"Skiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too long; to stake his life, watching tree-tops for a sign that he could yet save it, was the dreadful pastime by which Bedell often quelled passionate promptings to revenge his exile. "The Falls is bound to get the Squire, some day," said the banished settlers. But the Squire's skiff was clean built as a pickerel, and his old arms iron-strong. Now when he had gone forth from the beloved child, who seemed to him so traitorous to his love and all loyalty, he went instinctively to spend ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... fellow seemed to preclude the possibility of escaping him upon the open beach. There was but a single alternative—the rude skiff—and with a celerity which equaled his, I pushed the thing into the sea and as it floated gave a final shove and clambered ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shall fall into the sea, and the horse will also drop at thy feet: then bury it in the place of the bow. This done, the main will swell and rise till it is level with the mountain head, and there will appear on it a skiff carrying a man of laton (other than he thou shalt have shot) holding in his hand a pair of paddles. He will come to thee and do thou embark with him but beware of saying Bismillah or of otherwise naming Allah Almighty. He will row thee for a space of ten days, till he bring ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... our matrimonial skiff Strikes snags in love's meandering stream, I lift our shallop from the rocks, And float as in a placid dream. And well I know our marriage bliss While life shall last will never cease; For I shall always let thee do, In generous love, just what I please. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... is it without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance. Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it. Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... supper, the negro appeared on the bank, with some chickens in his hand, which was a signal to Frank that he had something to communicate. He immediately set off alone, in a skiff. When he reached the shore, the negro informed him that the rebel lieutenant was expected at the plantation that evening, and that he would bring with him the mail, which was to be carried across ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... did not arrive. Meanwhile, Essex, excited beyond all restraint by the volleys of culverin and cannon, slipped anchor, and passing from the body of the fleet, lay close up to the 'War Sprite,' pushing the 'Dreadnought' on one side. Raleigh, seeing him coming, went to meet him in his skiff, and begged him to see that the fly-boats were sent, as the battery was beginning to be more than his ships could bear. The Lord Admiral was following Essex, and Raleigh passed on to him with the same entreaty. This parley between the three commanders occupied ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing longingly at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left your baggage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... skiff, that for a while had stood Safe on the tranquil bosom of the flood; Until at length, the mountain torrents sweep Its faint resistance headlong to the deep, Where in large gulps the foamy brine it drinks, And in the dread abyss for ever ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... across prairie, and at length, leaving Lake Cataouache on the left, through cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. He would have pressed Mr. Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged skiff, with a stalwart negro rowing or towing whenever the sail was ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Club and Boat Racing is the popular sport of crew rowing or sculling, where each college appoints a crew of eight strong scull pullers or oarsmen and one small coxswain or steersman to pilot a long narrow boat called a skiff or shell. The coxswain calls the strokes and is generally the coach and commander of the crew. Unlike in a canoe, the pullers face backwards, and the one nearest the coxswain is called the "stroke oar", because all the other oars watch him and match his stroke. The ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Doubters were convinced that he saw clearer than they, grumblers were satisfied, young men who jeered openly were beaten into submission with whatever weapon came most conveniently to hand. Dennis was big, agile, and absolutely fearless, and when he dealt a blow with an oar, a skiff's thwart, or a pole from a drying-stage, a second effort was seldom required against the same jeerer. Once or twice, of course, he had to hit many times and was compelled to accept some painful strokes in return. One or two of ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... see the Indian On his mountain lake; but squalls Make their skiff reel, and worms In the unkind spring have gnawn Their melon-harvest to the heart.—They see The Scythian; but long frosts Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp, Till they too fade like grass; they crawl Like shadows forth ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Beervat's boys; and they fell upon the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck the maid adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which slew them! Our little man drove into the press with a pair of fists able to do their work. A valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and suddenly the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough. to say, brains would have come. The Bungays made a show of fight. No lack of blood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The tinker rose to his feet, shovelled the sand over the embers of his fire, and descended the little path to the beach. The night was inky dark, and for a moment he paused irresolute. Then a dark form appeared against the faintly luminous foam, wading knee deep and dragging the bows of a small skiff towards the shore. The tinker gave a low whistle, and the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... The little skiff moved slowly on its course, as if guided by an idle or unskilful hand, and the oars were dipped so lightly and leisurely, that they scarce dimpled the waves, or moved the boat beyond the natural motion of the tide. The ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... crowds, Caesar, besides many others, fell into the sea. And he would have perished miserably weighed down by his robes and pelted by the Egyptians—his garments, being purple, offered a good mark—had he not thrown off the incumbrances and then succeeded in swimming out somewhere to a skiff, which he boarded. In this way he was saved without wetting one of the documents of which he held up a large number in his left hand as he swam. His clothing the Egyptians took and hung upon the trophy which they set up to commemorate this rout, as if they had as good as captured the ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... window of his room." He watched it with longing eyes, he sought upon the shining disk and in the spots upon it mountains and forests, wonderful castles and enchanted flowers and fragrant trees. He believed that he saw lakes with shining swans which were drawing boats, a skiff which carried him and his beloved, while about them charming mermaids blew upon their twisted conchs and stretched their arms filled with water lilies over into ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... and the carved and gilt work with which the ship was adorned; for it was the custom, especially in the Spanish navy, in those days to ornament ships of war far more profusely than at present. At length Don Hernan came on deck. He observed the skiff alongside; and his eye falling on Lawrence, he very naturally at first took him to be some poor fisherman habited in the cast-off finery of a gentleman. Lawrence, however, guessed who he was from his uniform, and, shuffling along ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... trail from the enemy if they carried that." But they had plenty of other necessities, including tea and coffee. They were also loaned a few necessary cooking utensils, and thus equipped, they launched out in their skiff once more. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... first hour, the seaman in his skiff Moves through the unmoving bay, to where the town Its earliest smoke into the air upbreathes And the rough hazels climb along the beach. To the tugg'd oar the distant echo speaks. The ship lies resting, where by reef and ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out the summit of a bluff three hundred and fifty feet high and sixty degrees steep. These sky and water lots were afterward sold to confiding Eastern speculators, and a year or two later the owner of the water privileges rowed all over his lots in a skiff. Whether the other purchaser used a balloon to reach his is not known. But the operation of staking out these ineligible "additions" to the city of Red Owl had attracted much attention, and consequently Plausaby's alibi ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... men in the thread-like skiff—the skiff that would scarce have seemed an adequate vehicle for the tiny "cox" who sat facing them—were staring up at Zuleika with that uniformity of impulse which, in another direction, had enabled them to bump a boat on two of the previous "nights." If to-night they bumped the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the discharge of the last gun, the battery on the Island had been quitted by the officer in command, who, descending to the beach, preceded by two of his men, stepped into a light skiff that lay chained to the gnarled root of a tree overhanging the current, and close under the battery. A few sturdy strokes of the oars soon brought the boat into the centre of the stream, when the stout, broad built, figure, and carbuncled face ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... give much more information. Jamestown had a church, a court-of-guard (guardhouse), 3 stores (probably storehouses), a merchant's store, and 33 houses. Ten of the Colony's 40 boats were here, including a skiff, a "shallop" of 4 tons, and a "barque" of 40 tons. There were stores of fish, 24,880 pounds to be exact, corn, peas, and meal. There were four pieces of ordnance, supplies of powder, shot and lead, and, ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... their oars just in time as the shell grazed the stern of a heavy skiff, which a boy, who was rowing, had stopped just in the ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... air to break the wave That rolls below the Athenian's grave, That tomb[55] which, gleaming o'er the cliff, First greets the homeward-veering skiff High o'er the land he saved in vain; When shall such Hero ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... with a great bote, which was able to cary 10 tunnes of water, which at our returne homewards we towed all the way from Chio vntill we came through the straight of Gibraltar into the maine Ocean. We had also a great long boat and a skiff. We were out vpon this voyage eleuen moneths, yet in all this time there died of sicknesse but one man, whose name was George Forrest, being seruant to our Carpenter called ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... that the destruction of all on board seemed inevitable. Through all these trying scenes the fragile, sylph-like duchess manifested intrepidity which excited the wonder and admiration of every beholder. The little skiff which was to convey her to the beach soon disappeared in the darkness ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... at any moment. He would just go and look at the place where they used to meet, at the tree under which he lay when she took his hand, at the spot where she sat by his side. Just go there and then return—nothing more; but when his little skiff touched the bank he leaped out, forgetting the painter, and the canoe hung for a moment amongst the bushes and then swung out of sight before he had time to dash into the water and secure it. He was thunderstruck at first. Now he could not ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the sailors, but I heard them. It was soon all over!—A rock, just covered by the tossing waves, and so unperceived, lay in wait for its prey. A crash of thunder broke over my head at the moment that, with a frightful shock, the skiff dashed upon her unseen enemy. In a brief space of time she went to pieces. There I stood in safety; and there were my fellow-creatures, battling, now hopelessly, with annihilation. Methought I saw them ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... sinking heart that he stepped into the frail skiff, which seemed scarcely more than a nutshell upon the tempestuous deep. He was on the point of asking his servant, unacquainted though he was with seamanship, to be the third man in the boat; but the latter, anticipating his intention, had made haste to betake himself ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Portuguese determined to go to capture it. They entered the river, attacked the ship, and, without their knowing how, it blew up. As the ship sank, a powerful suction was formed, and drew after it the Dutch [i.e., one of the captured ones] skiff in which the commander, Nuno Alvarez Botello, was giving his orders. The brave gentleman was drowned there, without any one being able to help him; and with him were also drowned his good intentions, and all that that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... stretched away to the distant bend, where, through the gathering twilight, I could just see the white gates of the Eight-Mile Lock. Raising my voice, I sang out in a long-drawn, sonorous monotone the familiar cry of "Lock! lock! lock!" and, bending to the sculls, sent my little skiff flying down stream. The sturdy figure of old James Pegg, the lock-keeper, whom I had known for many years, instantly appeared on the bridge. One of the great gates slowly swung open, and, shipping my sculls, I shot in, and called out a cheery ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... Bridge. A boat containing five men put off to collect the tallow which floated on the water, but it got surrounded by tallow which had caught fire, and the whole of its occupants were either burned to death or drowned. Later in the night a small skiff rowed by a single man was drawn by the tide into the vortex of the fire. Another boat ran out and saved the man, but a second boat which was pulled off by a single rower for the same purpose was drawn too near the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... tie your canoe tight to us," Cora said, as the two visitors were about to climb into their frail skiff. "You would be washed out during the storm that's coming. Here, Bess, hold this," handing Bess one end of the awning tie. "Belle, can you keep that ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... condescendingly relaxing her speed, had suffered our boat, tossing like a feather on the steamer's mighty swell, to come in palpitating, timid fashion under the shadow of her paddle-box, where the strong arms of men stationed on the portable ladder let down from her side had caught our skiff by the prow and held the inconstant thing for one instant firmly enough to suffer us to spring to their precarious stairway and so secure our passage to Ardrishalg. Thence, after two hours' sail by track-boat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... of the Babylonian cosmology, employs a happy illustration. He says that according to Babylonian notions the world is a "boat turned upside down." The kind of boat meant is, as Lenormant recognized,[738] the deep-bottomed round skiff with curved edges that is still used for carrying loads across and along the Euphrates and Tigris, the same kind of boat that the compilers of Genesis had in view when describing Noah's Ark. The appearance in outline thus presented by the three divisions of the universe—the heavens, the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... for a fare, and holding up a small piece of silver, in a moment the light boat was at the foot of the accommodation-ladder. Ghita now descended; and as soon as her uncle and she were seated, the skiff, for it was little more, whirled away from the ship's side, though two or three more, who had also been left by recreant boatmen for better fares, called out to him ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... uneducated peasant. A favorite among the Bavarians, judging from the frequency with which it is met with in all parts of Bavaria, represents a peasant in a balcony waving her kerchief to her lover, departing in a little skiff, on an intensely blue sea. Beneath, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... stream, They launch their buoyant skiff, Bless'd, if they may but trust hope's dream, But ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... direction. All along its bank, to the point where it enters the Argentine territory, had Francia established his military stations, styled guardias, where sentinels kept watch at all hours, by night as in the day. For a boat to pass down, even the smallest skiff, without being observed by some of these Argus-eyed videttes, would have been absolutely impossible; and if seen as surely brought to a stop, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... it makes 'em suffer so much that a soldier had pity on the criminal and gave him his canteen; and then, as soon as the Egyptian had drunk his fill, he gave up the ghost with all the pleasure in life. But that's a trifle we couldn't laugh at then. Napoleon embarked in a cockleshell, a little skiff that was nothing at all, though 'twas called 'Fortune;' and in a twinkling, under the nose of England, who was blockading him with ships of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed over, and there he was in France. For he always had the power, mind you, ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... knows about him. They say he used to have a garden, and raised everything he wanted to eat. In the summer time he used to work a good deal for two or three farmers that lived over at Cedar Hill, at the further end of the pond. He had a little skiff, and rowed back and forth in that. He never used to spend any money, and people say he must have had all of a thousand dollars, that he had earned, when he died; but nobody knew what became of it. They suppose he buried it about here somewhere, or ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... Austin and the whole of our servants went with them to an evening entertainment; the more bold returning by lantern-light. Yesterday, Sunday, Belle and I were off by about half past eight, left our horses at a public house, and went on board the Curacoa, in the wardroom skiff; were entertained in the wardroom; thence on deck to the service, which was a great treat; three fiddles and a harmonium and excellent choir, and the great ship's company joining: on shore in Haggard's big boat to lunch with the party. Thence all together to Vailima, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no one saw Professor von Glauben quietly enter a small and common sailing skiff, manned by two ordinary fishermen of the shore, and scud away with the wind over the sea towards the west, where, in the distance on this clear day, a gleaming line of light showed where The Islands lay, glistening ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... be taken for spirits of the powers of nature. The mountain-dweller saw them through the panes of his little window. They sailed in hosts before the Ice Maiden as she came out of her palace of ice. Then she seated herself on the trunk of the fir-tree as on a broken skiff, and the water from the glaciers carried her down the river ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about from one bank of verdure to the other and do not think of coming to the surface to float and sail in the sunlight. The collectors of sticks and shells are more highly privileged. They can remain on the level of the water indefinitely, with no other support than their skiff, can rest in unsubmersible flotillas and can even shift their place ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... year, and relate to the little Ohio River hamlet where he was born, and where his mother's people, who were river-faring folk, all lived. Every two or three years the river rose and flooded the village; and his grandmother's household was taken out of the second-story window in a skiff; but no one minded a trivial inconvenience like that, any more than the Romans have minded the annual freshet of the Tiber for the last three or four thousand years. When the waters went down the family returned and scrubbed out the five or ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Defourchet alone with Doctor Dennis. She stood so quiet, her eyes glued on the dull, shaking shadow yonder on the bar, that he thought she did not care. Two figures came round from the inlet to where the water shoaled, pulling a narrow skiff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... rapid progress, using only two oars, but the first day did not suffice to carry them clear of the reeds, in fact, at night when they landed to camp, they could scarcely find room to pitch their tents. On the second day, an accident happened to the skiff they were towing; she struck on a log, and immediately sank with all the valuable cargo she carried. Two days were spent in recovering the things, as the boat had gone down in twelve feet of water, and during the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... another man were the only ones saved from drowning or capture. Captain Cushing, after blowing up the ram, jumped into the river, swam ashore, lay in the swamps near Plymouth till night, then proceeded through the swamps till he came to a creek, where he captured a skiff belonging to a Confederate picket, and paddled himself to the Valley City. The torpedo boat was sunk, and about a dozen men were either drowned or captured. In the meantime, the fleet had moved up to the mouth of Roanoke river. Upon learning that Captain ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... The Skiff-boat ne'rd: I heard them talk, "Why, this is strange, I trow! "Where are those lights so many and fair "That ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... the improvised sleigh that was tilting its way across the drifts like a skiff on angry water, was the green box of an ordinary farm-wagon, set on runners. The wheels of the vehicle lay on some hay in the rear of the box. On the broad wooden seat was a man, facing rearward to get the wind at ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... she complained, with pretty petulance, as soon as they had shaken hands. "There hasn't been a stampede for a week. That masked ball Skiff Mitchell was going to give us has been postponed. There's no dust in circulation. There's always standing-room now at the Opera House. And there hasn't been a mail from the Outside for two whole weeks. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... taken command of her, and her captain, Faucon, had taken the Pilgrim, and was the green-jacketed man on the quarter-deck. The boat put directly off again, without giving us time to ask any more questions, and we were obliged to wait till night, when we took a little skiff, that lay on the beach, and paddled off. When I stepped aboard, the second mate called me aft, and gave me a large bundle, directed to me, and marked "Ship Alert.'' This was what I had longed for, yet I refrained from opening it until I went ashore. Diving down into the forecastle, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the woods by a road they were well acquainted with. They were soon out of sight, all but one gentleman, who was bargaining with one of the rowers to take him and his dog across the river at the head of the rapids in a skiff. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... passed, and in the course of a few months Josephine and I were married, and our home was made on my own old place. Still, night by night, in storm, calm, or freshet, Paul pulled himself in a skiff across that mighty river, and we could see the lights shining to a late hour in the little bower. He had changed a great deal, for he loved with the whole force of his fiery and impetuous nature. Pauline loved too, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... they would all behave well. He then ordered the boats to be lowered, and the gangway ladder to be rigged, to enable the ladies to descend with ease. We had three boats—the long-boat, the jolly-boat, and a skiff. It was arranged that the captain should go in the long-boat, the first mate in the jolly-boat, and the second mate, whom I volunteered to accompany, in the skiff, which, though small, was a very seaworthy boat; and I preferred trusting myself ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... wove silver webs across the ways Carved by the wind, a half-breathed sigh, That spoke in ripples. "O Heart's Delight," I cried, "The skiff comes for me now across the water." And, as I bent to kiss her, Love's fair daughter, She barely breathed, "Good-night," And some musician blended Chopin with her phrase: "Good-bye, Love's ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... surely a good quarter of a league of road to make. I found the boat as they had told me, but, the water having subsided, it was aground. I push it, in order to set it afloat; not being able to effect this, on account of its weight, I call to the ship, that they bring the skiff to ferry me, but no news. I know not whether they heard me; at all events no one appeared. The daylight meanwhile was beginning to discover to the Iroquois the theft that I was making of myself; I feared that they might surprise ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... you cannot imagine such water; why should it be blue on top, and green when you look down into it? I have a little skiff of my own in which I drift, and I have been happy for hours, studying the bottom; you see every colour of the rainbow, and all as clear as in an aquarium. I have been fishing, too, and have caught a tarpon. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... wood plated with gold, daggers to defend the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of Ahmosis. Besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the Pharaoh Kamosu—models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the Nile to reach its last resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the gods on ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... interested in looking at his game that he thought it not worth while to look at whoever might be passing in the skiff; so, once more, Dorothy slid out of ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... quiet, and a little as it were a one side, she watched the play and the people. She was so delightfully set free for the moment from all her home cares and life anxieties. It was like getting out of the current and rush of the waves into a nook of a bay, where her tossed little skiff could lie still for a bit, and the dangers and difficulties of navigation did not demand her attention. She rested luxuriously and amused herself with seeing and hearing what went on. And to tell the whole truth, Dolly was more than amused; she was interested; and watched ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the water, which was lashed in an instant into a sheet of foam; the masts bent like wands, and looked as if they would instantly go by the board. The helm was ordered to be put up; but before she could answer it—stiff as she generally was—over she went, as if she had been a mere skiff, till her yard-arms almost touched the water. It appeared as if she would never right herself again. Then many a stout heart quailed, and many a brave man gave himself up for lost; but, dreadful as was the scene, discipline triumphed speedily ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... with three hunters. By the middle of August, the rind of the birch is in perfect condition for peeling. The first thing the hunters did was to slit off the bark of a thick-girthed birch and with cedar linings make themselves a skiff. Then they prepared to lay up a store of meat for the winter's war-raids. Before ice forms a skim across the still pools, nibbled chips betray where a beaver colony is at work; so the hunters began setting beaver ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... followed, believing that her husband would be drowned, and little Wilhelmina ran and pulled the alarm and awakened the Backwoods Philosopher, who soon threw himself among them, but too late to dissuade them from their purpose, for Andrew's own skiff, the "Grisilde" by name, with three of the soberest of the party, had already set out to convey Wehle, after one hasty immersion, to the other shore, while the rest stood round hallooing like madmen to prevent any alarm that ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... been erected a number of seats of japanned mason-work, in a style peculiar to Spanish countries. There were steps cut in the face of the bank, overhung with drooping shrubs, and leading to the water's edge. I had noticed a small skiff moored under the willows, where these steps went down to ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... called a rough voice to us, as the boat grated at our beach. Auberry and I walked over and found that it was the mate of the boat, with a pair of oarsmen in a narrow river skiff. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... only time Lady Bridget and McKeith met on Mrs Gildea's veranda. In fact, Biddy, reminiscent of wild sea-excursions along the shore by Castle Gaverick, developed a passion for what she called tame boating on the Leichardt River. She found a suitable skiff in the boat-house—the Government House grounds sloped to the water's edge, and would row herself up and down the river reaches. It was easy to round the point, skirt the Botanical Gardens, and, crossing above the ferry, land below ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... am motoring down to Hampton, and will gladly meet you there. I shall wire for the skiff and lunch. Au revoir." ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... confident was the company of success that the hamlet was thrown into a fever of excitement by the establishment of a boatyard and, the actual construction of a bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement. No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had one, a rather light skiff, he told me. He used it to go up and down to look at the bridges he was now busily laying. When I asked for its use the next day, he said Yes, if I would send him some ducks; adding that I should need a ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Situation situacio, sido. Situation (post) oficio. Six ses. Sixteen dek-ses. Sixty sesdek. Size grandeco. Size (of a book) formato. Size glueto. Skate gliti. Skates glitiloj. Skein fadenaro. Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin hauxto. Skin (animal) felo. Skin senfeligi. Skinner felisto. Skip salteti. Skirmish bataleto. Skirt ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... skiff again and went on down the great river till we came to a place nearly opposite Mineral Point, when we gave our boat to a poor settler, and with guns and bundles on our backs took a straight shoot for ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... A skiff came paddling along-shore. As it drew near, I saw that it contained two people,—the Doctor's boy and Mary Ellen. He was singing, but I was unable to distinguish the words. Then there was some laughing. After that, she began singing to him, and I made out both words and tune, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on her oars, watching the scene with the eager, vivid interest which was characteristic of her. So absorbed was she that she failed to notice that her own small skiff was getting rather dangerously hemmed in. To her right lay a biggish sailing vessel, blocking the view on that side, behind her a small fry of miscellaneous craft, packed together like a flotilla of Thames boats on a summer's day awaiting the opening of the lock gates. Half unconsciously she heard ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Bertram's breast was Philip's shield. I thought on Darien's deserts pale, Where Death bestrides the evening gale, How o'er my friend my cloak I threw, And fenceless faced the deadly dew. I thought on Quariana's cliff, Where, rescued from our foundering skiff, Through the white breakers' wrath I bore Exhausted Bertram to the shore: And when his side an arrow found, I sucked the Indian's venom'd wound. These thoughts like torrents rushed along To sweep away my ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... front window. When Gwendolyn raised the sash, the butterfly fluttered in, throwing off a jeweled drop as he came and alighted upon the dull rose and green of a flower in the border of the nursery rug. His wings were flat together and he was tipped to one side, like a skiff with tinted sails. But when the sails were dry, and parted once more, and sunlight had replaced shower, he launched forth from the pink landing-place of Gwendolyn's palm—and sped away and ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... swam my light skiff, And like an arrow flew through Fenor Sound, Swept by the pleasant strand, and the tall cliff, Whereon the pale rose amethysts are found. Rounded Moyferta's rocky point, and crossed The mouth of stream-streaked Erin's mightiest tide, Whose troubled ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... globes filled with liquid fire, which would soar. Leonardo, artist, studied the wings of birds. The Jesuit Francisco Lana, in 1670, working on Bacon's theory sketched an airship made of four copper balls with a skiff attached; this machine was to soar by means of the lighter-than-air globes and to be navigated aloft ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... put out the fire on the captured boat to save the cargo, when a skiff was seen coming down the river. Some of our people cried out, "Here comes an express from Prairie du Chien." We hoisted the British flag, but they would not land. They turned their little boat around, ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... cried out land, and there in the early dawn of morning could be seen the welcome sight of land. Fortunately they lighted on the only secure entrance through the reefs. The vessel was run ashore and wedged between two rocks, and thereby was preserved from sinking, till by means of a boat and skiff the whole crew of one hundred and fifty, with provisions, tackle and stores, reached the land. At that time the hogs still abounded, and these, with the turtle, birds and fish which they caught, afforded excellent food for the castaways. The Isle of Devils Sir George ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... up from the pier. Instantly a boat was sent out, and the little freight steamer lay by and put out her skiff. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Connor Magan, as he threw up his brimless hat into the air—the ringing, jubilant shout he sent after it could only spring from the reservoir of glee in the heart of a twelve-year-old boy. Giving a push to the skiff in which his father sat waiting for him, he jumped from the shore to the boat, and struck out ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... the river above the mouth of the Yazoo, entirely concealed from the enemy by the dense forests that intervened. Even spies could not get near him, on account of the undergrowth and overflowed lands. Suspicions of some mysterious movements were aroused. Our river guards discovered one day a small skiff moving quietly and mysteriously up the river near the east shore, from the direction of Vicksburg, towards the fleet. On overhauling the boat they found a small white flag, not much larger than a handkerchief, set up in the stern, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream. Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence Had risen, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... from Boswell to Temple on this day helps to fill up the gap in his journal:—'It gives me acute pain that I have not written more to you since we parted last; but I have been like a skiff in the sea, driven about by a multiplicity of waves. I am now at Mr. Thrale's villa, at Streatham, a delightful spot. Dr. Johnson is here too. I came yesterday to dinner, and this morning Dr. Johnson and I return to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... of which Captain von Wetten had spoken. Tall fir-trees, the weed of Switzerland, bounded the garden on either hand, shutting it in as effectually as a wall. Out upon the blue-and-silver floor of the lake a male human being rowed a female of his species in a skiff; and near the parapet something was hooded under a black cloth, such as photographers use, beneath whose skirts there showed the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... rather an imposition on the public than on him. Yet he lacked not talent of some kind; he was a good hand at whist, excellent at cudgel playing, dexterous on the bowling-green, capital at quoits, unparalleled at rowing a skiff, could play well at nine-pins, could run, hop, skip, jump or whistle with any man of his years, not ignorant of the science of self-defence, and when rudely or ruffianly insulted, could repay the indignity, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... loitered for a moment to rest and watch the boats flitting about below. There went a four, smartly manned by youngsters no older than myself. There lolled a big fellow in a canoe. There swished by a senior in a skiff, calling on the four-oar to get out of the way as he passed. There, too, stood a master in flannels, with the Oxford Blue on his straw, talking to a group of boys. I wish I could have overheard what they were saying. Perhaps they were discussing the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... his own master, but he found it dull. He had so few parishioners that it is said he used to go down to the seashore and skiff stones in order to gather a congregation. For he thought if the people would not come to hear sermons they would come at least to stare at the mad clergyman, and for years he was remembered as the "mad clergyman." And now because he found his freedom dull, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... skiff, or bark rather, as it might be truely styled, being a veritable Indian canoe, made of birch bark most cunningly put together, these being so light as to float in shallow water, and to be easily removed, are for this reason preferred by ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... baptised, O my City. I come to slake my thirst in thy Jordan. I come to launch my little skiff, to do my little work, to pay my ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... thy mountain dwelling, Haste, as a bird unto its peaceful nest! Haste, as a skiff, through tempests wide and swelling, Flies to its haven of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the laws of hydrostatics would set at naught their strength. The shock with which they touch the mill will recoil on the skiff; if they grapple it they will be dragged away by it. It is as if a spider would catch a ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... cattle-breeder, who leads around she-asses for consumptives," now president of the section, and soon to become one of the Abbaye butchers; Guerard, "a Rouen river-man who has abandoned the navigation of the Seine on a large scale and keeps a skiff, in which he ferries people over the river from the Pont du Louvre to the Quai Mazarin," and four characters of the same stamp. Their energy, however, replaces their lack of education and numerical inferiority. One day, Guerard, on passing M. Hua, the deputy, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... row vigorously, and the frail skiff skims along the water at a rate of speed equal to an express-train. But the rushing of the rippling waters past the boat is the chief indication of the rapidity of our progress, so smoothly do we glide along. One peculiarity of the caique is that there are no rowlocks for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... leaves the barge where he did not meet with it. I do not know how a wayfarer, following in our track, contrives to reach our side of the water; but I fancy some person, unseen, must be left in charge of these ferries, and rows across in a skiff, or other smaller ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... coming on board just at this time with four pipes of rum, the rope which was thrown to her from the ship, and which, was taken hold of by the people on board, unfortunately broke, and the boat, which had come to the ship before the wind, went adrift to windward of her, with a small skiff of Mr Banks's that was fastened to her stern. This was a great misfortune, as, the pinnace being detained on shore, we had no boat on board but a four-oared yawl: The yawl, however, was immediately manned and sent to her assistance; but, notwithstanding the utmost effort of the people ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... surprise of Collins, then a little in advance, when, on nearing the spot where the boat lay moored, he beheld, not those of who they were in search, but a naked, and hideously painted savage, in the very act of untying the rope by which the skiff was fastened to the knotted and projecting root of the tree. Sensible that there was impending danger, although he knew not of what precise kind, inasmuch as there was no Reason to apprehend anything hostile ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... skiff might brave The winds that lift the ocean wave, The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound To where the River weds the Sound, The Sound should give me to the Sea, That ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the dinghy, and having adjusted the thole pins and placed my oars on the rowlocks, I took my seat and pushed off from the shore. My little skiff yielded freely to my stroke, and shot out into the deep water as smoothly as if she had been a fish; and with a heart as light as ever beat in my breast, I pulled away over the bright blue sea. The sea was not only bright and blue, but as calm ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... that a soldier took pity on the scoundrel and handed his flask to him; and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure in life. But there is not much fun for us about this little affair. Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a skiff, called the Fortune, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France for he always ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the lake along which the Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point. Presently the long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with their ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as Raphael fills his skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the Atalanta came on!—-no rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look ahead every now and then, and watching her course, which seemed to be straight as ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a box or a beam afloat, To raft him from that sad place; Not a skiff, not a yawl, or a mackerel boat, Nor a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... through a door in the rear wall behind the castle, leading into the open air, he had escaped down a narrow stone stairway which, protected by a little roof, ran down to a few boats on the Elbe. At least, Herse reported that at midnight the Squire in a skiff without rudder or oars had arrived at a village on the Elbe, to the great astonishment of the inhabitants who were assembled on account of the fire at Tronka Castle and that he had gone on toward Erlabrunn in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... taken on considerable flesh since his friends had seen him last, but there was no mistaking the military attitude. In the water around the sponson floated a number of water wings, tied to the boat, to represent floating ice cakes. The audience applauded vigorously as the skiff drew near. At the psychological moment, when Nyoda had her camera focused for a snap a huge mosquito settled on George's extended calf. He uttered a sudden yell, brought his hand down on his leg and pitched headfirst into the water. The patriots rescued him and set ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... all proportion to its legitimate revenue, its newspaper functions being altogether subordinate to services as a railroad ally and political organ. The late O.H. Rothacker, one of the ablest and most versatile writers in the country, was at the head of its editorial staff, and Fred J.V. Skiff, now head of the Field Columbian Museum, was its business manager. These men, with Field, were given carte blanche to surround themselves with a staff and news-gathering equipment to make the Tribune "hum." And they did make it ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... party reached the sea at last. The National Guard of Boulogne began firing on them. The prince, Count Persigny, Colonel Voisin, and Galvani, an Italian, were put into a boat. As they pushed off, a fire of musketry shattered the little skiff, and threw them into the water. Colonel Voisin's arm was broken at the elbow, and Galvani was hit in the body. The prince and Persigny came up to the surface at some distance from the land. Colonel Voisin and Galvani, being nearer to the shore, were immediately rescued. Count ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove, Briarios or Typhon, whom the Den By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast 200 Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th' Ocean stream: Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam The Pilot of some small night-founder'd Skiff, Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell, With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes: So stretcht out huge in length the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... labour and expense. When a similar accommodation shall have been provided upon the American side, it is expected to prove a lucrative concern, but at the present foot-passengers only can be landed in the States. The little skiff had just put off, with a party from the Canada shores, and got involved in streams of ice, in a way somewhat hazardous, and which rendered it impossible for the boatmen to return. The scene from the ferry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... small boy, in a small, bright-painted and half-decked skiff, sailed close in to the wall and let go his sheet to spill the wind. "Want to get ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... that was cast into the ground by Duncan and Pierre, was brought with infinite trouble a distance of fifty miles in a little skiff, navigated along the shores of the Ontario by the adventurous Pierre, and from the nearest landing-place transported on the shoulders of himself and Duncan to their homestead:—a day of great labour but great ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... major told me he should feel it his duty to go with his daughter, if we all separated in different boats. I thought that would hardly do, sir," pursued Pedgift Junior, with a respectfully sly emphasis on the words. "And, besides, if we had put the old lady into a skiff, with her weight (sixteen stone if she's a pound), we might have had her upside down in the water half her time, which would have occasioned delay, and thrown what you call a damp on the proceedings. Here's the boat, Mr. Armadale. What ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Sometimes we narrowly escaped going over falls, and once encountered a world of labor and trouble by getting into a wrong channel. I made myself as useful and agreeable as possible to all. I had learned to row a skiff with dexterity during my residence on Lake Dunmore, and turned this art to account by taking the ladies ashore, as we floated on with our ark, and picked up specimens while they culled shrubs and flowers. In this way, and by lending a ready hand at the "sweeps" ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... pressing emergency, I placed myself forward in the boat, and, seizing a handful of green blades on either side of it, endeavored, by violently pulling upon them, to force the craft through the thick growth which surrounded it. The headway of the skiff was slow, but my efforts were not silent. In fact, the commotion occasioned by my own panic became, to my hearing, so confounded with the sound made by my floundering pursuer that my excited imagination multiplied the single supposed bear, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tenderly raised his son's body in his arms, and strode out of the hall and down to the shore, where he deposited his precious burden in a skiff which an old one-eyed boatman brought at his call. He would fain have stepped aboard also, but ere he could do so the boatman pushed off and the frail craft was soon lost to sight. The bereaved father then slowly wended his way home, taking comfort from the thought that Odin himself had come ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... over his shoulder, he strode down the walk through the gate and along one of the streets of the village, until he reached the lake-shore, with the air of an emperor. At this spot boats were kept for the use of Judge Temple and his family. The young man threw himself into a light skiff, and, seizing the oars, he sent it across the lake toward the hut of Leather-Stocking, with a pair of vigorous arms. By the time he had rowed a quarter of a mile, his reflections were less bitter; and when he saw the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... hiding the pirate boat during the day. There were several sloughs or bayous and many indentations of the shore-line, while above the town there was none. Above the town the shores sloped back from the river's edge, and even a skiff on the shore could be seen from across the river. The search for the pirate vessel was therefore conducted below ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... from a ring beside the door, and into it George tumbled. He unhitched the lashings, and strongly thrust the boat out upon the water. Coming to the first of the dim shapes, he grasped it and thereby propelled the skiff to another beyond. These indistinct shapes were the piles supporting ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... to Damascus' kingdoms large, Nor to the fort built in Asphalte's lake, But jealous of her dear and precious charge, And of her love ashamed, the way did take, To the wide ocean whither skiff or barge From us doth seld or never voyage make, And there to frolic with her love awhile, She chose a waste, a sole ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Skiff-boat ner'd: I heard them talk, "Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair That signal made ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... A skiff burst from the darkness, grounding on the beach beneath. A figure scrambled out and up the ladder leading to the wharf. Immediately a second boat, plainly in pursuit of the first one, struck on the beach ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... master of the Venetian school, probably Giorgione, made the marvelous picture of a galley full of daemons, which speeds with the swiftness of a bird over the stormy lagoon to destroy the sinful island-city, till the three saintS, who have stepped unobserved into a poor boatman's skiff, exorcised the fiends and sent them and their vessel to the bottom of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... but the soldiers did not wait for the Dutch to board, for some of them escaped from the galleon by swimming. Thirteen or fourteen of them were drowned, among them Christobal de Fegueredo. Some jumped into a small skiff belonging to the galleon, for they had taken all the boats from the city, so that they had none in which to come thence. The galleon was left with a few men, who were no longer firing and were silent. At this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... or two of the penning of this epistle, Tom realised one of the objects of his young Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking in a skiff by himself. He had been such a proficient in all the Rugby games that he started off in the full confidence that, if he could only have a turn or two alone, he should satisfy not only himself but everybody else that he was a heaven-born oar. But the truth soon began to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... upon the steeps, Where'er, below, amid the savage scene Peeps out a little speck of smiling green. A garden-plot the mountain air perfumes, Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms; A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff, Threading the painful crag, surmounts the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... seemed to her at length but an imperceptible speck; but soon it reappeared, growing larger as it approached, and Mary could then observe that it was bringing back to the castle a new passenger, who, having in his turn taken the oars, made the little skiff fly over the tranquil water of the lake, where it left a furrow gleaming in the last rays of the sun. Very soon, flying on with the swiftness of a bird, it was near enough for Mary to see that the skilful and vigorous oarsman was a young man from twenty-five to twenty-six years ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... easy," said Betty to herself, writing the name "Robinson Crusoe" after the last act, as the crew of little pickaninnies, seated in an old skiff which had been dragged up from the mill stream for that purpose, took up a piece of patch-work and began to sew. Betty was the only one ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Trans-Atlantic Skiff, a certain Old Traveler, who owed allegiance to George and Mary, reclined on his Cervical Vertebrae with a Plaid Shawl across him ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... who went out into the flood with a skiff and saved a woman and baby, told of his ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... however, some delays occurred relative to the disposition that should be made of them, and they, meanwhile, effected their escape from their jailors by way of one of the prison windows, from which they managed to displace a bar, and by a skiff, in the darkness of night, crossed the Tennessee River a little below Chattanooga. From this point the party made their way back to my camp, traveling only at night, hiding in the woods by day, and for food depending on loyal citizens that Card had become ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... was a shallow, skiff-like boat, almost as broad as it was long, and with a square bow and stern. There was a place for a short mast to be stepped, but, with the lake covered with drifting ice cakes, it was judged safer to depend upon huge sweeps for ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... of the skiff incessantly, and its soft patter induced melancholy thoughts, and the wind whistled as it flew down into the boat's battered bottom through a rift, where some loose splinters of wood were rattling together—a disquieting and depressing sound. The waves of ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various |
