"Skipper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Puritan spirit by the presence of Queen Mary's pupil, he wrapped his cloak about him and went out to study the weather, and inquire for lodgings to which he might remove Cicely. He saw nothing he liked, and determined on consulting his old mate, Goatley, who generally acted as skipper, but he had first to return so as not to delay the morning meal. He found, on coming in, Cicely helping Oil-of-Gladness in making griddle cakes, and buttering them, so as to make Mr. Heatherthwayte declare that he had not tasted the like ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kit, in the course of my first visit to the villa, some further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too much given to what Kit described as "his drop." He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with "father's trousers" I ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... routing about for something short and amusing, take up the Cornhill, and read A Flash in the Pan. I have commenced, says the Baron, my friend GEORGE MEREDITH's One of the Conquerors. Now G.M. is an author whose work does not admit of the healthy and graceful exercise of skipping. Here the skipper's occupation is gone. G.M.'s work should be taken away by the reader far from the madding crowd and perused and pondered over. If Ponder's End is a tranquil place as the name implies, then to that secluded spot betake yourself with your GEORGE MEREDITH, O happy and studious ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... routine for the day—varied, occasionally, when the tide served, by a fishing trip down the narrow bay inside the point. For such emergencies they provided themselves with a sail-boat and skipper, hired for the whole season, and arrayed themselves in a highly nautical rig. The results were, large quantities of sardines and pale sherry consumed by the young men, and a reasonable number of sea-bass and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... want Hastings and Tony to take the child to Mantes, then to make all possible haste for Calais, and there to keep in close touch with the Day-Dream; the skipper will contrive to open communication. Tell him to remain in Calais waters. I hope I may have need ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... in servitude; but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reign was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river, she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said that that course ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pushing ashore and getting out our rope, a great ship bumped hard against us, as we were in the act of landing, and in the crush I had let every one get out before me, so that only I, Georg Kotzler,[46] two old wives, and the skipper with a small boy were left in the ship. When now the other ship bumped against us, and I with those named was still in the ship and could not get out, the strong rope broke; and thereupon, in the same moment, a storm of wind arose, which drove our ship back with ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... clerk of the weather," the skipper replied. "At present there is not a breath of wind stirring, and from the look of the sky I see no chance of ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... he rolls and flutters; for the first shot rarely kills at once with an amateur; there's too much excitement. Splendid sport, that! but I'm not going into it second-hand. I promised to tell you a story, now the skipper's fast, and the night is too warm to think of sleep down in that wretched bunk;—what another torture Dante might have lavished on his Inferno, if he'd ever slept in a fishing-smack! No. The moonlight makes me sentimental! Did I ever tell you about a month I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... "The skipper lies in the scupper, The barque is lost in the bight; The bosun calls for a basin— This ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... either tradition errs or I was present when there landed at St. Andrews a French barber-surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the great Cardinal Beaton; I have shaken a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France after the '15; I was in a West India merchant's office, perhaps next door to Bailie Nicol Jarvie's, and managed the business of a plantation in St. Kitt's; I was with my engineer-grandfather (the son-in-law of the lamp and oil man) when he sailed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... waitin' their tatties, an' they roared to Sandy to stop; but Sandy cudna. The tatties were fleein' ower the back door o' the cairt, an' the scales were rattlin' an' reeshlin' like an earthquake; an' there was Sandy, bare-heided, up to the knees amon' his tatties, ruggin' an' roarin', like the skipper o' some schooner that was rinnin' on the rocks. I'll swear, Sandy got roond his roonds an' a' his tatties delivered in less than half the time Donal' took! The wives an' laddies were gaitherin' up the tatties a' the wey to Tutties ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... their ships from India and the Far East across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea, whence they transferred their cargoes to caravans which completed the trip to Cairo and Alexandria. By taking advantage of monsoons,—the favorable winds which blew steadily in certain seasons,—the skipper of a merchant vessel could make the voyage from India to Egypt in somewhat less than three months. It was often possible to shorten the time by landing the cargoes at Ormuz and thence dispatching them by caravan ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... day, rations, water, and even those blessed oranges had almost given out, and to add to our joy the skipper, who was afterwards discovered to be a Bulgarian, had not the remotest notion of our whereabouts and lost his nerve completely. A big Australian actually did take the helm for a time and made a shot for the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... passed my time between the cabin and deck. Mattia wanted to be left alone. When at last the skipper pointed out Harfleur I hurried down to the cabin to tell him the good news. As it was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Harfleur, Bob's brother told us that we could sleep on the boat ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... First Clerks who serve every Administration, and keep their lamps bright for all parties—a fine set of fellows in their way, though some people will tell you that they have their favourites too, and are not so brisk about the fog-signals if they don't like the skipper. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... beach attracted bears thither in such numbers that, for instance, in 1609 nearly fifty of them were killed by the crew of a single vessel. At one place eighteen bears were seen at once (Purchas, iii. p. 560). A Norwegian skipper was still able during a wintering in 1824-25 to kill 677 walruses. But when Tobiesen wintered there in 1865-66 he killed only a single walrus, and on the two occasions of my landing there I did not see one. Formerly the hunters almost every year, during late autumn when the drift-ice had ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... with the skipper about it?" said he, looking at me steadily for some seconds. "Suppose I was to tell him what a good ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... merriment; and he was greatly rejoiced to find himself safely seated in the cabin. The voyage, however, already more than once deferred, was not yet to begin. Wednesday, being King's Proclamation Day, the vessel could not be cleared at the Custom House; and on Thursday the skipper announced that he should not set out until Saturday. As Fielding's complaint was again becoming troublesome, and no surgeon was available on board, he sent for his friend, the famous anatomist, Mr. Hunter, of Covent Garden, [Footnote: ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... a thunder-cloud as John bowed to her on passing out, but Mrs. Callender cried out in a jubilant voice, "Be skipper of your ain ship, laddie!" and added (being two yards behind the Archdeacon's broad back going down the stairs), "If some folks are to be inheritors of the kingdom of heaven there'll be a michty crush at ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... that it bore evident traces of past habits of intemperance; as far as his features went, they certainly reminded Harry of Mr. Stanley's portrait. The sailor's dress was that which might have been worn by a mate, or skipper, on shore; he appeared not in the least daunted, on the contrary he was quite self-possessed, with an air of determination about him which rather took ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... planned to-day—time, 4:30 P.M.—the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself. I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and another whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing. Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was along with his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... worse, but mere forgetfulness to change the course: one of those dreadful lapses of memory which baffle all Board of Trade inquiry. You may light, and buoy, and beacon every danger along the coast, and still you leave that small kink in the skipper's brain which will cast away a ship for all your care. The second of his desires you have helped me to fulfil. He wished in death to be John Murchison again, and lie where his ship lies: lie with his grand error atoned for. John Emmet needs no gravestone: ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... himself without letting it show on his face. The skipper was letting the boot ensign redeem himself after the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... jury could have brought in no other verdict, considering the nature of the evidence supplied; but many people declared that Captain Hervey of The Diver should have been called. If the deceased had enemies, said these wiseacres, it was probable that he would have talked about them to the skipper. But they forgot that the witnesses called at the inquest, including the mother of the dead man, had insisted that Bolton had no enemies, so it is difficult to see what they ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... other, displaying a small parcel. "I've got to take this over there for the skipper. How far do you ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... to the damsel and told her what had happened, at which she wrung her hands. Then they fared forth at once from the city, and Allah spread over them His veil of protection, so that they reached the river-bank where they found a vessel ready for sea. Her skipper was standing amidships and crying, "Whoso hath aught to do, whether in the way of provisioning or taking leave of his people; or whoso hath forgotten any needful thing, let him do it at once and return, for we are about to sail"; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... said Barney, "and a good clean race it will be if Dave Tower is skipper of that submarine. I never knew a ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... Cappy Ricks at the time he, the said Murphy, was chief kicker of the barkentine Retriever under Captain Matt Peasley. Subsequently, when Matt Peasley presented in his person indubitable evidence of the wisdom of the old saw that you cannot keep a good man down, Michael J. became skipper of the Retriever. This berth he continued to occupy with pleasure and profit to all concerned, until a small financial tidal wave, which began with Matt Peasley's purchase, at a ridiculously low figure, of the Oriental Steamship Company's ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... long past time when the brig had been wrecked her crew had got safe away from her, and had been able in part to strip her before they left her alone upon the sea. What I wanted, however, they had not taken away. In a locker I found a case made to hold six big bottles, in which the skipper had carried his private stock of liquors very likely; and two of the bottles, no doubt being empty when the cabin was cleared, had been left behind. They served my turn exactly, and I brought them on deck and filled them from my pool ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... frightened than were the captain and crew of a small Levant trader which happened at the moment to be almost directly above the scene of the explosion. All hands felt the jar; the watch below frantically sprang on deck under the impression that they had collided with another vessel; and the skipper, who happened to be standing near the taffrail, was horrified beyond expression to see an immense cone of water some thirty feet high rise out of the sea just astern of his vessel, to fall next moment with a deafening splash and an accompanying surge which tossed the little vessel ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her, and sometimes puzzled her. Some of the men who rode short distances in the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys. They called the conductor "skipper," and hailed each other in ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... said he, as Frank entered, "for I want to talk to you. I'm not at all pleased with the looks of our skipper," he went on to say, "and how he came to be placed in command is a mystery to me. Perhaps the quarter-master thinks, like a good many men who see the Mississippi River for the first time, that any body can take charge of a steamboat; but suppose we should run aground—what ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... fisheries were the foundation of her commerce. The thrifty Yankee sold the best of his catch in Europe (here again we follow Weeden); the medium quality he ate himself; and the worst he sent to the West Indies to be sold as food for slaves. With the proceeds the skipper bought molasses and carried it home, where it was turned into rum; the rum went to Africa and was exchanged for slaves, and the slaves were carried to the West Indies, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Rum and slaves, two chief staples of New England trade and sources of its wealth; slave labor the foundation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... and The Starry Flag were in demand almost every day; and we need not add that the young skipper did not regard himself as a martyr in the cause. Though the excursions to Halibut Point, Straitsmouth, the Selvages, and other places in the vicinity, were frequently repeated, he was never happier than when ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... skipper; "speak her fair: I'm scary always to see her shake Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake." But merrily still, with laugh and shout, From Hampton river the boat sailed out, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... run down to Havana, passing Moro Castle and dropping anchor on the seventh day out from New York, but found some trouble there in getting a cargo for the home voyage. The delay worried our skipper considerably, for he had calculated on being home with his wife and baby at Christmas; but we of the crew enjoyed the city, and I for one got leave to go ashore whenever I could, and made the most of my ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... of King Island had been found by the skipper of a sealing brig, named Reid, in 1799, but the name it bears was given to it by John Black, commander of the brig Harbinger, who discovered the northern part in January, 1801. Flinders was occupied for three days at ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... was SOP. The ship wasn't taut, she was tight! And she wasn't happy. There was none of the devil-may-care spirit that marks crews in the Scouting Force and separates them from the stodgy mass of the Line. Every face I saw on my trip to the skipper's cabin was blank, hard-eyed, and unsmiling. There was none of the human noise that normally echoes through a ship, no laughter, no clatter of equipment, no deviations from the order and precision so dear to admirals' hearts. This crew was G.I. right down to the last seam tab on their ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we shall have to stay at Genoa for a week while ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... had turned her round and was making headway against the waves, but still her bow would not lift, and the captain wept still more. His womanish behaviour disgusted me. At last a quiet passenger, an experienced sailor, gave some advice, which the skipper followed, and which helped matters a little, so that he regained his self-control to the extent of calling a general council; he announced that he dared not continue the voyage, and asked our consent to return to Noumea. We all agreed, and about midnight we approached the reef. Now there are lights ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... self-confident. That glass of champagne from the Senator's hospitable bottle made him feel doubly capable to-night to take his ship out into the open Atlantic, and then to bed with that easy heart which a skipper only knows ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... deck steward 'o she was and 'e told me. 'Er old man's a bleedin' millionaire, a bloody Capitalist! 'E's got enuf bloody gold to sink this bleedin' ship! 'E makes arf the bloody steel in the world! 'E owns this bloody boat! And you and me, comrades, we're 'is slaves! And the skipper and mates and engineers, they're 'is slaves! And she's 'is bloody daughter and we're all 'er slaves, too! And she gives 'er orders as 'ow she wants to see the bloody animals below decks and down they takes 'er! [There is a roar of rage ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... over the sands. The sea was nearly abeam now, and several times Jack almost held his breath as the waves lifted the Bessy bodily to leeward and threatened to cast her into the breaking waters but a few fathoms away. But the skipper knew his boat well and humoured her through the waves, taking advantage of every squall to eat up a little to windward, but always keeping her sails full and plenty of way on her. At last they were through the swashway; and though the sea was again heavier, and the waves frequently ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... all civilized lands. England was a good customer of the colonies, and Boston shipowners did a thriving trade with oil from New Bedford or Nantucket to London. The sloops and ketches engaged in this commerce brought back, as an old letter of directions from shipowner to skipper shows, "course wicker flasketts, Allom, Copress, drum rims, head snares, shod shovells, window-glass." The trade was conducted with the same piety that we find manifested in the direction of slave-ships and privateers. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... running her goods to the shore. In the autumn of 1734 the master of the Dutch schuyt The Good Luck of Camphire, alias The Brotherly Love, had succeeded in running as many as 166 half-ankers[4] of brandy and 50 lbs. of tea on the coast near Great Yarmouth, the skipper's name being Francis Coffee. He was a notorious smuggler. But on this occasion both he and his ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... for the first time. He mingled freely with captains of the foreign merchant vessels and went out in their boats. On one occasion, he was out in a storm and came near being drowned; but this did not prevent "Skipper Peter Alexievitch," from putting out to sea again. Once he piloted three Dutch vessels. The young czar gave orders to construct a dockyard and to ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing; and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her nipped finger, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... out of this very power of clinging to the same places and the old loves, and what an incomparable group they make! "Telling the Bees," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "My Playmate," "In School Days," are sufficient in themselves to set the seal to his ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... of the cutter was checked, and the boat placed in a convenient position for a further conference with the sloop. Either by intention or carelessness the skipper of the sail-boat had permitted her to broach to, probably because he was giving too much attention to the boat and too little to the sloop. When the cutter lost its headway, it was not more than fifty feet from ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to each other when they got on board, on chests at the foot of the mast. They talked to each other. Irish and Basque are, as we have said, kindred languages. The Basque woman's hair was scented with onions and basil. The skipper of the hooker was a Basque of Guipuzcoa. One sailor was a Basque of the northern slope of the Pyrenees, the other was of the southern slope—that is to say, they were of the same nation, although the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... lord?" for there was a pallor on his lordship's face which caused the worthy skipper a vague uneasiness. He had seen his master under various and peculiar circumstances, but had never seen him look quite ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... seizes, in the English Channel, the American steamer Dacia, which was formerly under German registry and belonged to the Hamburg-American Line, and takes her to Brest; a French prize court will determine the validity of her transfer to American registry; British skipper reports that the German converted cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich sank a British ship and a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... things, also, tending to make my lot on ship-board very hard to be borne. True, the skipper himself was a trump; stood upon no quarter-deck dignity; and had a tongue for a sailor. Let me do him justice, furthermore: he took a sort of fancy for me in particular; was sociable, nay, loquacious, when I happened to stand at the helm. But what of that? ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... next seaport to find another berth, since I've refused to sail on the Huntress," he explained in answer to her questions. "Mr. Martin has had to get a new skipper and a new crew, for none of the old hands would sail when they heard it was against your father's wishes. There was a bark came in from Delaware to be laid up for repairs, with mostly Swedes aboard, and they have manned the Huntress from ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... your eyes? The Breeze, if you want to know. What are you going to do about it?" the little skipper shouted fiercely. In the light wind the ships ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle. Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among the warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants: "Anything going my way, this trip?" He would scorn to do it. Before his passengers have passed the custom ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... try to run alongside for a while, but the immense drag of her four towers of canvas soon draws her clear, and she speedily looms once more like a cloud on the horizon. Good-bye! The squat collier lumbers along, and her leisurely grimy skipper salutes as we near him. It is marvellous to reflect that the whole of our coal-trade was carried on in those queer tubs only sixty years ago. They are passing away, and the gallant, ignorant, comical race of sailors who manned ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... may make a good sailor," said Aunt Martha. "Indeed, if it were not for these British ships hovering about our shores it is likely that Skipper Cary would have been off to the Banks and taken Amos ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... "The skipper wants to say good-by, men, but he isn't up to the job. He's afraid to tackle it; so he has asked me to wish you light duty, heavy pay, and double rations in civil life. He has asked me to say to you that he loves you all and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... for several hundred yards, and then striking boldly into the current; and it was amusing to see our well-crammed boat suddenly drawn into the rapid stream and whisked and whirled about like a straw, while a nice calculation on the part of the skipper, and a good deal of rowing and shouting on that of the sailors, enabled us to touch the opposite shore not very far below the point from which we had started. One last lingering look at Cashmerian ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... thin old fellow, with the black coat, faded yellow-green on the shoulders, who was talking to Skipper ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... morning off the mouth of Delaware Bay floating the flag of France and a signal of distress. Young Girard was captain of this sloop, and was on his way to a Canadian port with freight from New Orleans. An American skipper, seeing his distress, went to his aid, but told him the American war had broken out, and that the British cruisers were all along the American coast, and would seize his vessel. He told him his only chance was to make a push for Philadelphia. Girard ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... point the gallant skipper of the British collier, slouching with a heavy load of grime for London, or waddling back in ballast to his native North, alike is delighted to discover storms ahead, and to cast his tarry anchor into soft gray calm. For here shall he find the good shelter of friends ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and proceeded to a small but active sea-port town on the coast, Zaandam. The first person they saw here was a man fishing from a small skiff, at a short distance from the shore. The tzar, who was dressed like a common Dutch skipper, in a red jacket and white linen trowsers, hailed the man, and engaged lodgings of him, consisting of two small rooms with a loft over them, and an adjoining shed. Strangely enough, this man, whose ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... June another cargo arrived at Boston, and when the excise-officer stepped on board he was seized and confined below, while the wine was sent on shore. The officer was afterwards liberated, and on the following morning the skipper of the sloop entered four or five pipes at the custom-house, declaring that this was the whole of his cargo. Aware of the falsehood of this statement, the commissioners ordered a comptroller to seize the sloop, and to fix the king's broad arrow upon her. This was the signal for a riot. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... most of them are navigable for coasting vessels of light draught. These inlets are so influenced by the action of storms, and their shores and locations are so changed by them, that the cattle may graze to-day in tranquil happiness where only a generation ago the old skipper navigated his craft. During June of the year 1821 a fierce gale opened Sandy Point Inlet with a foot depth of water, but it closed in 1831. Green Point Inlet was cut through the beach during a gale in ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... early one bright morning, the "Gypsy," with skipper, crew, and a party of eight jolly young men on board, sailed out of Boston and that night dropped anchor under the lee of an island in Casco Bay. She remained there one full day and the next ran to Boothbay and found shelter in a landlocked cove forming part of the coast line of Southport ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... us all into a heap, and you could have heard a pin drop. Then came the hail again, 'If you don't answer I will sink you,' whereupon the skipper of the lugger shouted out, 'the Jennie of Portsmouth.' 'Lend a hand, lads, with the sails,' he whispered to us; 'slip the cable, Tom.' We ran up the sails in a jiffy, you may be sure, and all the sharper that, as they were half-way up, four guns ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine men came out of it—he admitted—but no more chance in the world if put to it than fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great name as a skipper. Big man; short side- whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice. A good fellow, but no more up to people's tricks than ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... vessel. Once a great black wall heaved up and doubled the intensity of the murky midnight by a sinister shade; there came a horrible silence, and then, with a loud bellow, the wall burst into ruin and crashed down on the ship in a torrent which seemed made up of a thousand conflicting streams. The skipper silently dashed aft, flung his arms round Tom Lennard, and pinned him to the mast; Mr. Blair hung on, though he was drifted aft with his feet off the deck until he hung like a totally new description of flying ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... d'ee do, my lad? Now, 'tis queer, but only five minutes a-gone I was talkin' about 'ee with your skipper, Nummy Tangye, t'other side o' the ferry. He says you'm goin' up for your mate's certificate, and ought to get it. Very well he spoke of 'ee. Why don't Hester invite you inside? Come'st 'long in to ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... surely come before morning, unless something has happened to him, for I never knew Plum to break his word," said Jack to the skipper. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... Skippers.—Foreign trade at Athens is fairly well systematized, but it still partakes of the nature of an adventure. The name for "skipper" (naukleros) is often used interchangeably for "merchant." Nearly all commerce is by sea, for land routes are usually slow, unsafe, and inconvenient[*]; the average foreign trader is also a shipowner, probably too the actual working captain. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... clapped on to the rope an' we hoisted him clear out av the wather. A bowline wuz passed over his tail an' we got him on boord an' a few blows wid the axe along the spine quited him down. His floppin' on the deck niver woke the skipper, so we cut him open. We shlit him from close under the mouth to near the tail and overhauled everything that wuz in him. In the stomach we found a collection of soup an' bouillon cans an' bottles enough to shtart a liquor house. As we wuz examinin' the stuff, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... won't. The dear old skipper would be sure to give me away, though his orders are not to mention my ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... land. How vessels ever find their way, say from Hangoe to Nystad, is a mystery to the uninitiated landsman. At a certain place there are no less than 300 islands of various sizes crowded into an area of six square miles! Heaven preserve the man who finds himself there, in thick weather, with a skipper who does not quite know ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... a few people who live there, and they are principally wood-cutters," continued the skipper. "But they are true as steel, and you can trust them with your life. I have bought wood of them for years and know them like a book. I will go ashore with you and give you a good send-off. We shall get ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... present no difficulties, the return evening journey, with a stiff breeze from the land making a choppy sea, and the puzzling lights at the complicated entrance to the anchorage, are disturbing elements that make one feel thankful to have the skipper on board to guide the little craft through the maze of shipping, and pick up her moorings. For small boat sailing the waters of the Fal are ideal, but here also, as on the salt waters beyond the river mouth, great care is required by reason of the wind ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... Barb'ry Coast, I reckon. Sealers have liberties last shore-day. Like whalers. I've buried a few irons myself, matey, but I'll never sight the vapor of a right whale ag'in. Stranded, I am. So you'll do me a favor, matey, an' pilot me down into the cabin, if so be the skipper's there. If he ain't, I'll wait for him. I've got the right an' run o' the Karluk's cabin. I know ev'ry inch of her. You'll see when we go ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... "Thanks, skipper. And by the way, I erased that record yesterday." The two gripped hands; and there came into being a relationship that was to become a ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... of the same name nestling at the foot of its eastern slope in a grove of coco-trees, close to the sea. Struggling with difficulty against the force of the current, we succeeded, with the assistance of light and fickle winds, in reaching Legaspi, the port of Albay, on the following evening. Our skipper, a Spaniard, had determined to accomplish the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart. But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is imminent. Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his neighbour: a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth: yet we have the neat and finished touch (cap. vii.):—"The lamentation was very fine (the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... It appeared that the skipper of the vessel, with seven of the crew, had been landed by a British cargo steamer at Hobart Town, Tasmania. The Westward Ho! had picked them up in a small boat about seven ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... (replied the Dane); but every person in Copenhagen pities the young Queen, attributing the coolness which the King shewed towards her, ere he set out on his voyage, to the malicious advice of Holcke." The confusion of this minion may be easier conceived than described; whilst the King, giving the Skipper a handful of ducats, bade him speak the truth and shame the devil. As soon, however, as the King spoke in Danish, the Skipper knew him, and looking at him with love and reverence, said in a low, subdued tone of voice—" Forgive me, Sire, but I cannot forbear my tears to see you exposed to the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... there came a skipper who wanted to see the mill, and the first thing he asked was if it could ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... he was; and in a few minutes Gimblet, rather out of breath after his run, hurried on board, and with a word of apology and thanks to the obliging skipper turned, like the other passengers, towards the shelter ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... whim it could be called—in the pleasantest and speediest way. Before long he was the temporary owner of a fine little schooner, in which he proposed to scour the seas in search of his missing friend. To his great satisfaction, Captain Somers consented to act as his skipper: a crew of picked men was obtained; and the world in general received the information that Mr. Vivian and his sister were going on a yachting expedition for the good of their health, and would probably not return to England for ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of the picturesque. He offered himself to no temptations now, nor to any risks. Right onwards he went to the docks, addressed himself to a grave, elderly master of a trading vessel, bound upon a distant voyage, and instantly procured an engagement. The skipper was a good and sensible man, and (as it turned out) a sailor accomplished in all parts of his profession. The ship which he commanded was a South Sea whaler, belonging to Lord Grenville—whether lying at Liverpool or in the Thames at ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... as you sing," said Batavius, with all the authority of a skipper to his mate. "How can a woman fly when she has no wings? And to say any bark has wings is not the truth. And what kind of rose is the rose of love? Twelve kinds of roses I have chosen for my new garden, but that kind I never heard of; and I will not believe in any rose that never dies. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... running on board each other." The Hope's captain asked Grant very peremptorily who he was and where he came from, to which Grant replied by hoisting his colours and pendant; but even this did not satisfy the irate merchant skipper, who appeared to have had very decided intentions of running down the Lady Nelson. Eventually, however, he rejoined the convoy, which stood to ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... Pete came out to relieve at the tiller while they went in to eat. Both lads hailed his advent with feelings of relief, and the awkwardness vanished over the dinner, which was all their skipper had claimed it to be. Afterward 'Frisco Kid relieved Pete, and while he was eating Joe washed up the dishes and put the cabin shipshape. Then they all gathered in the stern, where the captain strove to increase the general cordiality ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... away, When, doomed in upper floors to star it. The bard inscribed to lords his lay,— Himself, the while, my Lord Mountgarret. No more he begs with air dependent. His "little bark may sail attendant" Under some lordly skipper's steerage; But launched triumphant in the Row, Or taken by Murray's self in tow. Cuts both ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... letter, written in Dutch, was sent to the Board of Trade as an enclosure in a letter from Bellomont dated Oct. 24. Bellomont, as indicated in the latter part of doc. no. 82, sent the Antonio, with a trusty skipper, to Antigua, St. Thomas, Curacao, and Jamaica, to recover whatever could be found of Kidd's booty. This is one of the letters it brought back. Lorentz ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... skipper; "here it is at last, solid as the fluke of an anchor. Toss me the powder-flask Harry; ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... mistake me, I don't pretend to have seen anything or heard anything extraordinary in the ordinary way of seeing or hearing. Only I was dead sure that he was there with the same old entreaty. Afterwards I lighted a pipe, went above, talked to the skipper's wife, read, investigated my boy's and also my dog's welfare rather perfunctorily, settled down to saying an evening Office, made an end more or less of that, just as night came on, and then again took time to think over things. I remembered that he would ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... customary perquisite. I've been on this boat six years, and it's always been so. About a week before we make port, the choicest of the remaining stores are taken to his cabin, and he disposes of them after we dock. I can't say just how he manages it, but he does. The skipper may know of this custom, and there may be some reason why he permits it. It's not my business to see anything. The Chief Steward is a powerful man on an English vessel. If he has anything against me, sooner or later he can ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... drifting, a nasal hail suddenly roused me to the fact that there were other navigators in those seas. "Bo-oat ahoy! Whar' ye bo-ound?" Giving a stroke with the larboard oar, I saw, hove to, a fishing-schooner,—her whole crew of skipper, three men, and a boy standing at the gangway and looking with all their ten eyes to make out, if possible, what strange kind of sea-monster had turned up. My boat could not have seemed very seaworthy, only seven inches above water, disappearing in the trough of every sea that passed, then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... boat's course up the stream. The wind was blowing fresh, and, notwithstanding the contending force of the current, the boat careened to her task, and made very good progress through the water. While the gallant little bark pursues her way, we will introduce her skipper ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... succession came these orders from Captain Snaggs, the hoarse words of command ringing through the ship fore and aft, and making even the ringbolts in the deck jingle—albeit they were uttered in a sort of drawling voice, that had a strong nasal twang, as if the skipper made as much use of his nose as of his mouth in speaking. This impression his thin and, now, tightly compressed lips tended to confirm; while his hard, angular features and long, pointed, sallow face, closely shaven, saving ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hired boat of his neighbor, Miss Mabel Ripley. They were not racing, for his craft was unusually fast, as became a multi-millionaire's plaything. Besides, he and the girl had merely a bowing acquaintance. The Firefly was simply bobbing along on the same tack as the Enchantress, while the fair skipper, who had another girl as a companion, tried vainly, at a respectful distance, to hold her own ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... privileges to deep-sea fishing vessels and forbade American boats to enter Canadian ports for the purpose of trans-shipping crews, purchasing bait, or shipping fish in bond to the United States. Every time a Canadian fishery cruiser and a Gloucester skipper had a difference of opinion as to the exact whereabouts of the three-mile limit, the press of both countries echoed the conflict. Congress in 1887 empowered the President to retaliate by excluding Canadian vessels ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... everyday purposes of carrying water; and we also know that all the simplest and earliest pottery is moulded on the shape of just such natural jars and bottles. The fact and the theory based on it are no novelties. Early in the sixteenth century, indeed, the Sieur Gonneville, skipper of Honfleur, sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, made his way right across the Southern Ocean to some vague point of South America where he found the people still just in the intermediate stage between the use of natural vessels and the invention of pottery. For these ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... everyone in Dunkirk that this little craft plied to and fro in the Jacobite service and was allowed to pass the forts without challenge. Indeed, she had a special permit. Therefore nobody wondered when Captain Salt paid her red-bearded skipper a visit that evening, on his way to the citadel; nor was the skipper astonished to receive a letter for the Earl of Marlborough's secret agent at Ostend, and be bidden to leave ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... recollect now—it was the Dutch skipper. There's murder in that bill, Peter: it was things I supplied to him just before he sailed; and an old man was passenger in the cabin: he was a very rich man, although he pretended to be poor. He was a diamond merchant, they say; and ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the sailor, who had given him the toy-boat, to take him on board. The sailor had done this, not suspecting what was to happen. A school of mackerel had been seen; and, as the breeze was fair, the skipper spread all sail, and was ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel, principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... scandalous need of legislation for the protection of sea-men when ashore from land-sharks, a digression which includes a pleasant interpretation of the myth of Ulysses and Circe as none other than the dilemma of a Homeric merchant skipper whose crew Circe "some good ale-wife," had made drunk "with the spirituous liquors of those days"; of the difficulty with which Fielding could persuade his wife "whom it was no easy matter for me to force from my side" to take a walk on shore; and of the captain's grievous lamentations, which ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... was appointed 2nd in Command of "C." There were also other changes, for Major R.E. Martin was given Command of the 4th Battalion, and was succeeded as 2nd in Command by Major W.S.N. Toller, while Captain C. Bland became skipper of ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... Rob, keenly interested. "Then the crew and skipper of the Flying Fish will have to look alive. I know that Sam's father helped him out with that boat and put a lot of new wrinkles in it. I didn't think, though, he'd have it ready in time for ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... skipper," exclaimed O'Grady. "He would try it and do it too. We'd back him, and so would every man ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... encounter, farther down the shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial period), a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a little gravelly bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the pebbles as the tide creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or ex-pilot, with strands of coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a face that has the expression of a half-open clam. He is always ready to talk with you, this amphibious person; and if he is not the most entertaining of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... once a skipper of Dyrevig called Bardun. He was so headstrong that there was no doing anything with him. Whatever he set his mind upon, that should be done, he said, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... from forgiveness as he read that letter. His first mate, who was beside him when he opened and read it, was actually frightened when he saw the look on the skipper's face. "He went white," said the mate; "not pale, but white, same as a dead man, or—or the underside of a flatfish, or somethin'. 'For the Lord sakes, Cap'n,' says I, 'what's the matter?' He never answered me, stood starin' at the letter. Then he looked up, not at me, but as if somebody ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... afford to be fastidious about a berth. Consequently, I'd found myself in a rotten old Genovese tramp barque that most of the crew had run from because they thought she'd founder next time she put to sea. Of course the owners didn't want to see her again, and the skipper had been doing his best to play into their hands all the way down from the Baltic. His mate had contrived to baulk his losing her during the previous half of the trip, but got sick of the job and cleared when he found the chance. It was into the mate's shoes that I stepped; and having no ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... is bound from Liverpool to La Guayra, and on the way down we called at Lisbon. On the morning of the day I was to sail from there, there came into port the Glanford, a big English merchantman, from Buenos Ayres to London. I knew her skipper, Captain Guy Chesters, as handsome a young English sailor as ever stood ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... a fine young fellow, the skipper, Jean Martin. I believe his father is a large wine merchant, at Nantes. I suppose you know ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... in Dumferling toune, Drinking the blude-reid wine: "O whare will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... "'Tain't the skipper's, for he's drunk as a biled owl, and ain't stirred out of his bunk since eight bells," said the other. "It's the first mate's orders; but, I reckon, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Johnny Heinhold who secretly warned me across the bar that I was getting pickled and advised me to take small beers. But as long as Captain Nelson drank large beers, my pride forbade anything else than large beers. And not until the skipper ordered his first small beer did I order one for myself. Oh, when we came to a lingering fond farewell, I was drunk. But I had the satisfaction of seeing Old Scratch as drunk as I. My youthful modesty scarcely let me dare ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... that there may be more people than Chatfield and the Squire in at this business," continued Vickers. "Just so! We—Copplestone and myself—know very well that the skipper of the Pike, Andrius, is in it: that's undeniable. But there may be others—or one other, or two—on shore here. And as the Pike can communicate by wireless, those on board her may have sent a message to their shore confederates ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... had made some delay, and it was almost the end of the long vacation. Charles Audley undertook to go to Trieste with the travellers, and make inquiries about Zoraya and her first husband. Sir Robert, the Skipper, as the family still termed him, had written for his yacht to meet him there, and be ready for him to convey the party to Sicily. He professed that he could not lose sight of Franceska, with whom he declared himself nearly ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pulling the skiff out to the Greyhound's moorings. Kate stepped on board of the sail-boat, and Fanny, fastening the painter of the skiff at the stern, began to bustle around with as much confidence as though she had been a skipper ever since she left ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... railing, slacken, loop, and come up off the port quarter. Frithiof called up the speaking tube to the bridge, and the bridge answered, 'Yes, nine knots.' Then Frithiof spoke again, and the answer was, 'What do you want of the skipper?' and Frithiof bellowed, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... ghost of her pinnacled mountain-tops. But his mind would take no account of these familiar features; as he dodged in and out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory would serve him with broken fragments of the past: brown faces and white, of skipper and shipmate, king and chief, would arise before his mind and vanish; he would recall old voyages, old landfalls in the hour of dawn; he would hear again the drums beat for a man-eating festival; perhaps he would summon up the form of that island princess ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,—a cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon her ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) |
