"Landsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 with ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... 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 and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... him from going to them if I would, Benjamin. There my power stops. You old sailors have superstitions or beliefs, and I, a landsman, have a conviction, too. The invisible prophets tell me that he ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the plains where the dolphins play, And the bend of the mast and spars, And a fight at night with the wild sea-sprite When the foam has drowned the stars. And, pray, what joy can the landsman feel Like the rise and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... none of the bustle and confusion aboard the U.S.S. Plymouth, at that moment lying idle in a British port, that the landsman would commonly associate with sailing orders to a great destroyer. Blowers began to hum in the fire rooms. The torpedo gunner's mates slipped detonators in the warheads and looked to the rack load of depth charges. The steward made a last trip ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... 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 ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... strength, he suddenly 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 ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 heroes, but that they were heroes ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 in a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of lower masts, 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 ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... bloody wretches complaining of ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain proportion of reasonably honest men. All of them (save here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all required consular assistance ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... according to the orders of the Admiralty, and in the way I think most proper. Whether modern law or ancient law makes my mode right, I cannot judge; and surely of the mode of disposing of a fleet, I must, if I am fit for my post, be a better judge than any landsman, however learned he may appear. It would be the act of a fool to tell Europe where I intend to place the ships, for the purpose of effectually obeying my orders; not a captain can know it, and their positions will vary, according to the information I may receive.... ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... to the skin, half-frightened, but wildly excited and determined to see out, what a landsman has but seldom a chance of seeing, a great gale of wind at sea, I clung tight to the starboard bulwarks of Mr. Richard Green's new clipper, Sultan, Captain Sneezer, about an hour after dark, as she was rounding the Horn, watching ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... books. The idea of your making any profitable use of them is one that nobody who has the slightest acquaintance with you would entertain for a moment: does the bald man buy a comb, the blind a mirror, the deaf a flute-player? the eunuch a concubine, the landsman an oar, the pilot a plough? Are you merely seizing an opportunity of displaying your wealth? Is it just your way of showing the public that you can afford to spend money even on things that are of no use to you? Why, even a Syrian like myself knows that if you ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well for a jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one on board as soon as I hove in sight. A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes, and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get. The trowsers, tight round the hips, and thence ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... figure to attract the attention of 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 or severe, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at Swan 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. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... have taken us a lifetime to accumulate as much money as we have earned in this year. Of course, it was hard for the men who had families, McLaughlin especially; the others were all working sailors, but he was a landsman and my partner in the enterprise; but I will make it up to him, and the mahogany hunt will turn out the best paying piece ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... distinctions of rig did not bother Martin on this, his first, view of his new home. He was looking through his landsman eyes. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... 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 up and the scene at night ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... not, after a single trip, always fond of relating his hair-breadth perils and escapes, and of seizing every opportunity to display his marine knowledge by framing his conversation ship shape, and decorating his oratory with a few of those lingual localisms, which to a landsman must be almost unintelligible without the aid of 150a naval glossary. A fortnight's tuition under the able auspices of my friend Horace had brought me into tolerable good trim in this particular; I already knew the difference between fore and aft, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Hubert de Burgh, landsman as he was, resolved to oppose them to the utmost, and with much difficulty collected a fleet of forty ships of all sizes. Several of the knights, believing his attempt hopeless, declared that they knew nothing of sea fights, and refused to share his peril; ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... twelve years old, and just stick the way I was, eating stolen apples, I 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
... their ultimate destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys or slave boys, like pages or pilot-fish within easy call continually hovering round Don Benito. So that to have beheld this undemonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute, no landsman could have dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at sea, there was no ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Arctic and 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,' ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... triumphantly into our saddles in a breathless and exhausted 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 ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... light a fire. She had no sort of notion as to how or when her brother would return. The fact of the matter was that had not her brother had in his possession a note from the captain asking him to come aboard, and had he not known the penalty for not returning a landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled seaman would have carried him to Seattle, leaving Beth to shift for herself. He reached home on a gasoline schooner some ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... 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 can ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... day she had returned to live in the midst of these fishers, through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there, and live like a landsman ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... of the Thames are a world of themselves; peopled by a nation of aliens; endless in the variety of their life; abounding in weird and beautiful pictures which even the landsman can appreciate. Alban rarely tired of that panorama of swirling waters and drifting hulks and the majestic shapes of resting ships. And upon such a day as this which had made an idler of him, their interest increased tenfold; and to this there was added a ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... the land, and a landsman was rowing it. He could tell by the uneven splash of the oars, the slish along the surface as a crab was caught, and the muffled curse as the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... 