swift illness ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the down-East skipper was entirely one of accident. Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... own,—somewhat scrubbed, no doubt, with rough usage, but sound,—so it's time for you to look out for rudder, compass, and charts, and it seems to me that thems to be found with young Mister Allfrey, so you'd better go an' git him to become skipper o' your ship without delay. You see, sir, havin' said that to myself, I've took my own advice, so if you'll take command of me, sir, you may steer me where you please, for I'm ready to be your sarvant for love, seein' that you han't ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... each other. "All right, Manning," said Miles after he had closed the air lock, "take your station. And remember I'm skipper ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... his orders forbidding trade with New England vessels. George Durant, with a large majority of the people, was determined to thwart him in this matter. Governor Miller, on the other hand, was so determined in enforcing his orders that he in person boarded a Boston vessel and arrested the skipper. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,—a cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... should reckon that skipper of his, Captain Erskine, must be a pretty smart sort of man," said Mr Parmenter, who so far had hardly joined in the conversation, and who had seemed curiously indifferent to the terrible exploits of the Flying Fishes and ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... started during one of those informal tea-parties the Skipper's Missus sometimes held in the after-cabin. They were delightful affairs. You needn't accept the Invitation if you didn't want to; there was no necessity to put on your best monkey-jacket if you did. You were just told to "blow in" if you wanted some tea, and then ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... shouted down into the engine-room for full speed ahead, and an instant later I heard the dull boom of a gun. In a moment I was up on deck to see an enemy submarine about two hundred yards off our port bow. She had signaled us to stop, and our skipper had ignored the order; but now she had her gun trained on us, and the second shot grazed the cabin, warning the belligerent tug-captain that it was time to obey. Once again an order went down to the engine-room, and the tug reduced speed. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that interfered with the inspection-drill: every one in the wrong place, and each cursing his neighbour for stupidity. At last the shore-boats boarded us, as if our confusion wanted anything to increase it. Red-faced harbour-masters shook hands with the skipper and pilot, and disappeared into the "round-house" to discuss grog and the gales. Officers from the garrison came out to welcome their friends—for it was the second battalion we had on board of a regiment whose first had been some years in Canada;—and then what a rush of inquiries were ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... The Spanish skipper instantly brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water-battery, a mile and ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... good customer of the colonies, and Boston shipowners did a thriving trade with oil from New Bedford or Nantucket to London. The sloops and ketches engaged in this commerce brought back, as an old letter of directions from shipowner to skipper shows, "course wicker flasketts, Allom, Copress, drum rims, head snares, shod shovells, window-glass." The trade was conducted with the same piety that we find manifested in the direction of slave-ships and privateers. In order that the oil may fetch a good price, and the voyage be speedy, the captain ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... first time. It occurred to me then that Guy was the name of the captain of the Jane, an English ship; but what of that? The captain of the Jane never lived but in the imagination of the novelist, he and the skipper of the Halbrane have nothing in common except a name which is frequently to be found in England. But, on thinking of the similarity, it struck me that the poor captain's brain had been turned by this very thing. He had conceived the notion that he was of kin to the unfortunate ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... speedily, because rain was falling, I stumbled across three of the disgraced and disfigured fishermen. They were alone and forlorn. They had no hut and did not know what would happen if another wet night swept over them. One happened to be the skipper of one of the trawlers which had been sunk and he vehemently denied the charge that they had been guilty of laying or sweeping mines. They were attending to their trawls when they ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... last shore-day. Like whalers. I've buried a few irons myself, matey, but I'll never sight the vapor of a right whale ag'in. Stranded, I am. So you'll do me a favor, matey, an' pilot me down into the cabin, if so be the skipper's there. If he ain't, I'll wait for him. I've got the right an' run o' the Karluk's cabin. I know ev'ry inch of her. You'll see when ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... a stony road which was almost level with the salt marshes on either side. San Giovanni appeared after about an hour and a half. We rode down on to the beach. The motor-boat was getting up anchor. We yelled to the skipper, but he understood no Serb; so we translated through a Turk who was lounging about. The skipper said that he could not embark us there as it was Montenegrin territory, but that if we would go back to Alessio he would wait for us at the mouth ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... command of the Whidaw and a small fleet of other pirate craft, which was lying at anchor in the Bay of Placentia in Newfoundland. Sailing from Placentia for Nantucket Shoals, he seized a whaling vessel, the Mary Anne. As the skipper of the whaler knew the coast well, Bellamy made him pilot of his small fleet. The cunning skipper one night ran his ship on to a sand-bank near Eastman, Massachusetts, and the rest of the fleet followed his stern light on to the rocks. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... sight till breakfast was ready, and the ceremony of eating was performed as rapidly as possible. We were very hungry, and ate with our eyes nearly closed, and conversation was anything but hilarious. For years the huge flat-bottomed scow plied back and forth to the steamers, and the skipper enjoyed a monopoly of the business, and ruled his motley crew with an iron hand. Gradually old age began to weaken his power, and the sons overthrew his authority and pushed him aside. All hands became captain and crew at once, and amid a medley of commands and crash of baggage, embarking ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... she had never before seen. And their speech, plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her, and sometimes puzzled her. Some of the men who rode short distances in the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys. They called the conductor "skipper," and hailed each ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... necessary assistance. This offer the authorities accepted, but they forgot the essential condition of furnishing assistance. Naturally, much delay and vexation were caused by this display of official ineptitude. At this juncture a retired coasting skipper, Captain William Hilton Hovell, made an offer to join the party, and find half the necessary cattle and horses. This offer aroused the Government to some sense of its responsibility, and it agreed to do something in the matter. This ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... icicle's slender and slippery, 320 Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling in loco desipere Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although 'tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... range of subjects covers a familiar list of comedies or tragedies—the partings before war, the interior behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the chocolate girl, the skipper ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a place too, and tried to outdo his comrades; seeing which Giraffe apparently thought he might as well make it unanimous then there were four, leaving only the skipper and his first assistant on deck to ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... did I care for Science then? I was a man with fellow-men, And called the Bear the Dipper; Segment meant piece of pie,—no more; Cosine, the parallelogram that bore JOHN SMITH & CO. above a door; Arc, what called Noah skipper. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... me, I don't pretend to have seen anything or heard anything extraordinary in the ordinary way of seeing or hearing. Only I was dead sure that he was there with the same old entreaty. Afterwards I lighted a pipe, went above, talked to the skipper's wife, read, investigated my boy's and also my dog's welfare rather perfunctorily, settled down to saying an evening Office, made an end more or less of that, just as night came on, and then again ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... him a suit of his own clothes, and L50, and saw him put off to sea. Sandy promised to keep well out in the bay, until some vessel going North to Zetland or Iceland, or some Dutch skipper bound for Amsterdam, took him up. All the next day Ragon was in misery, but nightfall came and he had heard nothing of Sandy, though several craft had come into port. If another day got over he would feel ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... The skipper is, however, at liberty to proceed direct to Copenhagen, but this liberty costs five thalers (fifteen shillings). If, however, the toll may thus be paid in Copenhagen just as easily, the obligation to stop at Helsingor is only a trick to gain the higher toll; for if a captain is ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... bight of blue horizon, Ua-pu upraise the ghost of her pinnacled mountain-tops. But his mind would take no account of these familiar features; as he dodged in and out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory would serve him with broken fragments of the past: brown faces and white, of skipper and shipmate, king and chief, would arise before his mind and vanish; he would recall old voyages, old landfalls in the hour of dawn; he would hear again the drums beat for a man-eating festival; perhaps he would summon up the form of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Singleton one day, as they stood at the weather gangway watching the foam that spread from the vessel's bow as she breasted the waves of the Atlantic gallantly—it's my opinion that our skipper is made o' the right stuff. He's entered quite into the spirit of the thing, and I heard him say to the first mate yesterday he'd made up his mind to run right up into Baffin's Bay and make inquiries for Captain Ellice first, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Ben," exclaimed Fred; "no one in creation except you would ever have thought of such an apparatus. But I wouldn't wish myself in the water with such a rig. You are a sort of skipper ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... all my life. I was good-natured enough to go to sea as a boy because a skipper took a fancy to me and wanted my 'elp, and when I got older I was good-natured enough to get married. All my life I've given 'elp and advice free, and only a day or two ago one of 'em wot I 'ad given it to came round here with her 'usband and 'er two brothers and 'er mother ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... from Naples. Wrapped in my cloak, and stretched in a sort of heavy stupor on the deck of the "Rondinella," my appearance apparently excited no suspicion in the mind of the skipper, old Antonio Bardi, with whom my friend Andrea had made terms for my voyage, little aware of the real identity of the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... made up at length; he would creep out of the house in the dead