"Lifeboat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writing this within thirty minutes after stepping on the dock here in Queenstown from the British mine sweeper which picked up our open lifeboat after an eventful six hours of drifting, and darkness and baling and pulling on the oars and of straining aching eyes toward that empty, meaningless horizon in search of help. But, dream or ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... little further on, at a certain abrupt turning called the "lookout," where visitors stop to breathe and villagers to gossip, one could catch a glimpse of the beach and "Crazed Kate's Cottage," the drying-ground for nets, the lifeboat house, the pier, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... clear sky. Presently we began to notice the wind again. It came fitfully, first from one quarter and then another, rapidly increasing until, at times, it rose into a tempest. It lifted the water in huge combing waves, but the car rode them like a lifeboat. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... a good passage to Madeira, arriving there on the following Sunday morning, and after coaling, we proceeded on the evening of the same day to Bermuda. In the first watch of the night the cry was heard: "Man overboard! Away lifeboat!" The lifebelt was let slip immediately by the sentinel, the engines were reversed, and the lifeboat with its crew lowered quickly from the davits. The lifeboat was one of an improved pattern, fitted with accessories, such as two calcium lights which burn for thirty minutes, ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... and snatched the port lifeboat out of the davits, smashed in the door of the dining saloon and flooded it, gutted the galley, and drove the cook and the steward to the protection of the engine room. The chief called up through the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... some could not. It mattered little. Their hearts had been stirred by that young student, or rather by the student's God. Their voices, trained to battle with the tempest, formed a safety-valve to their feelings. "The Lifeboat" was, appropriately, the first hymn chosen. Manx Bradley led with a voice like a trumpet, for joy intensified his powers. Fred Martin broke forth with tremendous energy. It was catching. Even Groggy Fox ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... intensely absurd as to show a state of obscurity in his own faculties, in comparison to which fog is a thin atmosphere! Or mark what excitement would be felt as the storm-drum was hoisted, telling how the Government craft was being buffeted and knocked about, and the lifeboat of the Opposition manned to take charge of the ship if abandoned! What a mercy to those poor, hard-worked, harassed, and wearied "whips"! what a saving there would be in club-frequenting and in cab-hire! ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... such a mixture of smiles and shudders—she confessed she was very nervous—that he couldn't tell if she were in high feather or only in hysterics. If the family was really at last going to pieces why shouldn't she recognise the necessity of pitching Morgan into some sort of lifeboat? This presumption was fostered by the fact that they were established in luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where they naturally would be established in view of going to ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... being accomplished, Captain Lyster issued orders for the re-embarkation of the party; but scarcely had he done so, when it was discovered that the enemy, having made a desperate rush at the first lifeboat, had succeeded in getting hold of her, and were tracking her along the beach towards the spot where the guns were posted which had first opened on the Teazer. On seeing this, the British, headed by their gallant leader, Captain ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the lifeboat station, Condy and Blix reached the old, red-brick fort, deserted, abandoned, and rime-incrusted, at the entrance of the Golden Gate. They turned its angle, and there rolled the Pacific, a blue floor of shifting water, stretching out there forever and forever over the curve of the earth, over ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... Presidio, Lime Point with its watching cannon; and by noon of a gray and boisterous day, under a lusty wind and a slant of rain, just five months after her departure, the "Bertha Millner" let go her anchor in San Francisco Bay some few hundred yards off the Lifeboat Station. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... run for the after-hatch. I've had it big and ugly a good many times in my life; was washed upon a pile of rocks once stickin' up about a cable's length off our coast, and hung to the cracks until I dropped into a lifeboat; and another time I was picked up for dead off Natal and rolled on a barrel till I came to. But that racket aboard the Zampa ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of the lifeboat, and the women of Mumbles Head, Who, when the men stood shivering by, or out from the danger fled, Tore their shawls into striplets and knotted them end to end, And then went down to the gates of death for father and brother and friend. Deeper and deeper ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... mate's fit for his job," was the answer. "Go and make sure of the starboard lifeboat, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... trembled in spite of myself, the relief was so great. There we stood—he, Henry Lawrence, taller and handsomer and prouder-looking than any man in the room, looking down upon me and offering me his arm! I think I felt as I should if a lifeboat came to take me off a wreck—in a modified degree, I mean. I took his arm with a few rather inarticulate words of thanks, and we strolled through the other rooms, he listening to me with such earnest attentiveness, bending his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... to interrogate us; they were all courteous and sympathetic, and I took the opportunity of mentioning to the young Lieutenant the loss of my wife's jewels in the lifeboat, and he assured me he would have the boat searched, and if the jewels were found ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... ground-car and were driven to Kandar's commercial spaceport. There they found the Sylva. It was far larger than the usual space-yachts. There were commercial space-craft which were no larger. But it was a workmanlike sort of ship, at that. It had two lifeboat blisters, and there were emergency rockets for landings where no landing-grids existed. The armored bands of overdrive-coil shielding were massive. The Sylva, in fact, looked more like a service ship than either a commercial ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... boy answered, as he took her to the beach where the lifeboat had landed and where her friends were anxiously awaiting her, "you've given me a chance to quit in a sort of 'blaze of glory.' Don't you ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... again for its sailing; had read accounts of its tremendous size and its unexampled completeness and luxury; had felt it a matter of the greatest satisfaction that such a comfortable, and above all such a safe boat had been designed and built—the "unsinkable lifeboat";—and then in a moment to hear that it had gone to the bottom as if it had been the veriest tramp steamer of a few hundred tons; and with it fifteen hundred passengers, some of them known the world over! The ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... pushing and fighting their way toward the ladder. In the struggle many of them went overboard. A few persons, who saw that it would be impossible to get to the ladder, jumped into the sea, thinking they would swim to the boat. Just then the lifeboat, already loaded to its full capacity, rowed away. The people that were in it drew their knives and threatened to cut of the fingers of any one ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... the ledge of rocks that runs below the village. She had eight men aboard of her, and these had to take to the rigging; where the people on shore heard them shouting. It is a fearful kind of noise, the crying of men in a wrecked ship. Morning broke, and the weather was wilder than ever. There was no lifeboat in the place, and it was plain that the vessel could not stand the rage of the breakers much longer. It was hard to see the ship at all, the spray came in so thickly. The women were crying and wringing their hands on the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... postponed the further examination of the ship until after breakfast. Jumping across cracks with the tins, we soon reached camp, and built a fireplace out of the triangular water-tight tanks we had ripped from the lifeboat. This we had done in order to make more room. Then we pierced a petrol-tin in half a dozen places with an ice-axe and set fire to it. The petrol blazed fiercely under the five-gallon drum we used as a cooker, and the hot milk ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... already listed heavily to port when another torpedo struck her with shattering force. She rocked back and forth, striving to right herself. The boats were being lowered. The Captain called for the Colonel, and insisted on his entering the largest lifeboat. Two other boats were already crowded and launched. The Firefly settled with ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... when easy and rapid means of communication had not yet destroyed all the glamour of distance, when a county like Lancashire was as a far-off country, with a spirit, a language, customs and ideas unknown to the Metropolis; days when, if there were no lifeboat crews, there could still be found rather experienced "wreckers," and when the keeping of a beacon, to light a dangerous piece of sea, was still within the province of a public-spirited landlord. They are the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of faces would arise from underground and gaze out wistfully through area-railings. For no one born in Kirris-vean can ever forget it. But Kirris-vean itself is inhabited by grandparents and grandchildren (these last are known in Eaton Square as 'Encumbrances'). It has a lifeboat in which Sir Felix takes a peculiar pride (but you must not launch it unless in fine weather, or the crew will fall out). It has also a model public-house, The Three Wheatsheaves, so named from the Felix-Williams' coat of arms. The people of Troy believe—or ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... former cried in excitement. "I heard something an hour ago, and I got up, and I've been sitting by the window, watching. I saw the lifeboat go out, and they're signalling ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Hankos in there, which you imagined to be the cause of my desire to keep something hidden. When we planned a trip to this underground world I had a dim idea that we might meet with trouble. So I planned and made a cylinder lifeboat." ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... "One of those small skin canoes the Alaskan natives use. And it's touchy as a duck; comes bobbing up here and there, but right-side up every time. And it's frail looking, frail as an eggshell, yet I would stake a bidarka against a lifeboat in a surf. Do you know?"—he went on after a moment—"I would like to see you in one, racing out with the whitecaps up there in Bering Sea; your face all wet with spray, and your hair tucked away in the hood of a gray fox parka. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... is now only represented by its foundations and the circular wall surrounding them, which acts as a convenient shelter from wind and sand for the low houses of the men who are stationed there for the lifeboat and ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... a fleet of some seven small companies with more sporting spirit than assets, and his astute helmsmanship had resulted in running all seven soundly and irrevocably upon the rocks. From the wreck he emerged, in the first lifeboat to leave, with his broad white brow as untroubled and serene as ever. The collapse, however, left him without visible means of support, so he took a short trip abroad, returning in a month or two as the American ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... were steaming behind the R——, when all at once she steered out and backed, amid much running around on board. At first we thought she saw a submarine and stood by our guns. Then we saw she had a man overboard. We immediately dropped our lifeboat, and I went in charge for the fun of it. Beat the R——'s boat to him. He had no life-preserver, but the wool-lined jacket he wore kept him high out of water, and he was floating around as comfortably as you please, barring the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... In the hurry one lifeboat was overturned just before it reached the water. The "Grigsby's" leading launch raced to the spot. Half a dozen jackies promptly dove over into the icy water to give a hand to passengers too frightened to ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... discussing the storm—a storm unparalleled, it seemed, in the month of August. At any rate, people who had visited Llandudno yearly for twenty-five years declared that never had they witnessed such a storm. The new lifeboat had gone forth, amid cheers, about six o'clock to a schooner in distress near Rhos, and at eight o'clock a second lifeboat (an old one which the new one had replaced and which had been bought for a floating warehouse ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to do but to keep on rowing. The wind may lull or it may shift and give us a chance of making for Ramsgate. The boat is a good sea boat, and may keep afloat even if we are driven out to sea. Or if we are missed from shore they may send the lifeboat out after us. That is ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... that the steamer had not relinquished her intention of bringing up inside the pier if possible; his right hand was in his pocket, where it played with a large key which lay there. It was the key of the lifeboat shed, and Flower was coxswain. His musing was on the possibility of a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... be the ruin o' your trade. I've nae objections to you haein' a hobby; but shurely you cud get a better ane gin a lot o' thae blethers o' Bandy Wobster's. Get ane o' thae snap-traps, or whativer ye ca' them, for takin' photographs; get on for the fire brigade or the lifeboat, join the Rifles or something. There wud be some sense in the like o' that. But fykin' an' scutterin' awa' amon' exyems, as you ca' them, an' triangles, an' a puckle things like laddies' girds and draigons, that nae ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... the illustrated newspapers were hung on the walls. One of them represented a scene of rescue from shipwreck. A mother embracing her daughter, saved by the lifeboat, was among the foreground groups. The print was entitled, "The Mercy of Providence." Mrs. Farnaby looked at it with a moment's steady attention. "Providence has its favourites," she said; "I am ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the two things. This is government work altogether, and maintained solely for the saving of life. The crew of the lifeboat here are not allowed to touch a pound of freight or baggage on a wracked ship. The wracking-masters were appointed and paid by the board of underwriters in New York. Old Captain Brown was general agent on this beach. They took the coast in charge, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the outer with the ease of certain conquest, and the foundering shores vanished under each uplifted send of the ocean. We rounded the buoy. I could see the tide holding it down aslant with heavy strands of water, stretched and taut. About we went again for the lifeboat-house. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... said Tommy succinctly. "I've been down by the quay pool, and I've got acquainted with a lot of A1 chaps that have agreed to take me drift-fishing every night, and they are going to put out the Clovelly lifeboat for exercise this week, and if the weather is fine, Bill Marks is going to take Atlas and me to Lundy Island. You don't catch me round the evening lamp ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... boat, too, pulled by a strong, well-trained crew, was now getting close to the scene. So it came about that the liner's lifeboat picked up Jack, the girl and her brother. The middies, disdaining any such outside interference, calmly turned and made for ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... Roy was built by Messrs. Forrestt, of Limehouse, the builders for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and so she is a lifeboat to begin with. Knowing how much I might have to depend on oars now and then, my inclination was to limit her length to about 18 ft., but Mr. White said that 21 ft. would ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Furnishing it. The chief recovers health. Showing John the message from the lifeboat. "Waters" one of his crew. The mystery of the photograph. Information that others of the ill-fated Investigator were on the island. Reasons why certain tribes sacrificed white captives. A new expedition planned. Determine to go overland. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... did save them from drowning were gallant lifeboat-men, who put their own lives in deadly peril, fighting the storm inch by inch in the hope of rescuing a number of unknown fellow creatures. All honor to them! We would sooner doff the hat to them than to any prince in Christendom. Some of them, perhaps, take a drop too much occasionally, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... long lifeboat covered with canvas which lay some distance from the life-raft. "That will be my boat," he said eagerly. "Rose, you must be in command of the raft. Of course, you have been drifting about a long time and you are all ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... need a lifeboat? That would be rather standard equipment for a ship. Ross stepped into the corridor and stared about him with open and incredulous wonder. Could this be some form of ship, grounded here, deserted and derelict, and now being plundered by the Reds? The facts fitted! They fitted so well with all ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... "Your pal's a little worried this mornin', Shiny. He ain't slept much. You see the bulls got him right. It's the death chair for him and no lifeboat ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a pause, "Doctor Wallis and I got ashore as quickly as we could. We got a lantern and came along the cliffs. And two of the men took our big lifeboat and rowed along near the shore. They found the Blackbird pounding on the rocks, and we found Steve Ferrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood you spattered along ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the wreck has been told by abler pens in the daily newspapers. How forty-seven people were saved; how the lifeboat from Cadgwith picked up some, floating insensible on the ebbing tide with lifebuoys tied securely round them; how some men proved themselves great, and some women greater; how a few proved themselves ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... casually spun out of the past and woven in with my present pursuits? Nevertheless, I was glad to shove aside this rationalistic interpretation: on the verge of drowning, I magnified the straw to a lifeboat, and caught at it. I pardoned myself for going to the shelves which still held my father's medicines, and examining each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... in the lifeboat that came down from the space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... well to fasten some inflated bladders in each end, so as to make the canoe a diminutive lifeboat, in case of an upset or of a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry from the bo'sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... small stream, we entered the town of Settle and called for tea at Thistlethwaite's Tea and Coffee Rooms. There were several small factories in the neighbourhood. We noticed that a concert had recently been held in the town in aid of a fund for presenting a lifeboat to the National Society, one having already been given by this town for use on the stormy coasts of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... him make up his mind to win a woman and she was a gone gosling. His picture was to be found in rogues' galleries and ladies' lockets. And sh-h-h! Listen! Everybody knew he was the identical crook who, disguised in woman's clothes, escaped in the last lifeboat that left the sinking Titanic. Who ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... which picked up men were the Maple Leaf, the motor boat Naru, the Annie, the May, and the Deal lifeboat. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... bring, dramatist, your pen! And I'll tell you a simple story of what women do for men. It's only a tale of a lifeboat, of the dying and the dead, Of the terrible storm and shipwreck that happened off Mumbles Head! Maybe you have traveled in Wales, sir, and know it north and south; Maybe you are friends with the "natives" that dwell at Oystermouth; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... strange visitor had alighted upon the water, rushing along a little way in front and leaving two long, milky paths of white foam behind. Both the pilot and the passenger were drenched by every wave. They watched the latter as he was taken off, and their eyes followed the return of the lifeboat. Almost immediately afterwards the plane, increasing its speed, rushed across the surface of the ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shoulder. But he brought his wounded machine safely to earth and toppled into the arms of the hospital aids; went backward in a motor-ambulance to a receiving-station, then back in a train, then across the Channel, then across the ocean in a steamer to be sunk by a submarine and brought ashore in a lifeboat. Strathdene had pretty well tested the modern systems ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... finally the wind, not being able to get at us by a frontal attack, took us on the flank, and up blew one blanket, and the rifles at the ends wavered. Then, with cries of "Close the water-tight compartments," "Man the pumps," "Launch the lifeboat," "Where's the rocket apparatus?" and such-like remarks, as used by those in peril on the sea, we came out and joined in the fun. The horses, seeing us all about, thought it must be reveille, and started neighing and pawing ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... efforts to reach the little boy were rendered ineffectual by the two girls, who at the moment of the first alarm had been strangled by the salt water and were now clinging desperately to her arms and attempting to climb up to her shoulders. Meanwhile, the lifeboat man was rowing rapidly towards the scene, but it seemed to the onlookers who had rushed to the platform railing that he would never arrive. At the same time a young man, who had started from the diving raft some ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... murmurs of discontent were concentrating into threats of a reform party to turn the cheerful rascals out. The new park was to be a sop thrown to the populace—something to make the city proud of itself and grateful to its mayor and council. It was more than a pet scheme of Mayor Dugan, it was a lifeboat for the ring. In half an hour the committees had been appointed, and the mayor turned to the regular business. Then from his seat at the left of the last row little Alderman ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... now. All I can tell you is that it stands just out of reach of the full tides, on a piece of rock, dead on the beach and about a mile from the station. It was built originally for a coastguard station and meant to hold a lifeboat, but they found they could never launch the lifeboat when they had it, so the man to whom all the foreshore and most of the land around here belongs—a Mr. Fentolin, I believe—sold it to my father. I expect the place has tumbled ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Duncan during those wet days. He would come and sit beside me as I painted, and would tell me stories of storms and shipwrecks, and of the different times when the lifeboat had been sent out, and of the ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... me that." Laetitia forms a mental image of a lifeboat going out to a wreck. How excited ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... starlit night under the shadow of a lifeboat amidships, had even acknowledged to her the dubiousness of the mission that had taken him abroad. Later, he had outlined to her what his life had been, telling her of his struggles when a penniless student of the City law school, of his early and unsavory criminal-court ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges and an excellent lifeboat, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... under the water like bronze tritons. They generally swim beneath the surface, coming up from time to time to breathe, and shaking the water from their thick curly hair. M. Garnier followed the natives on the log that had served as a lifeboat, and to encourage them by example undressed and threw himself into the water. The work commenced. Twenty or thirty feet is not much of a dive for a South Sea Islander. Every minute the divers brought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... red eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . . Look at this, says George, in great excitement, showing him a paper. Cloete's heart gives a jump. Ha! Wreck in Westport Bay. The Sagamore gone ashore early hours of Sunday, and so the newspaper men had time to put in some of their work. Columns of it. Lifeboat out twice. Captain and crew remain by the ship. Tugs summoned to assist. If the weather improves, this well-known fine ship may yet be saved. . . You know the way these chaps put it. . . Mrs. Harry there on her way to catch a train from Cannon ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... apart from them stood a tall bare-headed man. He had a long white beard. There seemed to be some kind of consultation going on. When the Queen and Phillips appeared on the steps below the castle the group on the steamer broke up. Captain Wilson, Mr. Donovan and Smith took places in the Ida's lifeboat. The old man went into the largest of the island boats. He stood in the stern, his hand on the carved end of her huge tiller. The eight boats, tailing out in a long procession, rowed ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... saw the lifeboat head for the shore, they thought they better disappear, knowing that the minute the men beached the boat they would be after them. So they raced into the Park and hid themselves behind some ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... uneasy and instead of going below I walked a few steps more. The other walkers dropped off pair by pair (they were all men) till at last I was alone. Then, after a little, I quitted the field. Jasper and his companion were still behind their lifeboat. Personally I greatly preferred good weather, but as I went down I found myself vaguely wishing, in the interest of I scarcely knew what, unless of decorum, that we might have ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now, you're talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look at that. And America they say ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... principal lines of steamers. Each flag represents a number, and four flags can be hoisted at once on the staff. With the flags there is given a book containing the meaning of each number. Thus, a wrecked ship cries silently to the shore, "Send a lifeboat" by flags 3, 8, 9, or says that she is sinking by 6, 3, 2; or a vessel under full sail hails another by 8, 6, 0, or bids her "bon voyage" with 8, 9, 7. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing colors in cloudy days or when the flags will not fly, other systems of signaling are used: that of cones ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... three distinct and absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalled value to practising men. In cases of exhaustion the preparation known as Gibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved more lives already than any lifeboat round the coast. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... pier comprised fully half the population of Monrovia. It centred about the life saving crew, whose mortar was being loaded. A stove-in lifeboat mutely attested the failure of other efforts. The men worked busily, ramming home the powder sack, placing the projectile with the light line attached, attending that the reel ran freely. Their chief watched the seas ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was now really as full as it could possibly be crammed with safety to its passengers. And it was detained only until a cask of fresh water and a keg of biscuit could be thrown into it, and then it gave way for the second lifeboat to come up to ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... "We can wave them when the steamer goes by and they'll send a lifeboat for us. How romantic! She's just coming into the channel now. Everybody get ready ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... steamer's funnels out into a dark aerial wake as far as the eye could reach. With a gentle rhythmic motion the vessel rose and fell, while the stars began to pale and faint grey shadows appeared in the eastern sky. Still the man and the girl stood by the swaying lifeboat and talked the things that lovers say. Step by step they went over their thoughts for one another in each successive phase of the dark tragedy through ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... steaming by day and anchoring at night in some snug bay. It was also agreed, nem. con., to tow the Sambk El-Musahhil, in order that, should accidents happen, it might in turn act tug to the steamer; or even, at a pinch, serve us as a lifeboat. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... tug was sent for, by signals to the shore when the fog lifted, and in time one arrived, with a lifeboat in tow—which was a lucky forethought of some one, for the rising wind and sea had developed into a storm that was breaking the ship in pieces. Anchored well out, and steaming with full power into the teeth of the gale, the tug slacked ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... guns, then the "Little Sophy," flying her bright colours in the daytime and showing her many lights at night, is always rolling about among the boats, blowing her whistle to tell them she is near by, or sending off help in her lifeboat, or steaming after a smack ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... hailing voice. "All hands on deck? Shall I man a lifeboat? Well, well," in astonishment, as he came nearer, "where are you, anyhow? ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... known, for his mind was bent on that single purpose. I should tell you that the Trinity House had discovered Menawhidden at last and placed the bell-buoy there —which is and always has been entirely useless: also that the Lifeboat Institution had listened to some suggestions of mine and were re-organising the service down at the Porth. And it was now my hope that John Emmet might become coxswain of the boat as soon as he had local knowledge to back up the seamanship and aptitude for command in ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... your belt worked loose, you had to dive into ze water. When you were dragged into ze lifeboat the belt was gone, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... they would make the discovery which Captain Boycott had made, that the English government would find that it did not pay from an Imperial point of view to support a worse than useless class against the Irish nation. The 'lifeboat for the landlords,' as Lord Derby had once called the Land Act (1881), rescued them from the rocks upon which they were hurled by the waves of the Land League, but they had not reached the shores of safety yet. There were other breakers ahead that would do more damage to their rotten ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... and separating it from the steep, pebbly shore, are a number of fishermen's shanties, bathing machines, and hulks of old vessels stretched in a long, straggling row, while one larger shed stands back from the rest, labelled "Lifeboat" in ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Natalians, for, especially at this time of year, it varies from hour to hour. All along the coast one hears of terrible buffeting and knocking about among the shipping in the open roadsteads which have to do duty for harbors in these parts; and it was only a few days ago that the lifeboat, with the English mail on board, capsized in crossing the bar at D'Urban. The telegram was—as telegrams always are—terrifying in its vagueness, and spoke of the mail-bags as "floating about." When one remembers the vast size of the breakers on which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... more to the strangely anomalous objects which appeared at the Broads. It was nothing less than a stout old lifeboat, passing its last declining years on the smooth fresh water, after the stormy days of its youth time on the wild salt sea. A comfortable little cabin for the use of fowlers in the winter season had been built amidships, and a mast and sail adapted for inland navigation ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... I not marry the man who loves me, if I love him?" said Catherine. To her the effort was something like the leap of a woman from the deck into the lifeboat. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly and ludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to a stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he clambered to his feet again he saw this light suddenly go out and then reappear. As it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray and low-bodied, slinking forward through the gloom. He ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... he said simply. "Besides, even if they launched the lifeboat, the chances were dead against their reaching you. I thought of a rope, too. But that seemed equally risky. It was a choice of odds. I chose what ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... first morning out there had been daily drills, on every transport, in abandoning ship. A few night drills, too, had been held. Not an officer or man was there but knew his station and his lifeboat in case of disastrous meeting ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. One of these ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... seemed a Jew, sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a back-tilted silk-hat pressed down upon his head to the ears; and lying on face, or back, or side, six more, one a girl with Arlesienne head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and three of uncertain race; the first room—the waiting-room—is much more numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume of Punch, the Gentlewoman, and the book of London views in heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... his nervousness had nothing to do with fear: he used to drive or ride Cocote after she had been running away, upsetting the carriage and breaking the harness, till she was subdued again into docility. Once at Dieppe, in a storm, he had volunteered to steer a lifeboat which was making for a ship in distress, but his services had been refused when it was known that he had a family. He rode fearlessly one of the high, dangerous bicycles of that time, about which Aunt Susan humorously said ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... superhuman strength to maintain his hold with the ship pitching and rolling as she was doing; in another moment he fell headlong into the foaming sea. Scarcely had he touched the water when Bill Windy ran to the falls of the lifeboat on the starboard side, crying out for volunteers. Charles followed him. The most active men were aloft; but several gathered at the falls. The captain took the helm, relieving the man at the wheel, who hurried to assist the mate. Bill, with three hands, was already in the boat. ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... call my ship a BOAT!" said the Captain. "At sea, a boat means only a lifeboat or some other small vagabond craft. Come out on the bridge and I'll show you a ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the sands of time, We have not long to stay, The lifeboat soon is coming, To carry the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... moment later it was forgotten in the joy of two almost simultaneous discoveries. The first was a mass of wreckage floating beside the derelict in the midst of which, bottom up, rose and fell an overturned lifeboat; the other was the faint, dim line of a far-distant shore showing on ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... necessary for the men to pass to any other part of the ship, such as to the ensign staff, for instance, they had to climb over the sacks. She was particularly well equipped with boats, too: there were a steam pinnace and a whaler in chocks on the starboard side of the deck- house, balanced by the lifeboat and cutter on the other; and she carried no less than four fine, wholesome boats at her davits aft, all nicely covered over with canvas, to protect them from the sun—and also, in one case, to screen from ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... promptly called away the lifeboat's crew, and these men quickly scrambled into one of the quarter-boats, which by this time had been run up to the davits. Life-buoys too had been thrown overboard, but not one of them had fallen ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... same way, those who man the lifeboat do not ask credentials from the crew of a sinking ship; they launch their boat, risk their lives in the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to save men whom they do not even know. And what need to know them? "They are human beings, and they need our aid—that is enough, that establishes their ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... in the newly discovered lifeboat. Trip to South River. Finding the broken yoke of their team. Recovering the lifeboat. Uses for the bolo. Decision to row the boat around the point. Making more guns. Preparing new tools. Alloys and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... a quick low voice, "they'll want the lifeboat, and the wind carries the sound of their guns in the wrong direction. Run round, lad, and give the alarm. There's ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Stead's revival of pilgrimages. Is Grimm's Law universal? The abuses of the Civil Service; of the Pension List. Dr. Barnardo. Grievances of match-girls; of elementary teachers. Are our police reliable? Is Stevenson's Scotch accurate? Is our lifeboat service efficient? The Eastern Question. What is an English fairy-tale? What are the spots on the sun? Have they anything to do with commercial crises? Should we spoil the Court if we spared the Black Rod? or the City if we spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial bearings ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Fingal was sunk off Northumberland. And the Leeuwarden was sunk by being hit from the deck guns of a German submarine off the coast of Holland. There was no loss of life except during the sinking of the Fingal, some of whose men were drowned when she dragged a lifeboat full of men ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... surprised," said Dr. Jim. "I know there was a ship in distress off Calister yesterday. They damaged the lifeboat trying to reach her. But the wind seems to have gone down a little this morning. Do you care for ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... afterwards there were ropes and spars, and dark things bobbing like corks, but she knew they were men in mortal agony; and she found herself shouting encouragement, telling them to hold on bravely, help was coming—the lifeboat! the lifeboat! She joined in the sob of excitement too, and the cheers of relief when it returned with its crew complete, and five poor wretches rescued—only five out of fifteen, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone. Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... possession of the lower parts of the ship. The small handful of whites were on the top of the fiddley, and while most were fighting to keep the Africans back, a couple were frenziedly working to get a pair of davits swung outboard, and a lifeboat which hung from them lowered into the water. It was clear they had given up all hope of standing by the ship; and presently they got the boat afloat, and slid down to her in hurried clusters by the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... fit for use; and he may well boast of a boat, which, for combined strength and lightness, and especially for capacity of burden, no art of the shipbuilder has ever been able to surpass, and which, if it has not already, might serve for a model of the best lifeboat ever constructed, in these days of boasted perfection in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... answered the skipper; and he turned away to bellow an order to the crew to clear away and lower the port lifeboat, the port side being shielded from the glare of the searchlights. Then I heard him order the chief officer to superintend the lowering of the boat, and at the same time to smuggle an extra breaker of water and a bag or ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... bell began to ring, and Aggie said "It has come!" and as usual commenced to sneeze violently. We ran out on deck, dear Tish saying to be calm, as more lives were lost through excitement than anything else; though she herself was none too calm, for when we found afterward that it was only a lifeboat drill I discovered that she ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for a minute or two. When I have got across, run to Ellan as hard as you can tear, and tell them that we are cut off by the tide on the Stack. They'll bring round the lifeboat. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar |
