"Skiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trembling to hear how long a period of banishment in the hospital should be awarded us. At length came a little skiff, bringing two guardians (servants of the hospital), and with them the news that we must remain in the hospital ten days from the period of our entrance, but that we could not disembark to-day, as it ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... cutter, manned and provisioned, with the skiff in tow, hoisted her foresail and sheered off from the after gangway. The India-rubber Man, as Senior Officer of the expedition, took the helm and banished the Young Doctor into the bows, where, to judge by the ecstatic shouts of ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of looking for me out on the water," she cried, triumphantly, and quickly untying it, she sprung into the little skiff, and seizing the oars, with a vigorous stroke the little shell shot rapidly out into the shimmering water, Daisy never once pausing in her mad, impetuous flight until the dim line of the shore was almost indistinguishable from the blue arching dome of the horizon. "There," she cried, flushed and ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities, drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take me wherever ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... romanticky feeling a-paddling along them canals, With the manderlines twangling all round, and the larf of the gayest of gals Gurgling up through the Hightalian hair—though it do 'ave a cockneyfied sniff,— Wy it's better than spooning at Marlow with MOLLY MOLLOY in a skiff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... Lang whirled about only a few feet from the dory. From the shadowed crevices in the rocks, men leaped forward and hurled themselves to the beach. About the skiff bright jets of flame cut the fog. Came the sharp report of an ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Corinthians paid no attention to their overtures, and all being now ready, the great multitude, drawn from all parts of Greece, set sail for Epidamnus. When they reached Actium, at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, they were met by a herald, sent out from Corcyra in a skiff, to forbid their approach. This was a mere manoeuvre, to throw the guilt of commencing hostilities on the Corinthians; and meanwhile the Corcyraeans manned their ships, to the number of eighty, and put out to meet the enemy's ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... danger. A curse, followed by an ejaculation of surprise and pleasure, enlightened him as to the nature of the collision: he was in contact with one of the anchored vessels. "Odin is good!" cried a voice; "ha! a skiff drifted from a wrecked vessel! and all eyes but mine sleeping!" The speaker threw over a small anchor and grappled the boat. Jean was prepared; without a moment's hesitation he cut the anchor-rope: his craft drifted onwards, leaving the fisherman grumbling ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... could row a skiff with any one, set her shanty-boat sweeps on their pins, coiled up the two bow lines by which the boat was moored to the bank, and which the river woman untied, then rowed out of the eddy and into ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... way to the river's brink, and there pointed out a skiff lying at a short distance from the shore. At a signal, the men who manned it pulled in and received the two youths on board, then pulled at ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... distance up the way, a young man in a canoe, passing, much to their good-natured chagrin, a party of three in a skiff, who had engaged him in a trial of speed. From both boats a shower of hilarious French was issuing. At the nearest corner the skiff party turned into another street and disappeared, throwing their lingual fireworks to ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the doctor and his bearers. The disabled physician was accommodated with a seat on the bottom of the scow, two of the Richards boys being displaced in his favour. The Captain reported a prize in the shape of a handsome varnished skiff, which he found drawn up on some skids or rollers at the foot of a great mass of rock, that seemed as if cut all about in regular form, in readiness for quarrying. The finding of the boat just opposite it, the worn appearance of the ground, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... typical of the man. He came down clamorous to the eastern landing, where the surf was running very high; scorned all our signals to go round the bay; carried his point, was brought aboard at some hazard to our skiff, and set down in one corner of the cockpit to his appointed task. He had been hired, as one cunning in the art, to make my old men's beards into a wreath: what a wreath for Celia's arbour! His own beard (which he carried, for greater safety, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Courtney's face. He turned away abruptly and hurried down the street. He remembered the "skiff" that belonged to young Cale, salvaged some years before on the abatement of a February flood. On more than one occasion he had taken Rosabel out on the river in this clumsy old boat, twice at least to the base of Quill's ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... tacking slowly down the bay, I met the Marquis. He was pulling himself in a small skiff, and when he saw me he made haste to come alongside and hitch on. At first I wondered whether it would not be against his father's wishes that he should enter into conversation with such a worldly person as myself. But he evidently saw what was ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... Philip, while Meadows began letting himself down the side of the wharf to the skiff which he knew rode there upon the black water, "'tis enough to make one believe in miracles, my running into you! What were you doing out ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... she soon sunk. At the moment of the explosion a cannonball crashed through the launch. Cushing plunged into the river and swam to shore through a shower of bullets. After crawling through the swamps next day, be found a skiff and paddled off to the fleet. Of the launch's crew of fourteen, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... our voyage, we had to land, while the boatman and some other persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed; another time, the boat went through a lock. We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond secluded herself, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... river. At the landing opposite, however, were two men; and presently Lucy recognized Joel Creech and his father. A second glance showed Indians with burros, evidently waiting for the boat. Joel Creech jumped into a skiff and shoved off. The elder man, judging by his motions, seemed to be trying to prevent his son from leaving the shore. But Joel began to row up-stream, keeping close to the shore. Lucy watched him. No doubt ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... it as a man goes to a funeral. He had been a fisherman in his younger days, but it was a bitter necessity, in his view, which now compelled him to resume it when he was old and stiff. While he was stowing the bait and lines in the skiff, Dock Vincent came down to see him. He had laid aside his suit of black, and now ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... just in time as the shell grazed the stern of a heavy skiff, which a boy, who was rowing, had stopped just in the ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... not a few of these spies might know me by sight in any disguise. So we struck off due north through the almost level open country, intending to keep on northward until we came to the Spina and to follow that to the Po. As Agathemer said, if we could not find ferrymen by day we could steal a skiff by night. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... possible. Equipped with revolvers, knives, shotguns, and clubs, the party secured a boat and were soon cutting through the water at a good speed for a point on the island near where the specter usually made its appearance. Arriving at the landing place, the skiff was hauled up on the shore and the young men took up a position in a clump of trees close at ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... pecuniary interest is the most binding tie of sympathy of which their nature is capable; and never had the landlord of the Gethin Castle been more closely attached to his guest and son-in-law elect than at this time, when Richard Yorke proposed to himself to part them; as though a gilded summer skiff should thrust itself between two laden ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon; and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft—the very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing the disappearance of intermediate forms, less adapted to any one particular ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... and the negro were aboard, the boatman rowed out on the river, shipped his oars and let the skiff drift with the tide. ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... or rather the native genetic term, for all canoes, of which there are many different kinds, as tete, pekatu, kopapa, and others answering in variety to our several descriptions of boats, as a 'gig,' a 'whaleboat,' a 'skiff,' a 'dingy,' etc." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the landing was a huge flat-boat, that was managed by the aid of a stout cable reaching quite across the river; and beside it nestled a small light skiff. In this Therese seated herself, and proceeded to row across the stream, Hector plunging into the water and ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of the tombs frequently represent canals conveying the water of the inundation into the fields, and the proprietor of the estate is seen, as described by Virgil, plying in a light painted skiff or papyrus punt, and superintending the maintenance of the dykes, or other important matters connected with the land. Boats carry the grain to the granary, or remove the flocks from the lowlands; as the water subsides the husbandman plows the soft earth with a pair of oxen, and the same subjects ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... little more to be said about Mr. Smith. He appears in this chronicle because he owned a boat which became our vehicle on Lake Oquossok, Aquessok, Lakewocket, or Rangeley. Mr. Smith guided us across the carry to the next of the chain of lakes, and embarked us in a crazy skiff. It was blowing fresh, and, not to be wrecked, we coasted close to the gnarled arbor-vitae thickets. Smith sogered along, drawling dull legends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... that a soldier took pity on the scoundrel and handed his flask to him; and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure in life. But there is not much fun for us about this little affair. Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a skiff, called the Fortune, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France for he always had the faculty of taking the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... silver webs across the ways Carved by the wind, a half-breathed sigh, That spoke in ripples. "O Heart's Delight," I cried, "The skiff comes for me now across the water." And, as I bent to kiss her, Love's fair daughter, She barely breathed, "Good-night," And some musician blended Chopin with her phrase: "Good-bye, Love's ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... ancient black man, reputed to be a centenarian and the son of an African King, whose duty it was to keep the household supplied with fish. On many a morning he could be seen out on the river in his skiff, beguiling the toothsome perch, bass or rock-fish. Not infrequently he would fall asleep and then the impatient cook, who had orders to have dinner strictly upon the hour, would be compelled to seek the shore and roar at him. Old Jack ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... board. Lawrence walked about the deck admiring the guns and the carved and gilt work with which the ship was adorned; for it was the custom, especially in the Spanish navy, in those days to ornament ships of war far more profusely than at present. At length Don Hernan came on deck. He observed the skiff alongside; and his eye falling on Lawrence, he very naturally at first took him to be some poor fisherman habited in the cast-off finery of a gentleman. Lawrence, however, guessed who he was from his uniform, and, shuffling along the deck, made him one of his profoundest ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a certain amount of quiet humour about Campbell's record; for instance, he states that they used their "pram" or Norwegian skiff and tried trawling for biological specimens on March 27—"our total catch was one sea-louse, one sea-slug, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... were gone—not even the tiniest canoe or most dilapidated skiff remained. It is grievous to relate—but truth is truth—that the sheriff, who was on Sundays a Sabbath-school superintendent, now lost his temper and swore frightfully. But no boats were conjured up by the sheriff's ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... under, and restore again those Disgraced Favourites of Heavn, to its former Indulgence, yet had not hitherto the Apostles themselves (so deep set is our Natural Pride) any other than hopes of worldly Power, Preferment, Riches and Pomp: For Peter, who it seems ever since he left his Net and his Skiff, Dreamt of nothing but being a great Man, was utterly undone to hear our Saviour explain to em that his Kingdom was not of this ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... side until he was safely moored to the Pittsburgh shore; then as a reward for his services, presented Paul with a little flat boat about twelve feet long by five feet wide and ordered two of the crew to tow it with a skiff to the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... sewing a patch on the mainsail of his catboat. These necessary repairs had prevented his taking the usual trip to the fishing grounds. Looking up from his work, he saw, through the open door, Ralph Hazeltine just stepping out of the cable-station skiff. He tucked his sail needle into the canvas and hailed the young man with a ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... easy," said Betty to herself, writing the name "Robinson Crusoe" after the last act, as the crew of little pickaninnies, seated