of the night and make his way down to the Docks. At every hour ships of various size and tonnage put out of the port of London, and, no doubt, the skipper of one of these for a consideration would take him wherever he wanted to go; and Fenwick knew, moreover, that there were scores of public-houses along the side of the river which are practically never closed, and which are run entirely for the benefit of seafaring men. It would ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... is the formation of metallic sulphides, as above. A skipper one night anchored his newly painted vessel near the Boston gas-house, where the refuse was deposited, with its escaping H2S. In the morning, to his consternation, the craft was found to be black. H2S had come in contact with ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... hand is the skipper,' one of 'em said, 'and hasn't got a soft place about him. Well, my lad, I'm sorry for what's happened, but talking won't do it any good. You've got a long voyage before you, and you'd best turn in and make yourself comfortable ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... theology of hard work is what you will find most of aboard ship. Carry on and do your duty; keep a sharp lookout, all gear shipshape, salute the bridge when going on watch, that is the whole duty of a good officer. That's plenty theology for a seaman." But the skipper's eye turned brightly toward his bookshelves, where he had several volumes of sermons, mostly of a ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... freedom of talk and repartee permitted on an excursion. Before sunset they were out in the open, and could feel the long ocean swell. The wind had risen a little, and there was a low band of clouds in the south. The skipper told Mr. Delancy that it would be much fresher with the sinking of the sun, but Jack replied that it wouldn't amount to anything; the glass ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... determined not to vex that Puritan spirit by the presence of Queen Mary's pupil, he wrapped his cloak about him and went out to study the weather, and inquire for lodgings to which he might remove Cicely. He saw nothing he liked, and determined on consulting his old mate, Goatley, who generally acted as skipper, but he had first to return so as not to delay the morning meal. He found, on coming in, Cicely helping Oil-of-Gladness in making griddle cakes, and buttering them, so as to make Mr. Heatherthwayte declare that he had not tasted the like since Mistress ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know whether you were here, I said you were. The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you—that they would hang about outside for half ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... had been discovered and betrayed to the skipper by some officious noodle, and Captain Willis was ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the whole yarn," said the skipper of the Maori Maid, as he pushed a decanter of brandy towards his visitor, and take a cigar. "It's pleasant to meet an Englishman in these Dutchman-infested islands, especially when he has a good yarn ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... the circumstances which have led to it, call for explanation. It is easily given. The tall dark-bearded man is Captain Robert Redwood, the skipper of an American merchant-vessel, for some time trading among the islands of the Indian Archipelago. The Irishman is his ship-carpenter, the Malay his pilot, while the others are two common sailors of his crew. The boy and girl are his children, who, having no mother ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... squirrels chattered; still he pushed on, catching a chance dinner at a wayside farm-house, and by night had come within plain sight of the water. The sloop Princess lay at the Glastenbury dock close by, laden with wood and potatoes, and bound for New York the next morning. The kind-hearted skipper, who was also the owner of the vessel, took a sudden fancy to the sore-footed, blue-eyed boy who came aboard to bargain for a passage to the city. The truant was not, indeed, overstocked with ready money, but was willing to pawn what valuables ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... thick boots, a-throwin' out his feet afore him e'enamost out of sight, when he was in full rig a-swigglin' away at the top of his gait. Well, they cut as many shines as Uncle Peleg. One frigate they guessed would captivate, sink, or burn our whole navy. Says a naval one day, to the skipper of a fishing boat that he took, says he, 'Is it true Commodore Decatur's sword is made of an old iron hoop?' 'Well,' says the skipper, 'I'm not quite certified as to that, seein' as I never sot eyes on it; ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... week or ten days in the harbor, owing to head winds or inclement weather we set sail; and I remember well that the pilot, Fowler by name, as he was about to leave the vessel, throwing his leg over the bulwarks, said in his gruff voice to our skipper, "I will give you twenty-eight days ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... pier's low undertone Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start,—a skipper's horn is blown To ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... was awaiting him; so, when the crew saw him, they came to him and bore the two chests on board. Then the Persian called out to the Rais or Captain, saying, "Up and let us be off, for I have done my desire and won my wish." So the skipper sang out to the sailors, saying, "Weigh anchor and set sail!" And the ship put out to sea with a fair wind. So far concerning the Persian; but as regards Hasan's mother, she awaited him till supper-time but heard neither sound ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... all the passengers below, and pen them in with closed hatches and storm-shutters, (so hot, Emmy, that the black-hole of Calcutta must have been an ice-house to it: how the foolish people abused our wise skipper, and more than one pompous old Indian threatened him with an action for false imprisonment!) this huddling away was the first effort; and simultaneously with it, the crew were all over the rigging, furling sails, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; "O whare will I get a skeely skipper, To sail ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... sentries met and parted, so indifferent to us, apparently, that we wondered if we might get nearer. We ventured, but at a certain moment a sentry called to us, "Fifty yards off, please!" Our young skipper answered, "All right," and as the sentry had a gun on his shoulder which we had every reason to believe was loaded, it was easily our pleasure to retreat to the specified limit. In fact, we came away altogether, after that, so little promise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... long time came also a skipper who wished to see the mill. He asked if it could make salt. "Yes, it could make salt," said he who owned it, and when the skipper heard that, he wished with all his might and main to have the mill, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... long story, Bulger. I'll tell you all in good time. You're looking for a job, are you? Well, I happen to know of a skipper here—a good man: maybe he'll have a berth for a seasoned salt like you. I'll present you to him, and I know he'll do ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... into an OTHELLO with an "occupation gone." The Canadian fishermen, of course, would suffer equally with those of our own shores. They are a light-hearted people, though, are these Canadians, fond of music and dancing, and they would doubtless find consolation for their troubles by addressing the skipper of the Miantonomah in a grand MASANIELLO strain, chorussed with "SCHUFELDT don't ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... less extravagant to go and consult the will of Heaven on any questions which it is given to us to decide by dint of learning. As though a man should inquire, "Am I to choose an expert driver as my coachman, or one who has never handled the reins?" "Shall I appoint a mariner to be skipper of my vessel, or a landsman?" And so with respect to all we may know by numbering, weighing, and measuring. To seek advice from Heaven on such points was a sort of profanity. "Our duty is plain," he would observe; "where we are ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Montagues, Pickerings, Fortescues, Sheffields, Sidneys, and the like. But side by side with these, though in far smaller proportion, were seen officers like Ewer, who had been a serving-man, like Okey, who had been a drayman, or Rainsborough, who had been a "skipper at sea." A result hardly less notable was the youth of the officers. Amongst those in high command there were few who, like Cromwell, had passed middle age. Fairfax was but thirty-three years old, and most of his colonels were ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... be saying that you did not take trouble enough to find her people,' she remarked. 'I should love to keep her here, but it makes me all the more grieved for her friends. It's hard on them to lose a dear little girl like that. I suppose your skipper had such a fright with that gunboat that he will not be likely to take another trip ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... point the gallant skipper of the British collier, slouching with a heavy load of grime for London, or waddling back in ballast to his native North, alike is delighted to discover storms ahead, and to cast his tarry anchor into soft gray calm. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had been blown north. There was one man on her—a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder, and had made for the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all drowned. Well, we took him on board, this man, and he and the skipper had some long talks in the cabin. All the baggage we took off with him was one tin box. So far as I know, the man's name was never mentioned, and on the second night he disappeared as if he had never been. It was given out that he had either thrown himself overboard or fallen overboard in the heavy ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle. Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among the warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants: "Anything going my way, this ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... her round and was making headway against the waves, but still her bow would not lift, and the captain wept still more. His womanish behaviour disgusted me. At last a quiet passenger, an experienced sailor, gave some advice, which the skipper followed, and which helped matters a little, so that he regained his self-control to the extent of calling a general council; he announced that he dared not continue the voyage, and asked our consent to return to Noumea. We all agreed, and about midnight ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... answer. But somebody led Coburn into an office where this carrier's skipper was at his desk. He looked at Coburn with a sardonic, ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Irish. Now, he will file off these handcuffs and give me the file. By working at every opportunity we can all be free in a few days; then all we have to do is to force our way out and seize the skipper. We will throw him overboard, and kill all who oppose us; then the ship will be ours and we can sell it and ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... six years, and it's always been so. About a week before we make port, the choicest of the remaining stores are taken to his cabin, and he disposes of them after we dock. I can't say just how he manages it, but he does. The skipper may know of this custom, and there may be some reason why he permits it. It's not my business to see anything. The Chief Steward is a powerful man on an English vessel. If he has anything against me, sooner or later he can lose my berth for me. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... knows, it would be almost an impossibility for sixteen sail-boats to go any where in company without trying their speed, especially if they were sailed by boys. When our heroes stepped into their vessels, each skipper made up his mind that his boat must be the first one to touch the opposite shore. Not a word was said about a race, but every one knew that one would be sure to come off. Every thing was done in a hurry, and the little vessels were all ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... that somehow struck his fancy, raised in angry protest, followed by the crack of a whip, and much loud laughing, the skipper of the brigantine had pushed into a ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... "Why, the cuddy folk—the skipper, and the parson, and that Frere. I see yer walkin' the deck wi' un o' nights. Dom 'um, I'd put a bullet through his red head as ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... tunnel quite startled us until we became used to the situation. The roof seemed so low that we instinctively stooped our heads to avoid getting them removed from our shoulders, an action which caused immense amusement to the skipper, who, in the manner of his kind, accentuated the eerie feeling of the place by spinning all sorts of creepy yarns about canal boatmen who had mysteriously gone overboard in the pitch dark, and ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... them we want to ship out, and they'll furnish us with the proper amount of drinks and take care of us, all hunky dory, till they find us a berth on ship ... of course they'll be well paid for their trouble ... two months' advance pay handed over to them by the skipper ... but that ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... bad," said the old General sententiously. "There are four people who should have no personal likes or dislikes; they are an innkeeper, a schoolmaster, a ship's skipper, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... tatties were fleein' ower the back door o' the cairt, an' the scales were rattlin' an' reeshlin' like an earthquake; an' there was Sandy, bare-heided, up to the knees amon' his tatties, ruggin' an' roarin', like the skipper o' some schooner that was rinnin' on the rocks. I'll swear, Sandy got roond his roonds an' a' his tatties delivered in less than half the time Donal' took! The wives an' laddies were gaitherin' up the tatties a' the wey to Tutties Nook; and gin Sandy got to the milestane his cairt was tume. By ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... their ships from India and the Far East across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea, whence they transferred their cargoes to caravans which completed the trip to Cairo and Alexandria. By taking advantage of monsoons,—the favorable winds which blew steadily in certain seasons,—the skipper of a merchant vessel could make the voyage from India to Egypt in somewhat less than three months. It was often possible to shorten the time by landing the cargoes at Ormuz and thence dispatching them by caravan across the desert of Arabia to Mecca, and so to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... formas[7]. Tis the mind of man, and woman to affect new fashions; but to our Mynsatives[8] for sooth, if he come like to your Besognio,[9] or your bore, so he be rich, or emphaticall, they care not; would I might never excell a dutch Skipper in Courtship, if I did not put distaste into my cariage of purpose; I knew I should not please them. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... the boat more particularly; but the fugitive gave such answers as he pleased. Though the skipper was very rough and savage to the two men who formed his crew, he treated his passenger at first with much consideration. The little cabin of the schooner was a nasty hole, and if Clyde had not been very sleepy, he could hardly ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... exclaimed the ever-ready Sam; 'jes you wait where you are one minute.' In less than that time the agile Sam had rounded up Miss Denby and had her walking along the beach by the side of Captain Abner, and whether she thought that skilful skipper was going to show her some rare seaweed or the state of his mind, Sam considered not for one minute. He had brought the two together, and that was ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... around and plunged off the ice ledge with a heavy splash into the open water again. Then Reddy, who was almost equally convulsed, came to his senses. "Now you've done it, Dutchy; you're a fine skipper, you are! How do you expect to get us back to shore again?" The steering oar was left behind us on the ice, and there we were drifting on the open water, with no rudder and no oar to bring ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... modernism in the shape of a rifle—all are there ready to drive away the bad antoh which caused the illness. To a pole—or rather a combination of two poles—are tied two rudely made wooden figures, one above the other, representing, the one below, the djuragan or skipper (tihng); the one above, the master of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... ordained. It is related by one of the passengers of the ship in which Mr. Taylor was sailing that the master of the vessel had great difficulty in locating the island, and that for three days they cruised about and saw nothing resembling land. The third day towards evening the skipper gave up the search and headed for the Cape. Mr. Taylor, who was gazing towards the setting sun suddenly saw the Peak of Tristan, which is 7,640 feet high, emerge out of the clouds. It was about ninety ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... your skipper, and what is he like?" "Oh, well, if you want to know, I'm sailing under a hard-case mate as I sailed with years ago; 'E's big as a bucko an' full o' beans, the same as 'e used to be When I knowed 'im ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... and lace the sail, at intervals of a foot, to the boom and mast. Fasten a becket or loop of rope at a suitable position on the mast, to set the heel of the sprit into. Rig main-sheet over two sheaves, as shown; it brings less strain on the boom, and clears the skipper's head in tacking. Make a good, large wooden cleat to belay ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the mouth of the Mersey on the 15th of June and for several weeks we had fair breezes and unclouded skies. The skipper, an admirable seaman but nothing more, favored us with very little of his society, except at his table; and the young woman, Miss Janette Harford, and I became very well acquainted. We were, in truth, nearly always together, and being of an introspective turn of ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... every bone in your body," he roared suddenly at the miserable mulatto lad, "if you ever dare to disturb me before half- past three for anybody. D'ye hear? For anybody! . . . Let alone any damned skipper," he added, in ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... is walking his quarter-deck, With a troubled brow and a bended neck; One eye is down through the hatchway cast, The other turns up to the truck on the mast; Yet none of the crew may venture to hint "Our skipper hath gotten a ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... easterly weather, the swell ran pretty high, and out in the open there were "skipper's daughters," when I found myself at last on the diver's platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and my {172} whole person swollen with ply and ply of woollen underclothing. One moment, the salt wind was whistling round my night-capped head; the next, I was ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... me, I was never so glad to get near a fire in my life. The skipper of the cheese let us get in the engine room and dry out. Can you see that wet bunch of fluffs with all the highlight off and their marcels around their necks. I'll bet there was a whole lot of surprises sprung when the true complexion ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... nickname given to the family on account of their red or tawny beards (Lat. barba). The founder of the family was Yakub, a Roumeliot, probably of Albanian blood, who settled in Mitylene after its conquest by the Turks. He was a coasting trader and skipper, and had four sons—Elias, Isaak, Arouj and Khizr, all said to have been born after 1482. Khizr became a potter and Isaak a trader. Elias and Arouj took to sea roving. In an action with a galley of the Knights of Saint John, then established ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... a heap, and you could have heard a pin drop. Then came the hail again, 'If you don't answer I will sink you,' whereupon the skipper of the lugger shouted out, 'the Jennie of Portsmouth.' 'Lend a hand, lads, with the sails,' he whispered to us; 'slip the cable, Tom.' We ran up the sails in a jiffy, you may be sure, and all the sharper that, as ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... silk and drysalters' goods chiefly. D'ye think we shall have a fair wind? I don't care how soon, for we've at least twenty passengers on board, and our provisions and water are running rather short. Here's the skipper." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... as I can do to support life until I can be off on my next little travel-plan. It's me for a leisurely cruise around the world, in the governor's little old boat—the Ariel—painted up within an inch of her life, brass all shining, lockers filled, a first-class cook engaged, and a brand-new skipper and crew—picked men. Sounds pretty good to me. How about you? Shop keeping in ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the rajah has ordered that all officers who may fall into their hands are to be kept as hostages, so that he can open negotiations with the skipper. If he gets what he wants, he hands us back; if not, there is no manner of doubt that he will put us out ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... forget our large basket which we had had so much difficulty in finding, and which excited so much attention and attracted so much curiosity towards ourselves all the way to John o' Groat's. It even caused the skipper to take a friendly interest in us, for after our explanation he stored that ancient basket amongst ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... years,' he said, grimly. 'It's no use; it's accident when a ship falls in with it. One captain reports it a thousand miles from where the last skipper spoke it, and always in the Gulf Stream. They think it is a different specimen every time, and the papers are teeming ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... should see, as you like enough may, When tramping the docks for a ship some fine day, A spanking full-rigger just ready for sea, And think she's just all that a hooker should be, Take 'eed you don't ship with a skipper that drinks— You'd better by half play at fan-tan with Chinks!— For that'll mean nothing but muddle an' mess, It may be much more and it can't be much less, What with wrangling and jangling to drive a man daft, And rank bad dis-cip-line both forrard and aft, A ship ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... of the harbour, and rounding the east end of the island, under the pilotage of the regular skipper, Captain Quasho, they had a fair wind for Barbuda, where they arrived early in the day, and cast anchor in a small harbour. They were cordially received by the overseer, who happened to be close at hand, and who, with one assistant, constituted ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Captain Winton, but left much to his discretion. It was intimated to him that he might return to Atlamalco in the course of a few days,—an elastic term which might be halved or doubled without any blame attaching to the skipper. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... was far, far from forgiveness as he read that letter. His first mate, who was beside him when he opened and read it, was actually frightened when he saw the look on the skipper's face. "He went white," said the mate; "not pale, but white, same as a dead man, or—or the underside of a flatfish, or somethin'. 'For the Lord sakes, Cap'n,' says I, 'what's the matter?' He never ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the engine-room signaled the skipper's order, and the ship felt her way once more. Again there was silence, save for the throb of the engines and the grating ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... violently and made a snarling noise, which froze the blood in Lewis's veins. He ran out of the house with cold beads of sweat on his forehead. He ran through the wood to the shore, and there he found the boat. He rowed back to the yacht and fetched some quinine. Then, together with the skipper, the steward, and some other sailors, he returned to the ominous house. They found it empty. There was no trace of Stewart. They shouted in the wood till they were hoarse, but no answer broke ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Mr Gunson was right. We mustn't trust any one, but wait till the Captain tells us of some respectable skipper who's going up ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... virtues as obedience, industry, silence, and cleanliness to be acquired all at once by people who have been neglected for centuries. But there can be no radical defect in them, for they work hard enough in America, and under strict taskmasters too, for a Yankee farmer is like a Yankee skipper, inclined to pay good wages, but to insist on the money being earned. So far as discipline is concerned there is no better soldier or soldier-servant than a Western Irishman, none more patient under difficulty and privation, none so full of cheerfulness and ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns—at which we little human beings in the void cheer louder than ever—with the ship's kitten. Up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she hurtles away again. The ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... then there may be an eddy where the feeling lingers and reflects a bit of scenery, but for the most part it can only catch gleams of color that mingle with the prevailing tone and enrich without usurping on it. This volume contains some of the best of Mr. Whittier's productions in this kind. "Skipper Ireson's Ride" we hold to be by long odds the best of modern ballads. There are others nearly as good in their way, and all, with a single exception, embodying native legends. In "Telling the Bees," Mr. Whittier ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... had no thought it could be deserted. Hogan would certainly retain a guard there, and probably others—with no duties of seamanship weighing on them—would seek refuge there from the wind-swept deck above. No doubt the fellows had a skipper, as neither Hogan, nor the man Mark, bore any resemblance to a lake sailor. Quite possibly the entire crew were innocent of what was actually transpiring aboard, and equally indifferent, so long as their wages were satisfactory. ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... the little, vessel running away from the great broad-backed rollers which rolled over the shore far above. Every now and then she shipped a sea, and once her deck was quite full of water, up to the gunwale nearly.' And as for her future skipper, he says, 'I had plenty of work at navigation. It really is very puzzling at first; so much to remember—currents, compass, variation, sun's declination, equation of time, lee way, &c. But I think I have done my work pretty well up to now, and of course it is a great pleasure as well as a considerable ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... presented himself to the Captain of the Hydrographer, the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored tolerance—good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had combative red-gold hair. His steel eyes were shaded ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... They were not racing, for his craft was unusually fast, as became a multi-millionaire's plaything. Besides, he and the girl had merely a bowing acquaintance. The Firefly was simply bobbing along on the same tack as the Enchantress, while the fair skipper, who had another girl as a companion, tried vainly, at a respectful distance, to hold ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... sailed to Norway and had a prosperous voyage, and Audunn spent the following winter with the skipper Thorir, who had a farm in Morr. The summer after that, they sailed out to Greenland, where ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... it acted like a charm, and, bringing up on another reef, we were ready for another tussle. Fortunately, this proved only a short lift. In the mean time the schooner had passed through the first reef by an opening, as her skipper was undoubtedly familiar with these waters. Still another shoal was ahead; instead of again lifting our sloop over it, I hauled by the wind, and stood for what looked like an opening to the eastward. Our pursuers were on the opposite ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... of our crew were on deck, and the skipper and the second mate took up their positions one on either side of me, the man who had first called my attention to the strange ship, joining some other seamen near the forecastle. No one spoke, but, from the expression in their eyes and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... feller's the best sailor, that's what's the matter. I don't know who he is, but he's a skipper ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... your game, is it? You are the skipper, and us a brace of lubbers as doesn't know north from west, I suppose. Let him sail the cursed ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... the raspberry and blackberry, the young larva of Vanessa Antiopa, one of our most abundant butterflies, may be found living socially on the leaves of the willow; while the mature larva of another much smaller butterfly, the little Copper skipper (Chrysophanus Americans), so abundant at this time, may sometimes be found on the clover. It is a short, oval, greenish worm, with very short legs. The dun-colored skippers (Hesperia) abound towards the middle of the month, darting ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... master, laden with sugar, pimento, &c. &c. left Kingston, Jamaica, in the early part of March, in the present year, bound for Glasgow. The skipper, who was a genuine son of the "Land o' Cakes," concluded to take the inside passage, and run through the gulf. This might have been questioned by seamen better acquainted with the windward passage; but as every Scotchman likes to have his own way, the advice of the first ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... through the city," says one of the annalists of those days, "like lightning," and proceeded to a small but active sea-port town on the coast, Zaandam. The first person they saw here was a man fishing from a small skiff, at a short distance from the shore. The tzar, who was dressed like a common Dutch skipper, in a red jacket and white linen trowsers, hailed the man, and engaged lodgings of him, consisting of two small rooms with a loft over them, and an adjoining shed. Strangely enough, this man, whose name was Kist, had been in ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the other, when Maida happened to lay his nose against the window, exclaimed pro-di-gi-ous! In short, they evidently meant all their humbug not for you, but for the culprit of Waverley, and the rest of that there rubbish." "Well, well, Skipper," was the reply, "for a' that, the loons would hae been nane ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... met with or heard of more than once or twice, people of the same names, and those very uncommon ones, who were in no way related to each other; nevertheless, I venture to tell your correspondent J. F. M. that about twenty years ago there was living the skipper of a coasting vessel, trading between Bridport and London, named Caleb Clark. He or his family are probably living at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... in the course of my first visit to the villa, some further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too much given to what Kit described as "his drop." He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with "father's trousers" I never knew. Kit said ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... skipper gray, whose eye's were dim, Could tell by tasting, just the spot, And so below, he'd "dowse the glim,"— After, of course, his ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... metal was 444 pounds. The Didon, which had three days before sailed from Corunna with despatches for the Rochefort squadron, and after escaping an action from another English frigate, had been visited by the skipper of an American merchant-vessel, who informed Captain Milius that a ship whose topgallant-sails were just then rising out of the water to windward was an English 20-gun ship, on board of which he had been the previous evening, and from what he had heard he was sure ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... attributing the coolness which the King shewed towards her, ere he set out on his voyage, to the malicious advice of Holcke." The confusion of this minion may be easier conceived than described; whilst the King, giving the Skipper a handful of ducats, bade him speak the truth and shame the devil. As soon, however, as the King spoke in Danish, the Skipper knew him, and looking at him with love and reverence, said in a low, subdued tone of voice—" Forgive me, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... inclination for book-making superseded by the more disagreeable study of appearing eminently happy under an irresistible inclination towards sea-sickness. We anchored in the Tagus in September;—no thanks to the ship, for she was a leaky one, and wishing foul winds to the skipper, for he ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... he was the conductor at the end of the long train. He had to explain very plainly that of course a freight train had a conductor. Every train had to have a "skipper" just like a boat. A railroad man had explained all that to Russ Bunker when the family was on its way to Cowboy ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... The skipper went on board, hoisted anchor and set sail. Using his man's wits, he also decided that wheat, which makes bread, was the very thing to be desired. In talking to his mates and sailors, they agreed with him. Thus, all the men, in this matter, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... a feller," said Mr. Peters, getting restive. "I don't take the contract to explain the thing. But it does seem some way droll that the old schooner should be wrecked so soon after what has happened to the old skipper. If you don't see it, or sense it, I ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Well, I should say 'vraiment.' Come, Smiles, let's run away from all the world beside, and I'll show you my skill as a skipper." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... doubt your word a mite, Scraggsy. I never did see a ferry-boat skipper that knew shucks about sailorizing," the imperturbable Gibney responded. "Me, I'll smell my way ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... skipper's business, I suppose, but I don't hold with takin' any chances you don't have to," was the gruff comment, "an' if you'll take the advice of an old hand at the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... starting something!" He stared at both of us with an almost startled expression, as if he could not believe his own verdict, yet could not get away from it. "Else you'd give the Bundesrath story to the papers! That German skipper's conduct ought to be bruited round the world! You said you'd do it. You promised us! You told the man ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Wade, "sailing a vessel wouldn't be very light nor very pleasant work for us, I'm thinking. If we could afford to hire a good skipper, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... The skipper or captain of this trim little craft was Jack Bergen, of Boston, and he with his mate, Abram Storms, had made the trip across the continent by rail to San Francisco—thus saving the long, dangerous and expensive voyage ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis |
