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More "Oar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assistance to Marmora, which was then besieged by the Moors. These galleys struck on a shoal, when the Moors seized all the people on board, making captives of the Christians and setting at liberty all the Moors, who were chained to the oar; as for the Gypsy galley-slaves whom they found amongst these last, they did not make them slaves, but received them as people friendly to them, and at their devotion; which matter ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... to his great annoyance, his oar stuck fast in the oar-lock, and he straightway did that very unsailorly thing known as ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... could get hold of an oar or two, or lower down a grating, and hold on by that till ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... putting in an oar," the young man hastened to say. "The plan was entirely Mr. Spence's. I am simply working out some ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... her oar, taking most unguardedly a privilege of relationship. "Of course, you are the best judge of how you feel yourself, Aunt Caroline, but we are told there are some steps to ascend when we get there—and you know ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... steering oar and was trying to hold the longboat into the wind. He had stood there since sundown, huge and untiring, legs braced and the bucking wood cradled in his arms. More than human he seemed, there under the icicle loom of the stern-post, his gray hair and ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not escape, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor, if we had, could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar toward the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... had slipped off his shoes while still at his oar, working off first one shoe and then the other with his foot. It was so late in the evening that not a single man in the crew was in the regulation bathing-suit, all were more or less dressed. Eric's chum, a chap nicknamed the "Eel" because of his curious way ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... river, and with the aid of the family rockaway the entire party were at the boat-house before the sun had passed much beyond the meridian. Burt, from his intimate knowledge of the channel, acted as pilot, and was jubilant over the fact that Amy consented to take an oar with him and receive a lesson in rowing. Mrs. Marvin held the tiller-ropes, and the doctor was to use a pair of oars when requested to do so. Webb and Leonard took charge of the larger boat, of which Johnnie, as hostess, was ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... away the fact that he had done things. They were large, broad; the knuckles heavy; the palms calloused by something rougher than oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the most fascinating thing in the world to watch these daring Argonauts rush the rapids, to speculate whether or not they would get through. The stroke of an oar, a few feet to right or left, meant unspeakable calamity. Poor souls! Their faces of utter despair as they landed dripping from the water and saw their precious goods disappearing in the angry foam would have moved ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... for that very reason are called preparations: because they have to be made ready beforehand [aparejados] many days, and even years. Accordingly, not only should the arms be ready, but the soldiers experienced in and accustomed to them; the galley not only finished, but the rower skilful at the oar; the food collected; and even the money, which is the sinew of war, ready and assigned for the expenses of war—in order that the enemy, who spies on all our actions, may see how well prepared and equipped we are, and be restrained and intimidated. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... a few months ago on the Thames with the oar The 'Varsities met in a contest of strength, 7 to 2 were the odds that the Dark Blues would score A win, which they did—by a lucky half-length: And last week, when the thousands assembled at Lord's To see Cambridge win by an innings—at Cricket's Great luck they're ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... boys had no alternative but to obey their cousin's demand. Jack took the second oar, while Valentine steered. Raymond was ready enough now for hard work, and pulled away with all his might, evidently wishing to escape as fast as possible from the neighbourhood of ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... I'll get 'em!" declared the old salt. "Come on," he called to Mr. Bunn. "You look like you could handle an oar," and he started toward a dory that was drawn up on ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... walked aft to the taffrail, in order to make certain of the state of things. Just as I reached the stern, Sennit was encouraging the men to "give way" with the oar. I saw that he had six of his people with him, and no doubt six of his best men—the boldest and most active being always the most forward on such occasions. There was no time to be lost; and I turned to look for Marble. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... side with my children and got in the boat there were no seamen in it. Then came a few men, but there were oars with no one to use them. The boat had been filled with passengers, and there was nothing else for me to do but to take an oar. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... Spaniard, who was the constructing engineer of the ships of the Dey, armed himself with a pole, and commenced battering us with blows. But immediately a Genoese seaman, mounted on a neighbouring vessel, armed himself with an oar, and struck our assailant both with edge and point. During this animated combat we managed to land without any opposition. We had conceived a singular idea of the manner in which the police act on the coast ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Oswald's blood: the alternative they adopted was perhaps not more merciful—although a common doom in those times. They selected a crazy worm-eaten boat, and sent the criminal to sea, without sail, oar, or rudder, with a loaf of bread and cruse of water, the wind blowing freshly ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... he did not soon recover. One of his oars had slipped overboard without his notice, and the other might have gone after it, if his companion had not reminded him where he was, and what he ought to do. Paddling the boat around with one oar, he recovered the other; but he had no clear idea of the purpose for which such implements were intended, and he permitted the boat to drift with the tide, while he gave himself up to the consideration of the difficult and trying question which the conduct ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... ships are coming out of the east, and the waves glide away at their wake in widening glassy hues. How they speed! How they speed, without oar or sail! ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... other way, intensely brilliant points of light appear and disappear. Behind a boat rowed against the current two widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated V, stretch apart and glitter, and every dip of the oars and the slippery oar-blades themselves, as they rise out of the water, reflect the sunshine. The boat appears but to touch the surface, instead of sinking into it, for the water is transparent, and the eye can see ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the tiller, allowing the raft to rise and fall on the waves. The wind being aft, and the sail square, all he had to do was to keep his oar in the centre. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... hours we tossed about, while the chief held the steering-oar and his men paddled through a welter of jeweled color that threatened momentarily to toss us on the rocks. If we smashed on them we were dead men, for even had we been able to climb them the high tide would have drowned us against the wall of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... trying to his spirits, that he felt a long walk necessary to his composure; and as there is a great deal in the influence of harmonious associations, he chose, for the scene of this walk, his old neighbourhood, down among the mast, oar, and block makers, ship-biscuit bakers, coal-whippers, pitch-kettles, sailors, canals, docks, swing-bridges, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... said Douglas. "Row as if your lives depended on each stroke of the oar; for ere five minutes the skiff will be out ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... acquainted with the use of domestic animals, farming implements, carts, and yokes; they were also possessed of boats, the rudder, oars, but were unacquainted with the movement of vessels by sails. These conclusions seem to be established by the facts that words equivalent to boat, rudder, oar, are common to the languages of the offshoots of the stock, though located very widely asunder; but those for mast and sails are of special invention, and differ ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... girls against three rough men. In spite of all this, they decided in the end to go on. Pushing the boat into the sea they rowed out a few fathoms, then set the sail and bore away before the brisk breeze. The fact that the oar-locks, which were mere wooden pegs, were worn smooth and shiny, told that the boat had not ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... but in the face of such sudden and unlooked-for danger her courage failed her. The pretty rose-bloom died away from her face, and her beautiful blue eyes expanded wide with terror. She caught her breath with a sob, and, seizing the oar with two soft, childish hands, made a desperate attempt to turn the boat. The current resisted her weak effort, snapping the oar in twain like a slender twig and whirling ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... the farther shore Half pants, half whistles, in her draught; The cadence of a creaking oar Falls drowsily; a corded raft Creeps slowly in the noonday gleam, And wheresoe'er a shadow sleeps The men lie by, or half a-dream, Stand leaning at ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... At long intervals, the warning cry of a belated gondolier was just audible, as he turned the corner of a distant canal, and called to invisible boats which might be approaching him in the darkness. Now and then, the nearer dip of an oar in the water told of the viewless passage of other gondolas bringing guests back to the hotel. Excepting these rare sounds, the mysterious night-silence of Venice was literally the silence ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... pirates were hanged there. It was the first convenient place for inbound ships to dispose of this dirty, deep-sea cargo. Doubtless hereabout the lanes and building-tops were crowded with an idle throng as on a holiday, and wherries to the bankside and the play paused with suspended oar for a sight of the happy festival. Did Hamlet wait upon this ghastly prologue? Shakespeare himself, unplayed script in hand, mused how tragedy and farce go hand in hand. In those golden days with which our comedy concerns itself, a gibbet ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... sight so gladsome to the eyes of friends? is it not that the gallant ship sails so swiftly? And why is it that, for all their crowding, the ship's company [9] cause each other no distress? Simply that there, as you may see them, they sit in order; in order bend to the oar; in order recover the stroke; in order step on board; in order disembark. But disorder is, it seems to me, precisely as though a man who is a husbandman should stow away [10] together in one place wheat and barley and pulse, and by and by when he has need of barley meal, or wheaten flour, ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... stalwart spirit of those men who were made absolute pioneers by the ash heap of 1906. Some of these have gone to their last accounting, but for those who are still serving, and still tugging at the oar, there remains but to guard the heritage which they bequeathed - to bring upon the results of their work a ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... as of Our Mannor of East Greenwich, in Kent, in free and common Soccage, and not in Capite, or by Knights Service, yielding and paying yearly to Us, Our Heirs and Successors, for the same, the fourth Part of all Goods and Silver Oar, which within the Limits hereby Granted, shall from Time to Time, happen to be found, over and besides the Yearly Rent of Twenty Marks and the fourth part of the Gold and Silver Oar, in and by the said recited Letters Patents reserved ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... only for a few months in St Andrews in 1547, when the castle capitulated to the foreign fleet, and he and his companions were flung into the French galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at the oar under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and the heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count the cost of the choice so recently made. It is a tribute to his constancy that men chiefly remember ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... retreating; until, at length, we got into an angry controversy, which the cook, who was in the bow of the boat, attempted to end by cutting the anchor-rope. As he was drawing his knife to execute this purpose, I swiftly lifted an oar, and, with a single blow, laid him senseless in the bottom of the canoe. By this time the schooner was within pistol-shot; and, as she passed with a three-knot breeze, the captain, who had witnessed the scene, threw a grappling-iron into our skiff, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... West Coast. Presently she made her appearance, a sprightly young woman about 26, and we all started in their canoe for their home at Skidegate, where I had been invited. En route while passing a pipe from the chief to his wife, my oar caught in the water, giving the canoe a sudden lurch which would have been quite alarming to most feminine nerves, but not to the Princess for she laughed so heartily over the mishap, that I saw a smile spread over the big face of the old chief. An hour brought us to the broad ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... pow'rs are claim'd, new pow'rs are still bestow'd, Till rude resistance lops the spreading god; The daring Greeks deride the martial show, And heap their valleys with the gaudy foe; Th' insulted sea, with humbler thoughts, he gains; A single skiff to speed his flight remains; Th' incumber'd oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast Through purple billows and a floating host. The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour, Tries the dread summits of Caesarean pow'r, With unexpected legions bursts away, And sees defenceless realms receive his sway;— Short sway! ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... ridge, 'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig, His motley household came.—Not last nor least, Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea Of Venice had so ably, zealously Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away To follow through the world; who without stain Had worn so long that honourable badge[63], The gondolier's, in a Patrician House Arguing unlimited trust.