in an old skiff which had been dragged up from the mill stream for that purpose, took up a piece of patch-work and began to sew. Betty was the only ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... beside my father and since, I bethought me of one day when the stag, a great one of twelve points, took to the sea just this side of Watchet town, swimming out bravely into Severn tide, so that we might hardly see him from the strand. There went out three men in a little skiff to take him, having with them the young son of the owner of the boat. And in some way the boat was overturned, as they came back towing the stag after them, when some hundred or more yards from shore, and in deep water where a swift current ran. Two men clung to the upturned ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... crick We could see the old mill stick Its red gable up, as if It jest knowed we'd stol'd the skiff! See the winders in the sun Blink like they wuz wonderun' What the miller ort to do With sich ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... life boat, long boat, jolly boat, bum boat, fly boat, cock boat, ferry boat, canal boat; swamp boat, ark, bully, battery, bateau [Can.], broadhorn^, dory, droger^, drogher; dugout, durham boat, flatboat, galiot^; shallop^, gig, funny, skiff, dingy, scow, cockleshell, wherry, coble^, punt, cog, kedge, lerret^; eight oar, four oar, pair oar; randan^; outrigger; float, raft, pontoon; prame^; iceboat, ice canoe, ice yacht. catamaran, hydroplane, hovercraft, coracle, gondola, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ses. Sixteen dek-ses. Sixty sesdek. Size grandeco. Size (of a book) formato. Size glueto. Skate gliti. Skates glitiloj. Skein fadenaro. Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin hauxto. Skin (animal) felo. Skin senfeligi. Skinner felisto. Skip salteti. Skirmish bataleto. Skirt jupo. Skittles kegloj. Skulk kasxigxi. [Error in book: kasigxi] ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... being constructed in Whitehall as he spoke, but D'Artagnan had the London executioner fast bound under lock and key in a cellar, and Athos had a light skiff waiting at Greenwich. Not only this, but at midnight these four wonderful men, thanks to Athos, who spoke excellent English, were also at work at the scaffold—having bribed the carpenter in charge to let them assist—and at the same time boring a hole ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... (for my head was too much lost to be precise) remarked upon my pale face in a very alarming manner. I had the strength to cut a step or two of a jig, and cry out some ribaldry, which saved me for that time; but my legs were like water when I must get down into the skiff among these miscreants; and what with my horror of my company and fear of the monstrous billows, it was all I could do to keep an Irish tongue and break a jest or two as we were pulled aboard. By the blessing of God, there was a fiddle in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Jenny Ann warningly as the girls arranged themselves for a row in their skiff. "In all our experience on the water I never saw so many yachts and pleasure boats as there are on these waters. If you don't keep a sharp lookout one of the larger boats may run into you. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... vessel round, and lay to about a quarter of a mile o' the coast. At dusk I'm to put off in a skiff and row to Pine Bluff, and lay under its shadow till I hear your signal. Then I'm to put to shore and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... hadn't gone on the excursion,—as soon as he knew that the boat was signalling for help and that Miss Lawson was sending up rockets,—rushed for a row boat, grabbed an oar (two would have hampered him), and paddled madly out into the lake. He struck right out into the dark with the crazy skiff almost sinking beneath his feet. But they got him. They rescued him. They watched him, almost dead with exhaustion, make his way to the steamer, where he was hauled ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... impertinent private secretary had been indulging in some practical joke or mystification at his expense; but as he drew near to the Spree, he heard the light stroke of oars in the water. Pollnitz hastened forward, and his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, discovered a skiff drawn ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... same moment everything around them disappeared, and a beautiful lake, long, wide, and deep, was seen, surrounded by green fields. Fish with golden scales and eyes of pearls played in the clear water. In the centre, in a small silver skiff, rowed a man, whom the soldiers recognised as ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... entertainment; the more bold returning by lantern-light. Yesterday, Sunday, Belle and I were off by about half past eight, left our horses at a public house, and went on board the Curacoa, in the wardroom skiff; were entertained in the wardroom; thence on deck to the service, which was a great treat; three fiddles and a harmonium and excellent choir, and the great ship's company joining: on shore in Haggard's big boat to lunch with the party. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a ferry hard by the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. "Never fear, mother!" grumbled one of them, "we'll make the river as smooth as we can for you. We'll get a plane ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... ghosts His boat deep freighted, sinking to the edge Of the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees No substance; but, arrived where once again His skiff floats free, hears friends to friends Give lamentable welcome. The unseen Shore faint resounds, and all the mystic air Breathes forth the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Our skiff is steered by skilful hands, Its rowers' arms are strong, But muscles are not iron bands To bear such conflict long. And hearts beat hard, and breath comes fast, And cheeks too hotly burn, Before the welcome goal is passed— The ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... Boswell to Temple on this day helps to fill up the gap in his journal:—'It gives me acute pain that I have not written more to you since we parted last; but I have been like a skiff in the sea, driven about by a multiplicity of waves. I am now at Mr. Thrale's villa, at Streatham, a delightful spot. Dr. Johnson is here too. I came yesterday to dinner, and this morning Dr. Johnson and I return to London, and I go ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... done to the brethren he heaved heavy sighs and was deeply grieved; and he followed the murderers by their track, and found them in the harbour, sweating to carry their boat in the harbour to the water, but unable to do so. For God so fastened their skiff to the land that by no means could they remove it. So being unable to resist the will of the All-Powerful, they beseech as suppliants pardon of the man of God, then present. Mindful of his Master as He prayed for the Jews who were crucifying Him, he, a holy ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... Between the threatening Chinese and the rising water he was beside himself with fright; and, more than the Chinese and the water, I feared him and what his fright might impel him to do. I could see him casting longing glances at the small skiff towing astern, so in the next calm I hauled the skiff alongside. As I did so his eyes brightened with hope; but before he could guess my intention, I stove the frail bottom through with a hand-axe, and the skiff filled ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... said Bob; "if you didn't mind rowing across the river every day, I've got a skiff, and there's the old hewed-log house on the Indianny side where we used to live. A body might stay as long as he pleased in that house, I guess. Judge Kane owns it, and he's one of the best-hearted ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... the sound reached them of breaking bushes and the loud voices of Cossacks approaching along the bank on horseback and on foot. 