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Tiller   Listen
noun
Tiller  n.  One who tills; a husbandman; a cultivator; a plowman.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tiller" Quotes from Famous Books



... from the ship at six bells in the morning watch. Dolly Venn, who was rated as fourth officer, was with me in the launch, and Harry Doe, the boatswain, at the tiller. I left Mister Jacob on the bridge, and gave him my orders to stand in-shore as near as might be, and to look for my coming at sunset—no later. "Whatever passes," said I, "the night will find me on board again. I trust ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... He doesn't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's sermons make him think of soul-saving and other bewildering and uncomfortable topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it goes with him, that tiller of the soil answers promptly: 'Pa'son Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no holler-day at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... find what I seek—a companion; or if this may not be—to endless time, decrepid and grey headed—youth already in the grave with those I love— the lone wanderer will still unfurl his sail, and clasp the tiller—and, still obeying the breezes of heaven, for ever round another and another promontory, anchoring in another and another bay, still ploughing seedless ocean, leaving behind the verdant land of native ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... to the last, he saw, as they were carrying him below, that the tiller ropes which had been shot away were not replaced, and ordered that this should be immediately attended to. Then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he spread his handkerchief over his face and his stars. But for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... slipping down on the deck, went quietly into the sleep of the gin-drunken. At four o'clock in the morning the gray fog grew grayer with the early dawning; and as I gazed with weary eyes into the vague unknown that shut us in, Booden roused him from his booze, and seizing the tiller from my hand, bawled: "'Bout ship, you swab! we're on the Farralones!" And sure enough, there loomed right under our starboard quarter a group of conical rocks, steeply rising from the restless blue sea. Their wild white ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... drudgery and to that subordinate position to which woman is always consigned where civilization and religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden, busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets, moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her own children, and at all times a servant to the commands and passions ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... children huzzah and wave their hands to the express; but for the most part, it is an interruption too brief and isolated to attract much notice; the sheep do not cease from browsing; a girl sits balanced on the projecting tiller of a canal boat, so precariously that it seems as if a fly or the splash of a leaping fish would be enough to overthrow the dainty equilibrium, and yet all these hundreds of tons of coal and wood and iron have been precipitated roaring past her very ear, and there is not a start, not a tremor, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... peasant: his duties are those of a farm laborer, yet this phrase would not be a fair translation. This word, which is rendered "tiller of the soil," has no ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various

... work for the oarsmen; but the seat of honour was in the stern of the boat, and no man filled it better than the transformed Tam. Alert and full of resource, with one hand on the tiller, he leaned over the boat, lengthening or shortening rope for the halter, and regulating the speed of the oarsmen with unerring judgment; giving a staunch swimmer time and a short rope to lean on, or literally ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... his field for tillage for a fixed rental, and receive the rent of his field, but bad weather come and destroy the harvest, the injury falls upon the tiller of the soil. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... tiller was in fact, looking, with mingled curiosity and hostility, at the gunboat that he was passing but a few yards away, and did not notice a canoe, manned by six rowers, that was coming down with the stream, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... suddenly pushing the hatch to and throwing a coil of rope over it, he produced from his pockets a brace of pistols which he had bought at Dunkirk out of the stock of money he had had in his pocket when he was captured, and ordered the man at the helm to steer for the frigate. The man let go the tiller at once, and he and his companion prepared to make a rush upon Will. But the sight of the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... food and water were stowed on board, the sail raised, and the boat cast off from the pier. Cesare took the tiller and with a light morning breeze the Red Dragon drew proudly away from the beach and ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... wearer of the third Gold Button and the Horn Belt-clasp, in situations of critical perplexity, seems by his own ingenuous showing to have maintained an unparalleled aptitude for behaving either with the crystalline simplicity of a Kan-su earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies." Assuredly, if your striking and well-chosen metaphors were ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... so long been known in our pages by the nom de guerre of Tiller, gained the open street, he had a better opportunity of understanding the nature of the danger which so imminently pressed upon the brigantine. With a single glance at the symmetrical spars and broad yards of the ship that was sweeping past the town, he knew her to be the Coquette. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... Scilly Isles had been sighted by Timmy Durrant lying like mountain-tops almost a-wash in precisely the right place. His calculations had worked perfectly, and really the sight of him sitting there, with his hand on the tiller, rosy gilled, with a sprout of beard, looking sternly at the stars, then at a compass, spelling out quite correctly his page of the eternal lesson-book, would have moved a woman. Jacob, of course, was not ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... may we see the treason of those brethren against us." Therewith he took the tiller, but Frithiof caught up a forked beam, and ran into the prow, and ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... higher religious motives, and a largeness of the sympathetic life which is favored by the nature of the occupation. Where the nomadic habits of the original shepherds pass into the more sedentary state of the soil tiller, the element of personal care and the affection and the consequent education of the sympathy were increased. Men had now to care for half a dozen or more kinds of animals; they had to learn their ways, in a manner to put themselves in their places and conceive their needs. Thus the life of ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... manipulation of the tiller was extraordinary and erratic, and it was not until the boat was well past the wharves that he ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... pulled through the locks by men harnessed to a long tow rope, and a savage dog on one of these barges menaced me with dripping fangs and bloodshot eyes when I stopped to talk to the steersman, who sat on the tiller smoking a short, evil-smelling pipe, while his "vrouwe" was hanging out a heavy wash of vari-colored garments on a line from the staff on the bow to a sweep fastened ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... lawyer and a neighboring farmer, were at the Bar, one of those old-fashioned slatted coops, in a corner, peculiar to Pennsylvania, discussing the merits of a law suit, seizure of the property, &c., of a deceased tiller of the soil, in the vicinity. Busily chatting, and quaffing their toddy, the entrance of the poor old traveller was scarcely noticed, until he had divested himself of his old, many-caped cloak, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rocked upon the calm water that murmured along the shore, when a young man came down from the upper bank of white drift sand, and seized the tiller rope. He had the rope in his hand, his arm was upraised to draw the boat to his feet, when he was startled by hearing the words with which ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... consult what to do with us; for, in eight or ten minutes they came back, apparently in great haste, shut us all below, fastened up the companion way, fore-scuttle and after hatchway, stove our compasses to pieces in the binnacles, cut away tiller-ropes, halliards, braces, and most of our running rigging, cut our sails to pieces badly; took a tub of tarred rope-yarn and what combustibles they could find about deck, put them in the caboose house and set them ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... hurrah, we're off once more," Shouted the Polar Bear, waving his paw, And the Mermaid Princess laughed in glee As he held the tiller and ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory

... now; all hands on deck! We can get into New Bedford in two days if this wind holds. Nor' west!" shouted the skipper to the man at the tiller. "We'll sup with our old women in ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... Lewis's son. Out of solicitude for their dear friend and kinsman, the Stukeleys could not part from him until he was safely launched upon his voyage. At the head of the stairs they were met by Captain King; at the foot of them a boat was waiting, as concerted, the boatswain at the tiller. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... and get in," Tom ordered his companions, as he pushed out a pair of oars. "Nicolas, you're also good with a pair of oars. Mr. Renshaw, you take the tiller. Inform me instantly when you see the first gleam of the 'Morton's' search-light. Evarts ought to have caught the scoundrels this time. Evidently he's been cruising softly ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... shook to my knees, listening. Why had he not denounced me, then? And in the same instant the answer came: He was to profit by my disgrace; he was to be aggrandized by my downfall. The drama he had prepared was to be set in scenery of his own choosing. His savant fingers grasped the tiller, steering me inexorably ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... no flocks; I am a tiller of the ground, and must Yield what it yieldeth to my toil—its fruit: [He gathers fruits. Behold them in their various bloom and ripeness. [They dress their altars, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... aware that their last moment had arrived. Servadac and the count grasped each other's hands for a long farewell; and, tossed by the tremendous waves, the schooner was on the very point of being hurled upon the cliff, when a ringing shout was heard. "Quick, boys, quick! Hoist the jib, and right the tiller!" ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... Describing how the English tiller had been expropriated from the soil Wallace says: "The ingenuity of lawyers and direct landlord legislation steadily increased the powers of great landowners and encroached upon the rights of the people, till at length the monstrous doctrine arose that a landless Englishman has no right whatever ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... a yacht, like Miller, That skimmer of the seas— A wheel rigged on a tiller, [See Notes (5)] And a fresh gunwale breeze, A crew of friends well chosen, And all a-taunto, I Would sail for regions frozen— I'd rather freeze ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... we were speeding merrily before the breeze towards the opposite shore. But about the middle of the lake we found the water a good deal rougher, and the wind began to increase notably. Hamilton held the tiller, and not liking to make fast the haulyard of the sail, gave me the rope to hold, with instructions to hold on till further orders. He was a perfect master of the business in hand, and so was the new boat a perfect mistress of her business, but this did not prevent ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... 'nother Phil got Cap'n Jonadab talking "boat," and when Jonadab talks "boat" there ain't no stopping him. He's the smartest feller in a cat-boat that ever handled a tiller, and he's won more races than any man on the Cape, I cal'late. Phil asked him and me if we'd ever sailed on an ice-boat, and, when we said we hadn't he asks if we won't take a sail with him on the river next morning. We didn't want to put ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... take human life, and I refrained from this last step, and as the ship was bare of sails and we were in position to control the tiller we passed two days and a night, with only a few crackers for food, and almost ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... the sharpest of bowmen, stood by the mast, and shot with his bow." His arrow hits the tiller-end, just over the Earl's head, and buries itself up to the shaft in the wood. "Who shot that bolt?" says the Jarl. Another flies between his hand and side, and enters the stuffing of the chief's ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... frequently is himself a tiller of the soil. Many of the older churches had land, ten or twenty or forty acres, which the minister was expected to till, and from it to secure a part of his living. A church at Cranberry, N. J., had a farm of one hundred acres until the close of the nineteenth century. ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... been said in France that King Haakon abandons tiller and compass for crown and scepter without one hour's training in ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... and the Malay rushed, or rather tottered, to the oars; while the captain threw himself into the stern, and took hold of the tiller-ropes. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: and bitingly she said, with ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... Dan, as he put the Isabel about, and headed towards the small island, about half a mile from the shore. "Take the helm, Cyd," continued he, as he left his post at the tiller, and rushed ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... of life, none was farther removed from the profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social arrangement. Montesquieu has made ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... in the common land which marked off the freeman or ceorl from the unfree man or laet, the tiller of land which another owned. As the ceorl was the descendant of settlers who, whether from their earlier arrival or from kinship with the original settlers of the village, had been admitted to a share in its land and its corporate life, so the laet was a descendant ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... even—oh, more than even!—with you, dear lady," he promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron's unconscious and unbending figure, "if it takes all summer. I wonder if she could have guessed. And it ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... numerous cases in America more recently. One case (for some details concerning which I am indebted to Dr. J.G. Kiernan, of Chicago) is that of the "Tiller Sisters," two quintroons, who for many years had acted together under that name in cheap theaters. One, who was an invert, with a horror of men dating from early girlhood, was sexually attached to the other, who was without ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... brought to perfection it is necessary that they should have their proper instruments if they would complete their works, so is it in the art of managing a family: now of instruments some of them are alive, others inanimate; thus with respect to the pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is alive; for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an instrument to living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a slave is an animated instrument, but every one that can minister ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and might often have influenced our national cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of England had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of machinery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind of one eye ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... beach together, with arms around each other's waists, and their footsteps guided by the still-burning torch lying on the sand. I followed, and in another minute I had the tiller in my hand, and told Tepi to push off, as Tematau ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... hoist sail as soon as he comes alongside. And that there black point which you may see, if your eyes are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as ship-shaped a crew—if it's the same as I saw making off this morning—as ever pulled. Your Captain Smith, you may take your oath, is at the tiller, and making fun of us two to the lads. In five minutes he will be on board, and then the revenue cutter from the station may give chase if she likes!... And there she is, due to the time—about a mile astern. But bless you, that's all my eye, you may take your ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... Raker struck the helms-man on board the pirate, shattering at the same time the tiller. In a moment the brig was up in the wind, and taken aback, throwing the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... into the harbor while old Mattsson stood out by the lighthouse. A young man sitting at the tiller lifted his hat and nodded to the girl. The old man saw that ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... the tiller. A couple of warehousemen from Henriksen's wharf were along as crew. Ole had arranged the trip carefully and had brought along a choice supply of provisions; he had even remembered roasted coffee for Irgens. But he had failed to find Coldevin, and he had purposely ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and breaking into a ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... hand and the sjambok in the other, instructing himself assiduously with the Word, while asserting himself liberally with the deed. Yet he was a first-rate sporting man, a shrewd trafficker, and at times an energetic tiller of the soil. The early settlements were Rondebosch, Stellenbosch, and Drakenstein, in the valley of the Berg River. Here the Dutch community laboured, and smoked, and married, multiplying itself with amazing rapidity, and expanding well beyond the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... weather in my time, but never just in that way. With the mizzen boom we rigged up a fore jury-mast and made shift to hoist a storm staysail to give us steerin' way and rigged up a tiller for steerin'. The wind was whistling like all possessed. It was askin' more than any vessel had a right to stand, and around midnight the fore staysail was blown clean out of the bolt ropes and she lost steerage way again. We couldn't hold her ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... of this, and asked him which he would prefer. Nelson replied: "Take your choice, Hardy, it does not signify much." The master was ordered to put the helm to port, and the VICTORY ran on board the REDOUTABLE, just as her tiller ropes were shot away. The French ship received her with a broadside; then instantly let down her lower-deck ports, for fear of being bearded through them, and never afterwards fired a great gun during the action. Her tops, like those ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... was flying along nicely now, with Dab at the tiller and Dick Lee tending sail, and Dab could listen with all his ears to Ford Foster's account ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... as those of Eugene Sue and Marryat are inferior. He goes on board his ship with his own creations, disdaining all society and assistance but that with which he is thus surrounded. Long Tom Coffin, Tom Tiller, Trysail, Bob Yarn, the boisterous Nightingale, the mutinous Nighthead, the fierce but honest Boltrope, and others who crowd upon our memories, as familiar as if we had ourselves been afloat with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... rose up, and still holding the tiller, stretched his hand to tear out the reefs. But at that instant, just as a quivering shimmer broke across the sky, something rose up from under the thwart and stood between them. Atle started ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Jack Tiller gave a hoist at his slacks, and with something between a sigh and a grunt, he wheeled round and went ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... tiller; but the slight cockle-shell merely swung round and drifted broadside on. O, if we had but left a single scull in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... easily, as the oars were got out, and headed directly away from the ship. The crew seemed to me to be mostly stewards or cooks in white jackets, two to an oar, with a stoker at the tiller. There was a certain amount of shouting from one end of the boat to the other, and discussion as to which way we should go, but finally it was decided to elect the stoker, who was steering, as captain, and for all to obey his orders. He set to work at once to get into touch with ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... a tiller of the fields, but, also, a water-carrier. He was resting now, after his labors in ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... husbandry, farming; georgics, geoponics[obs3]; tillage, agronomy, gardening, spade husbandry, vintage; horticulture, arboriculture[obs3], floriculture; landscape gardening; viticulture. husbandman, horticulturist, gardener, florist; agricultor[obs3], agriculturist; yeoman, farmer, cultivator, tiller of the