"Landsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Swan River on the 31st, under circumstances which must forcibly illustrate to a landsman the precision with which a ship may be navigated. We had not seen land for fifty-two days, and were steering through a dense fog, which confined the circle of our vision to within a very short distance ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... werry unwell!" cries the landsman; and, bringing up his hook and bait, requests the good-natured boatman to pull for shore, 'like vinkin,'—which request; the obliging fellow immediately complies with, having agreeably fished at the expense of his fare; and, landing his whitings and the flat, laughs in his sleeve at the qualms ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... they commenced, after the old fashion, the life of gentlemen rovers. Their mode of proceeding was to run alongside any merchantman they fell in with, which they thought would prove a prize worth having. Having taken possession of everything they wanted, they then made every landsman walk the plank, as they did likewise every seaman who would not join them. Those only who would take their oaths, and sign their articles, were allowed to live. Mr Teach used to dress himself out in a wild fashion, and as he ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Peter," said the captain, more exultant than ever, "you shall see an unveiling! It is not often given to a lad like you, a landsman, to behold such a dramatic act at sea, a scene so powerful and complete that it might have been devised by one of the great Elizabethans! Ho, Carlos, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... equal rights, and am now hauled up in dock for repairs. But you, I am sure, will be glad to know that, though much battered and tempest-tossed, I came into port with all sail set and every rag of bunting waving victory. This is a private note to you, and as you are but a landsman yourself, you will never know if my ropes are ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... every rough gale and lee-shore, and in which his calculations regarding ultimate results must be always very doubtful, has a strong tendency to render him superstitious. He is more removed, too, than the landsman of his education and standing, from the influence of general opinion, and the mayhap over-sceptical teaching of the Press; and, as a consequence of their position and circumstances, I found, at this period, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... hardy chopper. Looking along shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to shoot at anything in the water they cannot understand, Boyton sounded a lusty blast on the bugle to attract the chopper's attention from ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... minutes the shapes of a squadron of battleships can be clearly seen; in five minutes Smith's practised eyes, now that he has descended, can distinguish the Imperturbable, flying the admiral's flag, among what to a landsman would appear to be a dozen exactly similar vessels. Glancing back, he sees that the Red Scout has changed her course, and is already only a speck in the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... who has been to sea knows how, when his vessel has been hove to in a storm for many hours, perhaps during more than one day, within a few miles of the same spot, the sea there grows familiar to him as a landscape to a landsman, so that when the force of the gale is broken at last and the sea subsides to a long swell, and the ship is wore to the wind and can lay her course once more, he looks astern at the grey water he has learned to know so well and feels that he should know it again if he passed that way, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... business so profitable that I gave up farming altogether. But certain unfortunate speculations threw me on my back, and finally, having gone from bad to worse, I found myself in Boston, where, in sheer desperation, I went on board a coasting vessel as landsman. I remained on this vessel for nearly a year, but it did not suit me. I was often sick, and did not like the work. I left the vessel at one of the Southern ports, and it was not long after she sailed that, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... wanted to marry a sailor," she said. "And I thought I was safe in the hands of a landsman like you. And yet here you are, with all the stuff of the sea in you, running down your easting for port. Next thing, I suppose, I'll see you out with a sextant, shooting the sun or ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... is surrounded by water, it must be a visible point of land. HALL is a landsman, and therefore the proper man to send in search of land. To send a sailor like HAYES in quest of land would be absurd. Therefore HALL ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... for the plains where the dolphins play, And the bend of the mast and spars, And a fight at night with the wild sea-sprite When the foam has drowned the stars. And, pray, what joy can the landsman feel Like the rise and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to a harassed landsman thrust into the position of an admiral and eager to be rid of his responsibilities. If by evil fortune the north-wester should come down upon him, with the shoals and sandbanks close under his lee, he would be in a bad way. Nor was the view behind him calculated for comfort. There lay the ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... down to Portsmouth to see a friend who was in command of a man-of-war; he was rowed about among the hulks; the sailors in the gig looked half contemptuously at the sturdy landsman, huddled in a cloak, hunched up in the stem-sheets, peering about through his spectacles. But contempt became first astonishment, and then bewildered admiration, when they found that he knew the position of every ship, and the engagements in which ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... pleasant passages," said John Effingham to Paul, as soon as they were separated in the manner just mentioned. "Three trips across the Atlantic in so short a time would be hard duty to a landsman, though you, as a sailor, will probably think ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... plain to the Dagos and Swedes who fell to my lot. They couldn't understand much of what I said, but they could tell something of my meaning when I held up a rope's-end and belaying-pin before their eyes and made certain significant gestures in regard to their manipulation. This may strike the landsman as unnecessary and somewhat brutal; but, before he passes judgment, he should try to take care of a lot of men who are, for a part, a little lower ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... skies he paints. One figures his mind as some sort of marvellous picture gallery. He veritably sees things, and he makes the reader see them. And all the strange and curious sea jargon, of which not one landsman in a thousand understands anything—combings and back-stays and dead-eyes, and the rest of it—takes a salt smack of romance in his lips. He can be as technical as he pleases, and the reader takes him on faith, and rollicks along with him, bewildered, possibly, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... things specially wonderful and significant to him, the landsman of the Judaean hills, as they were afterward to Muhammed, the landsman of the Arabian deserts. And he has talked with sailors from those ships; from Tarshish and the far Atlantic, or from Ezion-geber and the Indian seas. And he has heard from them of mightier monsters ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... fish—among them that constant delight of the landsman, the puffer, which, when disturbed, rapidly inflates itself, rising to the surface of the water until it becomes apparently so large a mouthful that its would-be devourer is fooled into believing the morsel too big to swallow. Then, the danger removed, the puffer releases the gulped-down ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... those stanch friendships common to boyhood had sprung up during the voyage to Australia. "A whale, your grandmother, Jonathan!" repeated Davy Armstrong in a bantering tone, with all—as his companion thought he could detect—the conscious superiority of a sucking sailor over a raw landsman, in his voice. "Why, you'll be seeing the sea serpent soon if you look smart. Where is this wonderful thing you've discovered, Jonathan, my son? I'm blest if ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... across a little stone passage into the Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing a high settle with its back towards me drawn out in front of the Admiral's kitchen fire, I strolled in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and looking about. One landsman and two boatmen were seated on the settle, smoking pipes and drinking beer out of thick pint crockery mugs - mugs peculiar to such places, with parti-coloured rings round them, and ornaments between the rings like frayed-out roots. The landsman was relating ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... hope the course he took comforted himself—I am sure it made me ashamed to show my nose at home. So I went down to Leith, and, exchanging my hoddin grey coat of my mother's spinning for such a jacket as this, I entered my name at the rendezvous as an able-bodied landsman, and sailed with the tender round to Plymouth, where they were fitting out a squadron for the West Indies. There I was put aboard the FEARNOUGHT, Captain Daredevil—among whose crew I soon learned to fear ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and if we have no right to ask God to alter his laws for our sakes, then what use in prayer? I will answer,—Go to the seaman, and ask him what he thinks. The puzzle may seem very great to a comfortable landsman, sitting safe in his study at home; but it ought to be no puzzle at all to the master mariner in his cabin, with his chart and his Bible open before him, side by side. He ought to know well enough where reason stops and religion begins. He ought ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... than the usual run of passenger one meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life, and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who, nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Norwegian the democrat, the Dane the conservative. The Swede, polite, vivacious, fond of music and literature, is "the Frenchman of the North," the Norwegian is a serious viking in modern dress: the Dane remains a landsman, devoted to his fields, and he is more amenable than his northern kinsmen to the cultural ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... and despatch with which sailors can construct a raft, would be almost incredible to a landsman who had never seen the thing done. It is not from mere concert or organisation among themselves—though there is something in that. Not much, however, for well-drilled soldiers are as clumsy at such ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... throbbed through the palace, striking an hour that was no more intelligible than the jargon of a ship's clock to a landsman. Somewhere an orchestra thrilled into haunting sound, poignant with disclosures barely missed. Overhead, through the mighty rafters of the conical roof, the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... evening, at which Corean voracity is exhibited to the best advantage. The climate being so much colder than that of Japan, it is only natural that the Cho-senese should use more animal food and fat than do the landsman of the Mikado. Pork and beef, barely roasted and copiously condimented with pepper and vinegar, are devoured in large quantities. The Coreans also have a dish much resembling the Italian maccaroni or vermicelli. Of this large bowls may be seen at all the eating-shops in ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... met with was the sloop of that amateur pirate and landsman, Major Stede Bonnet. Teach and Bonnet became friends and sailed together for a few days, when Teach, finding that Bonnet was quite ignorant of maritime matters, ordered the Major, in the most high-handed way, to come aboard his ship, while he put another officer in command ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... burst there was no plumber to mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range of occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance. The immortal Captain Davis, of the Sea Ranger, remarks to the incompetent landsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the Farralone, 'There ain't nothing to sailoring when you come to look it in the face,' and I am inclined to think that the observation is true of other things besides navigation. There is nothing in ordinary gardening, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of modern charlatanism as shown in 'Herr Paulus,' of the "woman question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? —O landsman, these are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! —Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... may get a landsman to admire your bold cliffs, but you won't get a sailor to agree ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... not think from this, that persons called boys aboard merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a boy means a green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... hint at such a possibility. A specimen or two will show the situation of the present tongue, and the blending process already gone through with. We need not dip for this so far into the tar-bucket as to bother (nautice, "galley") the landsman. We will take terms familiar to all. The three masts of a ship are known as "fore," "main," and "mizzen." Of these, the first is English, the second Norman-French, the third Italian (mezzano). To go ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Nickerson, you are a married man, and it's no use for a gall to talk it into you; and then, in the next place, you see you know a plaguey sight more about the shape, make, and build of a craft like this than you do about the figure-head, waist, and trim of a gall. You are a seaman, and I am a landsman; you know how to bait your hooks for fish, and I know the sort of tackle women will jump at. See if I don't set their clappers a going, like those of a ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Hubert de Burgh, landsman as he was, resolved to oppose them to the utmost, and with much difficulty collected a fleet of forty ships of all sizes. Several of the knights, believing his attempt hopeless, declared that they knew nothing of sea fights, and refused to share his ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... returned the Captain drawing a deep breath. "This way, if your Highness pleases. There is a rope ladder, which is sometimes a little unsteady for a landsman, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... buyer of books. The idea of your making any profitable use of them is one that nobody who has the slightest acquaintance with you would entertain for a moment: does the bald man buy a comb, the blind a mirror, the deaf a flute-player? the eunuch a concubine, the landsman an oar, the pilot a plough? Are you merely seizing an opportunity of displaying your wealth? Is it just your way of showing the public that you can afford to spend money even on things that are of no use to you? Why, even a Syrian like myself knows ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... has bartered his rum for a coach and a crib, at the First Lord's stern decree, And he learns the use of the rocket and squib (which are useful as lights at sea): And they train him in part of the nautical art, as much as a landsman can, For they teach him to paddle the gay canoe, and to row ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... and our own time. In the days when Flood Ireson was drawn in the cart by the Maenads of Marblehead, that fishing town had the name of nurturing a young population not over fond of strangers. It used to be said that if an unknown landsman showed himself in the streets, the boys would follow after him, crying, "Rock him! Rock him! He's got a ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... strength, he suddenly shook off both the finishers of the law, and, with his arms still bound, ran to the Scottish Archer. "Stand by me, countryman," he said, in his own language, "for the love of Scotland and Saint Andrew! I am innocent—I am your own native landsman. Stand by me, as you shall answer at ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... coming from the land, and a landsman was rowing it. He could tell by the uneven splash of the oars, the slish along the surface as a crab was caught, and the muffled curse as the man ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Pau was responsible for his selection of the town as a market for his goods. I should not have taken him for a sailor, and said as much. With a shy smile, he confessed that he was a steward, adding that he was a landsman at heart, and that, but for the opportunities of trading which his occupation presented he should go ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... which was instantly welcomed in England and translated in France. Then came, in swift succession, "The Pioneers," the first Leather-Stocking tale in order of composition, and "The Pilot," to show that Scott's "Pirate" was written by a landsman! "Lionel Lincoln" and "The Last of the Mohicans" followed. The next seven years were spent in Europe, mainly in France, where "The Prairie" and "The Red Rover" were written. Cooper now looked back upon his countrymen ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... fearful gulf that separates the two worlds. The landsman can know little of the wildness, savageness, and mercilessness of nature till he has been upon the sea. It is as if he had taken a leap off into the interstellar spaces. In voyaging to Mars or Jupiter, he might cross such a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... they happen to want a clerk. I suppose you would be about as handy behind a counter as a hippopotamus. I have no business of my own to train you to. You are not good for the sea, and the sea has probably spoiled you for anything else. A drop of salt water just poisons a landsman. I am sure I don't know what to ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Vetch was on board the Sapphire, the smallest of the frigates, with orders to pick out the safe channel for the rest of the fleet; and although but a landsman, he did his best to act as a pilot. All went well until they reached the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence. There, instead of depending upon one of the smaller ships to lead the way, the Admiral imprudently sailed with his flag-ship in the van. By a singular want of judgment, moreover, he chose ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to a landsman—and this is what is called riding ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... wind Comes freshening down the bay, The rising sails are filling— Give way, my lads, give way! Leave the coward landsman clinging To the dull earth like a weed— The stars of heaven shall guide us, The breath of heaven ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... her as first mate, but he had never before commanded her. He was a good navigator, however, and well fitted for the task he had undertaken. He was a sharp fellow, and kept his eyes on everybody, particularly upon Nunez, who, although a landsman, and in no wise capable of sailing a ship, was perfectly capable of making plans regarding any vessel in which he was interested, especially when such a vessel happened to be sailing in pursuit of treasure, the value of which was merely a matter of conjecture. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... hope, my dear Fields, you may find this legible, but I rather doubt it; for there is motion enough on the ship to render writing to a landsman, however accustomed to pen and ink, rather a difficult achievement. Besides which, I slide away gracefully from the paper, whenever I want to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy; every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt for what he had seen fit to log ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present, by the way). He hesitated over a child's caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret's voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved as she did ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the ‘Victory’ every foot of the way from Asinara to this anchorage, [off La Madelena,] blowing hard from Longo Sardo, under double-reefed topsails.” The difficulties of the Bonifacio passage can hardly be understood by a landsman who has not visited the straits, but they are stated to have been so great, “and the ships to have passed in so extraordinary a manner, that their captains could only consider it as a providential interposition in favour of the great ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... to me as a landsman, and one who has crossed the ocean a great many times, that the safety of the Lusitania lay in speed. We were in the war zone by 140 or 150 miles, and every moment that we dawdled at fifteen or eighteen knots was an increase of our risk ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... island where the Ninety-Mile Beach ends in a wilderness of roaring breakers. It is the Isle of Blasted Hopes. Its enchanting landscape has allured many a landsman to his ruin, and its beacon, seen through the haze of a south-east gale, has guided many a watchful mariner to shipwreck ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... mortals cross the ocean of this world 100 Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage—how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are! An India screen is pretty furniture, A piano-forte is a fine resource, All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, The new edition fifty volumes long; And little Greek books, with the funny type 110 ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... by Lord Mountcashell, on which are now extensive and flourishing farms. At the east end of the Isle of Tanti are the Lower Gap and the Brothers, two rocky islets famous for black bass fishing and for a deep rolling sea, which makes a landsman very sick indeed in a gale of wind. After passing this Scylla, the bay, an arm rather of Lake Ontario, becomes very smooth and peaceable for several miles, until you leave the pleasant little village of Bath, where is one of the first churches erected by the English settlers ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... this is the ejaculation of a tired landsman; one might say, of a tired scholar, who was glad that even the short voyage was at an end. Some of the pilots supposed that the distance which they had run was eight hundred leagues from Ferro; others thought it was seven hundred and eighty. ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... bewhiskered individual, with a voice like a crosscut saw, and a rolling gait. Instead he saw a man of medium size, with a smooth face, merry blue eyes, and the softest voice and gentlest manner imaginable. Tom was very much disappointed. He had looked for a regular sea-dog, and he met a landsman, as he said afterward. But it was not long before our hero changed his mind ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... visibly, increasing fourfold his ludicrous aspect. He staggered backward, muttering incoherent words that might charitably be construed as apology, and passed on into the library, making an ineffectual effort to combine an air of dignified indifference with the uncertain gait of a landsman in a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of anybody. Middle aged, nearly as tall as Jim Hart, red haired, with a sharp little tuft of red whisker on his chin, and with features that seemed to be carved out of some kind of metal, he was a combination of the seaman and landsman, as tough and wiry as they ever grow to be. He regarded Oliver Pollock out of twinkling little blue eyes that could be merry ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the expedition was at first intended for Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer and then chief hydrographer to the Admiralty. The precedent of Halley's command of the Paramour in 1698 had taught a lesson of the danger of giving the command of a ship to a landsman, and Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hawke, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1768, said, to his everlasting credit, that he would sooner cut off his right hand than sign a commission for any person who had not been bred a seaman. Dalrymple, there is little doubt, never forgave ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the evening the Chaussee des Etats-Unis was naturally gay with the landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafes were crowded both inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with sailors, and pretty young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... man of copper offered her the weapons if she would take him as her husband, but she refused, saying that she was the daughter of a landsman, and preferred a husband from the village on the land. He laughed scornfully; her foot slipped, and she sank into the sea. Her father and mother came to seek her, and found only her ornaments scattered on the beach. They called her by her name, and implored her to go home with them; ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... returned to live in the midst of these fishers, through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there, and live like a landsman in the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... prim and proper, that staid and straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of 'em. It takes a lot to goad 'em to it, but once their hair's on end, it's time a sailor went to sea, and a landsman took to the bush. It's simply terrible. Them mild 'uns, Mr. Scarlett, beware ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... about military marching, or military words of command, when the young man told us to march on in our own way; upon which our sailors stuck their fists in their pockets, and scrabbled and reeled on as sailors always do; for a sailor does not know how to walk like a landsman. On which account I have been informed, since my return from captivity, that all our seamen, that were sent from Boston to Sackett's harbour, on Lake Ontario, were transported in coaches with four horses, chartered for the express ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... would have borne the burthen cheerfully," put in Roswell Gardiner, "to have been a little more comfortable. I never knew a person, seaman or landsman, who was ever the worse for having things snug about him, and for holding on to the better end of his cheer, as long as ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... repeated our manoeuvre and kept away—for not more than five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view and the surf to hearing—when I was aware of land again, not only on the weather bow, but dead ahead. I played the part of the judicious landsman, holding my peace till the last moment; and presently my mariners perceived ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years this division between the sailor and the fighting element in navies continued throughout the world. The fighting commander and the sailing-master were two different men, and the captain of a man-of-war was often a landsman. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... water more quickly than myself, or has decided whether certain doubtful appearances ahead were or were not sufficient to make us alter our course, &c.; and always speaking as no one who was what sailors call a landsman could have done. There was, of course, always a great deal of boat work, much of it to be done with a loaded boat in a seaway, requiring practical knowledge of such matters, and I do not remember any accidents, such as staving a boat on a reef, swamping, &c. in all those years; ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... young cockney, who, a few years before, had emigrated to Australia, and, by some favouritism or other, had procured the command of the vessel, though in no wise competent. He was essentially a landsman, and though a man of education, no more meant for the sea than a hairdresser. Hence everybody made fun of him. They called him "The Cabin Boy," "Paper Jack," and half a dozen other undignified names. In truth, the men made no secret of the derision in which they held him; and ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... me that we shall be wrecked," said Grant gravely. "I do not see an opening in these tremendous breakers, and if we can't get through them, even a landsman could tell that we shall ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... peculiar. It was entered from seawards by an extremely narrow inlet, across the mouth of which stretched a bar—I could realize that much by watching the breakers rolling over it; it was plain to me, a landsman, that even a small vessel could only get in or out of the cove at high water. But once across the bar, and within the narrow entry, any vessel coming in from the open sea would find itself in a natural harbour of great advantages; ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... were not easily frightened, and Jack Cockrell, the landsman, was confident that wind and tide would change to send the little raft shoreward. So tranquil was the sea that they rode secure and dry upon the cabin hatch which was buoyed by the two short spars. Joe Hawkridge was silent with foreboding of a fate more ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... thou lookest so closely at yonder shining world?" demanded Il Maledetto, with the superiority that the mariner afloat is wont successfully to assume over the unhappy wight of a landsman, who is very liable to admit his own impotency on the novel and dangerous element:—"the astrologer himself would not study ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... blockading Genoa, according to the orders of the Admiralty, and in the way I think most proper. Whether modern law or ancient law makes my mode right, I cannot judge; and surely of the mode of disposing of a fleet, I must, if I am fit for my post, be a better judge than any landsman, however learned he may appear. It would be the act of a fool to tell Europe where I intend to place the ships, for the purpose of effectually obeying my orders; not a captain can know it, and their positions will vary, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... disappearing and reappearing seal-like heads, with baskets splashing in the water or being hauled by excited hands. In the distance floats the majestic barque Rengasamy Puravey, an old-timer, with stately spars, a quarter-deck, and painted port-holes that might cause a landsman to believe her a war-ship. For half the year the barque is the home of the government's marine biologist, and his office and laboratory, wherein scientific investigation and experimentation are in constant progress, are in houses built on the quarter-deck. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... calm, which added not a little to my impatience of the ship. And, furthermore, by certain nameless associations revived in me my old impressions upon first witnessing as a landsman this phenomenon of the sea. Those impressions ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... you hadn't butted in on the shipping end of the business the man Peasley would not have been given this opening to swat us. It's nuts for a sailor any time he can trip up a landsman, and particularly his owners—" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... out on a huge fixed map covering, I think, the billiard-table. On it were shown where the various convoys were at the moment, the minefields, the positions where German U-boats had recently been located, and numberless other important details. To a landsman it was absorbingly interesting to have all this explained, just as it had been interesting, a few days before, to visit General Ashmore's office at the Horse Guards and to learn on the map how the London anti-aircraft defences were controlled ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... good to me. The new bairns would never be like the old bairns, and it would na be fair. And as for women, I've had my bellyful of women after her I was kind to, and was true to for one and twenty years, going off with some sweating landsman to a dingy town.... I was ay a good ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... down for a livin' in ships to the sea,— We love it a different way from you poets that 'bide on the land. We are fond of it, sure! But, you take it as comin' from me, There's a fear and a hate in our love that a landsman ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... on board was to extend its wings, and utter loud discordant cries. Once on deck, its grace and majesty vanished. It showed no fear, and the hook, still fastened in its beak, did not seem to annoy it; but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking deck. It staggered and waddled clumsily, and tried in vain to lift itself with its wings. It showed considerable temper, and snapped furiously at all who approached, and the captain's ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of his wife. But besides the general reasons why Major Bonnet should not become a pirate, and which applied to all men as well as himself, there was a special reason against his adoption of the profession of a sea-robber, for he was an out-and-out landsman and knew nothing whatever of nautical matters. He had been at sea but very little, and if he had heard a boatswain order his man to furl the keel, to batten down the shrouds, or to hoist the forechains to the topmast yard, he would have ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... landing-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that Saragossa possesses. The ferry-boat was moored to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed, high-sterned vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observant must conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings across the river on a wire rope, with a running tackle, by the force of the stream and the aid of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... this attempt, and being completely wetted, he again got below and went to bed. In this state of the weather the seamen had to move about the necessary or indispensable duties of the ship with the most cautious use both of hands and feet, while it required all the art of the landsman to keep within the precincts of his bed. The writer even found himself so much tossed about that it became necessary, in some measure, to shut himself in bed, in order to avoid being thrown upon the floor. Indeed, such was the motion of the ship that it seemed wholly impracticable to remain ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in New York a member of Cooper's club argued that Scott could not possibly have written The Pirate (which had just appeared), because the nautical skill displayed in the book was such as only a sailor could possess. Cooper maintained, on the contrary, that The Pirate was the work of a landsman; and to prove it he declared that he would write a sea story as it should be written; that is, with understanding as well as with imagination. The Pilot was the result.] but it gave pleasure to a multitude of readers, and it amazed critics by showing that the lonely sea could ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to distinguish; he was standing on the forward deck facing the wind and peering through the mist at the grey, heavy heave of the water. Alongside of them the dim shadow of a sister ferry screamed its way through the fogbank. That he was a landsman was evidenced by his way of standing; he was uncertain; at every heave of the boat he would shift sidewise. An unusually heavy roll caught him slightly off-balance and jostled him against the detective. The latter held up his hand and caught him by ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... would have taken us a lifetime to accumulate as much money as we have earned in this year. Of course, it was hard for the men who had families, McLaughlin especially; the others were all working sailors, but he was a landsman and my partner in the enterprise; but I will make it up to him, and the mahogany hunt will turn out the best paying piece of work ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... have his 2,000 pounds at all risks. He had one great advantage over a landsman who has committed a crime. He could always go to sea and find employment, first in one ship, and then in another. Terra firma was not one of the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... dancing boat, steering steadily with an oar. His brother tended the sail, and I was crouched amidships. As we approached nearer the scene of commotion, our younger companion assumed a station in the bow of the boat and began to sound with an oar. This looked a little formidable to a landsman; and soon turning his head in the interval of hastily pushing his implement into the water, the bowsman called out to his brother, "Joe, are you going to try it?" Joe made no sign, but steered steadily on. Again and again the sounding oar went rapidly down, and I suppose at last to ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... exact description of them. Certainly the ships represented on tapestry, on seals, or on coins are very unlike any piece of naval architecture which ever had existence. Every seaman knows how impossible it is for an ordinary landsman to draw anything like a faithful representation of a ship, however picturesque a production the thing might appear to him. We are bound, therefore, to look with grave suspicion on the performances of the draughtsmen of those early days; who had but a poor ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... I should pass very well for a Jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I thought myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one on board as soon as I hove in sight. A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes, and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get. The trousers, tight round the hips, and thence hanging long and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... making a fog-bound harbor will see a buoy through a slight shift in fog, while a landsman ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... {74} No landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excitement of the otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fifteen or twenty-five little skin skiffs, with two or three men in each, paddle out under a chief elected by common ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Eval said, ere Herbert could reply; "my wits, though a landsman, are not quite so blunt as yours, and I guess better than you do. Is it possible no one here can tell? has my demure brother Herbert's secret never been suspected? Caroline, what has become of your penetration; and Emmeline, your romance? Ellen, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... did not bother Martin on this, his first, view of his new home. He was looking through his landsman eyes. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... are perils by land, and perils by water, Short, I ween, are the obsequies Of the landsman lost, but they may be shorter With the mariner lost in the trackless seas; And well for him when the timbers start, And the stout ship reels and settles below, Who goes to his doom with as bold a heart As that dead man gone where ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Ned, "it does not become a landsman to suggest, perhaps, but I can't help reminding you, that leaks of this kind have been stopped by putting a sail ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the nor'west 'bout dark, and 'fore mornin' I tell ye it was a-humpin' things. We started with a pretty decent set o' sails, new eyelets rove in and new clew lines, but, Lord love ye, we hadn't taken old Hatteras into consideration. Bill Nevins, my engineer, and a landsman who was to work the h'istin' engine, looked kind 'er peaked when what was left of the jib come rattlin' down on his fo'c's'le hatch, but I says to him, 'the Screamer's all right, Billy, so she ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the skin, half-frightened, but wildly excited and determined to see out, what a landsman has but seldom a chance of seeing, a great gale of wind at sea, I clung tight to the starboard bulwarks of Mr. Richard Green's new clipper, Sultan, Captain Sneezer, about an hour after dark, as she was rounding the Horn, watching much ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... lately would the Escalantes give her up. All I know is that she's too damned miserable about something else to be even seasick like the rest of 'em. You'd a-been down there with Turnbull if you hadn't just had more'n your share of illness," added he, with the mariner's slight disapprobation of the landsman ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... "A landsman said, 'I twig the drop,—he's been upon the mill, And 'cause he gammons so the flats, ve calls him Veepin' Bill.' He said 'he'd done me very brown, and neatly stowed the swag,' -That's French, I fancy, for a hat,—or ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and Foret to uncover. The merchant strums on the table and glares at the marquis, and the marquis looks at the skylight, waiting for the merchant; and the end of it is M. Radisson must give Godefroy the wink, who knocks both their hats off at once, explaining that a landsman can ill keep his legs on the sea, and the sea is no respecter of persons. Once, at the end of his byplay between the two young fire-eaters, the sea lurched in earnest, a mighty pitch that threw tipstaff sprawling across the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... laws that govern the pulse of the big waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope; and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair wind justifies the length of a day's run, that the ship ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... and the winds and waters of the North Sea dealt all too rudely with the fair freshness of her exterior; she grew worn and weather-stained, and it was apparent even to the casual eye of a landsman that she had left her girlhood behind her out on the Nor'-East Rough. Some of the younger trawlers would jeeringly refer to her behind her back as "Auntie," and affected to regard her as an antediluvian old dowager, which of course was mainly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... the heaving deck of the saloon; his knees had that limp sea-bend of the sailor and his out-turned toes seemed to grasp the uncertain rise and fall of the carpet beneath his feet; he was a mariner now, not a preacher, for no landsman could hold himself so easily in a vessel which pitched and rolled in the long swells ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... are dupers and dupes, as it happens. After continuing a couple of hours, the base of the range, which seemed always close upon us, still receded and was receding. On the plains of Africa bounded by mountain ranges, one is as much at a loss to measure distances as the landsman at sea, when measuring the distance from his ship to the rocks bounding the shore. My negro Cicerone advised to beat a retreat, assuring me I should not reach the chain by daylight. We looked round on the city and found it fast ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... anything, he said. It was all mysterious and horrible—this quiet taking off of men while they slept. As for poisoning, of which he knew he was suspected, it was absurd. There was no poison on board, to begin with; and why should he, a landsman, seek to poison the men who could take the ship and treasure to port? What could he do alone on the sea? This was logical, and as he was a small, weak, and confiding sort of creature, I exonerated him in my mind from any suspicion of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... one at last, to avoid being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called "The Heart of the Trail!" which must mean something, though it did not seem to. He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and "The Landsman." Every minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage. She came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as if he were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from sea And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... NIGHTS (by Richard Gottheil) From 'The Story of the City of Brass' (Lane's Translation) From 'The History of King Omar Ben Ennuman, and His Sons Sherkan and Zoulmekan' (Payne's Translation) From 'Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman' (Burton's Translation) Conclusion of 'The Thousand Nights and a Night' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Henry William of Selm for all this sea passion might have remained a landsman, for the simple reason that he was one of those thorough souls for whom Life and an Object are synonymous terms. In other words he would never have made a yachtsman, a creature shifting from Keil to Cowes and Cowes to Naples according to season, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... fiercer than usual, and must have been pretty bad to have frightened such seasoned hands. They awoke Jesus, and there is a touch of petulant rebuke in their appeal, and of a sailor's impatience at a landsman lying sound asleep while the sweat is running down their faces with their hard pulling. It is to Mark that we owe our knowledge of that accent of complaint in their words, for he alone gives their 'Carest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and nervousness, always associated with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... about it that appealed to one's imagination. Here I had been expecting a landsman's bed, with a book and a reading-lamp, surrounded by the friendly security of houses; instead, I was to go faring with the night wind into ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the wheel looked silently forward, with that exasperating unconcern of any landsman's interest peculiar to marine officials. The passenger turned impatiently to the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... breaking, dropping, or forgetting anything. When I hear of professional conjurors performing remarkable feats, I think of the brothers Dobbs, and the loading of the Tomtit in the darkness; and I ask myself if any landsman's mechanical legerdemain can be more extraordinary than the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe entrenched landsman. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "I will have our surgeon's mate on the fielda good clever young fellow at caulking a shot-hole. I will let Lesley, who is an honest fellow for a landsman, know that he attends for the benefit of either party. Is there anything I can do for you in case ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... help in the least to encourage you, I should like you clearly to understand that so long as life—or at least consciousness and a particle of strength—remains to me, you may rely upon my doing my level best for you. And, being by profession a sailor, I may be able to do much that a landsman could not. Meanwhile, however, all that we can do at present is to wait patiently for daylight. One point is already declaring itself in our favour; I notice that the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... 'Good morning.' He answered pleasantly enough. His face was entirely strange to me. Then I sat down on the high seat back of the wheel and looked out at the river and began to ask a few questions, such as a landsman would ask. He began, in the old way, to fill me up with the old lies, and I enjoyed letting him do it. Then suddenly he turned round to me ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