'Are you bringing the skiff?' ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... had been a little awry while Mrs. James neglected her steering to wave her handkerchief to her husband and Mrs. Stephen; but now the light skiff went straight onward again, and they could soon see nothing more of the two figures it contained than Olive's light mantle and Stephen's white shirt ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Major to the Tropics and Equators, dancing their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far off, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... on the upturned keel of a skiff which lay upon the deck. He groaned sadly and held his green face between his two hands. "I would gladly sling you into the sea once more, master-shipman," said he, "if by so doing I could get off this most accursed vessel of thine. Or if you would wish to have ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with quenched orbs, an oldster bow'd by burthening years, How 'scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how 'scaped the thread a ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... blind and friendless. Glaucus is kind to, and protects her, finally purchases her of her brutal master. She loves him passionately and hopelessly, saves his life and that of his betrothed at the destruction of Pompeii; embarks with them in a skiff bound for a safer harbor, and while all are asleep, springs overboard and drowns herself.—E. L. Bulwer, Last Days of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and sail; but for The stars, I own my telescope is dim: But at least I have shunn'd the common shore, And leaving land far out of sight, would skim The ocean of eternity: the roar Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim, But still sea-worthy skiff; and she may float Where ships have founder'd, as doth ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... my skiff might brave The winds that lift the ocean wave, The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound To where the River weds the Sound, The Sound should ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the African storms, to have recourse to piteous prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff with two oars, through ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... that she must speedily go down. The captain and officers were still cool, and preserved perfect subordination. As night came on, and their situation became more terrible, several passengers insisted on being set on shore; and some small sloops being near, one of which sent off a skiff, two ladies, and three other passengers went away in her. More would have embarked had they not feared to encounter a tempestuous sea ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... and we left the city just as the clock struck nine. We proceeded to the upper part of the city, where I had been two or three times during the day, and selected a skiff to carry us across the river. The boat was not mine, nor did I know to whom it did belong; neither did I care. The boat was fastened with a small pole, which, with the aid of a rail, I soon loosened from its moorings. After hunting round and finding ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... coat, a heavy, short coat, and held it for her, saw her ensconced comfortably, stepped in and closed the door softly. The car went forward as smoothly as a skiff on a swift, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... but purpose to embark with thee On the smooth surface of a summer sea, And would forsake the skiff and make the shore When the winds whistle ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... few minutes, the cardinal was turning away in extreme disappointment, when a small skiff, rowed by a female hand, shot round an angle of the lake and swiftly approached them. A glance from Patch would have told Wolsey, had he required any such information, that this was the forester's granddaughter. Her beauty quite ravished him, and drew from him an exclamation ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the Pilgrim, and was the green-jacketed man on the quarter-deck. The boat put directly off again, without giving us time to ask any more questions, and we were obliged to wait till night, when we took a little skiff, that lay on the beach, and paddled off. When I stepped aboard, the second mate called me aft, and gave me a large bundle, directed to me, and marked "Ship Alert.'' This was what I had longed for, yet I refrained from opening it until I went ashore. Diving down into the forecastle, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... turned she to Damascus' kingdoms large, Nor to the fort built in Asphalte's lake, But jealous of her dear and precious charge, And of her love ashamed, the way did take, To the wide ocean whither skiff or barge From us doth seld or never voyage make, And there to frolic with her love awhile, She chose a waste, a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... away Bobby's eyes happened to rest upon a young man and a young woman rowing idly down-stream in a skiff, and he smiled as he recognized Biff Bates ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... those two venerable gentlemen floating in a skiff upon the clear waters of Lake George. One of them is a successful statesman, an ex-President of the United States, a lawyer versed in all the curious eccentricities of the "lawless science of the law." ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the execution of the drawings; in fact it often occurred when I set off in my little skiff, (especially in the outset) that seven or eight species were procured in the course of the excursion, which compelled me to make drawings of all when I came home tired in the evening; forwarding them to ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... man in possession of this means of impressing the wind, and resting his weary oar, than, scorning longer confinement to the coast, he boldly ventured upon the conquest of the main. Under the same impulse, the tiny skiff, in which he hardly dared to quit the river's bank, was enlarged, and made fit companion of his distant emprise. These footprints of the infant steps of navigation may all still be traced among the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mountains or clouds: a dark problem, which to this day I have not been able to solve. Nay, I was taken twice, despite of the most virtuous efforts to the contrary, from a Salve Regina, to watch a little skiff, which shone with its snowy sail spread before the radiant evening sun, and glided over the waters, like an angel sent on some happy-message. In fact, I found my heart on the point of corruption, by indulging in what I had set down in my vocabulary as the lust of the eye, and had some faint ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... seeking for my priests—my priests in their linen robes, with great harps, carrying along a mystic skiff ornamented with paterae of silver. No more feasts on the lakes! no more illuminations in my Delta! no more cups of milk at Philae! For a long time Apis has ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... "we are yet in the Gulph; and to-morrow, at break of day, we shall be in view of Amboyna." In effect, at the time mentioned, the next morning, they saw that island. The pilot being unwilling to cast anchor, Father Xavier, with some of the passengers, were put into a skiff, and the ship pursued its course. When the skiff was almost ready to land, two light vessels of pirates, which usually cruised on that coast, appeared on the sudden, and pursued them swiftly. Not hoping any succour ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... bless its western waves; Therefore, forth journeying, to that hill he went, Highest among the wave-girt, heathy hills, That still sustains his name, and saw the flood At widest stretched, and that green Isle {111} hard by, And northern Thomond. From its coasts her sons Rushed countless forth in skiff and coracle Smiting blue wave to white, till Sheenan's sound Ceased, in their clamour lost. That hour from God Power fell on Patrick; and in spirit he saw, Invisible to flesh, the western coasts, And the ocean way, and, far beyond, that land The Future's ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating) rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,—a boat of laths and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the left, through cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. He would have pressed Mr. Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged skiff, with a stalwart negro rowing or towing whenever the sail was ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... years before his death that a striking instance of this occurred. The first vessel that was built in Russia was a small skiff, which was planned and built almost entirely by Peter's own hands. This skiff was built at Moscow, where it remained for twenty or thirty years, an object all this time, in Peter's mind, of special affection and regard. At length, when the naval power of the ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... discharge of the last gun, the battery on the Island had been quitted by the officer in command, who, descending to the beach, preceded by two of his men, stepped into a light skiff that lay chained to the gnarled root of a tree overhanging the current, and close under the battery. A few sturdy strokes of the oars soon brought the boat into the centre of the stream, when the stout, broad built, figure, and carbuncled face of an officer in the uniform of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... many of our names for craft seem connected with Arabic: I have already noted "Carrack" harrk: to which add Uskuf in Marocco pronounced 'Skuff skiff; Katrah a cutter; Brijah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... and of the same deportment and gait, it has none, or as little as possible, as you see it pass before you. From my windows on the Riva there was always the same silhouette—the long, black, slender skiff, lifting its head and throwing it back a little, moving yet seeming not to move, with the grotesquely- graceful figure on the poop. This figure inclines, as may be, more to the graceful or to the grotesque—standing in the "second ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feel the .. irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... unto thy mountain dwelling, Haste, as a bird unto its peaceful nest! Haste, as a skiff, through tempests wide and swelling, Flies to its haven of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... renowned cities, of which I have heard below,—Nineveh, the capital of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleone and that famous Troy, on account of which I remember ferrying across there such numbers that for ten whole years my skiff was never high and dry and never caught cold," (that being Charon's fun, according to Lucian's conception, in conveying that all that long time his boat was in the water (hence "catching cold") from being perpetually used: ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... revolver from his pocket and pushed him down the stair, then dragged him along the lower deck. They passed a line of sleeping deck-hands too stupid to observe them. Dragging astern of the boat, high between the two long diverging lines of the rolling wake, there rode a river skiff at the end ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of rage. On the neat Netherland ship which bore him homeward matters were better; nay, while running into the harbour of Antwerp he had jested almost in his old reckless manner. But when trying to descend the rope-ladder from the high ship into the skiff in which sailors had rowed from the land, he made a misstep with his stiff leg and fell into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the course of a few months Josephine and I were married, and our home was made on my own old place. Still, night by night, in storm, calm, or freshet, Paul pulled himself in a skiff across that mighty river, and we could see the lights shining to a late hour in the little bower. He had changed a great deal, for he loved with the whole force of his fiery and impetuous nature. Pauline loved too, though still she feared him. The ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... doubtless remember that the writer, Mr. Allen, had an interview with you and Mr. Skiff, in which he protested on behalf of the National Commission that no time was given the Commission to investigate the character of qualifications of the jurors thus nominated, and that it was placing in the hands of the chiefs of the different departments the power to fix ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... departure of Rooke made for me a welcome break in my uneasiness. An hour ago I said good-night to Aunt Janet, and shut myself up alone here. My watch is on the table before me, so that I may make sure of starting to the moment. I have allowed myself half an hour to reach St. Sava. My skiff is waiting, moored at the foot of the cliff on the hither side, where the zigzag comes close to the water. It is now ten ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... skiff at twelve o'clock. If there was one drawback, it was the fact that the oar-locks of the boat had been mislaid. After consuming an hour in not finding them, Frank Hatch became discouraged at seeing us lay around the levee, so he tied the oars on with tarred rope and ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... who was nearly rescued. He had stepped into the skiff and then walked back into his home, which a short time later floated away with him. Incidents of this sort ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... as I sat on the cliff, I marked a shape like a dusky skiff, That skimmed the brine, toward the rocky shore— I heard a voice in the surge's roar— I saw a form in the flashing spray, And white arms beckoned me away. Away o'er the tide we went together, Through shade and mist and stormy ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... aged eighteen, the son of a fisherman, a young man of steady habits and a good constitution, with excellent muscular development, and who had never before required the aid of a physician, was seen by the residents of the village to fall forward from a skiff into the water and go down with uplifted hands. I could not learn that he rose at all after the first submersion. Two men were standing near a bluff which overlooked the bay, and after an instant's delay in deciding that an accident had occurred, they ran over an uneven and undulating ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... foot-fall re-echoed through that strange abode. Sound of chariot-wheel there was none. Nothing was audible but the soft dip of the oar, and the startled shout of an occasional gondolier, who feared, perhaps, that our heavier craft might send his slim skiff to the bottom. In about a quarter of an hour we turned out of the Grand Canal, and began threading our way amid those innumerable narrow channels which traverse Venice in all directions. Then it was that the dismal silence of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... and her only chance for this was to cross the Missouri river and wait for the belated train from Leavenworth. She found the ferryboats had stopped running for the night, but George Martin, chairman of the suffrage committee of Atchison, offered to take her across in a skiff. Undaunted, she seated herself therein and in the dense darkness was safely landed on the opposite shore. Here she boarded the cars and went to St. Joseph where she met Mr. Train, made the necessary arrangements and returned to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... being partly an ancient building—, and constructed with a view to defence, is situated an the verge of the lake. A stone dropped from the projecting balcony plunges into water deep enough to float a skiff. I had left my window partly unbarred, that, before I went to bed, I might, according to my custom, look out and see the moonlight shining upon the lake. I was deeply engaged with that beautiful scene in the Merchant of Venice, where two lovers, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and the major told me he should feel it his duty to go with his daughter, if we all separated in different boats. I thought that would hardly do, sir," pursued Pedgift Junior, with a respectfully sly emphasis on the words. "And, besides, if we had put the old lady into a skiff, with her weight (sixteen stone if she's a pound), we might have had her upside down in the water half her time, which would have occasioned delay, and thrown what you call a damp on the proceedings. Here's the boat, Mr. Armadale. What do you ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... we must have got off the road," announced the stranger. Then he peered out across the river: "Say! Ain't that a skiff coming yonder?" he inquired. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... little skiff scraped alongside the Bismarck. One at a time its occupants—five in number—scrambled over the side and stood before von Ludwig. The latter scrutinized each ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... bank, to the point where it enters the Argentine territory, had Francia established his military stations, styled guardias, where sentinels kept watch at all hours, by night as in the day. For a boat to pass down, even the smallest skiff, without being observed by some of these Argus-eyed videttes, would have been absolutely impossible; and if seen as surely brought to a stop, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the horrified cook rushed up on deck to tell the skipper that George's brain had gone; but, finding him in the midst of a hurried explanation to the men, stopped with greedy ears to listen. The skiff was making straight for the schooner, propelled by an elderly waterman in his shirt-sleeves, the sole passenger being a lady of ample proportions, who was watching the life of the ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... saluted each other, and the musketeers discharged their small shot, and so (God be praised) our fear and danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment. Our danger being thus over, we espied two boats on fishing in the channel; so every one of our four ships manned out a skiff, and we bought of them great store of excellent fresh fish of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of Ahmosis. Besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the Pharaoh Kamosu—models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the Nile to reach its last resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a short distance from the house. A barn of that size, Rick thought, meant a pretty substantial farm. He searched for signs of life and saw none. There was a boat, he noticed, an outboard skiff perhaps fifteen feet long, pulled up on the bank under an oak tree at the edge where the lawn met uncut field. A lawn table and chairs under the big willow looked inviting, and he speculated that Merlin and friends must spend considerable time there. Some of the chairs ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... rushed, dodging the things like a crow in a flock of pestering jays, and we really enjoyed the excitement. It was more fascinating sport than shooting rapids in a careening skiff, and at last we grew so confident in the powers of our car and its commander that we were rather sorry when the last meteor passed, and we found ourselves once more in open, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... this be who, clad in my doublet, could make away with three lusty fellows and no one the wiser? Hereupon (and all in a flash) I seemed to see again the great black ship drifting down on us in the river and the man who rowed the skiff with the misshapen bundle in the stern-sheets—the bundle ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... haply slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scally rind Moors by ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... I, your sister, and that thrice-accursed Bedford, did not, on the 7th of August 1821, go for a sail on the piece of water at Lowfield, and the skiff was not, in the deadly, sudden, jealous strife between him and me, accidentally upset? But I know how it is: it is this brat, and the memories ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... might appear to one seated in a skiff, and floating down the tranquil Thames, with its well-defined banks. But far different is the aspect of the stupendous Solimoes to the voyager gliding ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... an accomplice and clansman, who had served six months in the castle to enjoy that one night of unlimited vengeance. The owl whooped around us as we hung betwixt heaven and earth; the tide roared against the foot of the rock, and dashed asunder our skiff, yet no man's heart failed him. In the morning there was blood and ashes, where there had been peace and joy ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... of Storm King the evening boat, the "Mary Powell," swept toward them with scarcely more apparent effort than that of a swan. A few moments later their skiff was dancing over the swells, Amy waving her handkerchief, and the good-natured pilot awakening a hundred echoes by his steam-whistle of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... made straight towards the side that was nearest to him, as he discerned that it presented an embattled wall, probably that of the little garden already noticed, with a postern opening upon the moat, and a skiff moored by the postern, which might serve, he thought, upon summons, to pass him over. As he approached, in hopes to make his entrance this way, the postern opened, a man came out, and, jumping into the boat, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... enchains the wind, New pow'rs are claim'd, new pow'rs are still bestow'd, Till rude resistance lops the spreading god; The daring Greeks deride the martial show, And heap their valleys with the gaudy foe; Th' insulted sea, with humbler thoughts, he gains; A single skiff to speed his flight remains; Th' incumber'd oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast Through purple billows and a floating host. The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour, Tries the dread summits of Caesarean pow'r, With unexpected legions bursts away, And sees defenceless ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... spread; High on St. Michael's Mount it shone: it shone on Beachy Head. Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire. The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves: The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves: O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, the fiery herald flew: He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... mare's head, took her by the bit, and turned her from the spot. We set out. I clung to the cushion of the drozhky, which rocked like a skiff at sea, and called the dog. My poor mare splashed her feet heavily through the mire, slipped, stumbled; the forester swayed from right to left in front of the shafts like a specter. Thus we proceeded for rather ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... tremendous height there stands Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands: Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies. High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff: He, with his wife, were only left behind Of perished man; they two were human kind: The most upright of mortal men was he,— The most serene and holy ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of Odgal repined; for his brother was slain by Armor. He came disguised like a son of the sea: fair was his skiff on the wave; white his locks of age; calm his serious brow. Fairest of women, he said, lovely daughter of Armyn! a rock not distant in the sea, bears a tree on its side; red shines the fruit afar. There Armor waiteth ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... of his face, to hear again the clear-cut tones of his voice as he advised her. Then she drew back, frightened, into the sombre library, conscience-stricken that she should have yielded to this temptation then, when Clarence—She dared not follow the thought, but she saw the light skiff at the mercy of the angry river and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Down 'midst the hazel stems was seen The turbid stream, with all that past; The lime-white deck, the gliding mast; Or skiff with gazers darting by, Who rais'd their hands in extasy. Impending cliffs hung overhead; The rock-path sounded to the tread, Where twisted roots, in many a fold, Through moss, disputed ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... broad above the wave; The breeze now sank, now whispered from his cave; 170 As on the AEolian harp, his fitful wings Now swelled, now fluttered o'er his Ocean strings.[fc] With slow, despairing oar, the abandoned skiff Ploughs its drear progress to the scarce seen cliff, Which lifts its peak a cloud above the main: That boat and ship ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... without scorching the spectator; the quay was lined with ships loading and unloading; small boats were flying about in every direction; all around was gay and fresh, but the filthy steamer was still beneath me. I lost no time in calling a skiff alongside; then, shaking the dust from off my feet, I was soon pulling away ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... later Francis Vere with Captain Allen and the two boys took their seats in the stern of a skiff manned by six rowers. In the bow were the servitors of the two officers, and the luggage was stowed in ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... Boat Racing is the popular sport of crew rowing or sculling, where each college appoints a crew of eight strong scull pullers or oarsmen and one small coxswain or steersman to pilot a long narrow boat called a skiff or shell. The coxswain calls the strokes and is generally the coach and commander of the crew. Unlike in a canoe, the pullers face backwards, and the one nearest the coxswain is called the "stroke oar", because all the other oars watch him and match his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... black bearskin gesticulating protest against the cross till Cartier explained by signs that the whites would come again. Two savages were invited on board. By accident or design, as they stepped on deck, their skiff was upset and set adrift. The astonished natives found themselves in the white men's power, but food and gay clothing allayed fear. They willingly consented to accompany Cartier to France. Somewhere north of Gaspe the smoke ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... as he came panting down to the water's edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy water. He was bewildered by a sense of dampness in his right ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Skiff after skiff ahead of us was seen to be swallowed up in the cliffs in the most amazing way, and not an opening in the rocky wall to be seen. "You mustn't be afraid," said my sweet little guide, assuringly: "it ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... scarce again his horn he wound, When lo! forth starting at the sound, From underneath an aged oak That slanted from the islet rock, A damsel guider of its way, A little skiff shot to the bay, That round the promontory steep Led its deep line in graceful sweep, Eddying, in almost viewless wave, The weeping willow twig to rave, And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, The beach of pebbles bright as snow. The boat had touched this silver strand ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... tried to wash off the blood, and left towels and basin in the well. He knows he must be gone! It is certain death to linger. He takes his boat and rows away toward the dark coast and the twinkling lights; it is for dear life, now! What powerful strokes send the small skiff ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... In a skiff with a few Indians, Champlain tried to pass the rapids of St. Louis; but oars, paddles, and poles alike proved vain against the foaming surges, and he was forced to return, but not till the Indians had drawn for him rude plans of the river above, with its chain of rapids and its lakes and ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, 'Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, 525 That signal made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Paul Revere galloping along the pre-Revolutionary turnpike to spread the alarm passed en route two garages and one electric power house; that Washington crossing the Delaware stood in the bow of his skiff half shrouded in an American flag bearing forty-eight stars upon its field of blue; that Andrew Jackson's riflemen filing out from New Orleans to take station behind their cotton-bale breastworks marched ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the vessel set sail. This dog was sleeping on the banks [of the river]; when he awoke, and saw the ship in the middle of the stream, he was surprised, and having barked and jumped into the river, he began to swim [after us]. I sent a skiff for him, at last having seized [the faithful animal], they conveyed him into the ship. One month passed in safety on the river; somehow, my second brother became enamoured of my slave girl. One day, he thus spoke to our eldest brother, that, 'to bear the load of our younger brother's favours ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... dreamy motion, entirely fatigued, borne swiftly along in strong arms, under the low, waving boughs in the dim forest darkness, she was drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than before. Flor nodded triumphantly to her companion, in the beginning, keeping pace beside him with short runs,—there could be no fear of babble about that of which one knew nothing,—and took her seat at last in the boat as he directed, while with a long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... lest that circumstance might attract the notice of the Tartars, whom we feared to meet with. At day light we noticed traces of horses having been on the spot, and the recent fragments of a ruined skiff, from which we were led to conclude, that some persons must have been here; but some other circumstances gave us reason to believe that the Tartars were not near ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... nibble there. The cap'n'll pay well. That's square. We can't afford to try the other now, at any rate. Is the skiff here?" ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Daniel, "draw your skiff up beside the Greyhound, and I'll tell you a story of how I was once run ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Schaefer, a rescuer who went out into the flood with a skiff and saved a woman and baby, told of ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... time was rapidly drawing near when I was to begin my second series of bouts with John Barleycorn. When I was fourteen, my head filled with the tales of the old voyagers, my vision with tropic isles and far sea-rims, I was sailing a small centreboard skiff around San Francisco Bay and on the Oakland Estuary. I wanted to go to sea. I wanted to get away from monotony and the commonplace. I was in the flower of my adolescence, a-thrill with romance and adventure, dreaming of wild ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... say I. Let's make a dash for Cragan's dock, and borrow his skiff!" suggested Larry, ready to toss fishing poles, and even the fine catch in the dusty weeds bordering the road, so that they might be ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... wishes,—let us now Descend from this ethereal height; Then take thy way, adventurous Skiff, More daring far than Hippogriff, And be thy ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... reaching the woman in the swift current, while her grip was loosening and her cries were becoming fainter. Then the old spirit in John Barclay, that had saved the county-seat for Sycamore Ridge, came out for the last time. His skiff was tied to a tree on the bank close at hand. A boy was sent running to the nearest house for a clothes-line. When he returned, John was in the skiff, with the oars in hand. He passed an end of the line to the men, and without a word in answer to their protests, began to pull out against the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... his friends thus politely. Got into his skiff, the full moon shining brightly, By the light of whose beam, He soon spied on the stream A dame, whose complexion was fair as new cream, Pretty pink silken hose Cover'd ankles and toes, In other respects she was scanty of clothes; For, so says tradition, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a rough sea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Russians, Mahmetkul, being wounded, was obliged to quit the fight, and the mirzas carried him in a skiff to the other bank of the Irtysh. At this news, consternation spread throughout the hostile army. Deprived of its leader it despaired of victory. The Ostiak princes take flight. They are followed by the Tartars. And Kutchum, learning that the Christian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... craft with misgivings. And oddly enough it also bothered him to occupy a post which earlier had served not a nonhuman such as Sssuri, whom he admired, but a humanoid whom he had been taught from childhood to avoid—if not fear. The skiff was rounded at bow and stern with very shallow sides and displayed a tendency to whirl about in the current, until Sssuri, with his instinctive knowledge of watercraft, used one of the queerly shaped paddles tucked away in the bottom to both steer and propel them. They did not ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... naturalists, benefit by the designation given to this or that object in life's treasure-house: it is the skiff wherein they keep afloat for a brief while. A patch of lichen on the bark of an old tree, a blade of grass, a puny beastie: any one of these hands down a man's name to posterity as effectively as a new comet. For all its abuses, this manner of honouring the departed ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... presbyter, priest; sacristanus, sexton; frango, fregi, break, breach; fagus, [Greek: phega], beech, f changed into b, and g into ch, which are letters near akin; frigesco, freeze, frigesco, fresh, sc into sh, as above in bishop, fish, so in scapha, skiff, skip, and refrigesco, refresh; but viresco, fresh; phlebotamus, fleam; bovina, beef; vitulina, veal; scutifer, squire; poenitentia, penance; sanctuarium, sanctuary, sentry; quaesitio, chase; perquisitio, purchase; anguilla, eel; insula, isle, ile, island, iland; insuletta, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... Indian On his mountain lake; but squalls Make their skiff reel, and worms In the unkind spring have gnawn Their melon-harvest to the heart.—They see The Scythian; but long frosts Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp, Till they too fade like grass; they crawl Like shadows forth ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... my light skiff, And like an arrow flew through Fenor Sound, Swept by the pleasant strand, and the tall cliff, Whereon the pale rose amethysts are found. Rounded Moyferta's rocky point, and crossed The mouth of stream-streaked Erin's mightiest tide, Whose troubled waves break ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy |