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 ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... I can imagine a 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the 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 months, when the wind will do your work ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... his 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 ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... laughed. Partly because a landsman is always rather a comic figure to a sailor, partly because he knew how I had been brought up. He had never agreed with the theory of gentility which had taken such a hold of my mother. He was as out of place in his Surbiton home as a bear in a back-yard. His ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... me 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 shall ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... coming from the short, square figure of such an obvious landsman. The farmer took ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... than the usual run of passenger one meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life, and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who, nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth voyage round that ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... now trained his night glass was a marked rippling on the water, half a mile away, and farther seaward. A landsman would have missed it altogether. Yet that rippling on the sea's surface was clearly different from the motion of ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... But, sailor or landsman, there is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! beware of it; prepare for it in time. Gray-beards! thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom, by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... nothing of other unmistakable signs that death had really taken place. Sailors are not, as a rule, given to much sentimentalism; they are so constantly being brought face to face with death that in a comparatively short time it loses much of that impressiveness with which it affects the landsman; but this man had been a true friend and comrade as well as a faithful servant to me, and I am not ashamed to acknowledge that the tears sprang to my eyes as I knelt by the side of the body and offered up a short prayer ere I looked my last upon him. This done, I returned to the deck and ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... 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, full ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tell me anything, he said. It was all mysterious and horrible—this quiet taking off of men while they slept. As for poisoning, of which he knew he was suspected, it was absurd. There was no poison on board, to begin with; and why should he, a landsman, seek to poison the men who could take the ship and treasure to port? What could he do alone on the sea? This was logical, and as he was a small, weak, and confiding sort of creature, I exonerated him in my mind from any ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... strengthening sunlight of rising morning the brigantine would not have appealed very strongly to a landsman, or even to a yachtsman. As Barry discovered later, at breakfast, Little was sadly disappointed at the lack of polished brass-work, the bareness of the paint, the all-round creakiness of the ancient fabric. But to a seaman's eye the absence of brass meant a pleasing lack ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... matter perfectly, colonel," replied Lonley, who did not seem to take kindly to any advice from a landsman. ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... a thrilling suddenness about it that appealed to one's imagination. Here I had been expecting a landsman's bed, with a book and a reading-lamp, surrounded by the friendly security of houses; instead, I was to go faring with the night wind into the mystery ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... 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 the storm, and the grand example of calm trust and cheery ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Henry William of Selm for all this sea passion might have remained a landsman, for the simple reason that he was one of those thorough souls for whom Life and an Object are synonymous terms. In other words he would never have made a yachtsman, a creature shifting from Keil to Cowes and Cowes to Naples according to season, a ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... watch was relieved at eight o'clock, even the veriest landsman among us could tell that the situation was becoming serious. We turned in at once, determining to get all the sleep possible in that ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... of the finest of his novels, which was instantly welcomed in England and translated in France. Then came, in swift succession, "The Pioneers," the first Leather-Stocking tale in order of composition, and "The Pilot," to show that Scott's "Pirate" was written by a landsman! "Lionel Lincoln" and "The Last of the Mohicans" followed. The next seven years were spent in Europe, mainly in France, where "The Prairie" and "The Red Rover" were written. Cooper now looked back upon his countrymen with eyes of critical ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... 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 murky ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... there be any need to remind you) that it is a flagrant landsman who is telling you this tale. Nothing know I of seamanship, save what one could not avoid picking up on the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be told that I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land or sea. I answer that I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... 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 yard, he would have seen nothing out of the way in ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... To 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 a ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... 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 his ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the 20th of October I trust to be on the broad sea. My objection to the vessel is its smallness, which cramps one so for room for packing my own body and all my cases, etc., etc. As to its safety, I hope the Admiralty are the best judges; to a landsman's eye she looks very small. She is a ten-gun three-masted brig, but, I believe, an excellent vessel. So much for my future plans, and now for my present. I go to- night by the mail to Cambridge, and from thence, after settling ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... man of 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 ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... before dawn sounds to a landsman! The hated early call; the hasty breakfast with coffee-cup in one hand and time-table in the other; the dismal drive through dull, sleeping streets; the cheerless station; the gloomy train-shed with its lines of coaches wrapped in acrid ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... was captain 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
