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Tiller   Listen
noun
Tiller  n.  
1.
(Naut.) A lever of wood or metal fitted to the rudder head and used for turning side to side in steering. In small boats hand power is used; in large vessels, the tiller is moved by means of mechanical appliances.
2.
The stalk, or handle, of a crossbow; also, sometimes, the bow itself. (Obs.) "You can shoot in a tiller."
3.
The handle of anything. (Prov. Eng.)
4.
A small drawer; a till.
Tiller rope (Naut.), a rope for turning a tiller. In a large vessel it forms the connection between the fore end of the tiller and the steering wheel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tiller" Quotes from Famous Books



... not at all," he disclaimed. "Cocks'n, if you'll be so kind as to go forward, I'll take the tiller. Tom, old man! don't stand there all day. You'll get your feet ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... say that I like it better than life at Putnam Hall," smiled Sam Rover, as he threw over the tiller of the little yacht. "I'm quite anxious to meet Captain Putnam and Fred, ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield

... away, lads!" he cried; "no talking," and he took the tiller ropes. As he seated himself he looked toward the bows, and his eyes encountered the calm face ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... it when a small dog ran to where he and his daughter were upon their knees, and barked so fiercely as to attract to the spot its owner, a wealthy Pennsylvania farmer, who was upon the mountain in search of cattle that he had lost for several days. The kind-hearted tiller of the soil immediately piloted the suffering family to his own comfortable home, and properly provided ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... Grace. She stepped from the dory into the boat, and he flung out the dory's anchor and followed. The sail went up with a pleasant clucking of the tackle, and the light wind filled it. Libby made the sheet fast, and, sitting down in the stern on the other side, took the tiller and headed the boat toward the town that shimmered in the distance. The water hissed at the bow, and seethed and sparkled from the stern; the land breeze that bent their sail blew cool upon her cheek and freshened it with a tinge ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... 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 had ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... morning in a breath that filled his body with a sense of profound joy. Out at sea the boats were approaching the harbor; the morning sun fell on the slack sails, and made them glow; every boat was laboring heavily forward with the aid of its tiller. He had slept like a stone, from the moment of lying down until now. Sleep lay like a gulf between yesterday and to-day. Whistling a tune to himself, he packed his belongings and set out upon his way, a little bundle under his arm. He took the direction of the church, in order to see the time. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... as a master in the art—I mean Henry Fielding—we shall be somewhat puzzled, at the first moment, to state the difference that there is between these two. Fielding has as much human science; has a far firmer hold upon the tiller of his story; has a keen sense of character, which he draws (and Scott often does so too) in a rather abstract and academical manner; and finally, is quite as humorous and quite as good-humoured as the great Scotsman. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you harm not any tiller of the ground, nor any yeoman of the greenwood—no, nor no Knight nor 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 Book of Romance • Various

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... makes the gift of a cow is regarded as making the gift of what is the high refuge for all creatures. The cow should never be given away for slaughter (i.e., unto one who will kill her); nor should the cow be given unto a tiller of the soil; nor should the cow be given unto an atheist. The cow should not also, O chief of the Bharatas, be given unto one whose occupation is the keeping of kine.[344] The wise have said that a person who gives away the cow unto any of such sinful persons ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... grander, more noble, or higher calling for a healthy, sound-minded woman than to become the mother of children. She may be the colaborer of the business man, the overworked housewife of the tiller of the soil, the colleague of the professional man, or the wife of the leisure man of wealth; nevertheless, in every normal woman in every station of life there lurks the conscious or sub-conscious maternal ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... subtle 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 gaze revealed hints of concentric ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... a Thames waterman, that he was quite able to manage the boat without a steersman, and Charley was nearly his equal. But there is some amusement in steering, and Katie was allowed to sit between the tiller-ropes. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... with the same fate. We 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 bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work we got ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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

... evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the sea was alternately ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... back down-stream, she would take the sculls and I the tiller, and I would tell her (in French) all about our school adventures at Brossard's and Bonzig, and the Lafertes, and the Revolution of February; and in that way she picked up a lot of useful and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished Fraeulein Werner, the German governess, who yet knew French ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... the tiller a vicious shove, as if that would wake the yacht up, and glared forward along the row of parasols protecting fair faces from the sun and of hats cocked over noses that were screwed up with feelings too deep for words, and more intense than those produced by heat, he thought. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... front of these, a clumsy fishing-boat rose and fell on each passing wave. Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the rope and tiller, and in the bow, with their backs turned forever toward Opeki, stood two young boys, their faces lit by the glow of the setting sun and stirred by the sight of the great engines of war plunging past them on their ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... cutter just without the breakers, Mr. Effingham," Captain Truck continued, after standing up a while and examining the shore, "I will pull into the channel, and land in yonder bay. If you feel disposed to follow, you may do so by giving the tiller to Mr. Blunt, on receiving a signal to that effect from me. Be steady, gentlemen, at your oars, and look well to the arms on landing, for we are in a knavish part of the world. Should any of the monkeys or ouran-outangs claim kindred with Mr. Saunders, we may find it no easy matter to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... broad waste, little patches of cultivation are to be seen: small potato-gardens, as they are called, or a few roods of oats, green even in the late autumn; but, strangely enough, with nothing to show where the humble tiller of the soil is living, nor, often, any visible road to these isolated spots of culture. Gradually, however—but very gradually—the prospect brightens. Fields with inclosures, and a cabin or two, are to be met with; a solitary tree, generally ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... 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 that told of human life. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... 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

... 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

... the tiller, and, while the mother drank her coffee, was patting the baby under the cloak. But she had to betake herself to the tiller again, for the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... and behind that, a little house with many children running in and out of the door. A round fat rosy woman with great big arms was calling to the children to "take care," and a man stood at the stern with his hand on the tiller. He had a red shirt on and in his mouth a pipe which Marmaduke could smell a ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... shrouds, and are called chain-plates. The eye in the stern is called the bobstay plate. In the stern-post are two eyes called gudgeons. The rudder is hooked to this by means of two hooks called pintles. The bar or lever that is fixed to the top of the rudder-post is called a tiller. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... the gun deck. The rudders are as shown in the Danish drawing, and it is supposed that they were operated ferryboat fashion, one at each end of the vessel. Hence, each pair of rudders was toggled together by a cross-yoke. This was probably operated by a tiller (possibly the cross-yokes and tillers were of iron) pivoted under the beams of the gun deck close to the ends of the ship. Tiller ropes led from a tackle under the gun-deck through trunks to the spar deck, where the wheels ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... 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 doing, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... February, 1800, sleeping nature dreamed of spring; a brilliant, almost joyous sun made the grass in the ditches on either side of the road sparkle with those deceptive pearls of the hoarfrost which vanish at a touch, and rejoice the heart of a tiller of the earth when he sees them glittering at the points of his wheat as it pushes bravely up through the soil. All the windows of the diligence were lowered, to give entrance to this earliest smile of the Divine, as though all hearts were saying: "Welcome back, traveller long lost in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... wound up, lay without their use, and if at any time we bore but a Hollocke, or half forecourse, to guide her before the Sea, six and sometimes eight men, were not enough to hold the whip-staffe in the steerage, and the tiller below in the Gunner room; by which may be imagined the strength of the storm, in which the Sea swelled above the Clouds and gave battle unto heaven. It could not be said to rain, the waters like whole ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... leadership the 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 headed eastward ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... the deck of the little cutter, he saw Blue Peter sitting on the coamings of the hatch, his feet hanging down within. He was lost in the book he was reading. Curious to see, without disturbing him, what it was that so absorbed him, Malcolm dropped quietly on the tiller, and thence on the deck, and approaching softly peeped over his shoulder. He was reading the epistle of James the apostle. Malcolm fell a-thinking. From Peter's thumbed bible his eyes went wandering through the thicket of masts, in which moved so many busy seafarers, and then turned to ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... 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

... waiting, and adown from over the hills comes along the breath of the wind, breathing across the mirror; gently, ripplingly, comes the wind to play, and would try to pass, but you catch it in your white wings—catch it and hold it, leaning over to its fleeing passage, and press the trembling tiller-pulse, now throbbing with life, and luff as the boat darts forward in joy of possession of the wind, but she passes, gently, gently up again with the tiller till she leaves the sails with the ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... between stopping and flying from the room before he should discover her. But she felt no fear of the man himself, and bracing her nerves, struck a light. It showed Gray Michael sitting up and evidently under the impression he was at sea. He grasped the bed-head as a tiller and peered ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... ever-selfish, Eve would have abandoned Adam to himself while she tripped to solitary pastures new. But the same quality that sustains the secluded farmer and his household in the hills supported the timid tiller of the first garden as the sword flamed behind him over the closing gate of Eden. If Adam plained that Eve had lost him Paradise, does not every son of Adam own that she ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... a tune to keep his spirits up. Running easily over the monotonous dark swells with a fair following breeze, he passed an hour or two. He sat down, braced the tiller, and resigned himself to contemplation of the mysteries that had been and that still must be. And very sweet to him was the sense of protection, of guardianship, wherein he held the sleeping girl, in the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... sitting above 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 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 captain, and a jolly group of little boys and girls made the echoes ring, while Ned, with his thumb in his mouth, clung ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called Husbandry, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the actual tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the most righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he rejoices in his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich with purple and gems, nor with houses adorned with costly ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... message it brought; what story it held of the tragedy. At first I could only barely distinguish the figures of those aboard, yet these gradually assumed recognizable form, and finally the faces also became dimly visible. Manuel held the tiller, with Estada seated beside him, leaning forward, and gesticulating with one hand, as he directed the course. I had never seen these two, yet I knew them beyond a doubt. Mendez and Anderson (at least I supposed these to be the two) were poised ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... same feeling; they gave way to the feelings inspired by the situation, and gradually each one felt his eyelids grow heavy. It was Hatteras's watch. He took the tiller; the doctor, Altamont, Johnson, and Bell fell asleep, stretched on the benches, and soon were dreaming soundly. Hatteras struggled against his sleepiness; he wished to lose not a moment; but the gentle motion of the launch rocked him, in spite ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... man appeared, and they called again. One of the men went to the tiller, and the course of the sloop ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... sailed in the Greyhound with Ben and others, and she knew precisely what was to be done in order to get the boat under way. She understood how to move the tiller in order to make the craft go in a given direction, and had an indistinct idea of beating and tacking; but she was very far from being competent ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... hauled away to save their nets. It was time for us to make for the port. A few strokes shoved the boat from under the lee of the island; the oars were shipped, and the lateen sail run up by all hands. Hauling close to the wind, my friend seized the tiller: it was doubtful if we could make the harbour, which the little craft, struggling with the breeze, just headed; the towers of St. Victor being the point of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... the eldest son of Adam and Eve (Gen. iv.), was a tiller of the ground, whilst his younger brother, Abel, was a keeper of sheep. Enraged because the Lord accepted Abel's offering, and rejected his own, he slew his brother in the field (see ABEL). For this a curse was pronounced upon him, and he was condemned to be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... and wind, she saw herself pursued by a saucy little 15-ton craft that had been in her track since she left the Otley river before noon, dipping and straining, with every inch of sail set; as mad a stern chase as ever was witnessed: and who could the man at the tiller, clad cap-A-pie in tarpaulin, be? She led him dancing away, to prove his resoluteness and laugh at him. She had the powerful wings, and a glory in them coming of this pursuit: her triumph was delicious, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... but the work of a few minutes to gain the landing, hoist sail, cast off and reach down the bay, the wind abeam. Bill got into a snug place at the mast, Gus held the tiller, each boy firmly determined to do something that might call for the utmost ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... golden shining bronze scale armour and wearing a silver helm on which were short, black, curving horns; and he bore a double-headed axe, besides the sword at his side. He looked round on us—at the men standing silent, at Kenulf, and at me as I stood on the after deck resting on the tiller, and broke ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... diameter for the jib halyard. Four 6-in. and one 7-in. cleats, Fig. 18, are used. The blocks shown in Fig. 11 are used for the main and jib sheets. The steering arrangement is shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The tiller is 3-1/2 ft. long; rudder post, 1-1/4 in. in diameter; shoulder to lower end of jaws, 4 in.; depth of jaws, 2-7/8 in.; length of post including screw top, 12 in. The rubber washer acts as a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... its fruit deny, Although the olive yield no oil, The withering fig-trees droop and die, The fields elude the tiller's toil. The empty stall no herd afford, And perish all the bleating race, Yet will I triumph in the Lord— The God of my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... are crowned with success. It is probable that ours also will be successful. How can one know beforehand what the consequence will be? Having exerted thyself thou wilt know what the fruit of thy exertion will be. The tiller tilleth with the plough the soil and soweth the seeds thereon. He then sitteth silent, for the clouds (after that) are the cause that would help the seeds to grow into plants. If however, the clouds favour him not, the tiller is absolved from all blame. He sayeth unto himself, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... the distance, coming in his direction, he saw a long, slender gig which four oarsmen as black as negroes were driving through the water like an arrow. It came nearer, skimming over the water; a woman was holding the tiller. Heavens! It looked—it was she! In order to regulate the rhythm of the stroke, she was singing in her shrill voice a boating song, which she interrupted for a minute as she got in front of Patissot. Then, throwing him a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... 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 somewhat ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... brother entreated him not to take all. When she told her dream to Adam, he said, lamenting, "O that this may not portend the death of Abel at the hand of Cain!" He separated the two lads, assigning to each an abode of his own, and to each he taught a different occupation. Cain became a tiller of the ground, and Abel a keeper of sheep. It was all in vain. In spite of these precautions, Cain ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... sides, and, notwithstanding the commanding position of the batteries, strong hopes were felt on board the fleet of silencing the guns, which the enemy began to desert, when, at 4.30 P.M., the wheel of the flag-ship St. Louis and the tiller of the Louisville were shot away. The two boats, thus rendered unmanageable, drifted down the river; and their consorts, no longer able to maintain the unequal contest, withdrew. The enemy returned at once to their guns, and inflicted much injury ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... questioners crowded round him. He narrated: 'I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs—the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don't mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable—isn't he? No—not the little ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... 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

... minutes they saw close ahead of them a large boat, which, with its sail hanging idly by the mast, was drifting downstream. Two boatmen were sitting by the tiller, smoking their pipes. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... 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 ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... paleness of alarm. I comforted her by assurances of eternal love, and vowed to follow her to the ends of the earth in despite of every human power. We stood alone; for two sailors were with O'More and the girl in the cabin, and the third, having lashed the tiller to, was fixing something forward. We stood alone I cannot guess how long—time is short, but the joy of those moments has been everlasting. We exchanged vows of mutual affection and constancy, and I had ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... now stood baskets and shawls, a book or two, an empty basket for wild flowers, and by the tiller sat Faith—invested with her new dignity but not yet instructed therein. Mr. Linden stood on the shore, with the boat's detaining rope in his hand, looking about him as if he had a mind to take the good of things as he went along. Up the hill ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... looks wonderfully like a bowl clapped on top of their heads, others sport a huge woolly head-dress like the Roumanians; this latter imparts to them a fierce, war-like appearance, that the meek-eyed Persian ryot (tiller of the soil) is far from feeling. The national garment is a sort of frock-coat gathered at the waist, and with a skirt of ample fulness, reaching nearly to the knees; among the wealthier class the material of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... chairs; beyond that a pantry with shelves, and a great chest for provisions. A door at the back opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden tiller curves over the stern of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof. Two canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long tow-ropes, as if reluctant to follow so clumsy a leader. This is an accurate description ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... tiller of the soil stands at the head in Ceylon; even the skilled worker in iron is away below him. The rural laborer with us must be taught to hold his head up. He is A1 ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... tiller under one arm and a pipe in his mouth, long empty, sat Martin, thinking about Joan. Hearing voices, Tootles looked up from a book that she was trying to read. She had been lying in the hammock on the stoop of Martin's cottage for an hour, waiting ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... your storm cloud all right, Horace; only instead of a ducking we stand a chance of getting a licking from another enraged tiller ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... rowed away from the steamer there was no sign in the darkness of the little boat they had run down, but the man at the tiller steered as determinedly as if he knew for just what point in the blackness he was headed. With his head bent slightly forward and his big body swaying with the rock and pitch of the lifeboat he kept his ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... The tiller was in charge of an old man with peering pale-blue eyes and tremulous siccated hands. Yet he had an astonishingly potent voice, and issued orders, in tones like the grating of metal edges, to a loutish youth in a ragged shirt ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... meanwhile, far out on the sound, the little knockabout was heeling far over in the playful breath of the summer breeze. Tom Blake, bare- headed, bare-armed, was at the tiller. Jack Schuyler, also bare-headed and bare-armed, sat on the after overhang, tending the sheet, and bracing muscular legs against the swirling seas that, leaping over the low freeboard, tried to swirl him off among them. Kathryn Blair, leaned lithely against the weather ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... object then, son?" asked the tiller of the soil, possibly feeling a bit of natural ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... 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

... the hand. The Neolithic ax was a much better made one, and was furnished with a handle. They were enabled to accomplish a great deal with such axes. "Before it, aided by fire, the trees of the forest fell to make room for the tiller of the ground, and by its sharp edge wood became useful for the manufacture of various articles and implements indispensable for the advancement of mankind in culture." These axes vary in size and finish. As a general thing ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... Stephen and Olive shrank smaller and smaller as they shot straight out to sea. The two on shore used to relate how they saw Stephen stop rowing a moment, and take off his coat to get at his work better; but James's wife sat quite still in the stern, holding the tiller-ropes by which she steered the boat. When they had got very small indeed she ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... in the land of Egypt a Fellah, or tiller of the ground, who had a fair woman to wife and she had another man to friend. The husband used to sow every year some fifty faddan[FN467] of seeding-wheat wherein there was not one barley-grain, and grind it in the mill and pass this meal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... set their teeth. He of the stern lashed the tiller amidships, and crept forward, aiding the other to push out the long boom which projected ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... and meaning 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 the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... seize upon the gunwale of the nearly submerged boat, over which each wave breaks. He pulls himself along, and thus reaches Lady Ruth whom he finds holding on to one of the tiller ropes which has formed a loop, through which her arm ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... weather. As for the fog, it's a dirty nuisance to any navigator but, as I said, may quite possibly prove our salvation. I know these waters like a book, I've sailed them ever since I was old enough to tell a tiller from a mainsheet. I can smell my way in, if it comes to that, through the blindest fog the Atlantic ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... brought them to the northwestern extremity of the island. As they cleared the shelter of the land, the southerly breeze coming with some force across the open sea caught the cutter, and she lay over in a way to inspire Helen with alarm; she was about to let go the tiller, when Hazel seized it, accidentally inclosing her hand under the grasp of his own, as he pressed the tiller ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... ships: I ne'er set foot on one, But tales and pictures tell, when over them Breaketh a storm not all too strong to stem, Each man strives hard, the tiller gripped, the mast Manned, the hull baled, to face it: till at last Too strong breaks the o'erwhelming sea: lo, then They cease, and yield them up as broken men To fate and the wild waters. Even so I in my many sorrows bear me low, Nor curse, nor strive that other things may be. The great wave ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides

... engines ceased revolving, and then reversed in stopping her. Orders were flung about fast. A man climbed to the lookout as the first officer began to put a boat into the water. The crew of it and the second officer were already at the oars and the tiller as the ropes slid in the blocks. The passengers came crowding from their cabins, where they were dressing for dinner, and there were many expressions of surprise and slight terror. Death aboard ship is ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

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

... the earth would have brought forth thorns and thistles to be the food of animals, but not to punish man, because their growth would bring no labor or punishment for the tiller of the soil, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iii, 18). Alcuin [*Interrog. et Resp. in Gen. lxxix], however, holds that, before sin, the earth brought forth no thorns and thistles, whatever: but the former opinion is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... has blown up the waves. The river races beneath us, and the men standing on the barges have to lean all their weight on the tiller. A black tarpaulin is tied down over a swelling load of gold. Avalanches of coal glitter blackly. As usual, painters are slung on planks across the great riverside hotels, and the hotel windows have already points of light in them. On the other side the city is ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... litter. Tossed about were pearl oyster shells, husks of cocoa-nuts, empty casks, and cases. The deserted tiller was lashed; which accounted for the vessel's yawing. But we could not conceive, how going large before the wind; the craft could, for any considerable time, at least, have guided herself without the help of a hand. Still, the breeze was ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... 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 Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... tiller, and with fear-blanched face he looked to where his brother pointed. Amid a smother of white foam, almost dead ahead and scarcely two cable lengths away there showed the black and jagged points of rocks, known locally as the "Shark's Teeth." ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... used to hitch up quilts at a quilting bee, the only difference being that the burlap was framed or stretched over a table made of planed boards large enough for the full spread of the burlap. With paint and brush he began his work. The first coat was a tiller; the next, a thicker one, gave body to the cloth, and when this was rubbed down to a smooth surface the last coat was prepared. This was of a different color and was spread on thick. Then, with a straight ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... troubling in the world was of no use. It was a case of the island or the deep sea, and, putting the boat on the starboard tack, he lit his pipe and leaned back with the tiller in the crook of his arm. His keen eyes had made out from the deck of the brig an opening in the reef, and he was making to run the dinghy abreast of the opening, and then take to the sculls ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Aurillac, Ex-Priest Lebon from Arras, these shall both gain a name. Mountainous Auvergne re-elects her Romme: hardy tiller of the soil, once Mathematical Professor; who, unconscious, carries in petto a remarkable New Calendar, with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... lady guest spent much of her time on deck—sitting in a deck- chair, within easy conversational range of whichever had the tiller; and she favoured me with her company during the whole of the first watch (it being my eight hours out that night); but she was unusually silent gazing in an absent, dreamy manner for the most of the time, far away over the tranquil starlit ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... plants, no one would expect wheat to tiller more, and each ear to produce more grain, in poor than in rich soil; or to get in poor soil a heavy crop of peas or beans. Seeds vary so much in number {113} that it is difficult to estimate them; but on comparing beds of carrots ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... like a routine trade. Things are never twice the same at sea. The sailor has a thousand chances of using his judgment, if he has any to use; and that Old Rogers has in no common degree. So I should have no fear of him. If he won't let me steer him, you must put your hand to the tiller ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... not long been out from Dover before these three were down with sea-sickness, and the captain had to do all the work, day and night, through the Channel. As soon as they found their sea-legs they had to take their turn at the tiller, with the result that the course was often very considerably changed from what the captain had set. At a Portuguese island they took in the Creole, who wanted to work his passage to the Cape. I think it was at this place that the Port Officials ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... industrious, could have its forests of palms, bearing luscious fruit twice a-year. But, alas! the excitement of the razzia destroys the taste for all rational industry. What bandit could ever settle down into a tiller of the ground? ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... to be said. The boat was lowered so smartly that Dick was seated at the tiller, and four ash blades were driving her rapidly shoreward, before the leading crew of panting Somalis reached the ship's side. They secured two passengers, however. Mrs. Haxton, who had declined a seat in the jolly-boat on the score of the intense heat, changed ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... crippling blows to right and left, and strewing the quarter-deck with the slain and wounded. His object was to fight his way to the cabin, where there were fire-arms; but he was hemmed in with foes, covered with wounds, and faint with loss of blood. For an instant he leaned upon the tiller wheel, when a blow from behind, with a war-club, felled him to the deck, where he was despatched with knives ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... of blocks for'ard, and the huge mainsail loomed above him in the night. Bill cast off the bowline, the Cockney followed suit with the stern, 'Frisco Kid gave her the jib as French Pete jammed up the tiller, and the Dazzler caught the breeze, heeling over for mid-channel. Joe heard talk of not putting up the side-lights, and of keeping a sharp lookout, though all he could comprehend was that some law of navigation ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... old herring boat, with Annie Laurie painted on its stern, and Brownie has got the sail up and stands waiting with a smile to help his beloved "Miss Nell" into the old boat. Nell lays her hand upon his shoulder as of old, and steps in and takes the tiller; Drake makes taut the sheet, and the old boat glides away from the slip and sails out into ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... half-gulfed side, Flood succeeding flood is poured; Fast as they expel the tide, Faster still it rolls aboard. Now e'en Frithiof's dauntless mind Owned the triumph of his foe; Louder yet than wave and wind Thus his thundering accents flow! 'Haste and grasp the tiller, Bjorn, with might of bear-paw! Tempest so infuriate Comes not from Valhalla.* Witchcraft is a-going; Sure, the coward Helge Spells* the raging billows! Mine the charge to explore.'" [Footnote: Longfellow's translation] *[Footnote: Valhalla, the palace of Odin, in Asgard, the home of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Lee, who was handling the tiller. "And we're a long way off from home! It's up to us to turn about and make a ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... ailes lointaines Le battement dcrot, Si confus dans les plaines, Si faible, que l'on croit Our la sauterelle Crier d'une voix grle Ou ptiller la grle Sur le ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... as to his instructions, Levin took the tiller, and Jack Wonnell superserviceably got the terrapin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat-boat skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... suspense dragged away, and Thursday's gorgeous sunset brought a change. The Danish frigate, bright with flags and swarming with sailors, swept in, dropped anchor, and wrapped herself in thunder and white smoke. Soon she lowered a boat, a glittering officer took its tiller-ropes, its long oars flashed, and it bore away to the fort. But evening fell, a starry silence reigned, and when a late ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... and there is quite enough play of limb and change of position caused by the working of the ship, while he soon learns by practice to steer by the action of any part of his body from head to feet being in contact with the tiller, that delicate and true sensorium of a boat to ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... not the birds render to mortals! First of all, they mark the seasons for them, springtime, winter, and autumn. Does the screaming crane migrate to Libya,—it warns the husbandman to sow, the pilot to take his ease beside his tiller hung up in his dwelling,[252] and Orestes[253] to weave a tunic, so that the rigorous cold may not drive him any more to strip other folk. When the kite reappears, he tells of the return of spring and of the period when the fleece of the sheep must be clipped. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of efforts, the Saint-Ferdinand sprang forward, Gomez himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... hailed to him once and twice, and the second time he must have heard. But, without answering, he ran forward and took in his foresail. And then I saw an arm and a little hand reached up to take hold of the tiller; and my heart ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... an odd concern; not more than three or four feet high wheels, boiler and all; the pistons working perpendicularly; two cylinders and a tongue in front to guide the steam wagon with the necessary pilot wheel with its tiller ropes. I never knew what became of the engine but I have placed all that is left of the model in the Museum of the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum along with the remnant of Edward West's model steam engine for boats. Mr. Barlow and Mr. Bruen also built another small steam engine ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty

... separately. The element of mortality in the form is included in the transience of imagery. The poet uses the world as he knows it, and reflects in successive ages of literature the changing phases of civilization. The shepherd, the tiller of the soil, the warrior, the trader yield to him their language of the earth, the battle, and the sea; from the common altar he learns the speech of the gods; the elemental aspects of nature, the pursuits of men, and what is believed of the supernatural are the great storehouses of imagery. The ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... day, Mr. P. went out fishing. He hired a boat, and a man to sail it, and while the man was getting ready to put off, Mr. P. took his seat in the bow and began to fix his lines. He always likes to sit in the bow. The tiller don't knock him so often in the back, and the boom don't bother his head so much. What he particularly wanted was to catch a devil-fish! He thought to himself what a splendid thing it would be to catch one of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... occasion, he was going by himself from Falmouth to Plymouth in a small punt, fourteen feet long, when his hat was blown overboard, and he immediately threw off his clothes and swam after it, having first secured the tiller a-lee. As he was returning with his hat, the boat got way on her, and sailed some distance before she came up in the wind. He had almost reached her when she filled again, and he was thus baffled three or four times. At length, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... imagined he could trust them. Another crew picked up the oars, greasy caps were lifted, the Rio Negro's whistle screamed a last salute, and the boat stole away. Mayne steamed off to anchor on good holding ground, and Kit sat at the tiller, with his eyes fixed ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... the elements. The steam was escaping violently, not by the funnel, but from the safety-valves of the boiler; the alarm whistle sounded unnaturally loud, and the yacht made a frightful pitch, overturning Wilson, who was at the wheel, by an unexpected blow from the tiller. The DUNCAN no longer ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... pellets of lead, and thirty-two pounds of gunpowder by way of ammunition.(516) The mention of "teleres" and the small amount of ammunition favours the assumption that the instruments were rather hand-guns than heavy pieces, as has been supposed.(517) A "telere" or tiller was a common name for the stock of a cross-bow,(518) and the earliest hand-guns or fire-arms known consisted of a simple tube of metal with touch-hole, fixed on a straight stick or shaft, which when used was passed under the arm so as to afford a better ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... very pale and weak, stepped into the boat which carried the body of his humble friend. For it was decided that Tom Corbin should rest far out in the bay of Biscay. The officer took the tiller and, turning his head for the last look at the shore, saw on the grey hillside something moving, which he made out to be a little man in a yellow hat mounted on a mule—that mule without which the fate of Tom Corbin would have ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... Arabella sat in the stern of his craft with his right arm leaning on the tiller. A desultory conversation with the mate of a schooner, who was hanging over the side of his craft a few yards off, had come to a conclusion owing to a difference of opinion on the subject of religion. The skipper had argued so warmly that he almost fancied he must have inherited the tenets ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... two sailors was waiting for the captain, and he helped the little girls to the comfortable seats, and took his place at the tiller, and with a word to the oarsmen the boat moved out from the ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis

... 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 ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... now," said the sailor. "Going to have a big blow afore night." And he threw over the tiller and gave the necessary commands to change ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... Coast before she could be hove to to take a pilot aboard. This having been done, orders were given to square away for the harbour. The sea was breaking a good distance off, and the prospects for entering looked very ugly. The captain was at the tiller and was unusually agitated. The pilot's excitement remained subdued until the sinister commotion of seas was within easy distance. He then became voluble in his orders. The little vessel rushed into the merciless liquid breakers at great speed. One of them broke over the bluff of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... that 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 Oceanus is ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... ensued, in which Magallanes and many of his fighting men were killed, and when the fleet, deprived of many men, was in such straits that it could easily have fallen into the hands of the inhabitants of that land, a Portuguese pilot, who had come with Magallanes, came to the rescue, took the tiller, and turned the course of the vessel toward Maluco. He reached that place and found there one of the followers of Don Tristan de Meneses (may he rest in peace). They took him prisoner and obtained from him all the information that they desired. Then they made their bargains ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... beginning of his sorrows. Next he ate meat and bread, and drank wine, and poured forth some of the wine before his gods. Lastly he dragged up the heavy stone with which the ship was moored, a stone heavier far, they say, than two other men could lift. He took the tiller in his hand; the steady north wind, the Etesian wind, kept blowing in the sails, and he steered straight southward for the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... from the glacial cavern. These kames and sand plains, because of the silicious nature of their materials and the very porous nature of the soil which they afford, are commonly sterile, or at most render a profit to the tiller by dint of exceeding care. Thus in Massachusetts, although the first settlers seized upon these grounds, and planted their villages upon them because the forests there were scanty and the ground free from encumbering boulders, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... for a fireplace with charred ashes and a smouldering log among them, for though it was still summer the nights began to be brisk. On the walls hung some implements; a spade and a hoe, a spear, a sword, some knives and javelins. He that inhabited it seemed to be part a tiller of the soil and part a huntsman; but there were other things of which Paullinus could not guess the use—hooks and pronged forks. There were skins of beasts on the floor, and on the ceiling hung bundles of herbs and dried meats. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... air and important, Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind and the weather, 590 Walked about on the sands, and the people crowded around him Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful remembrance. Then, taking each by the hand, as if he were grasping a tiller, Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off to his vessel, Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and flurry, 595 Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness and sorrow, Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing but Gospel! Lost in the sound ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... the Volsung banners, and on went Sigmund before, And his sword was the flail of the tiller on the wheat of the wheat-thrashing floor, And his shield was rent from his arm, and his helm was sheared from his head: But who may draw nigh him to smite for the heap and the rampart of dead? White went his hair on the wind like ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... there must, after all, have been something in me worthy to command that man's half-bitter fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo's speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! "You hombres finos!" Very much ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... a word, like an angry child, and made my way to the steps into the sea, pulled round my boat into a little haven beside them, and shewed her oars and tackle and tiller; all the toil, and peril, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... hard enough 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 dragging the faint-hearted across at ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... though. I'm o' Manuel's way o' thinkin'. About tin years back I was crew to a Sou' Boston market-boat. We was off Minot's Ledge wid a northeaster, butt first, atop of us, thicker'n burgoo. The ould man was dhrunk, his chin waggin' on the tiller, an' I sez to myself, 'If iver I stick my boat-huk into T-wharf again, I'll show the saints fwhat manner o' craft they saved me out av.' Now, I'm here, as ye can well see, an' the model of the dhirty ould Kathleen, that took ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... wind, is not difficult to steer; will almost steer herself, indeed, in smooth water. Jack Tier could take his trick at the helm, in any weather, even in running before the wind, the time when it is most difficult to guide a craft, and Rose might be made to understand the use of the tiller, and taught to govern the motions of a vessel so small and so simply rigged, when on a wind and in smooth water. On the score of managing the schooner, therefore, Mulford thought there would be little cause for apprehension. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... evening the wind shifted immediately in our teeth, a violent hurricane and tempest suddenly arose, the most dreadful possible of nights and of scenes ensued, the sea breaking everywhere over the ship. We lost the tiller, and the vessel was for some minutes down on her beam-ends; and nothing, I believe, but the undaunted presence of mind, perseverance, experience, and courage of Paget preserved us from a watery grave. The oldest and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... family (where the women ordinarily marry late in life); and his little son Jean Francois (the second child and eldest boy), though set to weed and hoe upon the wee farm in his boyhood, was destined by his father for some other life than that of a tiller of the soil. He was born in the year before Waterloo—1814—and was brought up on his father's plot of land, in the hard rough way to which peasant children in France are always accustomed. Bronzed by sun and rain, poorly clad, and ill-fed, he ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... husbandry, vintage; horticulture, arboriculture^, floriculture; landscape gardening; viticulture. husbandman, horticulturist, gardener, florist; agricultor^, agriculturist; yeoman, farmer, cultivator, tiller of the soil, woodcutter, backwoodsman; granger, habitat, vigneron^, viticulturist; Triptolemus. field, meadow, garden; botanic garden^, winter garden, ornamental garden, flower garden, kitchen garden, market garden, hop garden; nursery; green house, hot house; conservatory, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... head, took the tiller from the steersman, and bade him go below and fill himself. Will Cary went down, and returned in five minutes with a plate of bread and beef, and a great jack of ale, coaxed them down Amyas's throat, as a nurse does with a child, and then scuttled below again with ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... the message which had been entrusted to him; and so, though he distributed rebuke and objurgation to every man in the boat except the Captain, he seemed to our hero to take particular delight in working him. There he stood in the stern, the fiery little coxswain, leaning forward with a tiller-rope in each hand, and bending to every stroke, shouting his warnings, and rebukes, and monitions to Tom, till he drove him to his wits' end. By the time the boat came back to Hall's, his arms were so numb that he could hardly tell whether his oar was in or out of his hand; his legs were stiff ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... gaining 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 with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Bolderhead after a day's fishing. Occasionally as the fitful breeze swooped down the sloop made a pretty little run, then she'd sulk, with the sail flapping, till another puff came. I lay in the stern with my hand on the tiller, half asleep, while Paul Downes, my cousin, was stretched forward of the mast, wholly in dreamland. A little roll of the sloop as she tacked, almost threw him into the water and he awoke with a snarl and ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... broad face beaming with boyish happiness, and something like a fatherly gentleness in his eyes, as he watched his companion at the tiller, whom, for a half-asleep moment of waking, I couldn't account for, till our start all came back to me, when I realised that it was our young scapegrace of over-night. Charlie and he evidently were on the best of ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... were in pointed contrast to McKinley's. Whereas McKinley seemed simply to hold the tiller, availing himself of currents that to the eye deviously, yet easily and inevitably, bore him to his objective, Roosevelt strenuously plied the oar, recking little of cross currents or head winds, if, indeed, he did not delight in them. Chauncey ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... (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



Words linked to "Tiller" :   till, develop, produce, farmer, grow, farm machine, harrow, lever, rudder, cultivator



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