—Not last nor least, Thou, though declining in thy beauty and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... considerable multitude of spectators. After a time he descended upon a common, where he left the cat nearly dead with cold, ascended, and continued his voyage. He says, in the narrative which he has left, that he descended by means of the one oar which was left to him, the other having fallen over; but, as he states that, in order to rise again, he threw over the remainder of his ballast, it is natural to believe that the descent of the balloon was caused by the loss of gas, because, if he descended ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... that Drake would find a way to bring the ship to them. As soon as the raft was built, a mast was stepped in her, on which a biscuit sack was hoisted for a sail. A young tree, working in a crutch, served them as a steering oar. The four men went aboard, a line was laid out to the bar, and the curious raft was hauled off into the sea. The last of the storm of the night before was still roaring up aloft. A high sea was running, and the wind blew strong from the west. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... tell him to insist on being relieved immediately. Of course, Skinner, Matt will get busy right away, looking for the right skipper to relieve Captain Curtis—and about that time the president emeritus will shove in his oar and ball things up. Every doggoned skipper Matt recommends for the job is going to have his application vetoed by ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Paul Desjardins, from de parish of St. Germain, He was long way on de fronte side, so he's fallin' overboar' Couldn't swim at all de man say, but dat's more ma frien', I can say, Any how he's look lak drownin', so we'll t'row him two t'ree oar. ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... moonlight between the grey-blue sea and lucid hills. Stars stand on all the peaks, and twinkle, or keep gliding, as the boat moves, down the craggy sides. Stars are mirrored on the marble of the sea, until one knows not whether the oar has struck sparks from a star image or has scattered ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... negro peacefully sleeping in the stern, with head pillowed on his arm. Herman awoke him with a German oath, and the way the fellow sprang up, his eyes popping open, was evidence of the treatment he was accustomed to. A hasty application of an oar brought the boat's nose to the bank, and I was thrust in unceremoniously, the three others following, each man shipping an oar into the rowlocks. Herman alone remained on shore, scattering the embers ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... oar put out, in an attempt to steer the boat into the cove. But in a moment it was swept away, and she drove on ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... At the age of fourteen he became a sailor, knocking about the world in the roughest manner, half the time practically a pirate. In an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took fire and he had to leap overboard; but being a strong swimmer he swam, aided by an oar, eight ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... hollowed longitudinally. On either side is nailed a palo de balzas, viz., a beam of a very porous kind of wood. One Indian sits forward, another more backward, each having a short wooden shovel-shaped oar, with which they strike the water right and left, and thus scull the boat onward. The passengers must crouch or kneel down in the middle, and dare not stir, for the least irregularity in the motion would upset the boat. We landed safely, and amused ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... stadia, and its length not more than seven thousand one hundred and thirty-two stadia. In some parts 12 it is moorland, in others there are wooded plains, and sometimes it rises into mountain peaks. The island is surrounded by a sluggish sea, which neither gives readily to the stroke of the oar nor runs high under the blasts of the wind. I suppose this is because other lands are so far removed from it as to cause no disturbance of the sea, which indeed is of greater width here than anywhere else. Moreover Strabo, a famous writer of the ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... and perhaps in the end set you free in a land where brave fellows are not given to be torn to pieces by wild beasts at the word of any kind. But if you fail me or betray me, then either I will kill you, or sell you to those who deal in slaves, to work at the oar, or in ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... or desk, or oar, With knife or needle, voice or pen, As thou in Nazareth of yore, Shall ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... he took a locket from his bosom; and I heard him speak, Will, and he said: "Here's the picture of my fair and true lady; drink to her, SeA-ors, all." Then he spoke to me, Will, and called me, right up through the oar-weed and the sea: "We have had a fair quarrel, SeA-or; it is time to be friends once more. My wife and your brother have forgiven me; so ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... so that she might destroy it when found, and with stinkpots at her mastheads and boarding-nets hung round her. Of course he was to escape in the end, but so narrowly that all possible sail had to be crowded on to his little ship, and the whole crew set to work the big oar at the stern, while every soul on board shivered and shook as men should when pirates are ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... which they profess to acquaint us. Food, which is the same as far as sight and touch are concerned, tastes differently to different individuals; fire, which is the same to the eye, communicates a sensation of pain at one time, of pleasure at another; the oar appears crooked in the water, while the touch assures us it is as straight as before it was immersed.[158] Again, in dreams, in intoxication, in madness, impressions are made upon the mind, vivid enough to incite to reflection and action, yet utterly at variance ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... showed herself at the hut window, at the hut door. When Fanny turned back to whistle again she saw her standing up in the boat, which, freed, was drifting out towards them—saw her scatter the ice with her oar—and the boat, pushed upstream, came drifting down towards them in a curve to hit the bank at their feet. The girl stepped out, smiling, happy, pretty, undimmed by the habit of trade. The man got in and sat down, the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... now, from slumber rous'd, Ernestus spied A river, branching from the ocean tide; The mighty stream roll'd on its darksome flood Thro' mossy cavern and thro' tangled wood; Thence in soft mazes drew its humid train, To feed the verdure of a lonely plain. He furl'd the sail, and grasp'd the labouring oar, And sped to Dalecarlia's welcome shore. The oar, light-stretching, breaks the sparkling tide. And scatters the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... swan to man if it didn't seem to come right out of my pinkey! Scart! Waal, it did give me something of a jump, an' that I won't deny. If Sile had a-bin there he'd kerwollopsed. I riz right up with an oar in my hand, ready to slam it over ther head uf any dad-bum thing that wiggled round the pinkey. Jest then I heard that sound ag'in, an' I made out it come from the point of rocks that makes off inter ther harber. I looked that ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... threatened to capsize the boat. When it seemed that the crisis was really come the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, "Let us pray." "No, no, my man," shouted the bluff old boatman; "let the little man pray. You take an oar." The greatest curse that can befall a young man is ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... is sweet to hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep; 'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen, as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... see no sign of any habitation, no gleam of light from the shore to cheer us. In vain we strained our ears for the plash of the oar, or welcome sound of the human voice, or bark of some household dog, that might assure us we were not doomed to pass the night ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... our boatmen quit their mooring, And all hands must ply the oar; Baggage from the quay is lowering, We're impatient—push from shore. 'Have a care! that case holds liquor— Stop the boat—I'm sick—oh Lord!' 'Sick, ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker Ere you've been an hour on board.' Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... rowed a boat on dangerous rivers and on the sea; had been nearly lost one dark night in a high spring-tide on the sandbanks of the River Mersey; had been washed out to sea through the failure of an oar at Barmouth; had narrowly escaped being swamped with his boat off the East Coast; and a few years before had a hair-breadth escape from drowning by being drawn under the wooden framework protecting the piles for a future famous bridge over the River Thames near the heart of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... below bridge; not by any means because he liked it, but to cure a weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had particularly recommended it - may be explained as rowed by three men, two pulling an oar each, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... elsewhere. The sea, like the wind, treated Yport as the mouth of a funnel, and a hundred cross currents were piling up such waves as no boat could pass, though the Yport women were skilful as any man with oar ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... objects relating to boats and ships have been unearthed at Jamestown: small anchors, chains, oar locks, ship bolts and spikes, and tools used by shipwrights and ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... which of us isn't an omnibus hack, With galls on his withers and sores on his back,— Buckled to circumstance, driven by fate, And chain'd on the pole of a oar that we hate— Yon ponderous Past which we drag fast or slow On the coarse-mended Present, this dull road we go, Hard-curb'd on the tongue and no bearing-rein slack, Ah! who of us isn't that ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... woman an' a baby layin' dead in oar camp now," he concluded. "Died last night. The pilgrims is tryin' to make coffins fer 'em out'n ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... smothered her torch, for there was no light among the reeds when I looked back. We crossed the river slowly, listening between oar-strokes for the paddle-dips of approaching canoes. There was no sound but the lashing of water against the pebbled shore and we lay in a little bay ready to dash across the fleet's course, when the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... came to a great lake. Close to the shore lay twelve little boats, and in each boat stood a handsome prince, one hand upon an oar, the other ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... good luck they found a small boat floating keep uppermost, for it had been overturned by the number of people who crowded into it. This boat they righted with much toil and discovered within it a drowned lady, also an oar caught beneath the seat. After this their dreadful journey was easy, at least by comparison. For now all the gloom had rolled away, the sun shone out and a fresh and pleasant wind blew from the sea ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... boat is good enough when you are looking for buried treasure. We set out, with Mr. Daddles and Jimmy rowing. A breeze had sprung up and the bay was a little choppy, so we splashed and bumped along at no great speed. Mr. Daddles did not pay much attention to the management of his long oar, but got into a discussion with Jimmy about what they would buy with their share of the treasure. Jimmy said his first choice would be a sailing yacht. Next, after that, he thought he should buy a steam-yacht. Mr. Daddles said he should ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... three miles or so away, and black despair took hold of them. Now the resourceful Thompson, without apologies, undressed, and removing the white shirt that he had worn at the dance, bade a sailor to tie it to an oar and wave it to ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... all his life had been prone to cowardice on water, but he clung to the kicking steering-oar with set face and determined jaw. His thousand dozen were there in the boat before his eyes, safely secured beneath the correspondents' baggage, and somehow, before his eyes were the little cottage and the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Traill and her whims? She is a dissatisfied lass at the best, and her love affairs are beyond my sorting. Serves you right, Christina Binnie! You might know, if anybody might, that they who put their oar into another's boat are sure to get their fingers ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... half of a man, which is a correct way of expressing his status in society. Why, my dear sir, you might as well expect to pull across the Atlantic Ocean in a water-logged skiff, with only one oar, and make a successful voyage of it, as to pull across the ocean of life without the help of a good woman. And I have my suspicions of the morals, as well as my contempt for the taste of a man, who can wander through this country and see as ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... this malicious sally, followed by the retailing of various anti-American anecdotes that made up in sting what they lacked in delicacy. These showed no signs of abatement until, slightly nettled, Selwyn put in an oar. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from side to side to add ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... sowing and of their birth. Then, bitterly weeping, they drew back all of them together to the evil bank, that waits for every man who fears not God. Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coal, beckoning them, collects them all; he beats with his oar ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... of time," said he. "Tain't quite high tide yet. You'll have time to get ashore before she moves. Hullo, Wade! Whar's that oar?" ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... very early, for they had to walk the two miles which separated Ballymoy from the lake shore. Mrs. Beecher, the girls, the two other boys, and the baskets of provisions followed a little later on the Rectory car, packed beyond all possibility of comfort. The Canon himself pulled an oar untiringly, but without the faintest semblance of style, and the party rippled with joy when they discovered that Hyacinth ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... coal coast coarse float foam goat gloam groan hoarse load loan loaf oak oar oats roast road roam shoal ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... and insensate man who is smitten with love for this devil of a Blanche. And there is this Frenchman, too, with his mysterious influence over you. Yet, you actually ask me such a question! If you do not tell me how things stand, I shall have to put in my oar and do something. Are you ashamed to be frank with me? ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... disturbed, frowning face, the quivering hand that held the lean cigar. All the strangeness and the mystery of the mysterious world were here concentrated. Numbly and dully he heard the soft, rhythmic splashing of the dipping oar, the turning cry of "Premie!" Then, sharper, "Sciar, Signori, sciar!" as they nearly jostled another gondola, swinging round sharply into a ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middles and legs in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded by a cruel seaman. Their rising forward and falling back at their oar is a miserable spectacle, and the noise of their chains with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of the strange and fearful to one unaccustomed to it. They are chastised on the least disorder, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the hatch joints. Each boat had three compartments, the middle one being about four feet long, about one-fifth the length of the boat, which was twenty-two feet over the top. Two places were left for the rowers, before and abaft the middle compartment, while the steersman with his long oar thrust behind was to sit on the deck of the after-cabin, all the decks being flush with the gunwale, except that of the forward cabin the deck of which was carried back in a straighter line than the sheer of the boat and thus formed a nose to help throw ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... broadside, at the rate of eight miles an hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing. George, on recovering his seat, tried to help him, but, on dipping his oar into the water, it immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat, and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... one by one on deck. After they were all up, I sent one of the boat's crew up, and then went alongside and hooked on the boat, which was quickly run up. There was no other mishap than the breaking of an oar in coming alongside. We had on board about three hundred invalid soldiers and sailors from the ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... held the steady oars quivered suddenly, then gripped them as in a vise; the man's face flushed; he bent to the right oar, the craft whirled half way on her keel; the other oar fell—swiftly and powerfully the boat shot ahead up ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... The Stroke Oar of this Food Bazaar had been in the Business for 20 years, and she had earned her Harp three times over. The Prune Joke never touched her, and she had herself trained so as not to hear any sarcastic Cracks about the Oleo. She prided herself on the Atmosphere of Culture ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... they broke into his larder and cellar and held riot. When the old miser could bear it no longer he started up and belabored his servants right and left; but one of them struck the old man with an oar and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... clefts in as sudden a squall as ever overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room. If the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few minutes, whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar, toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for loneliness and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret chamber and help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say good-bye ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... a' we caught us no fish, and whiles we talked we'd stopped rowing, until the boat drifted into the weeds and long grass that filled one end of the loch. We were caught as fine as ye please, and when we tried to push her free we lost an oar. Noo, we could not row hame wi'oot that oar, so I reached oot wi' my rod and tried to pull it in. I had nae sort of luck there, either, and broke the rod and fell head first into the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the water, took his gun, his game-bag, and a landing-net—one never knows what may come in one's way, a bird or a fish—and went toward the bed of rushes, rowing and steering with one and the same oar. Being an experienced marsh-sportsman, he soon found the one opening in the reeds through which it was possible to penetrate, and recognized by the vegetation ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... water. He pulled the snorkel from his mouth and let it hang. As luck would have it, the shadow saw him first. He stood up, oar in hands, poised for a swing ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... a sentence or two, the occasion for the utterance of the second of the two passages which I have taken for my text. When our Lord had finished His previous address and exhortations, Peter characteristically pushed his oar in with the question, 'Do these commandments refer to us, the Apostles, or to all,' the whole body of disciples? Our Lord admits the distinction, recognises in His answer that the 'us,' the Twelve, were nearer Christ than the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stores; and a very slight framework along the sides for containing the bags of biscuit and our spare clothes. A bamboo mast nineteen feet long, a tanned duck sail, answering also the purpose of an awning, a spreat, one boat-hook, fourteen paddles, and a steer-oar, completed each boat's equipment. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... was an oar and a jackknife. Upon this oar I spent much time, carving minute letters and cutting a notch for each week that passed. There were many notches. I sharpened the knife on a flat piece of rock, and no barber was ever more careful of his favourite razor than was I of that knife. Nor did ever a miser ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... bound when the boss cracks a joke, no matter how punk it is; and then Holmes put his oar in. ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... and men were seen hastening aloft, and standing out upon the foremast yards. This, however, had offered no interruption to the exertions of the boatmen, who still kept plying with a vigour that set even the sail-less vessel in motion, as the foaming water, thrown from their bending oar-blades, dashed angrily against her prow. Soon afterwards both the boat and her prize disappeared on the opposite side of the schooner, which, now lying with her broadside immediately on a line with the shore, completely hid them from the further ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the speed of its current. Touch forms its island. Taste constitutes its current. Scent is its mire. Sound is its waters. That particular part of it which leads towards heaven is attended with great difficulties. Body is the boat by which one must cross that river. Forgiveness is the oar by which it is to be propelled. Truth is the ballast that is to steady that boat. The practice of righteousness is the string that is to be attached to the mast for dragging that boat along difficult waters. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... moment he again became uneasy. He fancied that right up to the skerry came a whale, which said that he, Eilert, must now make haste; and when he stood on its back he stuck the shaft of an oar down its nostril, to prevent it from shooting beneath the sea again. He perceived that in this way the whale could be steered accordingly as he turned the oar to the right or left; and now they coasted the whole land of Finmark at such a rate that the ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... decoys bobbing and tugging at their anchor-cords outside the point. Before he had fished up a dozen on the blade of his oar a heavier squall struck the lagoon, blowing the boat out into the river. He had managed to paddle back and had secured another brace of decoys, when a violent gale caught him broadside, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... in the stern, where Graham promised to show him how to steer. Phil was an apt scholar, and delighted to be of use. Joe addressed Graham as "Captain," and complimented him on the fine feathering of his oar. The lad was a good oarsman, and made the boat ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... broke all over her, flinging the boat on deck upon the saloon skylight and pouring inches deep over the coaming into the well. Vane was hurled from the tiller. His wet face was smeared with blood, from a cut on his forehead, but he seized a big oar to shove the sloop off, when she swung upright, moved, and struck again. The following sea hove her up; there was a third, less violent, crash; and as Vane dropped the oar and grasped the helm, she suddenly ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... back to Kilronan, and beat up my crew from the public-houses near the bay. With their usual carelessness they had not seen to the leak in the curagh, nor to an oar that was losing the brace that holds it to the toll-pin, and we moved off across the sound at an absurd pace with a ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... north or south. He had come to the parting of the ways. His whole life hung in the balance. Floating in that frail skiff on the uneasy swell, he realized that everything depended on the direction in which he swung the prow. His future lay in his oar-blades. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... lady-like air, and a posy in her belt, while Kat would lounge in the window-seat, and read aloud, or amuse them with nonsense; or, if they went out on the pond, Kittie would wear her gloves and ply her oar with an eye to grace, while Kat would, perhaps, be encased in a sun-bonnet, or be bareheaded and row as if on a contract to outdo the champion club in existence. In their work was the same little mark of distinction, and so now-a-days it ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... a word.... You have been so beset with people all the afternoon that I never got a chance to put my oar in. Dear Reverend Mother, everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will ever preach again about Providence spreading a table in the wilderness without my coming back in memory to to-day. May we walk back together? I am a mass of ants, and mosquito-bitten ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Horan, pointing to a stalwart bluejacket who had just dropped at his oar as the boat pushed off the beach. 'It's murder! That's what it is. Sheer murder! Why the blazes can't the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form, but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail, twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed, combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish. The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... pointed out by his chum. Both saw a small rowboat sweep out from under some brushwood. In it stood the wild man, using an oar as a ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... put your oar in! I've had wonderful patience so far. [He puts his boot through a drawing] Art! This is what comes of it! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tangled dew, 'Tis not the silver-fretted sand, It is my own dear Lady true With golden hair and lily hand! O noble pilot, steer for Troy, Good sailor, ply the labouring oar, This is the Queen of life and joy Whom we ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... these the various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of exertion, or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life, both of which become hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry sedan chairs or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned by intoxication deform the countenance with leprous eruptions, or the body with tumid viscera, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... objective program music were always so true to life and to the real nature of music! It is in free three-part form, the first part of a calm nature in which we are rocked on gently undulating waves; a more rhythmic second part where, as Kullak says, the bass seems to suggest the monotonous steadiness of oar-strokes; an interlude, marked "dolce sfogato," introduced by some delightful modulations, as if in a quiet nook the poet were dreaming of the beauties of love and nature; an impassioned return to the chief subject, together with a partial presentation of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... imprudence. To this class may be reduced the Grecian Prodigals, who were detained in the service of their creditors, till the fruits of their labour were equivalent to their debts; the delinquents, who were sentenced to the oar; and the German enthusiasts, as mentioned by Tacitus, who were so immoderately charmed with gaming, as, when every thing else was gone, to have staked their liberty and their very selves. "The loser," says he, "goes into a voluntary servitude, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... were unlike anything to which we are accustomed. They began with a formal betrothal. In a log hut sat the bride's family, the mother spinning at one of the wooden erections so closely resembling an oar. The father and his friends were meantime gathered round a table drinking small beer (Kalja) from large wooden pots, or rather buckets, called haarikka. Each man helped himself out of the haarikka by dipping into that vessel the usual ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... piece of driftwood to the raft as a steering oar, found two other such pieces to serve as unattached oars, and helped Nicko finish with loading the supplies. "All ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... sprang into his boat and in a rage commanded the boatman to pursue the insolent servant of the usurer. But he of the sheepskin wig threw down the cane, took an oar himself, and his men helped him so well ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of grey Fingon, whose offspring has given Such heroes to earth and such martyrs to heaven, Unite with the race of renown'd Rorri More, To launch the long galley and stretch to the oar. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... returned Dickie noticed he carried a heavy oar which he had fashioned into a rude crutch, a number of small strips of wood and a ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... that I don't even get time to enjoy my meals," grumbled Jimmy, one sunny spring afternoon. "Swinging an oar a la Ben Hur would be just a little restful exercise after the way we've ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... are generally attached by strings of silk. Impressions of this seal are also made in ink direct upon the substance on which the brief is written." Mr. Edwards calls attention to the classic form of the boat and oar, showing direct derivation from an antique original. The seal is also made in the fashion of a Roman signet. A new one is made for every pope, and Mr. Edwards thus narrates the ceremonies connected therewith:—"When a pope dies, the Cardinal Chamberlain, ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... on the sponging ground for nearly a week before the water was clear enough for work. Dick spent most of his time sculling his dingy and soon learned to throw his weight on the big sculling oar to the best advantage without going overboard very often. One day while Pedro sat in the bow, they saw a 400-pound loggerhead turtle lying asleep on the water. Pedro motioned to Dick to scull up to the turtle and when the dingy was within three feet of the creature he jumped on its ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... separately good, but becomes so through fulfillment of relations. Each thing or person is surrounded by many others. To them it must fit itself. Being but a part, its goodness is found in serving that whole with which it is connected. That is a good oar which suits well the hands of the rower, the row-lock of the boat, and the resisting water. The white fur of the polar bear, the tawny hide of the lion, the camel's hump, giraffe's neck, and the light feet of the antelope, are all alike good because ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... without saying a word.... You have been so beset with people all the afternoon that I never got a chance to put my oar in. Dear Reverend Mother, everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will ever preach again about Providence spreading a table in the wilderness without my coming back in memory to to-day. May we walk ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... letting fly an oar at him, the yoke and rudder quickly following. His vengeance was let loose, and he poured forth a stream of quarter-deck language at the top of his voice. His phrases were dazzling in ingenuity, and amid much laughter and applause he urged his hearers to keep at a ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Other circumstances reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The allowance for copy-money furnished a little fund for the menus plaisirs of the circulating library and the theatre; and this was no trifling incentive to labor. When actually at the oar, no man could pull it harder than I, and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of attendance on the office were lightened by the power ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... moment one of the men raised an oar, which was blown round by a sudden blast, and its end struck another of the crew on the temple, rendering him almost insensible. He had to be put out at once, and another volunteer was called for. Like a flash of light, ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... shall tumble into the sea, but the horse will fall down by thy side, and thou shalt bury him in the place from which thou tookest the bow and arrows. This being done the sea will rise and cover the mountain, and on it thou wilt perceive the figure of a metal man seated in a boat, having an oar in each hand. Step on board and let him conduct thee; but if thou wouldest behold thy kingdom again, see that thou takest not the name ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... Provost Marshal and his Officers, etc. with Two Ministers,[3] who took great pains to prepare them for the last Article of their Lives. Being allowed to walk on Foot through the Town, to Scarlets Wharff,[4] where, the Silver Oar being carried before them, they went by Water to the place of Execution, being Crowded and thronged on all sides with Multitudes of Spectators. The Ministers then Spoke to the Malefactors, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... passed small native boats, some of them with sails and loaded with goods, most of them rowed by one or more oars. It was to be noticed that when there was only one oar it was being worked vigorously by a woman, while a man sat comfortably in the stern and steered. These people were evidently going from the crowded villages in which they lived to work ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... preferring any fate to a fiery death on the "Bear," and these had to be dealt with promptly. Three, with their fighting fury still red-hot in them, had most wastefully to be killed out of mischief's way; five, who had pitched their weapons into the sea, were chained to oar looms, in place of slaves who were dead; and there remained only Dason to have a ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... afterward, its whole duty done. On board, men were moving about, hanging lanterns, making taut here, setting free there, all with an air of utter peace and repose such as is found only on placid waterways beneath a setting sun. Occasionally an oar dipped in the still water, a hint of action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it climbed, hurried an angular figure,—that of a woman of about fifty ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... which must have been quite near us. He had often rowed a boat on dangerous rivers and on the sea; had been nearly lost one dark night in a high spring-tide on the sandbanks of the River Mersey; had been washed out to sea through the failure of an oar at Barmouth; had narrowly escaped being swamped with his boat off the East Coast; and a few years before had a hair-breadth escape from drowning by being drawn under the wooden framework protecting the piles for a future ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... you from disembarking." As we did not seem inclined to obey his order, our Spaniard, who was the constructing engineer of the ships of the Dey, armed himself with a pole, and commenced battering us with blows. But immediately a Genoese seaman, mounted on a neighbouring vessel, armed himself with an oar, and struck our assailant both with edge and point. During this animated combat we managed to land without any opposition. We had conceived a singular idea of the manner in which the police act on the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... London merchants armed their ships in the river. From the seaports everywhere came armed brigantines and sloops. The fishermen of the West left their boats and nets to their wives, and the fishing was none the worse, for the women handled oar and sail and line and went to the whiting-grounds, while their husbands had gone to fight for their King. Genius kindled into discovery at the call of the country. Mr. Fletcher of Rye (be his name remembered) invented a boat the like of which was never seen before, which would work to windward, ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Lopez de Sossa was captain. In Malaca, more of the mestizos of Yndia, sons of Portuguese, were shipped, to the number of three hundred men. These with the mestizos brought from Yndia, made somewhere about five hundred men in the said galleon. A galley of twenty-four benches accompanied it, each oar being manned with three men. They carried lead. The galley was old and was given to them in Malaca by the captain of Malaca, named Arias de Saldeva, who is captain of the fortress. The captain of the sea ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... understands nor knows again, when they are spoken by others. For those who say that the sense is truly informed and moulded when there is presented one image round and another broken, but nevertheless permit us not to pronounce that the tower is round and the oar broken, confirm their own sensations and imaginations, but they will not acknowledge and confess that the things without are so affected. But as the Cyrenaics must say that they are imprinted with the figure of a horse or of a wall, but refuse to speak of the horse or the wall; so also ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... over the sun, the mushy-ice comes bubblin' up an' up till from bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin' the river like a first snowfall?' 'Unh, hunh! more'n once when I took a doze at the steering-oar. But it allus come out the nighest side-channel, an' not bubblin' up an' up.' 'But with niver a wink at ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... while the blaze of innumerable lights, which flash and glitter through the leafy skreen of the casement-covered hill, reminds me of the fabled splendours of Aladdin's cave. An almost perfect silence prevails, interrupted only at intervals by the faint splash of some distant oar, or the notes of thousands of nightingales, which swarm in every rose-garden and orange grove, pouring forth "their amorous descant through the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... ordered a boat to be lowered, to carry me on board the Harmony, letting Dick accompany me. Dick, who pulled the stroke-oar, gave way with a will, for he felt as eager as I was about the matter. We were soon alongside, and without waiting for the mate, who commanded the boat, I scrambled on board, followed by Dick. There, to my great delight, I saw Mr Falconer. He did not recognise me, as ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... justice to his dinner, and takes no part in the conversation, which is chiefly carried on by Mr Rimbolt, sometimes with his wife, sometimes with Raby. At length, however, the first cravings of appetite being subdued, he shows a readiness to put in his oar. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... his comrade, 'It was a lucky day when we first put an oar in the lake for them, heretics ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and promised. He was rowing along with the easy grace of one used to the oar. He had been born and brought up in sound of the gulf's waves; its never-ceasing murmur had been his first lullaby. He knew it and loved it in every mood, in every varying tint and smile, in every change of wind and tide. There was no better skipper ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of St. Mark's. In his "Miracle of the True Cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely figures as they stand to ply the oar, and does not reject even such an episode as a serving-maid standing in a doorway watching a negro who is about to plunge into the canal. He treats this bit of the picture with all the charm and much of that delicate feeling for simple effects ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... kept supreme And separate the prerogative of God!) That seaman idle who is borne abroad To the far haven by the favouring stream. Not he alone that to contrarious seas Opposes, all night long, the unwearied oar, Not he alone, by high success endeared, Shall reach the Port; but, winged, with some light breeze Shall they, with upright keels, pass in before Whom easy Taste, the ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... curving of the rays of light caused by their entering the earth's atmosphere, which is a denser medium than the very light ether of the outer sky. The effect of refraction is seen when an oar is thrust into the water and looks as if it were bent. Refraction always causes a celestial object to appear higher than it really is. This refraction is greatest at the horizon and diminishes toward ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... backs and pulling their hardest till the stout ash blades nearly doubled in two with the strain, while the big, rolling sea raced after us, trying to catch us up; when, all of a sudden, the man holding the stroke oar on the after thwart uttered an exclamation which made the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... careless disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the moment. When the weather was calm, I frequently went immediately after I rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. The receiver had taught me to row with one oar; I rowed out into the middle of the lake. The moment I withdrew from the bank, I felt a secret joy which almost made me leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the cause, if it were not ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... stream; at another, the tide bears him onward as a boat is borne by the rapids, towards a thing he had not dreamed of, nor even vaguely wished to reach. At such hours, resistance seems useless. We seize an oar, it breaks in the flood; we snatch at an overhanging bough, it snaps or slips our grasp; we utter cries for help, those on the bank pass by not hearing, or cast to us a rope the current bears out of reach. ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the die for the open sky When the great sun beats abroad, For the foam-fleck and the narrow deck, The life of oar and sword. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... this fellow, in the long run, Bluewater! I do believe if I were to take him to Lambeth Palace, or even to St. James's, he'd thrust his oar into the archbishop's ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... large sail-boat, and, as the water near the shore is not deep, he has to use a small boat to reach it. When Carlo sees him take down the oar from its place in the yard, he runs up, and takes it in his mouth, as much as to say, "Let me carry that for you, master." Then he trots down the hill with the oar, feeling very proud that he ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... found that they had now coasted the headland, and saw the whales spouting at a distance. He therefore placed himself in his fishing-boat, called his associates to their several employments, plied his oar and harpoon with incredible courage and dexterity; and, by dividing his time between the chace and fishery, suspended the miseries of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... did not lose countenance, but went on hammering at his boat as if he cared not at all, till observing that one of the soldiers was looking hard at Edmund, he called out, "I say, Ned, what's the use of loitering there, listening to what's no concern of yours? Fetch the oar out of yon shed. I never lit on such a lazy comrade ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mimasc[a] to 'horn,'[1] flaming red in his hand; over him, a bossed, plaited shield, [2]curved, with an engraved edge of silvered bronze,[2] [3]with applied ornaments of red gold thereon,[3] and a boss of red gold; a lengthy sword, as long as the oar[4] of a huge currach [5]on a wild, stormy night,[5] [6]resting on the two thighs[6] of the great haughty warrior that is ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... interest Hilmer... Perhaps she could help things along in some way ... with a chance remark to Mrs. Hilmer. Would it be better to cast the seed more directly?... If she could only manage to run across Hilmer—she wouldn't want to seem to be putting in her oar... Would it be very dreadful if she were to think up some excuse and go beard ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... larking,' he said authoritatively, stepping into the boat, and bringing it up with such absence of effort that when a few minutes after he had brought it to the landing-place, and the freight was seated, Robert had no sooner taken the other oar than he exclaimed at the force of the stream with which Owen had dealt so easily, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sanguine hopes had been entertained, were found to be unfit for large masts or yards, being shakey or rotten at thirty or forty feet from the butt; the wood was so brittle that it would not make a good oar, and so porous that the water soaked through the planks of a boat which had been built of it. Mr. King also lamented their ignorance of the proper mode of preparing the flax plant, which rendered it useless ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... scarlet, and on the masts he set sails of linen, red, white, and blue. Then he stepped on board, and called on Ukko to protect and help him, and on the winds to aid him on his way, and off the magic boat flew towards Pohjola, never needing an oar to help it. ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not escape, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor, if we had, could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the beach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... which was standing into the harbor; and after examining her papers in the due exercise of his right as a belligerent, his boats hooked on to her, thus using a neutral to tow them into the enemy's port, so that his men reached their scene of exertion unfatigued by the oar, and for a great part of the way protected by such respect as the Spanish batteries might show to a neutral coerced into aiding a hostile undertaking. "Having approached within about three quarters of a mile of the nearest battery," says the British naval historian James, "and ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... peace. And now with shrewd haste a boat was lowered, and we were set in it with a pair of oars, and the old pirate bidding us farewell in his tongue, clapt on all sail and stood out before the wind, leaving us there to shift for ourselves. Don Sanchez took one oar, and I t'other,—Dawson lying in the bottom and not able to move a hand to save his life,—and Moll held the tiller, and so we pulled with all our force, crying out now and then for fear we should not be seen, till by God's providence we came alongside ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Attica, (50) and the exercise of magistracies which take them into regions beyond the frontier, they and their attendants have insensibly acquired the art of navigation. (51) A man who is perpetually voyaging is forced to handle the oar, he and his domestics alike, and to learn the terms familiar in seamanship. Hence a stock of skilful mariners is produced, bred upon a wide experience of voyaging and practice. They have learnt their business, some ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... of water craft, the vessel propelled by pole, paddle or oar must have preceded the use of sails. The former required more strength and the latter more skill. But no matter what science and art may do to make sailing more secure and comfortable, the boy, particularly if he be country bred, and so forced to be more self- ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... hours later the boat's one blue-shirted, barefoot Sicilian sailor in red worsted cap had with one oar at the stern just turned her drifting form into the glassy calm by the railway-station, tossed her anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters of boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... may live: I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs; he trod the water, Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted The surge most swoln that met him: his bold head 'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke To th' shore, that o'er his[398-18] wave-worn basis bow'd, As[398-19] stooping to relieve him: I not doubt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... it, uttered an expression of disappointment. We lifted him up, however, and showed that they were in the other canoe. When satisfied, he submitted to have his wounds more completely and scientifically bound up than I had been able to do. Meantime Jack had taken the steering-oar, while Timbo and I seized the paddles. A few hurried words from Timbo explained to Stanley what had happened, and without further delay we shoved off from the bank, and began to make the best of our way down the stream. Natty had ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the lake. The boat in which I now found myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and also possessed of powerful sweeps, which were worked by the men in standing positions, the rise of the oar after each stroke making the oarsman sink back upon the thwarts only to resume again his upright attitude for the next dip of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... upper heaven, and nearer the great dome of the Saluti signalled whitely; below them, all the islands near and far floated in twilit blueness on the flat lagoon. There was by times, a long sea swell, and no sound but the tread of the oar behind like a woman's silken motion. It drew with it films of recollection in which his mood suspended like gossamer, a mood capable of going on independently of his idea of himself as a man cut off from those experiences, intimations of which ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... each side, thrust their poles into the channel, and grasping successively the wooden bars, work their way toward the stern, thus pushing on the vessel in that direction. At other times, by the brisk and vigorous use of the oar, they catch and dash through the most favorable lines of current. In this exhausting struggle, however, it is needful to have frequent pauses for rest, and in the most difficult passages there are certain positions fixed for this purpose, which the Canadians call pipes."—H. Murray's ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... tolled the lonely midnight hour When a proud band, by daring impulse led, Approached the river with a cautious tread, With kindling eye and with an eager air, Unmoored the boats that waited for them there; In silence left the calm and peaceful shore, In sullen silence plied the hasty oar, In silence passed adown the quiet stream, While ever and anon a pale moonbeam, Sad and reproachful, cast a hasty glance On polished ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... out of the water as he could, and taking a look, fell back exhausted, clinging desperately to the oar. ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... long distances overland to reach water, and travelers have come suddenly upon alligators crawling amid prairies or woods, in the most unexpected manner. The alligator as a rule is very wary, but at times sleeps quite soundly. I saw one struck twice with an oar before ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... The oar indeed and home with sails Flax-tissued, swelled with favoring gales, Staunch to the wave, from spear-storm free, Have to this shore escorted me, Nor so far blame I destiny. But may the all-seeing Father send In fitting time propitious end; So our dread Mother's mighty ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... like the rowlocks. "Il faut chanter quand meme," he explained, "pour encourager les autres." Jo then started "Frere Jacques." Jan and Dr. Ob took it up till the Frenchman burst in with an entirely different time and key. Then one of the oar girls began a queer little melody on four notes only, and all the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... her own course," said the old man. "Miss Amory is a dev'lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play her own cards; and I'm doosid glad you are out of it—doosid glad, begad. Who's this smoking? Oh, it's Mr. Strong again. He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I tell you, don't meddle in the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suns, and systems, exhibit few beauties to the great mass of inattentive spectators; and the observance of them, by day and by night, excites no correspondent emotions. All is a blank! Plunged into an abyss of cares and anxieties, chained to the oar of constant, unvarying labour; and solicitous only "to buy and sell, and get gain," to them "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... can handle an oar?" Frere went on. "There, curse you, I don't want fifty! Three'll do. Come on ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... at the side of the "Gaspee" warning off the assailants, he presented a good mark; and Joseph Bucklin, who pulled an oar in the leading boat, turned to a comrade and said, "Ephe, lend me your gun, and I can kill that fellow." The gun was accordingly handed him, and he fired. Dudingston fell to the deck. Just as the shot was fired, the leader ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... them. The boatswain leaning over the bow grabbed the child, and with one sweep of his strong arm took her into the boat. The bow oarsman caught Harold by the wrist. The way of the boat took him for a moment under water; but the next man; pulling his oar across the boat, stooped over and caught him by the collar, and clung fast. A few seconds more and he was hauled abroad. A wild cheer from all on the Scoriac came, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... about his dealings with his host, and Flosi says he will pull an oar with him, so that his marriage bargain might be struck, and buy the ship of him afterwards. The Easterling was glad at that. Flosi offered him land at Borgarhaven, and now the Easterling holds on with his suit to his host when Flosi was by, and Flosi threw ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... songcraft, and the blossomed garth of rhyme; Tales of the framing of all things and the entering in of time From the halls of the outer heaven; so near they knew the door. Wherefore uprose a sea-king, and his hands that loved the oar Now dealt with the rippling harp-gold, and he sang of the shaping of earth, And how the stars were lighted, and where the winds had birth, And the gleam of the first of summers on the yet untrodden ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... Dean, I will give you a fair Account of what I wou'd have attempted at least, and to open all my Heart to you, that was one of the main Subjects I called at your Tomb to talk to you on, to see if we could get any of these Crawlers on the Earth to attempt it, by oar artfully suggesting it to him. In short, my Project was, by procuring greater and more numerous Subscriptions, and by extending and enlarging the Plan of the Dublin Society, to have promoted more than ever the general Good ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the taffrail, in order to make certain of the state of things. Just as I reached the stern, Sennit was encouraging the men to "give way" with the oar. I saw that he had six of his people with him, and no doubt six of his best men—the boldest and most active being always the most forward on such occasions. There was no time to be lost; and I turned to look for Marble. He was at my elbow, having ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... told him to steer straight for the negro. He grumbled not a little. Of course, if I wanted to run aground, it was none of his affair—etc., etc. Then I stationed the sturdiest of the two deck-hands on the port bow with a long oar, while I took the starboard with another. Very slowly and cautiously we made in, pointing straight for a thick growth of mangrove bushes. Samson stood ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... words right, but her voice wuz melogious, and as I listened my soul parodied the words to suit my needs. Yes, I felt that I must "bend to the oar" of my purpose, I must not "heed the rollin' waves" of weariness and anxiety, must leave "the poor old stranded wreck" of my domestic happiness and ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... and always such glorious anticipations for the morrow. Sometimes, in their eager pursuit after game, they would paddle up and down the creek, watching out on either side for ducks. On these occasions, Lizzie would hold the steering oar, while her father made vigorous use of the propelling ones; but one day his "Lady of the Lake," (as he called her), in her excitement, at the prospect over the bluffs, of flying ducks, rose to her feet; and, reeling, tipping, over she went, which was the finale of the ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... along the flowery bank, While many a bending seagrape[1] drank The sprinkle of the feathery oar That winged me ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... monarch call'd his seamen good, they muster'd on the shore, Waved in the gale the snow-white sail, and dash'd the sparkling oar; But by the flood that maiden stood—loud rose her piteous cry— "Oh! go not forth, my dear, dear sire—oh, go not forth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... searching about on the pan for a piece of transparent ice which I could use as a burning-glass. I thought that I could make smoke enough to be seen from the land if only I could get some sort of a light. All at once I seemed to see the glitter of an oar, but I gave up the idea because I remembered that it was not water which lay between me and the land, but slob ice, and even if people had seen me, I did not imagine that they could force a boat through. The next time that I went back to my flag-waving, however, the glitter ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of the oar brought them in among the tall, shielding posts, close alongside the steps of the Venezia. As the hotel porter handed the young ladies from the gondola, the Colonel paused to have a word with the gondolier. The man was ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... horrible eating house at Argenteuil, and which possessed only one bedroom, where I have certainly spent some of the maddest nights of my life. We cared for nothing except for amusing ourselves and rowing, for we all worshiped the oar, with one exception. I remember such singular adventures, such unlikely tricks invented by those five rascals, that no one would believe them at present. People do not live like that any longer, even ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... said, 'I told her not to go, but she is so self-willed.' And then he jumped into a boat and, taking the oars, went gliding out after you as swiftly as the wind. I never saw mortal arm make a boat fly as he did that little skiff. And I saw him strike the monster with his oar just as his huge jaws were opened to devour you. Dear! dear; but I was frightened, and woke up all ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... dropped the oar and took up the sword, who laid aside the gown for the sash and shoulder-strap, who, first in the bloodless triumphs of the regatta and in "capital training" for the great race of life where literary and professional fame are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shall haunt the shore When Thames in summer wreaths is drest, And oft suspend the dashing oar, 15 To bid ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the Danske pirates off Tuttee; Saw the Chrim burn "Musko"; speaks with bated breath Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary. Quaint is the phrase, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... came out, and his bold sailor's heart cheered and encouraged his wretched, despairing companions. All that night, and for the greater part of the following day, he stood in the stern-sheets, grasping the bending steer-oar as the boat swayed and surged along before the gale, and constantly watching lest she should broach to and smother in the roaring seas; the others lay in the bottom, feebly baling out the water, encouraged, urged, and driven to that exertion by the ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Father-land, Of child and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more;" And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... boats when this skilful manoeuvre was executed that the dripping bow oar of the pursuers was flourished almost in Jack's face as the sampan flew round. He seized it, but did not attempt to snatch it from the oarsman's clutch. He had no time for that, but he made splendid use ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... I's hardened. Ay! I see ye lewvk. I stell't,(3) it's true; bud, brethren, I'll repay. I'll pay back ten-foad iverything I tewk, An' folks may say whate'er they like to say. It were a kiss, An' t' lass has promised iv oar ingle-newk ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... nature without the quickening breath of Rhythm. It cadences the dash of the wave, chimes in the flash of the oar, patters in the drops of rain, whispers in the murmurings of the forest leaves, leaps in the dash of the torrent, wails through the sighing of the restless winds, and booms in the claps ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... to General Whipple, one of Washington's aids. Prince is the negro seen on horseback in the engraving of Washington crossing the Delaware, and again pulling the stroke oar in the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... uttered, put superstitious fears to flight at once. The men threw off their jackets; the boat was lowered, and in a few minutes was pulling about and searching in all directions. Our hero was one of the first to leap into her, and he pulled the bow oar. For some time they rowed about in vain. The night was intensely dark, and the cry was not repeated, so that they had nothing to guide them in their movements. A lantern was fixed in the ship half way up the mizzen rigging, but the lantern in the boat was ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... been picked up by a schooner and taken into that port. The officer in charge of the boat reported that in the early morning he had sighted a schooner standing toward them, and had hoisted a black silk handkerchief belonging to one of the crew on an oar as a signal of distress, but the people in the schooner, evidently thinking them pirates who had come out of some one of the inlets of the coast, turned tail and scudded away from them. A second schooner, coming along soon after, was more ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to each one of them they give an oar; and having told them to look at the backs of the men before them they make them bend forward as far as they can and at the same moment, and having put the end of the oar into the water pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; and if any of them does not do this ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... to such a dignified-looking personage so familiarly, not to say curtly; for I thought that this Mr. Boffin, in spite of his well-known name out of Dickens, must be at the least a senator of these strange people. However, he got up and said, "All right, old oar-wearer, whatever you like; this is not one of my busy days; and though" (with a condescending bow to me) "my pleasure of a talk with this learned guest is put off, I admit that he ought to see your worthy kinsman ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... thy father's heart! Now go—and at yon gates relate thy story— Say Brutus claims to be the chief in glory, 'Twas his fell sword that pierced his father's heart! Go—Now thou'rt told what staid me on this shore, Grim ferryman, push off, and swiftly ply thine oar. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the yacht, in the company of a man in whom I was naturally interested. I was passionately fond of the sea, and had already learned from the Berwick sea-going folk how to handle small craft, and the management of a three-oar vessel like this was an easy matter to me, as I soon let Sir Gilbert know. Once outside the river mouth, with a nice light breeze blowing off the land, we set squaresail, mainsail, and foresail and stood directly out to sea on as grand a day and under as fair ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... straining oar and chamois chase Had formed his limbs to strength and grace: On wave and wind the boy would toss, Was great, nor knew ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beautiful, and the most unselfish person I ever saw. She was perpetually trying to lighten my labor. She insisted on taking an oar and trying to row. She bore up most uncomplainingly against our hardships. In fact, she acted like a regular brick. Of course, before I had talked with her half an hour I was head over ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... around the pond. "When more water being introduced into the boiler or pot and steam was generated, she was again ready to start on another expedition." The boat was a yawl about eighteen feet in length and six feet beam. She was started at the buoy with a small oar when the propeller was used. The boiler was a ten or twelve gallon iron pot. This boat with a portion of the machinery was abandoned by Fitch, and left to decay on the muddy shore. Shortly after this he died in Kentucky in ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Trireme.—The genesis of the trireme was the old PENTECONTER ("fifty-oar ship") which, in its prime features, was simply a long, narrow, open hull, with slightly raised prow and stern cabins, pulling twenty-five oars to a side. There are a few penteconters still in existence, though the great naval powers have long since scorned them. It ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... lodged in the stern of the boat, another splintered the end of an oar, and then the rifleman's nerves must have got the better of him. The succeeding shots fell wide, and I whooped like a madman as I drove the boat on to the green tongue of land. Springing out hastily ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... going for a row," answered the girl, "but I have just discovered that one of the oar locks is broken, so I am not going for a row," and she laughed, showing her ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... our affairs—putting in his oar, so to speak—with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced by different ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... always threw a good deal of enthusiasm into anything he attempted to do, was barely saved from going overboard several times, and when once left alone with the side oar, succeeded in dipping the blade under a piece of hidden rock and was thrown by the swift motion of the boat high in the air, alighting somewhat breathless on the mass of tarpaulined freight in front of him, luckily without serious injury. The oar, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... the hunter, and tugged at his oar, for the levers clanked too loud for this work. They crept along to another berth a little way off, and tied up in the shadow of the bank; and they had scarcely settled themselves when they heard again the beat of engines. The launch was returning, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... I careless play'd, Or plied the quiv'ring oar, on conquest bent:— Again, beneath the tall elms' silent shade, I woo'd the fair, and won ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... a Genoese boy in those days was packed full of adventures. Most of the boys went to sea as soon as they were old enough to hold an oar or to pull a rope, and they had to be ready at any moment to drop the oar or rope and seize a sword or a pike to repel pirates or other enemies. There was always the chance of a sudden chase or a secret attack on a Christian boat by savage Mussulmen, and so bitter was the endless war of the ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... mutiny broke. We in the sternsheets stood together against them. It was all a madness. We were starved sore, but we were mad for water. It was over the water it began. For, see you, it was our custom to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside planking. And each man of us had developed property in the dew-collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and the rudder-head and half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had become the property of the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... somewhat flushed in the general rosiness that seemed to penetrate and suffuse every object. The fishermen, who were drawing in their nets, gayly singing, seemed to be floating on a violet-and-gold-colored flooring that broke into a thousand gems at every dash of the oar or motion of the boat. The old stone statue of Saint Antonio looked down in the rosy air, itself tinged and brightened by the magical colors which floated round it. And the girls and men of Sorrento gathered in gossiping knots on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... satisfactorily in Machinery Hall. Without a sight of our harvest-fields and threshing-floors foreigners would carry away an incomplete impression of our industrial methods, the farm being our great factory. The oar, the rifle and the racer are as impatient of walls as the plough and its new-fangled allies. They demand elbow-room for the display of their powers, and the Commission was fain to let their votaries ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... while the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... setting his goblet down with a bang upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were bent on doing him bodily injury. On another occasion a number of angry natives crowded in upon himself and a companion as they were building a boat. After standing their interference for some time, the builders seized, one a broken oar and the other a stout stake, and after a sharp fray, in which the arm of the carpenter was broken in two places, the intruders ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... the middle seat it chanced that he struck his foot against one of the oars which lay along the boat's bottom; and the rattling of this oar put a new thought ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... wrap which she always carried with her, and which she had gathered round her in the cathedral, and it lay about her in green fur-edged folds, bringing her white dress into relief, the shapely fall of the shoulders and all the round slimness of her form. As Kendal took the stroke oar, after he had arranged everything for her comfort, he asked her if Oxford was what she ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by Pontus, you, the box-clad hill Of high Cytorus, all, the pinnace owns, to both Was ever, is familiar; in the primal years 15 She stood upon your hoary top, a baby tree, Within your haven early dipt a virgin oar: ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... plants; and here and there the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... lines of white palaces, exquisitely lighted by thousands on thousands of electric candles, soft, rich, shadowy, palpable in their sensuous depths; all in deep silence, profound solitude, listening for a voice or a foot-fall or the plash of an oar, as though the Emir Mirza were displaying the beauties of this City of Brass, which could show nothing half so beautiful as this illumination, with its vast, white, monumental solitude, bathed in the pure light of setting suns. One enjoyed it with iniquitous rapture, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... winter fishing has been tried in Shetland on a large scale?-Yes; not on a large scale, but it has been tried pretty extensively. I know that from my own experience. I tried it myself from the time when I could handle a boat oar, until I was twenty-seven years of age. During that time I was at the fishing every day, summer and winter, when it was fishing weather, and living in the midst of the ocean; and I have no hesitation in ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of the purple fine, That neither noontide nor starshine Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, 35 Might pierce the regal tenement. When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more, 40 We sang together on the wide sea, Like men at peace on a peaceful shore; Each sail was loosed to the wind so free, Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... all children know and love; and the name of which I'll tell you by and by. So busily was I reading, that I never minded the tide; and presently discovered that I was floating out to sea, with neither sail nor oar. At first I was very much frightened; for there was no one in sight on land or sea, and I didn't know where I might drift to. But the water was calm, the sky clear, and the wind blew balmily; so I waited ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... flushed. Tall, straight, handsome he sat in the boat, fingering the oar-handle nervously. In appearance he was the ideal oarsman. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of the work, as places could not be spared for more than two, or at most three seamen to each boat, who were always stationed, one at the bow, to use the boat-hook in fending or pushing off, and the other at the aftermost oar, to give the proper time in rowing, while the middle oars were double- banked, and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen, To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green. Nor here alone their praises shall go round, Nor here alone their virtues shall abound— Broad as the empire of the free shall spread, Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread, Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue Hath never through the woods of ages rung, There, where the eagle's scream and wild wolf's cry Keep ceaseless day and night through earth and sky, Even there, in after time, as toil and taste Go forth in gladness to redeem the waste, Even there shall ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... they sat so, looking up into the changing autumn sky, listening to the soft tinkle of the water running below, the dip of an oar, the swirl of a blue heron's wing as it clove the air, the distant voices of the picnickers farther down the creek, the rustle of the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how they would drift down like little ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... about it," growled Smith. "Don't you get a shovin' your oar in that how. P'raps you've got a better hidear? 'Cause if you have, let it off at once for the gents to hear. I on'y said ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Pelias, fare thee well, May joy be thine in the Sunless Houses! For thine is a deed which the Dead shall tell Where a King black-browed in the gloom carouses; And the cold grey hand at the helm and oar Which guideth shadows from shore to shore, Shall bear this day o'er the Tears that Well, A Queen of women, a ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... days in Sanford were two that I spent on the river above the lake. A youthful boatman, expert alike with the oar and the gun, served me faithfully and well, impossible as it was for him to enter fully into the spirit of a man who wanted to look at birds, but not to kill them. I think he had never before seen a customer of that breed. First he rowed me up the "creek," under promise to show me ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... severe winters but managed to elude all pursuers. It has been said, and also contradicted, that the woodcock when rising from the ground uses its long bill as a lever to assist its starting, just as an oarsman pushes off from the bank with a boat-hook or oar; I myself have seen one rising from a bare and marshy place, and the position of its bill certainly gave me the impression that the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... has accomplished has come by practice. He pulls a strong oar, but there is a roughness and lack of smoothness about his work. Still, he gets over ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... his mark in his preparatory school and college in several lines of athletics. But a boy in his position would scarcely become a professional baseball player or pull an oar for a living. To tell the truth, Tom had never shown much aptitude for his father's business. Dry ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... listened to, to have kept our hearts young. And yet not a talk at all; a play, rather, in which words count for little and the action is everything: Listening to the toss of a curl or the lowering of an eyelid; answering with a lift of the hand—such a strong brown hand, that could pull an oar, perhaps, or help her over dangerous places! Then her white teeth, and the way the head bent; and then his ears and how close they lay to his head; and the short, glossy hair with the faintest bit of a curl in it. And then the sudden awakening: Oh, yes—it was the sugar ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hundred and thirty-two stadia. In some parts 12 it is moorland, in others there are wooded plains, and sometimes it rises into mountain peaks. The island is surrounded by a sluggish sea, which neither gives readily to the stroke of the oar nor runs high under the blasts of the wind. I suppose this is because other lands are so far removed from it as to cause no disturbance of the sea, which indeed is of greater width here than anywhere else. Moreover Strabo, a famous writer of the Greeks, relates ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Oxford's friar and his brazen head? While wondering Science stands, herself perplexed At each day's miracle, and asks "What next?" The immortal boy, the coming heir of all, Springs from his desk to "urge the flying ball," Cleaves with his bending oar the glassy waves, With sinewy arm the dashing current braves, The same bright creature in these haunts of ours That Eton shadowed with her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... when his boat is bumped. I know that if I had ever been in a boat which had been bumped, and the only reason why I have not been is because I have never rowed in a bumping race, I should want to hit somebody over the head with my oar or denounce the cox. Coxes, indeed, have told me that although they have never seen my first wish put into practice, my second is such an ordinary occurrence that the cox who has not suffered from it must be either deaf or a genius. And if ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... was now—quick and determined, taking an interest in his affairs once more, and sober as water. I felt cheered myself to see him so. He was no wastrel; he had had a spell of foolishness and dissipation, but it needed only his own resolution to put an end to that. An oar in the water looks broken to the eye, but ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... come suddenly upon alligators crawling amid prairies or woods, in the most unexpected manner. The alligator as a rule is very wary, but at times sleeps quite soundly. I saw one struck twice with an oar before ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... formed in many parts to aid the progress of the passenger. This gave an air of singularity and wildness to the place, which was aided by the boldness of the surrounding scenery. The street bore all the marks of the occupation of the inhabitants—nets hanging to dry—strings of fish—an old oar—or a "fisher's wife" broiling fish for her husband's breakfast—met the eye on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... we travell'd, and along the ridge, 'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig, His motley household came.—Not last nor least, Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea Of Venice had so ably, zealously Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away To follow through the world; who without stain Had worn so long that honourable badge[63], The gondolier's, in a Patrician House Arguing unlimited trust.—Not last nor least, Thou, though declining in thy beauty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... steamers, inward or outward bound—the ample width here between the two cities, intersected by Windmill island—an occasional man-of-war, sometimes a foreigner, at anchor, with her guns and port-holes, and the boats, and the brown-faced sailors, and the regular oar-strokes, and the gay crowds of "visiting day"—the frequent large and handsome three-masted schooners, (a favorite style of marine build, hereabout of late years,) some of them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... weather-quarter, at the distance of a cable's length, watching for my return. The wind was so light, and the brig so close, that no signal was made to heave to; indeed I had scarcely rowed under the Alceste's stern, on my way back, before it was necessary to call out, "In bow!" The rattle of the oar on the thwarts gave the earliest notice of my approach to the people on board the little vessel, and I could hear the first lieutenant exclaim in haste, "Attend the side! Where are ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... o'clock we began our descent. Near the summit the traces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., after a while, that we had lost it. He said, he thought that was of no consequence, we could find oar way down. I thought however it was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged over in the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stood still because so tired that I did not like to waste any labor. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... between the Director of D——y, and the Pit Potentates, one "B.Y.," champions the cause of the non-principal players against such as Mrs. Clive, "for the low-salary'd Players are always at the labouring Oar, and at constant Expence, while the rest are serv'd up once or twice in a Week each, as very fine Dishes," one of whom, he says, is Mrs. Clive, an "avaritious" person whom he is confident "has found, and feels, her Error by this Time."[17] ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... while the hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the spring,—whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there were huge cliffs ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... their span. And that proud port which Neptune's lib'ral hand Bade from thy startled walls its arms expand, And show the way to Fortune! Twice each day Bringing his floods all crown'd with glittering spray, And foaming from the oar, while, gleaming white, A host of vessels gaily sweep ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... servants, for, except rare and lately emancipated negro slaves, there was then no servile class in that colony, the children had to perform all the duties pertaining to the daily life, official or private, and my mother was able to pull an oar or manage the sail-boat with her brothers, and catch the horses and ride them bareback from pasture, when necessary for the daily work, which was not insignificant, for Newport was really the seaport of that section of the State, and as it ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... o'clock, the river was no solitude. Several persons were sauntering on the towing-path, and here and there a boat was plying. Deronda had been rowing fast to get over this spot, when, becoming aware of a great barge advancing toward him, he guided his boat aside, and rested on his oar within a couple of yards of the river-brink. He was all the while unconsciously continuing the low-toned chant which had haunted his throat all the way up the river—the gondolier's song in the "Otello," where Rossini has worthily set to music the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a hard job," Frank admitted, "because I don't think I ever shaped an oar in my life, and it's ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... dream, then?" asked he, and was quite curious. "I dreamt of a ferry-man who complained that he must always ferry from one side to the other, and was never released. What is the cause of it?" "Ah! the fool," answered the devil; "when any one comes and wants to go across he must put the oar in his hand, and the other man will have to ferry and he will be free." As the grandmother had plucked out the three golden hairs, and the three questions were answered, she let the old serpent alone, and he slept ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... sky again, that I had parted with all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which there sat two Oxonians, one of them helping me, and loudly and laughingly differing with the other, who did not at all like the rocking of the boat, and who assured me, to the manifest contradiction ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... notice of me, only the bow oar saying, "Is that you, Jim? Keep your head down." But Silver, from the other boat, looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment I began to regret ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Cambridge, John Meyrick by name, who visits me here at intervals, and is to me an object of curious interest. He is a Fellow and Lecturer of his College. He came up there on a scholarship from a small school. He worked hard; he was a moderate oar; he did not make many friends, but he was greatly respected for a sort of quiet directness and common-sense. He never put himself forward, but when it fell to him to do anything he did it with confidence and discretion. He had an excellent head for business, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and to the real nature of music! It is in free three-part form, the first part of a calm nature in which we are rocked on gently undulating waves; a more rhythmic second part where, as Kullak says, the bass seems to suggest the monotonous steadiness of oar-strokes; an interlude, marked "dolce sfogato," introduced by some delightful modulations, as if in a quiet nook the poet were dreaming of the beauties of love and nature; an impassioned return to the chief subject, together with a partial presentation of the middle portion; ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of the posterior end; the thrust exerted by each fin is toward the rear. If, now, light strikes one eye, say the right, the left fin is set in motion and the animal's body is set rotating toward the right like a rowboat with one oar. This is all that one such reflex arc could do for the animal. Since, however, there are now two, when the animal comes to be turned far enough toward the right so that some of the light strikes the second eyespot (as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... connected The Jug, as the bight where the Anguses lived was called, with the wider waters of Eskimo Bay. There could be no doubt, even at that distance, that the tall man standing aft and manipulating the long sculling oar, was Doctor Joe. As the little group gathered on the jetty he took off his hat and waved it high above his head. It was Doctor Joe beyond a doubt! The boys waved their caps and shouted at the top of their lusty young lungs, Margaret, undoing her apron, ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... attempted to influence—a thing never acting, but perpetually acted upon—protected by one friend, deceived by another; but in the advantage which I received from the one, and the evil I have sustained from the other, as passive and helpless as a boat that drifts without oar or rudder at the mercy of the winds and waves. I became a courtier, because Heriot so advised it—a gamester, because Dalgarno so contrived it—an Alsatian, because Lowestoffe so willed it. Whatever of good or bad has befallen me, has arisen out of the agency of others, not from my own. My father's ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... breeks up with an oar and skelps a splash o' water at the old woman, and laughed at her with the wind blowing her skirts, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck askew ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... many difficulties, he went on to cheer me with the example of the Prince of Pastors, the Bishop of our souls, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who preferred shame and toil to joy, that He might further the work of oar salvation. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... afternoon the two ladies went out rowing on the river, and Mrs. Easterfield was astonished at Olive's proficiency with the oar. She had thought herself a good oarswoman, but she was nothing to Olive. She good-naturedly acknowledged her inferiority, however. How could she expect to compete with ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Ten branches of red willow were placed within, the ends being bent upward and fastened by withes to two other saplings, which extended the whole length of the boat at the inside of the gunwale. The ten pieces were the [t]ici-iki[p]ada^{n}. The rudder or steering oar (i[|c]isa^{n}['][|c][)e]) was fashioned like the oars (mandu[|c]ugahi), with the blade flat and of the breadth of two hands. The rowers (u[|c]ugahi aka) sat near the bow, and the steersman ([|c]isa^{n}['][|c]a aka) took his seat ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,
... drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... branches to hide both of them from the duck. This arrangement looked like a fair sized table decoration, a conspicuous man in a topee with a gun at one end, and a black white-turbaned native at the other. Away they went, left oar, right oar! I watched these simple manoeuvres from the far side, where, like the other guns, I was posted at the water's edge, in full view of the duck which were swimming about in mid water, chuckling at us I am sure. The native's rowing was a sight! first ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... privilege which Byrd exercised fitfully, for his heart was in the talk that Sharlee was dutifully supporting with Mr. Miller. Into this talk he resolutely declined to be drawn, but his ear was alert for opportunities—which came not infrequently—to thrust in a polished oar to the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Save where many a palace gate 130 With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of Ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, 135 Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death 140 O'er the waters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... had often rowed a boat on dangerous rivers and on the sea; had been nearly lost one dark night in a high spring-tide on the sandbanks of the River Mersey; had been washed out to sea through the failure of an oar at Barmouth; had narrowly escaped being swamped with his boat off the East Coast; and a few years before had a hair-breadth escape from drowning by being drawn under the wooden framework protecting the piles for a future famous bridge ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... well as work, may bring out hand-craft. The gun, the bat, the rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports, are good training for the hand. Walking insures fresh air, but it does not train the body or mind like games and sports which are played out of doors. A man of great fame as an explorer and as a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan. That, fluting a wild carol, ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... where we built the hut when we first landed, Ailie," said Glynn, who pulled the aft oar; "d'ye see it?—just coming into view; look! There it will be shut out again in a moment by the rock ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... pointed at both ends, and painted black—furnished in the centre with cushioned seats, all black, over which is erected a kind of cot, with windows, to screen the passengers. One man stands in the fore, another in the back part, rowing with their faces forward, the oar working in a twisting manner on the top of a piece of wood curiously grooved for the purpose. I cannot say that I saw anything very peculiar in the dress of the gondoliers, or indeed in the appearance of any of the people of Venice, excepting the female water-carriers. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the University Boat Race is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. To begin with, it involves great muscular exertion; but this is not unpleasant, and, as I shall presently show, is not dangerous. Further, it ties the aspirant to his oar for at least ten weeks, which is perhaps its greatest disadvantage; and it involves intense application and a pretty good temper under remarks from the "coach" that are sometimes almost more than caustic. But against these drawbacks are to be set the pleasure of gratified ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... soul in her dreariness cried out, "One effort more!" But that is done with for ever. She is patient now; she believes at last; she labours no longer at the oar, but she is borne upon the moving tide; she is on her way to the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and steer, box the compass, pull an oar, or sail a boat; and I know the name and place of every spar, sail, and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... fealty for thy lord, or devotion to his daughter—speed swiftly upon my errand. Rest not, halt not, spare not the spur; but hie thee day and night until thou reach the sea; take the first bark, and haste with sail and oar to Ceuta, nor pause until thou give this letter to the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... fight, Brian pulled forth his pistols and emptied them both at the figure of O'Donnell. He saw the Dark Master reel, and the rower next him plunged forward over the bows, but the next moment O'Donnell had taken up the oar himself and was at work in mad haste. Brian groaned ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... not afraid!" said the plump young lady, and leaned forward to catch hold of one oar. Just then her foot slipped and she fell on the gunwale, causing the boat to tip more than ever. As she did this, Mabel Mallison, who was leaning over the side, gazing down into the clear waters of the lake, ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Never, in all his experience in rowing, had he tackled anything like an oar of that size, but he pulled for all he was worth, and a glow ran through him to feel that he was holding up his end. The light dory with two men aboard, came racing after them. It was nearly a half-mile ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... needed to carry him onwards; wind and tide did all that. He had merely to keep his place and steer his little bark up the wide river. He saw against the sky the great pile of Westminster. He had drifted almost across the river by that time. He was seated in the bow of the boat, just dipping an oar from time to time as it slipped along beneath the trees. And now the moon shone out for a few minutes clear and bright. It did not shine upon his own craft, gliding so stealthily beneath the bare trees that fringed the wall of the very house he had come to see; but it did gleam ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hands over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat meets 'em—Lord knows what the party at the oars thought—they climbs in an' the last I sees of 'em they was puttin' for shore—each havin' taken a oar from the boatman, an' they sure was makin' that ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... like to hear that the ship was struck by lightning, and went down in the middle of the ocean, with every soul on board but me, and that I drifted for days on a single oar, and at last came to a savage coast with a horde of wild Arabs ready to pounce upon me the moment I should ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... his galley was bound that afternoon on a cruise of a few miles along the coast and indeed was lifting anchor as he was hauled up the side. He had, therefore, but a hasty view of his surroundings before he was chained to his bench, facing the great oar. He saw only a long chamber, crossed by row upon row of white, desperate faces. Down the middle, by the ends of the benches, ran a gangway, along which three overseers paced leisurably, each with a tall, flexible wand in his hand. The stench in the place was overpowering, and Tristram ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tall bamboos shoot up, and the bamboo is welcome, for it is a tree of many uses. Its wood serves for the framework of houses, and its leaves are often used as thatch. It will make a dish, a box, a plate, a bowl, an oar, a channel for conveying water and a vessel for carrying it, a fishing-rod, a flower-vase, a pipe-stem, a barrel-hoop, a fan, an umbrella, and fifty other things, while young bamboo shoots are eaten and considered ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... advantage in producing this effect is a very material point. The mode universally adopted by Nature is the oblique waft of the wing. We have only to choose between the direct beat overtaking the velocity of the current, like the oar of a boat, or one applied like the wing, in some assigned degree of obliquity to it. Suppose 35 feet per second to be the velocity of an aerial vehicle, the oar must be moved with this speed previous to its ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... much cloth, threw obstacles in the way, and most unjustly demanded as large a passport-fee for my crossing as had been given to the other chief; which demand we were obliged to comply with, or the men would not take up an oar. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to London. But it was not one of the frequented parts of the river, being a quiet reach among solitary meadows. She remembered that there was a shabby little house standing by itself on the bank where boats could be hired, for they had put in there once to replace an oar, having lost one down a weir in the neighborhood. The weir had not been on the main stream, but they had come upon it in exploring a backwater. It could not ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... heavy rapids, over which it was necessary to track, and in some places to double the crews. Each boat had a tow line of fifty feet, and in tracking the end was taken ashore by one of the crew of two, while the boat was kept off the bank by the other man with an oar. At the Horseshoe Rapids, ten miles above Gull Island Lake, an accident happened which threatened to put a stop to further progress of the expedition. While tracking around a steep point in crossing these rapids the boat which Messrs. Cary and Smith ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... fishing-tackle and fowling-piece, and pushed out upon the broad bosom of the forest-girt Umbagog. Having had the best success, when up on the lake the last time, on the western margin, he pulled away in that direction, and, after rowing a couple of miles up the lake, he laid down his oar, unrolled his elm-bark cable, and let down his stone anchor, at a station a furlong or ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... he began a new life. This was a splendid thing for him, in a number of ways. For instance, one of the first things he did was to go in for athletics. He had a flat, narrow chest, sloping shoulders; but the rowing men trained him; and he worked until he became a good oar, and could ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... night in a beautiful nook in a bluff near a little stream. The next day we reached Running Water. The ferry-boat was a little thing, with a small paddle-wheel on each side operated by two horses on tread-mills. A man stood at the stern with a long oar to steer it. The river was not so wide here as at Yankton, but the current was swifter, which no doubt gave the place its name. It looked very doubtful if we should ever get across in the queer craft, but after a long time we succeeded in doing so. It gave us a good opportunity ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key, The maul, the oar, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... speaker mentioned Peter. In truth it seems to me the present company is preparing to leave Peter's bark, in the hope perhaps of being able to walk upon the waves. I humbly declare that my faith is not sufficient, and I should sink at once. I intend to remain in the bark, at the most plying a small oar, according to my light, for, as this gentleman says, I am very timid. It is therefore necessary for us to part, and it only remains for me to beg you to pardon my coming. I feel the need of a stroll ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... quoitcast of the unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded toward us through the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on the surface of the water; but the eddying current sucked him down; and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... opportunity of seeing the light of the glow-worm, but there can be few of those who have frequented in summer any part of our coasts, who have never seen that beautiful greenish light which is then so often visible, especially on our southern shores, when the water is disturbed by the blade of an oar or the prow of a boat or ship. In some cases, even on our own shores, the phenomenon is much more brilliant, every rippling wave being crested with a line of the same peculiar light, and in warmer seas ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... was a good deal of him—six feet and an inch, I should think; straight as an oar, his bared arms swinging free; waist, thighs, and back tough as a saw-log. To this was added two big blue eyes set in a clean-shaven face bronzed by the sun, and a double row of teeth that would have shamed an ear of corn. I caught, too, the muscles of his chest rounding out his boating ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I broke an oar to-day. I'm not used to rowing anyway, and the oar was long; two of us sit on one seat, each pulling an oar. There is room for eight in the boat, beside the captain. We went out to-day in a boat called the Ellida and after going all around the lake we thought it ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... says he. "I'll do it. Shove off. Here, stick your oar into the mud and push. That's it! Now climb in and give that old tub of yours a shove so she'll clear that left plane. Good work! Here's your seat, beside me. Don't get your knees in the way of that lever, please, or put your feet ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... push out from the land, and I scull with one oar, and play on my Pan's-pipes. And Mopseman, he swims behind. [With glittering eyes.] And all the creepers and crawlers, they follow and follow us out into the deep, deep waters. Ay, for ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... welcome the canoe and its owner. The ebb had ceased, and the incoming tide was being already felt close in shore; so with tide and wind against me, and the darkness of night settling down gloomily upon the wide bay, I pulled a strong oar for five miles to the entrance of Kill Van Kull Strait, which separates Staten Island from New Jersey and connects the upper bay ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... always been passionately fond of out-door life, and prided myself in having acquired no little skill at the oar. We were out on the painted lake, and I was rowing the light boat, and taking much selfish enjoyment out of the scene around me, when I became conscious that the fisherman was leaning far forward from his seat in the boat, addressing me in ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... bestowed its color upon the most cheerful sights and sounds of nature. The coming of summer or spring; the bells of Oxford and Ostend; the distant prospect of the Malvern Hills, or the chalk cliffs of Dover; sunrise on the sea, touching "the lifted oar far off with sudden gleam"; these and the like move him to tears equally with the glimmer of evening, the sequestered woods of Wensbeck, the ruins of Netley Abbey,[9] or the frowning ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 'What do I understand is the full order, sir, for your party?' demanded the waiter, doggedly and suggestively. Powell tried to repeat her wishes, but stumbled and stammered and grew red in the face. I put in a working oar to cover the undercurrent of laughter, while she, coolly unconscious of everything except that there was no occasion for a 'middleman,' since she was entirely competent to look after her own breakfast, repeated her order, and the waiter, looking intensely disgusted, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... "How get across the Elbe? We have copper pontoons at Pirna; but they will be difficult to cart. Or we might have a boat-bridge; boats planked together two and two. At Pirna are plenty of boats; and by oar and track-rope, the River itself might be a road for them? Boats or pontoons to Konigstein, by water or land, they must be got. Eight miles of abysmal roads, our horses all extenuated? Impossible ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... various voices! And this was the oar They triumphantly won from a great rival crew; The cool-headed, steady-nerved Stroke, bound to score; The fellow who funking or failure ne'er knew. He hurry, or falter, catch crabs, miss, or muff? No, no; lesser men might—say, GL-DST-NE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... end of the pool, a long, dark body slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form, but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail, twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed, combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish. The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright eyes of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Quelch and his companions marched on foot through the town of Boston to Scarlil's Wharf with a strong armed guard of musketeers, accompanied by various officials and two ministers, while in front was carried a silver oar, the emblem of a pirate's execution. Before the last act the minister gave a long and fervent harangue to the wretched culprits, in all of whom were observed suitable signs of repentance except Quelch, who, stepping forward ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a Trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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