soil, woodcutter, backwoodsman; granger, habitat, vigneron[obs3], viticulturist; Triptolemus. field, meadow, garden; botanic garden[obs3], winter garden, ornamental garden, flower garden, kitchen garden, market garden, hop garden; nursery; green ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... servus. Caesar (De Bello Gallico, vi. 15) says of the Gallic equites, "atque eorum ut quisque est genere copiisque amplissimus, plurimos circum se ambactos clientesque habent.'' Accepting the Celtic origin of the word, it has been connected with the Welsh amaeth, a tiller of the ground. A Teutonic origin has been suggested in the Old High Ger. ambaht, a retainer, which appears in a Scandinavian word amboht, bondwoman or maid, in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... doing something? Aren't we encouraging him and helping on a good show?" "Oh, get onto that hike!" "Gee whiz, Commodore, if you jibe over like that you'll go by the board." "Put your tiller hard a-port." "Haul in on your jib-sheet," "Lash yourself to the main-mast or you'll drop off astern," were some of the encouraging words of advice which rattled about Jean's assailed ears, as the space grew momentarily wider between him and his friends, those same friends wilfully holding ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... upon the tiller in such a manner that the whole concern travelled backwards and forwards across the deck in the maddest kind of way. For the first quarter of an hour, in spite of the September chill, the sweat poured off me ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... crew strained at their oars until every thing cracked again; but as the flood made, the current against us increased, and we barely held our own. "Steer her, out of the current, man," said the lieutenant to the coxswain; the man put the tiller to port as he ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... of a few white gulls could be heard quite distinctly, though they were half a mile or more away. Having hove anchor, we tacked slowly across the bay, passed the pier-head, and steered for Old Harry Rock and Swanage Bay. My crew was for'ard, and I had possession of the tiller. ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... Yawl let go the tiller, on which the sloop broached to and nearly went on her beam ends. This was more than I could bear, and calling on Ramon to follow me, I sprang forward, seized Kidd by the throat, and, drawing my dagger, told him that unless he promised to obey my orders and do his duty, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... from the Greek [Greek: georgos], an earth tiller, farmer. Spenser borrows the story in this stanza from that of Tages, son of Earth, who was similarly found and brought up. ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... broad daylight; so he looked to the tiller and got the boat's head a little up to the wind, and then gazed about him with the sleep still in his eyes. And as his eyes took in the picture before him he could not refrain a cry; for lo! there arose up great and grim right ahead the black cliffs of the Isle of Ransom. ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... to do," grinned the red-headed, former Bowery waif, Noddy Nipper, as, with a dexterous motion, he jerked over the tiller of the fine, speedy sloop in which the boys were enjoying a sail on Alexandria ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Flag-officer Foote was on, besides having been hit about sixty times, several of the shots passing through near the waterline, had a shot enter the pilot-house which killed the pilot, carried away the wheel and wounded the flag-officer himself. The tiller-ropes of another vessel were carried away and she, too, dropped helplessly back. Two others had their pilot-houses so injured that they scarcely formed a protection to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... kindly, free, poetic, laborious, simple existence for the tiller of the field is not so hard to realize that it must be banished into the world of chimaeras. Virgil's sweet and sad cry: 'O happy peasants, if they but knew their own blessings!' is a regret; but like all regrets, it is at the same time a prediction. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... motioned his companion to take up the oars, and then shoved off, leaping lightly on the stern-sheets where he could handle the tiller. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... indeed within less than half a mile of the wharf; but here at length the wind entirely failed her, and she sat idly on the water. De Vaux was watching her through the glass; there seemed to be some little hesitation and confusion on board; Sam, the boy, had given up the tiller to Black Bob. Suddenly the first blast of the gust from the east came rustling through the wood, making the young trees bend before it; then as it passed over the water there ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... with a south-easterly wind and a steady breeze; in the morning, we found our rudder broken at top in the tiller hole; we therefore hauled to windward under reduced sail and fitted a cross beam to either side. By estimation the west side of Nova Guinea must be North ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... heaving up whatever it may bear, and we feel in an immediate way its strong backward sagging when the rocks appear above it as it falls. We have our hand on the throb of the current turning in a salting river inland between green hills; we are borne upon it bodily as we sail, its movement kicks the tiller in our grasp, and the strength beneath us and around us, the rush and the compulsion of the stream, its silence and as it were its purpose, all represent to us, immediately and here, that immeasurable to and fro which ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... sat at the tiller smoking. He was in that mood of vacant obliviousness of the ordinary affairs of life which long drifting on calm seas induces. The helplessness of man in a sailing-ship, when the wind fails him, begets a kind of fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable, which is the ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... been committed in sea and tempest. Upon the strand, and close opposite to the small gate which now stood ajar, lay one of her boats, the crew of which had abandoned her with the exception only of a single individual, apparently her cockswain, who, with the tiller under his arm, lay half extended in the stern-sheets, his naked chest exposed, and his tarpaulin hat shielding his eyes from the sun while he indulged in profound repose. These were the only objects ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... fill the single sail of our little craft, we made an early start. Towards noon the wind freshened and soon was blowing furiously. The seas ran high, but George and I had become so used to rough weather and had faced danger so often that we ran right on in front of the gale, I at the tiller, and he handling the sail rope and bailing the water out when occasionally we shipped a sea. The rate at which we travelled quickly brought us to the rapid at the eastern end of the lake, and through this we shot down into the Little Lake, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... methods of attack transcended those of the mere devourer of leaf-tissue, as radically as an inventor of most intricate instruments differs from the plodding tiller of the soil. In the center of one leaf, less disfigured than some of its fellows, I perceived four tiny ivory spheres, a dozen of which might rest comfortably within the length of an inch. To my eye they looked quite smooth, although a steady oblique ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... near the wind as may be, and the other when she runs before it. Either will be quieter than washing about anyhow. May we make a parable out of that? If you want to have as little pitching and tossing as possible on your voyage, keep a good strong hand on the tiller. Do not let the boat lie in the trough of the sea, but drive her right against the wind, or as near it as she will sail. That is to say, have a definite aim to which you steer, and keep a straight course for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... shadow against the sky—exercised a weird fascination for him. He was well out in the open now where the wind blew a half-gale. His figure was wet from the sea but he felt no chill. Suddenly the hand gripping the tiller tightened, and his heart gave a great bound; then sank. Not far from that portentous point of land he saw another light—green! A boat was emerging from the big basin of water beyond. The starboard signal, set high above the waves, belonged ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... trials of motherhood deserve notice. We have seen the hopes that came to Eve, and beheld their realization in and through Christ. The trials were born of sin. Eve's eldest child, Cain, possessed a narrow, selfish nature. He was a tiller of the ground. Abel was a keeper of the sheep. The first born met this curse in the soil. The second born looked forward to the restoration. In process of time Cain brought of the fruit of the ground. Tradition has it that he brought what was left of his ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... situation, capitalists had seized upon the material advantages which the abundant supply of Irish milk afforded, and the green pastures of the "Golden Vein" were studded with snow white creameries which proclaimed the transfer of this great Irish industry from the tiller of the soil to the man of commerce. The new-comers secured the milk of the district by giving the farmer much more for his milk than it was worth to him, so long as he pursued the old methods of home manufacture. This induced farmers to go out of the butter-making business. After a while the price ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... he did not boast in vain. He was calm and unmoved in spite of the dreadful danger which threatened us. Still holding the tiller in his hand, and keeping his eye on the sails, he knelt down and offered up an earnest prayer for our safety. We followed his example, as did the natives; and when we arose from our knees, I, for my part, felt that I was much better prepared than before to ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... burnt and the caldron had bubbled. The brass-covered tombs of the abbots in the presbytery looked as if a century had passed over them without disturbance; while the graves in the cloister cemetery, obliterated, and only to be detected when a broken coffin or a mouldering bone was turned up by the tiller of the ground, preserved their wonted appearance. The face of nature had received neither impress nor injury from the fantastic freaks and necromantic exhibitions of the witches. Every thing looked as it was left overnight; ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... but did not choose to avail himself of his freedom. Had he survived a few years, he would have found himself in the enjoyment of a liberty so sublimated, that he could not lease, or rent a farm, or collect a common debt, without coming under the harrow of the tiller of the political soil. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... they hung back in disappointment and indecision. After clearing the lock and exchanging a word or two with the woman at the toll, the bargeman had laid himself down upon a heap of empty sacks, to take a nap most probably, leaving his boy in charge of the tiller. Soon bargee was wrapped in slumber, and the boy buried in a penny dreadful. Darby and Joan did not desire to disturb either of them. They were anxious above all things to get on board the boat ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... Britt sat there smiling upon him, and urging him to have "just one more piece of pie, and another cruller." Never before had he felt so important. He was the guest being treated with such respect. When holding the tiller that morning he had longed for Sammie Dunker and the rest of the boys to see him. So now, sitting near the bluff old captain and his wife, he desired the same thing. He felt quite sure that no other boy in the whole parish had been so honoured, and if ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... after this, Desmond, who fancied he was awake, was sitting near the tiller, with his hand placed mechanically on it, when he felt it suddenly move. There was a rushing sound, the boat heeled slowly over. Tom, who even in his sleep felt the movement, jumped up, and finding the boat heeling over, "Let go the main-sheet," he shouted to Pat, who, being in the land of dreams, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... hail and walked quickly aft. In 25 a short space of time we launched the cutter, into which Mr. Larkin and myself jumped, followed by the two men who took the oars. I rigged the tiller, and the mate sat beside me in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... that they would do well to leave these troubled waters. He jammed the tiller down, and tried to sheer away. It was the ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... from the sight of the V.A.D.'s pale face, I took to wandering about the decks and came suddenly on a man whom I had last seen at the tiller of a small boat in Clew Bay. I was beating windward across the steep waves of a tideway. His boat was running free with her mainsail boomed out; and he waved a hand to me as he passed. Once again we met at sea; but we were much less cheerful. He was returning to France after leave, to spend the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... and now she observed with some girlish anxiety the young man's unwonted solemnity, the strange brilliance of his eyes. A certain nervousness began to show through her cold calm: her unconscious hand wound the taut sheet round and round the tiller, an injudicious business in view of the gusty breeze. How to be rid most quickly of the interloper?... She might, of course, put ashore with him: but she particularly did not care to do that, and have all the piazza loungers and gossips see her in his ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Instead of ballast, I laid at the bottom a layer of stones covered with clay, and over this a flooring of boards. The benches for the rowers were laid across, and in the midst the bamboo mast rose majestically, with a triangular sail. Behind I fixed the rudder, worked by a tiller; and I could boast now of having ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... lowering of her boat, with the cloudiness of the sky darkening the misty sea, united to conceal the bold manoeuvre of the cutter. She had almost gained full headway ere an oblique shot, directed by mere chance, struck her stern, tearing the upcurved head of the tiller in the hands of the cabin-boy, and killing him with the splinters. Running to the stump, the captain huzzaed, and steered the reeling ship on. Forced now to hoist back the boat ere giving chase, the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... first note John a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten. Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; and the priest's face, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... back at what he has left. Here you have a youth, educated with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of wealth and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes his mother, his sister, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its reefs, while its rough crags, bare rocks and desolate aspect make it more terrible still.... He sees the glory of God which even the apostles saw not, save in the desert. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... as steersman for many years of our Lord, ever since the time of the skipper's late father. He had become as if glued to the tiller, and many could scarcely imagine the old brig with ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... once more, her gaze followed a small skiff speeding upstream over the placid surface of the silvery Wye; Medenham was rowing, and Cynthia held the tiller ropes; but Mrs. Devar's thoughts turned her mind's eyes inward, and they surveyed a gray prospect. Dale, the unseen monster who had struck this paralyzing blow, spoke of "the Frenchman." Lord Fairholme had charged both Dale and "the Frenchman" with tricking him. Therefore, the Earl and Marigny ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... an answering hail, and they soon saw that a boat was being manned. It came rapidly inshore, propelled by four members of the crew, and, as it drew nearer, they could see that Rogers was seated at the tiller. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... the whole of the cabin. The cabin is kept in place by the funnel, which slips off just above the roof. The slit in the cabin top just back of the hatch is where your engine lever comes through. The bitts, B, fore and aft, are made of Spanish cedar, running through the deck to the hull. Your tiller may be made of steel wire running through the head of the rudder-post, which is made of iron wire; the man who makes your engine will ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the sea, I shall tell thee a tale shall gladden thee. Yestreen I saw a ship go forth When the wind blew merry from the north. And by the tiller Steingrim sat, And O, but my heart was glad thereat! For 'twixt ashen plank and dark blue sea His sword sang ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... the hint," said the lieutenant, as he took his place at the tiller-ropes, "but I shall have a look at the Gaylet Cove, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... there was land in the vale of the Garonne that returned thirty-fold. The two conditions for raising tolerable crops were abundance of labour and abundance of manure. But misery drove the men away, and the stock were sold to pay the taxes. So the land lacked both the arms of the tiller, and the dressing whose generous chemistry would have transmuted the dull earth into fruitfulness and plenty. The extent of the district was estimated at a million and a half of hectares, equivalent to nearly four millions of English acres: yet the population of this vast tract was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... Mrs. Selborne smoked a cigarette before we returned to the deck. The skipper was at the tiller, but she did not relieve him. She was in a lazy mood, and I arranged some cushions to make her comfortable. We were standing well out ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... Viracocha, "sea-foam," the Peruvian god of the sea, was regarded as the source of all life and the origin of all things,—world-tiller, world-animator, he was called (509. 316). Xenophanes of Kolophon, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., taught that "the mighty sea is the father of clouds and winds and rivers." In Greek mythology ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... answered: "Look that you harm not any tiller of the ground, nor any yeoman of the greenwood—no knight, no squire, unless you have heard him ill spoken of. But if bishops or archbishops come your way, see that you spoil them, and mark that you always hold in your mind the High ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... close order through a narrow sound, Cormac swung his steering-oar and hit Thorvald a clout on the ear, so that he fell from his place at the helm in a swoon; and Cormac's ship hove to, when she lost her rudder. Steingerd had been sitting beside Thorvald; she laid hold of the tiller, and ran Cormac down. When he saw what she was ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on the tiller of the Bella Donna, the little sailing-yacht which Lady Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... very well on paper, but I assure you it was a time of intense excitement to us; if in the moment of deadly struggle the tiller ropes had broken, or the helmsman had made one false turn of the wheel, we might have got across the boiling rapids, and then good-bye to sublunary friends; our bones might have been floating past Quebec before the news of our ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... out after breakfast, and I gave him a leg up on to his very sorry horse, which he sat like a tailor or a sailor. He held the reins like tiller-lines, and indulged in a pleased smile at the effect of the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... of brave heart, Eloise. But let us not forget we yet remain in reach of Spanish claws, and they are merciless. Go back to the tiller a while, and let me lay hold upon this oar; 'tis heavy work for such soft hands as yours. Point the course direct for the cane island—you must remember it; you were there ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... because an idea has gone abroad that any man with Mr. Rarey's straps can manage any horse. It would be just as sensible to assert that any boy could learn to steer a yacht by taking the tiller for an hour under the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... The tiller is a piece of board three feet long, two inches wide, and one inch thick, having a V-shaped notch at the lower end to fit on the handle and small notches on its side two inches apart, for a distance of twenty-eight inches. These are to ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... the bows where he held the jib sheet. His hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind, and his lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. Presently he changed places with Sangree, and came down to talk with me by the tiller. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... into the Revolution, King Louis XVI., honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which was slipping from his feeble hands. Every day his efforts were becoming weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller was less and less deserving of public confidence. From M. Turgot to M. Necker, from Calonne to Lomenie de Brienne, the fall had been rapid and deep. Amongst the two parties which unequally divided the nation, between those who defended the past in its entirety, its ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... shot out of the tulles just ahead of her. The helmsman took one look at the five men in the little craft and dropped his tiller to pick up a double-barreled shotgun. He shouted to the sailors; they sprang for weapons, and the two miners in the cabin leaped up the companion stairs, their pistols in their hands. Before the foremost was ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... nameless emporium and picked a passage through a crowd of quaint shipping, wondering where I was, and asking myself whether I was mentally rising equal to my extraordinary surroundings, whether I adequately appreciated the immensity of my remove from those other seas on which I had last travelled, tiller-ropes in hand, piloting a captain's galley from a wharf. Good heavens, what would my comrades on my ship say if they could see me now steering a load of hairy savages up one of those waterways which our biggest telescopes magnify but to the thickness of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... the shepherd (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative life), and that of the husbandman, where we see again the favour and election of God went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... pulling this finishing spell for eleven hours. Two pulled, and he whose turn it was to rest sat at the tiller. We had made out the red light in that bay and steered for it, guessing it must mark some small coasting port. We passed two vessels, outlandish and high-sterned, sleeping at anchor, and, approaching the light, now very dim, ran the boat's nose against the ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... little sail, and seating himself in the stern, with the tiller in his hand, he brought the boat round to the wind. Once he turned toward shore and waved his hat, and then he sailed away ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... the blue sea from Zanzibar. If one could dream, one could picture the corsairs' red flag and the picturesque Arab figure standing high in the stern beside the tiller, and fancy would portray the freight of spices and cloves that they should bring from the plantations of Pemba and Zanzibar. But there are no dusky beauties now aboard these ships; and their freight ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... nor of being out at night, nor of startin' a strange engine. You should have seen her spin that wheel and juggle the tiller ropes. Some girl! ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... night. That he had not seen her while standing up, was owing to the fact that her sails, instead of being white, were tanned a dull red, that blended perfectly with the colour of the distant shore line. A bright-faced, resolute chap, somewhat younger than Cabot, but of equally sturdy build, held the tiller, and regarded with evident approval the behaviour ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... those of other hardy settlers of the neighborhood. No record has been found of his coming, but emigration by that time had grown so rapid that ships' lists were no longer carefully preserved. And then he was but a simple yeoman, a tiller of the soil; one who must have loved the sea, however, for he moved nearer and nearer towards it from Agawam through Wenham woods, until the close of the seventeenth century found his descendants—my own great-great-grandfather's family—planted in a romantic homestead-nook on a hillside, overlooking ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... son of Domenico Contucci of Monte Sansovino, was born from a poor father, a tiller of the earth, and rose from the condition of shepherd, nevertheless his conceptions were so lofty, his genius so rare, and his mind so ready, both in his works and in his discourses on the difficulties of architecture and perspective, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... dead ahead, the fellow at the tiller managed to suddenly shift the course of the advancing boat, and just in time. They swept past the Jessamine with ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... admit," went on Jennie. "Everything in the shell, girls? Now! up with it. Come on, little Trix," she added to the coxswain. "Don't get your tiller-lines snarled, and bring your 'nose-warmer'"—by which inelegant term she referred to the megaphone which, when they were really trying for speed was strapped ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson

... that the old Seahorse was lost. We came at the dons again as we had done before, only closer than ever; and just as the captain gave the word to put her about, a ball from one of their guns which they had trained down on us, cut old Dick Kemp in half at the helm, and broke the tiller to splinters." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... as prompt as the commander, and seizing the tiller, he soon had the great ship sailing along under perfect control. She went into the narrow channel, with the great rocks high on both sides. The waves beat up angrily and the breakers threw their spray high over the decks. With eyes fixed on the channel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... out of the little harbor where he had left his boat, Telly sat in the stern holding the tiller ropes, and shading her winsome face was the same broad sun-hat he had seen on the rock beside her the evening before. It was a long four-mile pull, but he was unconscious of it, and when he helped his companion out and secured ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... don't know what came over Dan: a blind rage swelling in his heart seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame. He sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away. He seized an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... importance to our well-being than is the fund which the sale of them would produce. The remarkable growth and prosperity of our new States and Territories attest the wisdom of the legislation which invites the tiller of the soil to secure a permanent home on terms within the reach of all. The pioneer who incurs the dangers and privations of a frontier life, and thus aids in laying the foundation of new commonwealths, renders ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... roadside, and they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime, and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes less. Enfin!" he ended brusquely. "This is not the National Assembly, and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... this," said Mr. Fison, who was trembling violently. He went to the tiller, while the boatman and one of the workmen seated themselves and began rowing. The other workman stood up in the fore part of the boat, with the boat-hook, ready to strike any more tentacles that might appear. Nothing else seems to have been said. Mr. Fison had expressed ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... would better take the tiller this time!" he said. "The bottom seems to be shoal all about here. And if you and Miss Everton will sit a little forward, Hilda, you will be more comfortable; I fear I cannot help dripping like hoary Nereus all ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... I have," replied the fisherman, "and it's time for Pat to cut and run!" and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the wind, and bowled away from us, with some fifteen ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... should stand still the runner-plank would strike him below the knee and break both his legs like straws; besides, when he was knocked over he was likely to be struck by the tiller-runner, which would ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... they rowed aground instantly, jumped overboard, and took to the land; but at the same instant Olaf's ship came up with them. Olaf saw a remarkably handsome man swimming in the water, and laid hold of a tiller and threw it at him. The tiller struck Erlend, the son of Hakon the earl, on the head, and clove it to the brain; and there left Erlend his life. Olaf and his people killed many; but some escaped, and some were made prisoners, and got life and freedom that they might go and tell what had happened. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What could prevent me? I cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... 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 tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... an economic unit, developed out of the gens, which is a unit of kin and little more. And thus the religion of the familia will be a religion of practical utility, of daily work, of struggle with perils to which the shepherd and the tiller of the soil are liable; it is not the worship of an idea of kinship expressed in some dimly conceived common ancestor; the familia, as I hope to show, had no common ancestor who could be the object of worship, except that of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... the cutter, and she struck upon a rock with such force that the rudder was nearly lifted out of the gudgeons: fortunately we had a brave man and a good seaman at the helm, for instantly recovering the tiller, by a blow from which he had been knocked down when the vessel struck, he obeyed my orders with such attention and alacrity that the sails were kept full; so that by her not losing way, she cleared the rock before the succeeding wave flowed ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... and the man who was ashore gave him an arm on board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself. Northmour took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars between the tholepins sounded crisp and measured in ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other. The watch had ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... huge pyramidical pile carried upon planks which considerably overhang the boat's sides. The steersman is placed upon the top of this stack, and is enabled to guide his vessel by a long pole lashed to the tiller, and it is curious to notice that the "tibbin," though finely chopped, does not appear ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... bulkier than seemed necessary for a journey of so few days. Innstetten talked with the captain. Effi, in a raincoat and light gray traveling hat, stood on the after deck, near the tiller, and looked out upon the quay and the pretty row of houses that followed the line of the quay. Just opposite the landing stood the Hoppensack Hotel, a three-story building, from whose gable a yellow flag, with a cross and a crown on it, hung down limp in the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... ship. When all were seated in the admiral's steam launch, the admiral descended the accommodation ladder and himself picked up the tiller ropes. ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis

... the system was essentially democratic. Gattamelata and Carmagnola sprang from obscurity by personal address and courage to the command of armies. Colleoni fought his way up from the grooms to princely station and the baton of S. Mark. Francesco Sforza, whose father had begun life as a tiller of the soil, seized the ducal crown of Milan, and founded a house which ranked ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... watching his new contrivance with interest. His steering-gear was rude, being a single runner under the tender with tiller attachment, but it served the purpose. The road was so nearly a straight line that little steering ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... workmen. There would be Gabriel—the good priest, as they say!—the apostle of the primitive gospel, the representative of the democracy of the church, of the poor country curate as opposed to the rich bishop, the tiller of the vine as opposed to him who sits in the shade of it; the propagator of all the ideas of fraternity, emancipation, progress—to use their own jargon—and that, not in the name of revolutionary and incendiary politics, but in the name of a religion of charity, love, and peace—to speak ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... to a Hole or Oven, that is a place where the Natives dress their Victuals; this Circumstance, trifling as it is, is still a further proof that these people eat human flesh. In the A.M. set up the Forge to repair the Braces of the Tiller and such other Iron work as was wanting. The Natives came alongside and sold us a quantity of large Mackrell for Nails, pieces of Cloth and paper, and in this Traffick they never once attempted to defraud us of any one thing but dealt as ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... that the Cap'n's trembling hands were taking a half-hitch with a rope's end about a tiller-spoke. He understood this as meaning that Cap'n Sproul desired to have his hands free for a moment. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... young man had called on Cynthia. The girls had discussed the event excitedly, had teased Cynthia about it; they had discovered, moreover, that the young man had not been a tiller of the soil or a clerk in a country store. Ellen, with the enthusiasm of her race, had painted him in glowing colors—but she had neglected to read the name ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... fatness; and then your only remedy (upon my knowledge, Prince) is in a morning a Cup of neat White-wine brew'd with Carduus, then fast till supper, about eight you may eat; use exercise, and keep a Sparrow-hawk, you can shoot in a Tiller; but of all, your Grace must flie Phlebotomie, fresh Pork, Conger, and clarified Whay; They are all dullers ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... weather quarter, at a distance of about fifty yards, the British frigate received her with a broadside. A hundred of the "Chesapeake's" crew were struck down at once, Lawrence himself being mortally wounded. A second broadside, equally well-aimed, increased the confusion, and, her tiller-ropes being shot away, the American frigate drifted foul of the "Shannon". Broke sprang on board with some sixty of his men following him. After a brief struggle [v.04 p.0629] the fight was over. Within fifteen minutes of the firing of the first shot, the "Chesapeake" struck her flag, but Broke ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... men, with their jerkins thrown off, their waists braced tight, swords, mallets, and pole-axes in their hands. Their leader, Goodwin Hawtayne, stood upon the poop and talked with Sir Nigel, casting his eye up sometimes at the swelling sail, and then glancing back at the two seamen who held the tiller. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Tiller" :   stool, cultivator, grow, lever, develop, farm machine, granger, harrow, get, till, acquire



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