... 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 ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... interesting part of the whole business, though, to us poor half-starved wretches, was the plentiful supply of fresh meat. Porpoise beef is, when decently cooked, fairly good eating to a landsman; judge, then, what it must have been to us. Of course the tit-bits, such as the liver, kidneys, brains, etc., could not possibly fall to our lot; but we did not complain, we were too thankful to get something eatable, and enough of it. Moreover, although few sailors ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... 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 sailed with his flag-ship in the van. By a singular want of judgment, moreover, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... always associated with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the landing-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that Saragossa possesses. The ferry-boat was moored to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed, high-sterned vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observant must conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings across the river on a wire rope, with a running tackle, by the force of the stream and the aid of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... a.m., we got under weigh and proceeded to the mouth of Chowan river, and returned to Edenton, where we arrived at 8 a.m. Captain J. A. J. Brooks and I went ashore, and called on Messrs. Samuel B——, Henry B——, and Mr. M——. In the afternoon, we interred Matthew Sheridan, landsman, who had died of typhus fever. At 5 p.m. we returned to ship and got under weigh and proceeded down the Albemarle Sound to Laurel Point, where we arrived at 9 p.m., and ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... a man of medium size, with a smooth face, merry blue eyes, and the softest voice and gentlest manner imaginable. Tom was very much disappointed. He had looked for a regular sea-dog, and he met a landsman, as he said afterward. But it was not long before our hero changed ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... it,—now I thankfully acknowledge, Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven,— To England I returned, [M] else (though assured 225 That I both was and must be of small weight, No better than a landsman on the deck Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm) Doubtless, I should have then made common cause With some who perished; haply perished too, [N] 230 A poor mistaken and bewildered offering,— Should to the breast of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... possibly have written The Pirate (which had just appeared), because the nautical skill displayed in the book was such as only a sailor could possess. Cooper maintained, on the contrary, that The Pirate was the work of a landsman; and to prove it he declared that he would write a sea story as it should be written; that is, with understanding as well as with imagination. The Pilot was the result.] but it gave pleasure to a multitude of readers, and it amazed critics by showing that the lonely sea could be a place ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... 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 young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... 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; geophilous^; ripicolous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pitying look on the ignorant landsman. "I could tell you that, sir," he said, in a tone of lofty condescension, ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... he's got," remarked Buzzby. "Before I'd go to sea with a first mate who jawed like that I'd be a landsman. Don't ever you git to talk too much, Master Fred, wotever ye do. My maxim is—and it has served me through life, uncommon,—'Keep your weather-eye open and your tongue housed 'xcept when you've got occasion to use it.' ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... have borne the burthen cheerfully," put in Roswell Gardiner, "to have been a little more comfortable. I never knew a person, seaman or landsman, who was ever the worse for having things snug about him, and for holding on to the better end of his cheer, as long as ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at a landsman's fears, the Admiral donned dressing gown and slippers and shuffled up to the decks. A pale moon had broken through the ragged fog wrack, and through the white light they plainly saw mountainous breakers straight ahead. Walker shouted to let the anchor go and drive to the wind. Above the roar ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... Though the 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 quays, A pinnace ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... longing in the very sound of the "Ays?" and brief inquiries by which he encouraged 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 ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was spare harpooner. We were coming out of the ice-pack on our way home, with head winds and a week's southerly gale, when we picked up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man on her—a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder and had made for the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all drowned. Well, we took him on board, this man, and he and the skipper had some long talks in ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it by halves; we must use it as proceeding from Him who has also given us Revelation; and to be ever interrupting its processes, and diverting its attention by objections brought from a higher knowledge, is parallel to a landsman's dismay at the changes in the course of a vessel on which he has deliberately embarked, and argues surely some distrust either in the powers of Reason on the one hand, or the certainty of Revealed Truth ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... work went on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man once a day. They treated me with every respect, and I had not, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... black ones on the left. Of course it was necessary for the pilot to bear this in mind if he were called upon to take the privateer through there in a hurry, or on a dark night when the wind was blowing strongly. To a landsman this may seem like a very small thing, but it was enough to insure the destruction of any vessel whose commander was so daring as to try to follow in Captain Beardsley's lead. More than that, Crooked Inlet was not marked upon any government ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... 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
... readily 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
... 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 cachelot, or sperm-whale, which would, he thinks, be very ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the command of Captain Brewis—a most capable and courteous officer, but a strict disciplinarian. To a landsman, his control of the various ships and his forethought in obtaining supplies seemed little short of marvellous. I had the good fortune to be associated with Captain Brewis on the passage from Colombo ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... 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 anchor. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... When the fog lifts the 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
... Taffril, "I 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 of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... on deck—a nearly impossible feat for any landsman, even for one so strong and active as Ishmael was, to accomplish with safety to life and limb, for the ship was now fearfully pitched from side to side, and wallowing among ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... fog in itself appear to her very formidable. To be sure, she had never known a thicker one; but the Lord Proprietor (saving his presence) had probably exaggerated its terror. He was—let this excuse be made for him—a landsman, comparatively ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in making a fog-bound harbor will see a buoy through a slight shift in fog, while a landsman ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... Peter," said the captain, more exultant than ever, "you shall see an unveiling! It is not often given to a lad like you, a landsman, to behold such a dramatic act at sea, a scene so powerful and complete that it might have been devised by one of the great Elizabethans! ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... said the person who entered, a strongly-built man with a bushy black beard and a sunburnt countenance, the sinister expression of which was ill-calculated to win confidence, and whose semi-nautical costume made it doubtful whether he was a landsman or sailor. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... little to tell that I am allowed to tell you. The technique of submarine-chasing and dodging would be dry reading to a landsman. It is a very curious duty in that it would be positively monotonous, were it not for the possibility of being hurled into eternity the next minute. I am in very good health and wholly free from ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... 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, with damp weather or rain. This may all ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... various as the seas 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 on faith, and rollicks along with him, bewildered, possibly, but trusting and happy. And Clark ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... been foiled in this attempt, and being completely wetted, he again got below and went to bed. In this state of the weather the seamen had to move about the necessary or indispensable duties of the ship with the most cautious use both of hands and feet, while it required all the art of the landsman to keep within the precincts of his bed. The writer even found himself so much tossed about that it became necessary, in some measure, to shut himself in bed, in order to avoid being thrown upon the floor. Indeed, such was the motion of the ship that ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the harbor we were joined by two diminutive Japanese destroyers which were to convoy us. The menace of the submarine being particularly felt in the Adriatic, the transports travelled only by night during the first part of the voyage. To a landsman it was incomprehensible how it was possible for us to pursue our zigzag course in the inky blackness and avoid collisions, particularly when it was borne in mind that our ship was English and our convoyers were ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... will see that this is the ejaculation of a tired landsman; one might say, of a tired scholar, who was glad that even the short voyage was at an end. Some of the pilots supposed that the distance which they had run was eight hundred leagues from Ferro; others thought it was seven hundred and eighty. As the light increased, there ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... suggested that the machinery controlling it had grown sluggish with the years. Sssuri, perfectly at home, darted out as soon as the opening was large enough to afford him an exit. And his thought came back to reassure the more clumsy landsman. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... idea of the "perils of the sea." To him, a railway journey, short or long, appears an infinitely more terrible and risky undertaking than a voyage half round the globe; and he will enumerate the various dangers to which a landsman is exposed as vastly in excess of those which may ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... transition. The balloon is to be 100 feet in diameter, giving it a net ascending power of 25,000 lbs." It was further stated that the crew would consist of three persons, including a sea navigator, and a scientific landsman. The specifications for the transatlantic vessel were also to include a seaworthy boat in place of the ordinary car. The sum requisite for this enterprise was, at the time, not realised; but it should be mentioned that several ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his hat, which was also encircled by a 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 in the stocks. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... youngsters were not easily frightened, and Jack Cockrell, the landsman, was confident that wind and tide would change to send the little raft shoreward. So tranquil was the sea that they rode secure and dry upon the cabin hatch which was buoyed by the two short spars. Joe Hawkridge was silent with foreboding ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the shelter of the roundhouse, I remained on deck, observing the weather phenomena, and the skill, certainty, celerity, and effect with which the crew carried out the orders of the captain and West. It was a strange and terrible experience for a landsman, even one who had seen so much of the sea and seamanship as I had. At the moment of a certain difficult manoeuvre, four men had to climb to the crossbars of the fore-mast in order to reef the mainsail. The first who sprang to the ratlines was Hunt. The second was Martin ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... river to the sea. He was to note the position of any mines, to prepare the way for trade with the Indians, and to find out from travel or enquiry whether there was a water passage through the continent. Two white men (a sailor and a landsman) were sent in Hearne's service. He had as guides an Indian chief, Chawchinahaw, with a small band of his followers. On November 6, 1769, the little party set out, honoured by a salute of seven guns from the huge fortress of Fort Prince of Wales, the massive ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... Captain drawing a deep breath. "This way, if your Highness pleases. There is a rope ladder, which is sometimes a little unsteady for a landsman, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... 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
... that some of your friends have to seize what opportunity they can of seeing you in your own quarters when you are in port. For though a ship in dock is a ship fettered and broken of much of her life and meaning, yet in the captain's cabin the landsman feels something of that fine, faithful, and rigorous way of life. It is a hard life, he knows; a life of stringent seriousness, of heavy responsibilities: and yet it is a life for which we are fool enough to speak the fool's word of envy. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... 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 ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... had been on board some time Mr. David Sproat, the British Commissary of prisoners, came on board; all the prisoners were ordered aft; the roll was called and as each man passed him Mr. Sproat would ask, 'Are you a seaman?' The answer was 'Landsman, landsman.' There were ten landsmen to one answer of half seaman. When the roll was finished Mr. Sproat said to our sea officers, 'Gentlemen, how do you make out at sea, for the most ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge |
