"Landsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... his grave was Roger Cuff conveyed, And strong resentment's lingering spirit laid. Shipwreck'd in youth, he home return'd, and found His brethren three—and thrice they wish'd him drown'd. "Is this a landsman's love? Be certain then, "We part for ever!"—and they cried, "Amen!" His words were truth's:- Some forty summers fled, His brethren died; his kin supposed him dead: Three nephews these, one sprightly niece, and one, Less near in blood—they call'd him surly John; He work'd in woods ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... the millions of islands which now fringe these shores, formed, at some remote period, one continuous strip of land. How vessels ever find their way, say from Hangoe to Nystad, is a mystery to the uninitiated landsman. At a certain place there are no less than 300 islands of various sizes crowded into an area of six square miles! Heaven preserve the man who finds himself there, in thick weather, with a skipper who does ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... aspect. He staggered backward, muttering incoherent words that might charitably be construed as apology, and passed on into the library, making an ineffectual effort to combine an air of dignified indifference with the uncertain gait of a landsman ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... large island where the Ninety-Mile Beach ends in a wilderness of roaring breakers. It is the Isle of Blasted Hopes. Its enchanting landscape has allured many a landsman to his ruin, and its beacon, seen through the haze of a south-east gale, has guided many a watchful mariner ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... his mariner's nose was turned toward the sea once again after his two years of landsman's hebetude, all his seaman's instinct, all his seaman's caution, revived. His nose snuffed the air, his eyes studied the whirls of the floating clouds. There was nothing especially ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... an astronomer, that thou lookest so closely at yonder shining world?" demanded Il Maledetto, with the superiority that the mariner afloat is wont successfully to assume over the unhappy wight of a landsman, who is very liable to admit his own impotency on the novel and dangerous element:—"the astrologer himself would not ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... into the streets of a busy city and see what a number of sights and sounds he will neglect because of their meaninglessness to him. Take the sailor whose powers of discerning a ship on the horizon appear to the landsman so extraordinary, and set him to detect micro-organisms in the field of a microscope. Is it then surprising that primitive man should be able to draw inferences which to the stranger appear marvelous, from the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... as a landsman, and one who has crossed the ocean a great many times, that the safety of the Lusitania lay in speed. We were in the war zone by 140 or 150 miles, and every moment that we dawdled at fifteen or eighteen knots was an increase of our risk of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ‘Victory’ every foot of the way from Asinara to this anchorage, [off La Madelena,] blowing hard from Longo Sardo, under double-reefed topsails.” The difficulties of the Bonifacio passage can hardly be understood by a landsman who has not visited the straits, but they are stated to have been so great, “and the ships to have passed in so extraordinary a manner, that their captains could only consider it as a providential interposition in favour of the great officer who ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared with that which permeates and saturates the mind of the typical sailor. A gentleman with whom I was long and closely associated held definite opinions on symbolic ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. There was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Jew. His interest in the sea and familiarity with sailors' terms are quite unlike a persistent Jewish characteristic which still continues. We have a Jew's description of a storm at sea in the Book of Jonah, which is as evidently the work of a landsman as Luke's is of one who, though not a sailor, was well up in maritime matters. His narrative lays hold of the essential points, and is as accurate as it is vivid. This section has two parts: the account of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... copper offered her the weapons if she would take him as her husband, but she refused, saying that she was the daughter of a landsman, and preferred a husband from the village on the land. He laughed scornfully; her foot slipped, and she sank into the sea. Her father and mother came to seek her, and found only her ornaments scattered on the beach. They called her by her name, and implored her to go home with them; ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to shoot at anything in the water they cannot understand, Boyton sounded a lusty blast on the bugle to attract the chopper's attention from the shooting iron. The man returned ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... soon securely hooked. The only show of resistance it made to being drawn on board was to extend its wings, and utter loud discordant cries. Once on deck, its grace and majesty vanished. It showed no fear, and the hook, still fastened in its beak, did not seem to annoy it; but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking deck. It staggered and waddled clumsily, and tried in vain to lift itself with its wings. It showed considerable temper, and snapped furiously at all who approached, and the captain's dog, which came trotting up, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by land, and perils by water, Short, I ween, are the obsequies Of the landsman lost, but they may be shorter With the mariner lost in the trackless seas; And well for him when the timbers start, And the stout ship reels and settles below, Who goes to his doom with as bold a heart As that dead man gone ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... her host, refrained from the only comments she felt to be suitable to the occasion. Under the tactful guidance of Edward Tredgold the conversation was led to shipwrecks, fires at sea, and other subjects of the kind comforting to the landsman, Mr. Chalk favouring them with a tale of a giant octopus, culled from Captain Bowers's collection, which made Mrs. Stobell's eyes ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the highest less than twenty feet above the deck. Sir Hotham Ward was now in the worst plight he had been, in that day, his ship being unable to advance a foot, her drift excepted, until everything was cut away. To the landsman it may appear a small job to cut ropes with axes, and thus liberate a vessel from the encumbrance and danger of falling spars; but the seaman knows it is often a most delicate and laborious piece of duty. The ocean is never quiet; and a vessel that is not steadied ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the chains and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy; every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt for what he had seen fit to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... that would have mastered a less experienced hand. We were getting close down upon the berg, and in fearfully rough water. In their curiosity to catch glimpses of the advancing sketch, the men pulled with little regularity, and trimmed the boat very badly. We were rolling frightfully to a landsman. C. begged of them to keep their seats, and hold the barge just there as near as possible. To amuse them, I passed an opera-glass around among them, with which they examined the iceberg and the coast. They turned out to be excellent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... any doubt; in three minutes the shapes of a squadron of battleships can be clearly seen; in five minutes Smith's practised eyes, now that he has descended, can distinguish the Imperturbable, flying the admiral's flag, among what to a landsman would appear to be a dozen exactly similar vessels. Glancing back, he sees that the Red Scout has changed her course, and is already only a speck ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... of nothing more confusing to a landsman, sahib, than a crowded harbor at night. The many search-lights all quivering and shifting in the one direction only made confusion worse and we had not been moving two minutes when I no longer knew north from south or east from west. I looked up, to try to judge by the stars. I had actually ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... summer of 1882 was especially remarkable for these winds, while each stormy November has been followed by a period about mid-winter of mild calm weather with dense fog. During these strong winds in summer and early autumn the weather would remain bright and sunny, and to a landsman would be not remarkable in any way, while the barometer has been little affected by them; but it has been often observed by those employed on the water that when it ceased blowing half a gale the sky at once became overcast, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the bad temper of his wife. But besides the general reasons why Major Bonnet should not become a pirate, and which applied to all men as well as himself, there was a special reason against his adoption of the profession of a sea-robber, for he was an out-and-out landsman and knew nothing whatever of nautical matters. He had been at sea but very little, and if he had heard a boatswain order his man to furl the keel, to batten down the shrouds, or to hoist the forechains to the topmast ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... rayonnante de joie. A fair wind and a bright blue sea, cool and refreshing breezes, the waves sparkling, and the ship going gallantly over the waters. So far, our voyage may have been tedious, but the most determined landsman must allow that ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and half-owner of the brigantine 'Pizarro', trading between the port of London, and the coast of Mexico. The second was his clerk, factotum, and confidant; half-sailor, half-landsman; able to take the helm in dangerous weather, if need were; and able to afford his employer counsel in the most intricate questions of trading ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... my boy!" he said; "here's a morning for a holiday landsman—or boy. Well, I didn't see ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... sea are like one another. Words shall not tell them, nor colour portray them. The kiss that burns, and the salt spray that stings—let the poet excel and the painter endeavour, yet the best they can do shall say nothing to the woman without a lover; and the landsman who knows not the sea. If you would live—love. You will live in an hour a lifetime; and you will wonder how you bore your life before. But as an artist all will be over with you—that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... stiff to climb the masts he mends sails on the decks. Everybody understands—even the commonest people and the minor poets understand—why it is that a sailor, when he is old and bent and obliged to be a landsman to die, does something that holds him close to the sea. If he has a garden, he hoes where he can see the sails. If he must tend flowers, he plants them in an old yawl, and when he selects a place for his grave, it is where surges shall be heard at night singing to his bones. Every ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... commander, in the hour of adversity. After much cogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing him to whistle the marine melody, 'Oh cheerily, cheerily!' and Rob the Grinder attaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as a landsman could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... mate. I shall be glad to have you again, for the chap who has been in your place is a landsman, and he don't know a marling-spike from an ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... justice of his case, but he had begun to have some dread of unjust success on the part of his enemies. It was delightful to him thus to hear that their cause was surrounded with such rocks and shoals; such causes of shipwreck unseen by the landsman's eye, but visible enough to the keen eyes of practical law mariners. How wrong his wife was to wish that Bold should marry Eleanor! Bold! why, if he should be ass enough to persevere, he would be a beggar before he knew whom ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the wheel looked silently forward, with that exasperating unconcern of any landsman's interest peculiar to marine officials. The passenger turned impatiently to ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike—a group of somewhat dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the waves, points them out ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... a sailor," she said. "And I thought I was safe in the hands of a landsman like you. And yet here you are, with all the stuff of the sea in you, running down your easting for port. Next thing, I suppose, I'll see you out with a sextant, shooting the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... liberty of peeping out across a little stone passage into the Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing a high settle with its back towards me drawn out in front of the Admiral's kitchen fire, I strolled in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and looking about. One landsman and two boatmen were seated on the settle, smoking pipes and drinking beer out of thick pint crockery mugs - mugs peculiar to such places, with parti-coloured rings round them, and ornaments between the rings like frayed-out roots. The landsman was relating his experience, as ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... that we shall be wrecked," said Grant gravely. "I do not see an opening in these tremendous breakers, and if we can't get through them, even a landsman could tell that we ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... for Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer and then chief hydrographer to the Admiralty. The precedent of Halley's command of the Paramour in 1698 had taught a lesson of the danger of giving the command of a ship to a landsman, and Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hawke, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1768, said, to his everlasting credit, that he would sooner cut off his right hand than sign a commission for any person who had not been bred a seaman. Dalrymple, there is little doubt, never forgave Cook ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, blow high, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... was a landsman, whose only knowledge of the water was in an occasional bathe, or in a river steamer; and his first attempt at placing the oars in the rowlocks resulted in one falling overboard, while he helplessly grasped the other; and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... altogether. But certain unfortunate speculations threw me on my back, and finally, having gone from bad to worse, I found myself in Boston, where, in sheer desperation, I went on board a coasting vessel as landsman. I remained on this vessel for nearly a year, but it did not suit me. I was often sick, and did not like the work. I left the vessel at one of the Southern ports, and it was not long after she sailed that, finding ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... the landsman at home or the sailor at sea, With nausea, scurvy, or canker maybe, 'Tis never in language to overexalt The potent preservative virtue of salt— A crystal commodity wholesome and good, A cure for disease, and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... find how much had been manufactured "out of nothing." Her seams, those which the sun had opened, were caulked neatly; her deck was clean and white; she was partially rigged, with new and old canvas and ropes; and to his landsman's eyes she looked almost fit for sea. But when he said as much to ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? —O landsman, these are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! —Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... rum for a coach and a crib, at the First Lord's stern decree, And he learns the use of the rocket and squib (which are useful as lights at sea): And they train him in part of the nautical art, as much as a landsman can, For they teach him to paddle the gay canoe, and to row the ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... by you nor Huish? that you won't go on stealing my profits and drinking my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you'll attend to your duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman, and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what you mean? If it is, be so good as to say ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... been chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs in the United States Senate, was extensively acquainted with the officers of the navy, and for a landsman had much knowledge of nautical affairs; therefore he was selected for Secretary of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Fields, you may find this legible, but I rather doubt it; for there is motion enough on the ship to render writing to a landsman, however accustomed to pen and ink, rather a difficult achievement. Besides which, I slide away gracefully from the paper, whenever I want to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... little boat is sometimes quite close to the big one, but the men are dead—frozen. M. de G. tells us all sorts of terrible experiences that he has heard from his men, and yet they all like the life—wouldn't lead any other, and have the greatest contempt for a landsman. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... a landsman than the manner in which a sailor handles huge, dripping hawsers or cables and with a few deft turns makes then fast to a pier-head or spile, in such a way that the ship's winches, warping the ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... the 19-20th October, Lieutenant Grimshaw was sent with a patrol of the Mounted Infantry company of the battalion to watch the road to Vant's and Landsman's Drifts, ten miles east of Dundee. About 2 a.m. on October 20th this officer reported that a Boer commando was advancing on the town. At a later hour he forwarded a second message to the effect that he was retiring before superior numbers, ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... telling of yarns beneath the starlit skies, the spirit of mingled superstition and daring, the prompt and brave activities attending a storm, and, above all, the excitement and dangers of battle—has for the landsman a ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Bill Sykes was a landsman, and had soon shown that he was totally unfit for a sailor. Dick Todd had entered as a boy. He was not worth much, and had become a great chum of Sykes'. Still, from the little I had seen of them, I did not think that they would have been ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... defect in her construction, often reported, never remedied—her hawse-pipes leading in on the berth-deck; the Eber's, from an injury to her screw in the blow of February 14th. In this overcrowding of ships in an open entry of the reef, even the eye of the landsman could spy danger; and Captain-Lieutenant Wallis of the Eber openly blamed and lamented, not many hours before the catastrophe, their helpless posture. Temper once more triumphed. The army of Mataafa still hung imminent behind the town; the German quarter was still daily garrisoned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sultan in the Arabian Nights. But music is the order of the evening. Though a band is not allowed to a ship of our class, there are always good musicians to be found among the reckless and jolly fellows composing a man-of-war's crew. A big landsman from Utica, and a dare-devil topman from Cape Cod, are the leading vocalists; Symmes, the ship's cook, plays an excellent violin; and the commodore's steward is not to be surpassed upon the tambourine. A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Certainly, never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career. Not even in that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom which so rapidly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... our manoeuvre and kept away—for not more than five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view and the surf to hearing—when I was aware of land again, not only on the weather bow, but dead ahead. I played the part of the judicious landsman, holding my peace till the last moment; and presently my mariners ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anybody. Middle aged, nearly as tall as Jim Hart, red haired, with a sharp little tuft of red whisker on his chin, and with features that seemed to be carved out of some kind of metal, he was a combination of the seaman and landsman, as tough and wiry as they ever grow to be. He regarded Oliver Pollock out of twinkling little blue eyes that could be merry ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... see no sign that my signals had been noticed, and began frantically to row toward her. After a quarter of an hour of violent exertion, I did not appear to be much nearer to her; but, observing her more closely, I could see, even with my landsman's eyes, that something was the matter with her. Portions of her mast and rigging were gone, and one large sail at her stern appeared to be fluttering ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... quickly than myself, or has decided whether certain doubtful appearances ahead were or were not sufficient to make us alter our course, &c.; and always speaking as no one who was what sailors call a landsman could have done. There was, of course, always a great deal of boat work, much of it to be done with a loaded boat in a seaway, requiring practical knowledge of such matters, and I do not remember any accidents, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every ill; and after the lapse of ten or twelve days, as the brig was drawing towards the latitude of Bermuda, my sickness disappeared as suddenly as it commenced; and one pleasant morning I threw aside my shore dress, and with it my landsman's habits and feelings. I donned my short jacket and trousers, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excitement of the otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fifteen or twenty-five little skin skiffs, with two or three men in each, paddle out under a chief elected by common consent. Whether fog or clear, the spearing is done only in calm ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... seaman much at the mercy of every rough gale and lee-shore, and in which his calculations regarding ultimate results must be always very doubtful, has a strong tendency to render him superstitious. He is more removed, too, than the landsman of his education and standing, from the influence of general opinion, and the mayhap over-sceptical teaching of the Press; and, as a consequence of their position and circumstances, I found, at this period, seamen of the generation to which I myself ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... next to the door of the forecastle. It was open—and, what was better, it opened inward. Also, it was of steel with a stout brass ring on the lock, this ring taking the place of what on a landsman's door would have been ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... heads towards the ocean, and flying between the Capes with amazing velocity, stood out to sea, directing our course towards the S.S.E., and proceeding at the rate of seven miles an hour under bare poles. The sea ran tremendously high, and the sky was dark and dreary; insomuch that by a landsman the gale might safely be accounted a storm. Under these circumstances, the ship rolling as if she would dip her topmasts in the water, and the waves breaking in at the back windows of the cabin, nothing remained to be done but to go to bed. Thither most of us accordingly repaired, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the maritime Ionians practise when they accept the hegemony of a Spartan landsman; enough of submission do the free citizens of Hellas show when they suffer the imperious Dorian to sentence them to punishments only fit for slaves. But when the Spartan appears in the robes of the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... I stand, Neither on sea, nor yet on land; Angels watch me on either hand. If you be landsman, come down the strand; If you be sailor, come up the sand; If you be angel, come from the sky, Look in my glass, and pass me by; Look in my glass, and go from the shore; Leave me, but ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... might warp her off; but the darkness magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this, Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating evidence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... he himself learnt at sea. I am glad, therefore, to welcome Messrs. Curwen's project of a wide and representative collection. Dr. Terry's qualifications as editor are exceptional, since he was reared in an environment of nineteenth-century seamen, and is the only landsman I have met who is able to render shanties as the old seamen did. I am not musician enough to criticize his pianoforte accompaniments, but I can vouch for the authenticity of the melodies as he presents them, untampered ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... off from the side o' the tender. But he had some sense, after all, for he saw there was no use makin' a fuss then. It was a bad landin' that day, four or five times worse than this afternoon, an' I guess it looked dangerous enough to a landsman to be a bit scarin'. One of the men went up with him, holdin' on to him, so he wouldn't get frightened an' drop, an' in a minute or two he was ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... story has several rather astonishing features—at least to an inexperienced landsman. The sword-fish and thresher are said to seek and attack the right whale together; but a nautical friend, whom I have consulted on the subject, says he has never heard of their interfering with the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... alike to me." And indeed to a landsman, the nodding schooners around seemed run from the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... from sea And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish But ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... waltzing and kicking round each other on every possible tack, crossing and re-crossing bows and sterns; sometimes close shaving, out and in, down-the-middle-and-up-again fashion, which, to a landsman, might have been suggestive of the 'bus, cab, and van throng in the neighbourhood of that heart of the world, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... eight bells, and I rather think Mr. Brown will want me on deck." We followed, for there was the prospect of seeing topsails reefed,—the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock heavier. The topmasts were working, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... if you hadn't butted in on the shipping end of the business the man Peasley would not have been given this opening to swat us. It's nuts for a sailor any time he can trip up a landsman, and particularly his owners—" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to the landsman. The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee candlestick. The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not been seen before. And so of everything between. There is the aspect of wet over everything now, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... said his battleships could not fight through without help, there was no foothold left for the views of a landsman. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... canes brush your face at every step. Shoes and stockings in hand you ford the shallow river, then, shod again, you begin the long ascent. You will need four good hours, or five, for you are not a landsman, your shoes hurt you, and you would rather reef top-sails—aye, and take the lee earing, too, in any gale and a score of times, than breast that mountain. It cannot be helped. It is a hard life, though there are lazy days in the summer ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... a most unprotected locality, floating in a narrow canal, at the mercy of a lot of strange sailors. The sailor, though, has a generous heart, and usually demands FAIR PLAY, while there is a natural antagonism between him and a landsman. I was, so to speak, one of them, and felt pretty sure that in case of any demonstration, honest "Jack Tar" would ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which I took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... nothing escaped his eyes. How he saw I could never make out, though I had a theory that it was with his elbows. After he had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, he took care that I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a landsman. Without looking up, he would say, suddenly, "There's a whale blowin' clearn up to win'ard," or, "Them's porpises to leeward: that means change o' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear, and paces the deck during his watch much as one of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... the ship, with the help of the pilot. For more than two thousand years this division between the sailor and the fighting element in navies continued throughout the world. The fighting commander and the sailing-master were two different men, and the captain of a man-of-war was often a landsman. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... to take a cruise about the fleet, and I'll spin you no end of yarns if you like to come, sir," said old Bob, with a twinkle in his eye, as his wherry was see-sawing alongside in a manner most uncomfortable to a landsman. ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... them to let him down, but they would not. They said it was customary, whenever a landsman came up into the rigging, for him to pay for his footing by a treat to the sailors; and that they would let him down if he would give them a ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... permanence of any wise scheme of education. Certain it is that a great difference of character existed between those Greeks who mingled much in maritime affairs and those who did not. The Arcadian may stand as a type of the pure Grecian landsman, with his rustic and illiterate habits—his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley cakes, and pork (as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief seasoning for the bread of an Athenian)—his superior ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... publication of the "Bab Ballads" a great deal of verse has been produced along the same general lines. Mr. Wallace Irwin's "Nautical Ballads of a Landsman" are the most notable additions of ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... Goatley to proceed in the story of voyages and adventures, and she could not wonder when Goatley said, "Your heart is in it still, sir. Not one of us all but says it is a pity such a noble captain should be lost as a landsman, with nothing to do but to lock the door ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that gives the sea that sound," said the captain. "This is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida. It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close with your vessel to make New York harbor—there; and all along it, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, runs the bar—so. Broken, but so much the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... is surrounded by water, it must be a visible point of land. HALL is a landsman, and therefore the proper man to send in search of land. To send a sailor like HAYES in quest of land would be absurd. Therefore ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... ask after our health and spirits if we give them a look in, and my word is for lying-to here until night comes or the ship is sighted. It must be a matter of hours, anyway. The gale's abating; a landsman would know as much ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... propitiate Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present, by the way). He hesitated over a child's caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret's voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved as she did ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... this unwieldy armament is a sign that they are thoroughly terrified, and seek safety in a huge crowd of ships. The firmness and discipline which they have acquired by long experience of land warfare will avail them little on the sea For courage is largely a matter of habit, and the bravest landsman is a mere coward when he is taken away from his own element, and set down on the heaving deck of a war-galley where he can hardly keep his feet. The disorganized multitude with which we shall have to ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... River on the 31st, under circumstances which must forcibly illustrate to a landsman the precision with which a ship may be navigated. We had not seen land for fifty-two days, and were steering through a dense fog, which confined the circle of our vision to within a very short distance round the ship. Suddenly the vapour for a moment dispersed, and showed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to a landsman—and this is what is ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... condition. One more such hospitable reception would forever have incapacitated us for the service of the Russian American Telegraph Company! I had only time to cast a hurried glance back at the Major. He looked like a frightened landsman straddling the end of a studdingsail-boom run out to leeward on a fast clipper, and his face was screwed up into an expression of mingled pain, amusement, and astonishment, which evidently did not begin to do justice to his conflicting emotions. I had no opportunity of expressing my sympathetic ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... specimens of American naval architecture of choice description; amongst the rest, a frigate and several other ships of war lying in ordinary. Everything appeared to indicate good management and efficiency, as far as a landsman could judge. This was very discernible on board the vessels we were allowed to inspect, where the utmost order and cleanliness prevailed. The officers, I thought, seemed to exact great deference from the men, and their martinet bearing ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... it was the very home of romance; he even pitted this part of Cornwall against Devonshire, as a claimant to the laurels of Elizabethan seamanship. According to him there had been captains among these coves and islets compared with whom Drake was practically a landsman. He heard Flambeau laugh, and ask if, perhaps, the adventurous title of "Westward Ho!" only meant that all Devonshire men wished they were living in Cornwall. He heard Fanshaw say there was no need to be silly; that not only had Cornish captains been ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a young cockney, who, a few years before, had emigrated to Australia, and, by some favouritism or other, had procured the command of the vessel, though in no wise competent. He was essentially a landsman, and though a man of education, no more meant for the sea than a hairdresser. Hence everybody made fun of him. They called him "The Cabin Boy," "Paper Jack," and half a dozen other undignified names. In truth, the men made no secret of the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... and more genial man. And when the trawl is hauled, wait till the fish are counted out, and packed away, and then kneel down and inspect (in a pair of Mackintosh leggings, and your oldest coat) the crawling heap of shells and zoophytes which remains behind about the decks, and you will find, if a landsman, enough to occupy you for a week to come. Nay, even if it be too calm for trawling, condescend to go out in a dingy, and help to haul some honest fellow's deep-sea lines and lobster-pots, and you will find more and stranger things about them than even fish ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... 'Good morning.' He answered pleasantly enough. His face was entirely strange to me. Then I sat down on the high seat back of the wheel and looked out at the river and began to ask a few questions, such as a landsman would ask. He began, in the old way, to fill me up with the old lies, and I enjoyed letting him do it. Then suddenly he turned round ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... those stanch friendships common to boyhood had sprung up during the voyage to Australia. "A whale, your grandmother, Jonathan!" repeated Davy Armstrong in a bantering tone, with all—as his companion thought he could detect—the conscious superiority of a sucking sailor over a raw landsman, in his voice. "Why, you'll be seeing the sea serpent soon if you look smart. Where is this wonderful thing you've discovered, Jonathan, my son? I'm blest if I ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... had appeared on deck. He was clinging to a cleat in the rail with a landsman's awkwardness and with the cunning object of proving to the ship that he wasn't to be surprised off his feet another time. He swayed grandly, generously, for'ard and aft, like a metronome set at a large, sweeping rhythm. Every billow shot a flood from stern to bow, and swished past ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... gale, so the weather was bad from the start. Our course was north by east, and when we had passed the butt-end of the island we nosed about in the trough of big seas, shipping tons of water and rolling like a buffalo. I know as much about boats as about Egyptian hieroglyphics, but even my landsman's eyes could tell that we were in for a rough night. I was determined not to get queasy again, but when I went below the smell of tripe and onions promised to be my undoing; so I dined off a slab of chocolate and a cabin biscuit, put on my waterproof, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... soon as each transport was loaded it pulled away from the pier and dropped anchor in the stream. When all our troops were on board the "Megantic" we cast loose, pulled up the stream off Cape Diamond, and "dropped our hook," as a landsman in the ranks was heard to remark. The hotels and boarding houses of the City were filled with friends of the men who had come on excursions to bid the soldiers good-bye. The City was full of life and activity and brilliantly lighted ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... the naval world to-day. The kind of vessel they used in the tenth century is the craft of most peculiar interest to Canadian history, though it has never been noticed there except by the merest landsman's reference. The special type to which this vessel belonged was already the result of long development. The Vikings had a way of burying a chief in his ship, over which they heaped a funeral mound. Very fortunately two of these vessels were buried ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... had not forgotten the Colonel's coolness. A landsman, for whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers, falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... from an Atlantic Transport boat. We had a drink together, and yarned of old times. The names of our old shipmates were like incantations. The breathing of them brought the past before us; the past which was so recent, yet so far away; the past which is so dear to a sailor and so depressing to a landsman. So and so was dead, and Jimmy had gone among the Islands, and Dick had pulled out for home because "he couldn't stick that Mr. Jenkins." Very few of them remained on the Coast; the brothers of the Coast ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... grew alarmed. The squall was fiercer than usual, and must have been pretty bad to have frightened such seasoned hands. They awoke Jesus, and there is a touch of petulant rebuke in their appeal, and of a sailor's impatience at a landsman lying sound asleep while the sweat is running down their faces with their hard pulling. It is to Mark that we owe our knowledge of that accent of complaint in their words, for he alone ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... contemplate removing it from its keel and placing it somewhere inland. All the evidence in hand points to a radically different conclusion, which is my sole reason for doubting the value of that conclusion. Captain Kidd is a seafarer by instinct, not a landsman. The House-boat is not a house, but a boat; therefore the place to look for it is not, as Dr. Johnson so well says, in the Sahara Desert, or on the Alps, or in the State of Ohio, but upon the high sea, or upon the waterfront of some one ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... you have had pleasant passages," said John Effingham to Paul, as soon as they were separated in the manner just mentioned. "Three trips across the Atlantic in so short a time would be hard duty to a landsman, though you, as a sailor, will probably think ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth, I suffered many hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by so few hopes, as these first ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... save these who know the sea can form a picture or imagine at all the unrelaxing toil and strain aboard these ocean outposts that link northern with southern climes and draw their invisible barrier across the waters. The sea, if you would traffic with her, demands a vigilance such as no landsman dreams of, but here you have men who to the vigilance of the mariner have added that of the scout, who to the sailor's task have added the sentry's, and on an element whose moods are in ceaseless change, today bright as the heavens, tomorrow ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... hat go down for a livin' in ships to the sea,— We love it a different way from you poets that 'bide on the land. We are fond of it, sure! But, you take it as comin' from me, There's a fear and a hate in our love that a landsman can't understand. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... with which sailors can construct a raft, would be almost incredible to a landsman who had never seen the thing done. It is not from mere concert or organisation among themselves—though there is something in that. Not much, however, for well-drilled soldiers are as clumsy at ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... will have our surgeon's mate on the fielda good clever young fellow at caulking a shot-hole. I will let Lesley, who is an honest fellow for a landsman, know that he attends for the benefit of either party. Is there anything I can do for you in case ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shook off both the finishers of the law, and, with his arms still bound, ran to the Scottish Archer. "Stand by me, countryman," he said, in his own language, "for the love of Scotland and Saint Andrew! I am innocent—I am your own native landsman. Stand by me, as you shall answer at ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... won't say. But there's no sense in this grown-up business—sailorising, politics, the piety mill, and all the rest of it. Good clean drowning is good enough for me." It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent harping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the day, a good square meal; and finally the Tai-sek, a great meal, in the evening, at which Corean voracity is exhibited to the best advantage. The climate being so much colder than that of Japan, it is only natural that the Cho-senese should use more animal food and fat than do the landsman of the Mikado. Pork and beef, barely roasted and copiously condimented with pepper and vinegar, are devoured in large quantities. The Coreans also have a dish much resembling the Italian maccaroni or vermicelli. Of this large bowls may be seen at all the eating-shops in Seoul, and ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... the void of the heavens commences. It is a consequence of this in distinctness, that any object seen beyond the apparent boundary of water, has the appearance of floating in the air. It is rare for the organs of a landsman to penetrate beyond the apparent limits of the sea, when the atmosphere exhibits this peculiarity, though the practised eye of a mariner often detects vessels, which are hid from others, merely because they are not sought ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Antarctic exploration, as well as whaling voyages, comprise much reading that is as interesting to the landsman as to the sailor. Most of its literature is within easy reach of the collector of modest means, though the earlier volumes are naturally increasing gradually in price. One of the hardest to obtain is William Scoresby's 'Account of the Arctic Regions,' which was published ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... whose valuable work on Dalmatia has rendered such a course unnecessary; but rather to enter, with log-like simplicity, the dates of arrival and departure at the various ports, and such-like interesting details of sea life. If, however, my landsman-like propensities should evince themselves by a lurking inclination to 'hug ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... "Shipwreck" to discover how much of dulness may lie enwrapped, to discharge itself, even in a first-class tempest. Courses, reckonings, trimmings of canvas—these occur in real life and amuse the simple mariner at the time. But to the reader, if he be a landsman, their repetition in narrative may easily become intolerable; and when we get down to the 'trades,' even the seaman sets his sail for a long spell of weather and goes to sleep. In short you cannot ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... simile! We mortals cross the ocean of this world 100 Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage—how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are! An India screen is pretty furniture, A piano-forte is a fine resource, All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, The new edition fifty volumes long; And little Greek books, with the funny type ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... exquisitely proportioned and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women," the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... dupers and dupes, as it happens. After continuing a couple of hours, the base of the range, which seemed always close upon us, still receded and was receding. On the plains of Africa bounded by mountain ranges, one is as much at a loss to measure distances as the landsman at sea, when measuring the distance from his ship to the rocks bounding the shore. My negro Cicerone advised to beat a retreat, assuring me I should not reach the chain by daylight. We looked round on the city and found it fast diminishing and disappearing in the distance, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... author of a curious composition entitled The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548, seems to be the only man who took more interest in the means than in the ends of seamanship. He was undoubtedly a landsman. But he loved the things of the sea; and his work is well worth reading as a vocabulary of the lingo that was used on board a Tudor ship. When the seamen sang it sounded like 'an echo in a cave.' Many of the outlandish words were Mediterranean ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? —O landsman, there are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! —Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave me ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conversation took place at what the captain called "the hellum", against the tiller of which he occasionally allowed his apprentice to lean his back while he attended to other work. Wilkinson was proud. This was genuine navigation, this steering a large vessel with your back; any mere landsman, he now saw, could coil up ropes like Coristine. The subject of this reflection was quite happy in the bow, chumming with The Crew. Smoking their pipes together, Sylvanus confided to his apprentice that a sailor's life was the lonesomest life ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... wind from the northwest, they soon reached Duff Harbour, where Malcolm went on shore and saw Mr Soutar. He, with a landsman's prejudice, made strenuous objections to such a mad prank as sailing to London at that time of the year, but in vain. Malcolm saw nothing mad in it, and the lawyer had to admit he ought to know best. He brought on board with him a lad of Peter's acquaintance, and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe entrenched landsman. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... with their home above tree-line, amid eternal snows, are wonderfully self-reliant and self-contained. The ouzel, too, is self-poised, indifferent to all the world but his brook, and showing an appreciation for water greater, I think, than that of any other landsman. These birds, the ptarmigan and the ouzel, along with the willow thrush, who sings out his melody amid the shadows of the pines, who puts his woods into song,—these birds of the mountains are ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the time before going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the evening the Chaussee des Etats-Unis was naturally gay with the landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafes were crowded both inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with sailors, and pretty ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and skies he paints. One figures his mind as some sort of marvellous picture gallery. He veritably sees things, and he makes the reader see them. And all the strange and curious sea jargon, of which not one landsman in a thousand understands anything—combings and back-stays and dead-eyes, and the rest of it—takes a salt smack of romance in his lips. He can be as technical as he pleases, and the reader takes him ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... later the cargo was all on board, and the Fanny sailed for England. The voyage was accomplished without adventure. As soon as the vessel entered dock and the crew were discharged Ralph landed, and having purchased a suit of landsman clothes, presented his kit to a lad of about his own age, who had been his special chum on board the Fanny, and then made his way to the inn from which the coaches for Dover started. Having secured a place for next day, dined, and ordered a bed, he passed the ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... wide and fearful gulf that separates the two worlds. The landsman can know little of the wildness, savageness, and mercilessness of nature till he has been upon the sea. It is as if he had taken a leap off into the interstellar spaces. In voyaging to Mars or Jupiter, he might cross such a desert,—might confront such awful purity ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... in a howling breeze May tickle a landsman's taste, But the happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yeo ho! And his ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Admiral's direction, Vetch was on board the Sapphire, the smallest of the frigates, with orders to pick out the safe channel for the rest of the fleet; and although but a landsman, he did his best to act as a pilot. All went well until they reached the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence. There, instead of depending upon one of the smaller ships to lead the way, the Admiral imprudently ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... and reappearing seal-like heads, with baskets splashing in the water or being hauled by excited hands. In the distance floats the majestic barque Rengasamy Puravey, an old-timer, with stately spars, a quarter-deck, and painted port-holes that might cause a landsman to believe her a war-ship. For half the year the barque is the home of the government's marine biologist, and his office and laboratory, wherein scientific investigation and experimentation are in constant progress, are in houses ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... friends of Spain had poured their gold To thin his ranks, and every hour his crews Deserted, he had laughed—"Let Spain buy scum! Next to an honest seaman I love best An honest landsman. What more goodly task Than teaching brave men seamanship?" He had filled His ships with soldiers! Out in the teeth of the gale That raged against him he had driven. In vain, Amid the boisterous laughter of the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... live on the sense of beauty alone, exempt from the necessity of "creature comforts," a sea-voyage would be delightful. To the landsman there is sublimity in the wild and ever-varied forms of the ocean; they fill his mind with living images of a glory he had only dreamed of before. But we would have been willing to forego all this and get back the comforts of the shore. At New York we took passage in the second ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... there was a mountain of jet rising out of the sea, and, to a landsman's eye, within a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... comprehended what was expected of her, and her nimble fingers soon performed their task. Tying a knot in the ends of the line, she did as desired, and the small rope was soon dangling within reach of Wychecombe's arm. It is not easy to make a landsman understand the confidence which a sailor feels in a rope. Place but a frail and rotten piece of twisted hemp in his hand, and he will risk his person in situations from which he would otherwise recoil in dread. Accustomed to hang suspended in the air, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... seaboard, seaside, seabank^, seacoast, seabeach^; ironbound coast; loom of the land; derelict; innings; alluvium, alluvion^; ancon. riverbank, river bank, levee. soil, glebe, clay, loam, marl, cledge^, chalk, gravel, mold, subsoil, clod, clot; rock, crag. acres; real estate &c (property) 780; landsman^. V. land, come to land, set foot on the soil, set foot on dry land; come ashore, go ashore, debark. Adj. earthy, continental, midland, coastal, littoral, riparian; alluvial; terrene &c (world) 318; landed, predial^, territorial; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... from the short, square figure of such an obvious landsman. The farmer took him by ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... questioning, whether one had rightly understood anything which they had asserted. Their sight was remarkably acute; it is well known that sailors, from long practice, can make out a distant object much better than a landsman; but both York and Jemmy were much superior to any sailor on board: several times they have declared what some distant object has been, and though doubted by every one, they have proved right, when it has been examined through a telescope. They were quite conscious of this power; and Jemmy, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately damning his soul and praying to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... a landsman, and had a proper respect for squalls and tempests, even on a fresh-water lake. He heard the announcement of Lawry Wilford with a feeling of dread and apprehension, and straightway began to conjure up visions of a terrible shipwreck, and of sole survivors, clinging ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... since taught me that these great beasts are as terror-stricken by this phenomenon as a landsman by a fog at sea, and that no sooner does a fog envelop them than they make the best of their way to lower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for me that this ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... encourage you, I should like you clearly to understand that so long as life—or at least consciousness and a particle of strength—remains to me, you may rely upon my doing my level best for you. And, being by profession a sailor, I may be able to do much that a landsman could not. Meanwhile, however, all that we can do at present is to wait patiently for daylight. One point is already declaring itself in our favour; I notice that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
