"Rudder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when we were upon the point of being dashed to pieces, a sudden breeze providentially sprang up, and filling our sails, impelled the vessel forward three or four yards. This was enough, but only just sufficient, for the rudder was not more than six yards from the rock. No sooner had we passed this frightful danger than the breeze fell again, and was succeeded by a dead calm; the tide, however, continued to carry us on with a gradually decreasing strength until one o'clock, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... right over his brows, which gave his round plump face a sly and comic expression. His little yellow eyes moved restlessly about, his thin lips wore a continual forced smile, while his sharp, long nose peered forward saucily in front like a rudder. 'I'm coming, my dear fellow.' He went hobbling towards the tavern. 'What are you calling me for?... ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... were glad, for it begane to be foule weather. After some houres sailing, it begane to snow & raine, & about y^e midle of y afternoone, y^e wind increased, & y^e sea became very rough, and they broake their rudder, & it was as much as 2. men could doe to steere her with a cupple of oares. But their pillott bad them be of good cheere, for he saw y^e harbor; but y^e storme increasing, & night drawing on, they bore what saile they could to gett in, while they could see. But herwith ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... a hand!" cried Wyn, hanging to the rudder. "Polly! you old darling! If you hadn't ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... our worthy host. A pleasant row that was, at one moment covered over with salt-water—the next riding on the top of a wave, ten times the size of our frail conveyance—then came a sudden concussion—in veering our rudder smashed into a smaller boat, which immediately filled and sank, and our rowers disheartened at this mishap would go no farther. The return was still rougher—my face smarted dreadfully from the cutting splashes of the salt-water; they contrived, however, to land us safely at the "Old Falcon," though ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... him, but not by the Caledonia. His fears as to that vessel were but too well founded. On the very day when she was due in Boston (the 18th of February) it was learned in London that she had undergone misadventure; that, her decks having been swept and her rudder torn away, though happily no lives were lost, she had returned disabled to Cork; and that the Acadia, having received her passengers and mails, was to sail with them from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the sails and looked after the rudder, and worked for their dear lives' sake, but all in vain—the storm only seemed to increase in violence, and all gave themselves up for lost. Then the faithful Ototachibana rose, and forgetting all the grief that her husband had caused her, forgetting even that he had wearied of her, in the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the only support of a monarchy. Without it the State is a vessel without a rudder—a balloon in the air. A true aristocracy, however, must be ancient. Therein consists its real force,—its ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... steam and water to stop the engines in their panic rush, the spirit of the vessel goes out of her in a great sigh. With dampered ash-pits her fires blacken and go out, the idle steering-engine clanks and rattles as the useless rudder tugs at her chains, and the crew tell in whispers how it happened just like that on the Gipsy Queen, out of Sunderland, or the Gerard Dow, out of Antwerp. All of which is not to be learned in the study at home. Let us get back ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... hate scorn. A soul with no religion— My mother used to say that such a one Was without rudder, anchor, compass—might be Blown everyway with every gust and wreck On any rock; and tho' you are good and gentle, Yet ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... long rudder-like tail, flattened his crested head until it reminded them of a wicked snake, and suddenly made up his mind to ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... visitors, but not a single person had a weapon of any sort. There must have been at least a thousand about the two ships, and one of them took the rudder out of a boat and made off with it. Cook ordered some muskets and four-pounders to be fired over the canoe which was escaping. The multitude, however, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... shore, and drew down a six-oared skiff; and Sigurd took the mast and rigging belonging to the boat out of the boat-house, for they often used to sail when they went for amusement on the water. Harek went out into the boat to hang the rudder. The brothers Sigurd and Hauk, who were very strong men, were fully armed, as they were used to go about at home among the peasants. Before they went out to the boat they threw into her some butter-kits and a bread-chest, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... my own son. I do not see in thee the future lord of Egypt. The dynasty in thy person will be like a Nile boat without a rudder. Thou wilt drive the priests from the court, but who will remain with thee? Who will be thy eye in the Lower and the Upper Country, who in foreign lands? But the pharaoh must see everything, whatever it be, on which fall the divine ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... divided into two compartments—the division near the prow being for second-class passengers, and that near the poop for first-class. An iron pole with a ring at the end is fastened to the prow, through which a long rope is passed; this is tied at one end near the rudder and at the other end is fastened a tow-horse, which is ridden by a boatman. The windows of the cabin have white curtains; the walls and doors are painted. In the compartment for first-class passengers there are ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... sea, confined in a foul ship upon salt meat and unvarying food, and without fresh vegetables. Not only so, but these unfortunate prisoners were men forcibly confined and crowded upon a ship tossed about on a stormy ocean, without a rudder, without a compass, without a guiding-star, and without any apparent boundary or to their voyage; and they reflected in their steadily increasing miseries the distressed condition and waning fortunes of devastated and bleeding country, which was compelled, in justice ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... anchor, and had been since 3 o'clock p.m. The day was beautiful. The fish were nibbling at pieces of hard tack which had been thrown overboard by the sailors. The current of the river rushed swiftly past, making the rudder flap in the water. The men were lounging about on the berth deck, resting. The cook was preparing supper, the messenger boys were carrying victuals from the galley to the ward-room, and placing them on the table. The officer ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... they have embarked in the same vessel with an unscrupulous villain—so I regard Ralph Dewey—and have, as far as I can see, given the rudder into his hands. If he do not wreck them on some dangerous coast, or sunken rock, it will be more from good fortune ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... it is necessary to coin words, if no word exists by which a correlation can adequately be explained. If we define a rudder as necessarily having reference to a boat, our definition will not be appropriate, for the rudder does not have this reference to a boat qua boat, as there are boats which have no rudders. Thus we cannot use the terms reciprocally, for the word 'boat' cannot be said ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair-crack of the bow-rudder—Magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gullwing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... examination of the position and condition of the ship, I am enabled to report that she has sustained no irreparable damage to her hull. The sternpost is bent, and some 20 feet of her keel partially gone; propeller and shaft uninjured. The lower pintle of the rudder is gone, but no other damage is sustained by it. No damage is done to her hull more serious than the loss of several sheets of copper, torn from her starboard ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... move the rudder very gradually; for if the course were suddenly changed a quarter of the circumference of the compass in such a sea as was then raging, it would be liable to make the steamer engage in some ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... their heads, and were looking past him into some distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. The other followed. Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his sight, and he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reformation, it shall be useful and comfortable to yourselves and your posterity. But let your zeal be always tempered with moderation; for zeal is a good servant but a bad master; like a ship that hath a full sail but no rudder. We had much need of Christian prudence, for we know what advantage some have attempted to take of us this way. For this reason let it be seen to the world, that presbytery, the government we contend for ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... close to him and behind his shoulders you are in very little danger. The bridle in the left hand must be used like steering lines: by pulling to the right or left as occasion requires, the horse, turning on his hind-legs, maybe guided just as a boat is steered by the rudder lines; or pulling straight, the horse may be fatigued by being forced to walk backwards. The strap passing through the surcingle keeps, or ought to keep, the Trainer in his right place—he is not to pull ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... incident in the eyes of the crew.) We were filled with pious gratitude when this quiet English sailor, whose hands were torn and bleeding from his repeated efforts to catch the rope thrown to him on his approach, took over the rudder. His whole personality impressed us most agreeably, and he seemed to us the absolute guarantee of a speedy deliverance from our terrible afflictions. We rejoiced too soon, however, for we still had before us the perilous passage through the sand-banks off the English coast, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... approaches us the intervening sail hides from my view the figure of the one man I want to see. A boat is lowered from the side of the pilot boat, into which two sailors descend. Who on earth is this who steps in after them and takes the rudder lines? He sports a top hat, kid gloves, and patent shoes. Is he a commercial traveller? He looks it. He is rowed to the side of the steamer, and then the fun begins. A rope ladder is lowered from the deck, which is immediately clutched by one of the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... her the name of Pomona, which is now a household word in myriads of homes. This extraordinary girl, and some household experiences, induced Mr. Stockton to write a paper for Scribner's Monthly which he called Rudder Grange. This one paper was all he intended to write, but it attracted immediate attention, was extensively noticed, and much talked about. The editor of the magazine received so many letters asking for ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... and the birds, sounds floated to us, sounds sweet as honey ... women's voices, one fancied, in them.... And all about us, sky, sea, the heaving sail aloft, the gurgling water at the rudder—all spoke of ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... he, "God has distinguished us from the beasts and made us a paradise to gain, and for this given us reason, which is a rudder to steer us against tempests and our ambitious desires, and there is a means of easing the imaginations of one's brain by fasting, excessive labours, and other virtues; and instead of frisking and fretting ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... prudence the new order was directed to employ the means best understood by the age. Cold calculation had succeeded to ardent zeal: the public mind no longer instinctively revered the old heroic type of dragon-tamers, be they called Roland or Saint Benedict. The new current required a new rudder, and the Visitation nuns supplied the need. At first they were not even meant to be cloistered, but to form a kind of missionary society (as their very name implies) among the Calvinists of Savoy and France. This original intention was soon overruled by the Italian advisers of Saint Francis: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... her turret, which revolved by machinery; but their 180-pound shot were far more powerful than any aboard the Merrimac. In maneuvering the Monitor enjoyed an immense advantage, with her light draft, strong engines, and well-protected screws and rudder. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... death of torture refined. There is nothing that I could say that you would understand for nothing that I could say would I myself understand. It is simply the end.... I hope I am insane. Yet I fear that I am not.... I am a ship without a rudder. My will is gone from me; I have no volition of my own—no soul—nothing. All that is left of me is a body, and the power still to suffer, and for the rest, only a great emptiness, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... would be all over with us; for in spite of our precautions, the water was increasing below. I swam back to the quarter-deck, where the captain, who was as brave a man as ever trod a plank, stood at the wheel with three of the best seamen; but such were the rude shocks which the rudder received from the sea, that it was with the utmost difficulty they could prevent themselves being thrown over the ship's side. The lee quarter-deck guns were under water; but it was proposed to throw them overboard; and as it was a matter of life and death, we succeeded. Still she lay like ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... into the skiff followed by Julius, Jack lingering behind long enough to lash the rudder amidships. Then he also took his place in the tender and picked up one of the oars, Julius took the other, Marcy knelt in the bow to feel for the channel with his boathook, and the work of towing the schooner through the Inlet was begun. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... burden, the broad keel, Such ample breadth Ulysses gave the raft. Upon the massy beams he reared a deck, And floored it with long planks from end to end. On this a mast he raised, and to the mast Fitted a yard; he shaped a rudder next, To guide the raft along her course, and round With woven work of willow-boughs he fenced Her sides against the dashings of the sea. Calypso, gracious goddess, brought him store Of canvas, which he fitly shaped to sails, And, rigging her with cords, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That's how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where the Frenchman had hit us—and the Channel crawling with short-handed British cruisers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it next time you grumble at ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... the vessel in the right way across the channel, to fire the torpedoes, to drop the anchors. Shells from the forts are exploding all around, and the noise is terrible. But hard luck meets the Merrimac. A shot has broken her rudder, so she cannot be steered; a shot has broken the chain of one of her anchors, so the anchor is gone; some of the torpedoes will not go off, so not enough holes can be made to sink the Merrimac quickly; the tide is sweeping ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... having been thrown overboard (except one, retained for signals), and all means taken to lighten her, she began to heave, and in about an hour after she swung off the shoal,—not, however, without having lost her rudder. ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... beat that who can!' But notwithstanding his merry look, at this last remark his face grew long; and with a melancholy shake of his head, he pointed to his hat which hung on a peg above him, and was swathed in a broad band of crape, terminating in two stiff skirts projecting from it like a rudder, and giving it the appearance of a corpulent butterfly in mourning, at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... their own lines for the greater surety. There they left him, bound, under the charge of trusty warders, and straightway returned to the battle. Now the Romans had lost their captain. They were as a ship upon the waters, without a rudder, that drifts here and there, having neither aim nor direction, at the bidding of the winds and waves. Such was the plight of the bailly which was spoiled of its captain, for an army without a constable is less an army than a flock of ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... is said and done, it is my steadfast belief that homicide is worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman. Ford saved me from being a homicide. "Imagine your legs are a rudder," he said. "Hold them close together, and steer with them." A few minutes later I came charging in on a comber. As I neared the beach, there, in the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How was I to stop that comber on ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... mast creaked; the ship groaned in all its joints, as it tipped on its side until the ends of the yards touched the water, and for one awful moment it seemed as if it could not right itself. Then yielding to the rudder it swung round to the west, and offered the point of the bow to the storm. Only the fact that it was very strongly built saved it ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... needed thee. Necessity, impetuous remonstrant! Who not with empty names, or shews of proxy, Is served, who'll have the thing and not the symbol, 160 Ever seeks out the greatest and the best, And at the rudder places him, e'en though She had been forced to take him from the rabble— She, this Necessity, it was that placed thee In this high office, it was she that gave thee 165 Thy letters patent of inauguration. For, to the uttermost moment that they can. This race still help ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that something of dead Porthos had just died within him. His Bretons surrounded him; Aramis yielded to their kind exertions, and the three sailors, lifting him up, carried him to the canoe. Then, having laid him down upon the bench near the rudder, they took to their oars, preferring this to hoisting ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... especially the latest type, is very speedy, and it has proved extremely reliable. It is very sharp in turning and extremely sensitive to its rudder, which renders it a first-class craft for reconnoitring duty. The latest machines are fitted with motors developing from ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... rudder to Noah's Ark, I think you are right!" burst out Tom. "Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face! Don't you remember how worried Barton Pelter looked when we told him the bonds were missing, and how he asked us at the moving picture show if we had ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... over. The stream was to have a breathing spell of air and sunlight before its great plunge into sixty miles of twilight canon. With a quick turn of his rudder oar the boatman in the stern brought the flat-bottomed craft round, and in a jiffy she lay beached on the shingle at Tokimata. It was now ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... he said it there came to him the realization that he might have to steer without that rudder in the near future. His smile vanished. He smothered a groan and picked up ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... on the raft. A strong rail was put up round it to serve as a bulwark, and a place raised in the centre, also securely railed in, which they said should be our post. They rigged also a couple of masts and sails, and some long oars, as well as a rudder and some short paddles, which latter might be used at times when the oars could not be so well worked. Altogether we looked with some satisfaction on the raft, and felt thankful that we had the means of escaping should we ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the boat the torpedo tube projected a short distance. At the stern the rudder was in place, and all was in readiness for placing the propeller shaft and the propeller itself. On the floor of the shed, near the middle of this strange, dangerous boat, lay miscellaneous small pieces of ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... was tossing and pitching about among the waves in a manner which gave concern to even the experienced fishermen who manned her. The sails had been torn off, carrying away with them a portion of the mast, and the boat refused to respond to her rudder, the steering gear being rendered useless. The crew became panic-stricken and rushing to Jesus besought Him to save them from death in the storm. "Master! Master! Help ere we perish. The boat ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... immortal destinies of your own souls, and you find hereafter, when it is too late, that both God and immortality exist, you have only yourselves to blame. We are the arbiters of our own fate, and that fact is the most important one of our lives. Our WILL is positively unfettered; it is a rudder put freely into our hands, and with it we can steer WHEREVER WE CHOOSE. God will not COMPEL our love or obedience. We must ourselves DESIRE to love and obey—DESIRE IT ABOVE ALL ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... a bark of dead men's bones And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long severed, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... expressed in a letter to one of his friends: "You know that my humor is neither to flatter nor to lie; but I swear to you that there is in this man a something which surpasses humanity, and that if our bark is ever to outride the tempests, it will be whilst this glorious hand holds the rudder. Other pilots diminish my fear, this one makes me unconscious of it. Hitherto, when we had to build anew or repair some ruin, plaster alone was put in requisition. Now we see nothing but marble used; and, whilst the counsels are judicious ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... She's sinking now! The light is growing dim. Wild billows leap her silver prow On the horizon's rim. And louder still the tempest blows; The shadows darker fall; Into the cloud-world depths she goes— Mast, rudder, sails and all, Wrecked in the ocean of the sky: Ship of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... till you have saved that crippled French ship in the corner. That ship, young gentlemen, is the Glorieuse: you perceive she is cut off from her consorts, and the whole British fleet is giving chase to her. Her bowsprit is gone; her rudder is torn away; she has one hundred round shot in her hull, and two thirds of her men are dead or dying. What's to be done? the wind ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... home along with the queen, who was sent from Kathay to Argon. The ships which are built in the kingdom of Mangi are made of fir, having only one deck, on which are built twenty cabins, more or less, according to their size, each for one merchant. They have each a good rudder, and four masts, with four sails, which they raise or let down at pleasure, but some have only two masts. Some of the largest ships have thirteen divisions in the inside, made of boards let into each other, so that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... find the least probable argument to perswade me there is any other concurrent cause then such as is purely Mechanical, and that the effects or productions are as necessary upon the concurrence of those causes as that a Ship, when the Sails are hoist up, and the Rudder is set to such a position, should, when the Wind blows, be mov'd in such a way or course to that or t'other place; Or, as that the brused Watch, which I mention in the description of Moss, should, when those parts which hindred its motion ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... moment it seemed as if the Mountain, as if the revolution, would regain the ascendency, as if the terrorists would once more seize the rudder which had slipped from their blood-stained hands. But the Convention, which for a time had remained undecided, trembling and vacillating, rose at length from its lethargy to firm, energetic measures, and came to the determination to restore peace at ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... courage; but in this new father of his country, destiny gave her a traitor; and in the critical emergency, when the implacable foe was in full force before her very gates, Charles of Anjou invaded the liberties which he had been called to protect. The assassin's hand, too, tore the steersman from the rudder, and with William of Orange the career, seemingly, of the infant republic and all her guardian angels fled; but the ship continued to scud along in the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... longed to enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, to love without knowing, to float like a leaf upon the eddies of life, drifted now to a sunny point, now to a solemn shade—now over glittering ripples, now over gleaming calms,—and not to determined ports, a trim vessel with an inexorable rudder. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... clear of Cape Race, which we did not see. The wind changed to southwest, and began breaking up the nasty swell that came down the Atlantic. We had made in the twenty-four hours only 210 knots, our position being Lat. N. 45 deg. 36', Long. W. 50 deg. 11'. During the night the rudder gear jammed and our ship began to run amuck among the fleet. We all slept through it, but the Captain had to stay on deck till it ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... is the eternal sacrifice of one generation to the next. An awful sense of the impotence of human agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations for mankind which I once indulged. For myself, I float on the great waters, without pilot or rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that are the breath ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... entered into the character of a woman. It is not a requisite of the sex. Women, indeed, make better sovereigns than men: but why is that?—because the women-sovereigns are governed by men; the men- sovereigns by women.—Charming, by my soul! For hence we guess at the rudder by which both ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... quite a little assembly by the boat-house to speed the expedition on its way, and it is safe to say that no boat on the river that afternoon carried a happier, more excited party. The Captain rowed; Pixie sat in the stern and pulled the rudder-lines according to instructions, with occasional lapses of memory when she mistook her right hand for her left, and was surprised to find the boat going in an opposite direction from what had been intended; the little girls sat ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... together, and set them about repairing the damages that had arisen, and preventing the further perils that stared them in the face; while the second mate at the same moment sprang to the wheel, which was revolving as it liked, now to starboard now to port as the waves met the rudder below, the poor helmsman who had previously controlled its action lying senseless on the deck, whither he had been thrown by the sudden concussion when the ship ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... grasping his unconscious burden with the other, Fred was drawn to the side of the Ariel by Bill's muscular arms. But the strength of all three was necessary to lift the two of them on board, so Lester had to abandon the rudder, while Teddy left the sheet to help. They succeeded at last, after a vast amount of tugging and straining, and laid the stranger's body on the deck, while Fred slumped down beside him trying to get back ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... not to know An errand, why, or where to go, To trot, to walk, or scamper swift— In short, he seem'd a dog adrift; His very tail, a listless thing, With just an accidental swing, Like rudder to the ripple veering, When nobody on ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... well-known amateur and connoisseur. Other works were produced in succession, each more interesting than its predecessor. Not daunted by difficulties that would have discouraged the most ambitious and audacious craftswoman, Mme. de Rudder took for a subject 'The Fates,' to decorate a screen. Aside from the artistic interest attaching to this work, it is remarkable for another quality. The artist yielded to the instinctive liking that she had for useful art—she ornamented a useful article—and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... cabin where her mistress lay almost senseless with sea-sickness. On board the ship the terror and confusion grew. For a while they were able to beat out to sea until the mast was carried away. Then the rudder broke, and, as the oars could not be worked in that fearful tempest, the galley began to drive shorewards. Night fell, and who can describe the awful hours that followed? All control of the vessel being ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... the red flames of the conflagration from which we were endeavouring to escape. Our first object was to proceed to a distance from the vessel, lest she should explode and overwhelm us; but, to our inexpressible distress, we discovered that the yawl had no rudder, and that for the two boats we had only three oars. All exertions to obtain more from the ship proved unsuccessful. The gig had a rudder; from this they threw out a rope to take us in tow; and, by means of a few paddles, made by tearing up the lining ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... wheat into the sea. And when it was day, they knew not the land: but they discovered a certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible, to thrust in the ship. And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoised up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore. And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmovable, ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... and all the nobles are for peace. We are the men whose wisdom lights the rudder that upholds the chariot of state. Would we be rich if we were not wise? Do we not know better than the rabble what medicine will silence this fire that threatens to ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... is more like the manoeuvre of a skilful helmsman, who, when a flaw that may not be resisted strikes the sails of his ship, doth not luff, and thereby increase the power of his enemy, and risk destruction, but, by a gentle turn of the rudder, glides by the danger, making its very violence facilitate his advance; or it may be compared to the progress of a wise traveller, who, when he encounters a steep hill, doth not always press straight forward, but, influenced by its shape, sometimes turns aside and encircles its ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done." And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic impression) set him down in her journal after their first meeting at Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and sot and heaved, And high his rudder flung, And every time he heaved and sot, A mighty leak ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... contrivance had been interviewed. He knew both men, and they were on the most friendly terms. In a moment of confidence Doctor Anderwelt had told him the machine was for submarine exploration; had explained the four-winged rudder, which would make it dive into the water, rise to the surface, or direct it to right or to left. Moreover, there were closed living compartments, around which were chambers containing a supply of air. He himself had pumped them full ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... insolence as basely set As mine own infamy; yet I have been Edged to the outer cliff. I have been weak, And played too much the lackey. What am I In this waste, empty, cruel, land of England, Save an old castaway,—a buccaneer,— The hull of derelict Ambition,— Without a mast or spar, the rudder ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... had left his little village behind, he did not know which way to go. He was like a ship without a rudder. He walked and walked until he came to a forest, where he met Bugtongpalasan. [12] Carancal asked him where he was going; and Bugtongpalasan said, "I am wandering, but I do not know where to go. I have lost my parents, and they have left me nothing ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... trussed and wired like a kite frame, the upper plane about five feet above the lower, which was level with the boat deck. We could see the eight-cylindered engine which drove a two-bladed wooden propeller, and over the stern were the air rudder and the horizontal planes. There she was, the hobbled steed now of the phantom bandit who had accomplished ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... suffered much more severely. The flagship Languedoc, 90, had carried away her bowsprit, all her lower masts followed it overboard, and her tiller also was broken, rendering the rudder unserviceable. The Marseillais, 74, lost her foremast and bowsprit. In the dispersal of the two fleets that followed the gale, each of these crippled vessels, on the evening of the 13th, encountered singly a British 50-gun ship; the Languedoc ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... vague swell flowing from far away down south under the night, lifted the Northumberland on its undulations to the rattling sound of the reef points and the occasional creak of the rudder; whilst overhead, near the fiery arch of the Milky Way, hung the Southern ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... no small matter for a steersman in the midst of a storm to keep the rudder straight. Of little consequence ought it to be to us that we are judged by men. God is our only true judge, and it is He Who sees the secrets of our hearts, and all that is ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... expression, "a man without a master," occurs several times in the Berlin Papyrus, No. ii. For instance, the peasant who is the hero of the story, says of the lord Miruitensi, that he is "the rudder of heaven, the guide of the earth, the balance which carries the offerings, the buttress of tottering walls, the support of that which falls, the great master who takes whoever is without a master to lavish on him the goods ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sailing together on our way from Troy, the son of Atreus and I, as loving friends. But when we had reached holy Sunium, the headland of Athens, there Phoebus Apollo slew the pilot of Menelaus with the visitation of his gentle shafts, as he held between his hands the rudder of the running ship, even Phrontis, son of Onetor, who excelled the tribes of men in piloting a ship, whenso the storm-winds were hurrying by. Thus was Menelaus holden there, though eager for the way, till he might bury his friend and pay ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... field is that of Education; and while she strives to make acquisitions in the various branches of knowledge, let her not forget that better education of the mind and heart. Talent, without virtue to guide, is like a ship without sails or rudder, exposed to the wild winds of the storm on the broad expanse of the ocean. What sadder spectacle can there be, than to behold a mind employing its talents and its learning in endeavoring to lead its fellow-beings away from the paths ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... or Chenopodium were observed. Since the 10th, the few boats seen are of different structure from those to which we had been accustomed; they are flat, less wide, and much better fastened together, elevated at both ends; they are propelled as well as guided by the rudder, which is curved, so as to bring it within reach of the helmsman, who is on a level with the bottom of the boat. Very little cultivation: Tassin's Map of but little use, as few of the names are recognised by the boatmen ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual existence, and you destroy its ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... how to his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey, With Palinure's unaltered mood, Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... in judging," said the elder woman with a tolerance that few possess. "Isabella may have cause for complaint against him, or she may be suffering from wounded vanity. A woman's vanity is the rudder that shapes her course through life. If it be injured, the course will be a crooked one. Isabella is a disappointed woman—one sees it in her face. Of the two I prefer to trust Dick Howard, and wish that you could do the same. We know nothing of what may ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, 5 We ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... stowed, yet workable. The boat itself was a mere shell, scarcely capable of sustaining safely more than three persons, but with lines of speed, its sharp prow cutting the water like a knife blade. I shipped the useless rudder inboard, and chose my course from the stars. The north star was completely obscured by thick clouds, but the great dipper gave me my bearings with sufficient accuracy. To attain again to the west coast not far from ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... he shook himself, he heard the voice of the Genoese blood, and he raised his head aloft with pride, dashing his fist down on the rudder. "Well, yes," he said to himself; "and if I am also obliged to travel for years and years to come, all over the world, and to traverse hundreds of miles on foot, I will go on until I find my mother, were I to arrive in a dying condition, and fall dead at her feet! If only I can see her once ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Philip Pennant Pearson (afterwards P. Pennant) was 7, Canon Kynaston, of Durham (whose name formerly was Snow), was stroke, and Butler was cox. When the cox let go of the bung at starting, the rope caught in his rudder lines, and Lady Margaret was nearly bumped by Second Trinity. They escaped, however, and their pursuers were so much exhausted by their efforts to catch them that they were themselves bumped by First Trinity at the next corner. Butler wrote ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... will not the judge who is able to direct the legislator in his work of naming, be he who knows how to use the names—he who can ask and answer questions—in short, the dialectician? The pilot directs the carpenter how to make the rudder, and the dialectician directs the legislator how he is to impose names; for to express the ideal forms of things in syllables and letters is not the easy task, Hermogenes, ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... parting in my life before. Things were happening so fast that I couldn't keep track of them, and now, just at the crucial minute, the old May jibed, fell off from the wind, and went into the trough of the sea. A great wave came then, ripped her rudder off (I found this as soon as I tried to use the wheel) and swept ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... direction of her hand, my eyes fell upon the image of a Madonna; rather large—perhaps a third life-size; with a gilt crown, a pink serious face bent a little forward over a pink naked child that perched on her left arm and raised one hand. It stood on a bracket, against the rudder casing, with fat cherubs' heads carved on the supports. The young girl crossed herself with a swift motion of the hand. The stern-ports, glazed in small panes, were black, and gleaming in a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the same proportion maintained that exists between the rudder and the ship: you want just enough tact to steer ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... early childhood, is still a sight whereof my old eyes never tire. What animation in that verdant world! On the warm mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole basks and frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the orange-bellied newt steers his way slowly with the broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are stationed the flotillas of the caddis worms, half protruding from their tubes, which are now a tiny bit of stick and again a ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... clung to the spar I know not. The next thing I remember was opening my eyes and finding myself in the bottom of a boat crowded with men from the Kestrel. The sea was running mountains high, and the boat, without rudder or oars, was flung like a cork from wave to wave. The dawn was just beginning to show in the sky, and the thunder of surf ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... speak, meditate, or act when we are not sufficiently provided with facts to stake out our thoughts is like navigating without a pilot along a coast strewed with dangers or rushing out on the immense ocean without compass or rudder." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... boat. It was not such a craft as the Greyhound, in which Fanny had been accustomed to sail; it was a bateau, or flat-bottomed boat, with very sharp slopes under the bow and stern. It had a keel and rudder, and was ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... the town, it happened as they were coming down from the Castlehill, in passing the Weigh-house, that she observed a beggar woman sitting on a stair seemingly in great distress, for her hands were fervently clasped, and she was swinging her body backwards and forwards like a bark without a rudder on a billowy sea, when the winds of an angry ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... manned by nine men. The man in charge was called the steersman; standing in the sharp angle of the stern, he steered the boat either by a rudder or a long oar, which he handled with great skill. The other eight men rowed the boat along with great oars, in the use of which they were very clever. Each boat was provided with a small mast and a large square sail. When there was no favourable wind the mast was unstepped ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... river. She ran foul of the Courier steamer, and unshipped her rudder. She put back for repairs, and won't be ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... can be steered wherever you want to go," he said, pointing to the big rudder that was hung aft, an opening in it allowing the screw or propeller ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... following year he read a paper on "A Proposed Method of Bevelling Iron Frames in Ships;" and, in 1866, he read two papers—one of them demonstrating the means of finding the most economical rates of expansion in steam engines, and the other describing a balanced rudder for screw steamers. But he did not confine his contributions to one Institution, or even to one medium of publication, for we find that he read a number of papers before the Philosophical Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... had not received a majority of the popular vote. The election was ominous, because it was sectional, Mr. Lincoln having carried all the Northern states but not one of the Southern. The intensest excitement prevailed, while passion blew the gale and held the rudder too. ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... the full width of the broad house boat. Along the outside, between each wall and the edge, there was room for one person to pass from forward deck to rear. From the cabin roof, over the rear deck, into the water extended a big rudder oar. When Susan, following Burlingham, reached the rear deck, she saw the man at this oar—a fat, amiable-looking rascal, in linsey woolsey and a blue checked shirt open over his chest and revealing a mat of curly gray hair. Burlingham hailed him as Pat—his only known name. But Susan had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... absolutely nothing. He was not even acquainted with the theory of sailing; nor did he know, how, or on what principle, a sail-boat moves. About steering he was equally ignorant, nor did he know how a boat obeys its rudder. But he knew that the one who sails a boat sits in the stern, and holds the tiller; so David did the same, holding the tiller in his right hand, and the sheets in ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... you can jam the butt of your rod; and the backs can be removed in a flash. Then you can haul at a fish! The boat lies deep, with heavy ballast in the stern. It has a keel all the way, and an enormous rudder. Both are constructed so your line can slip under the boat without fouling. It is equipped with sail and a powerful engine. Danielson can turn this boat, going at full speed, in its own length! Consider the merit of this when a tuna strikes, or a swordfish starts for the open ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Fuchou junks were moored here, which differ in construction from all other junks on the river Yangtse in having their great sterns twisted or wrung a quarter round to starboard, and in being steered by an immense stern sweep, and not by the balanced rudder of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... "That's why you're good for me." Unconsciously his glance travelled to the mantel, and shifted hurriedly. "I'm a kind of clinging vine, I guess. To change the figure of speech, I need a stiff rudder to keep me headed straight to ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... preparations to secure the York boat against the threatening storm were highly characteristic of her hit-or-miss crew. A stake was driven in the sand of the lake bottom, at either side the stern, and the rudder-post lashed between. This flimsy apparatus was designed to keep the boat from being driven broadside on the bar. The practical Garth frowned impatiently at its utter insufficiency; but the breeds could scarcely contain their impatience to resume their ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... into comparatively still water they ceased rowing, and allowed the punt to float down with it. The young ferryman now drew up the sweep alongside, and succeeded in getting the two unfortunate men into his boat. While he was doing this, his sister went aft, and used her oar as a rudder to steer the boat. At the foot of the current, which they soon afterward reached, there was no further danger. But we watched them still; and we saw them row ashore, on their own side of the river. One of the poor ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... craft has already been described. In order to make the ship sink beneath the water all that was necessary was to incline the rudder and open certain valves in the four tanks, when the water, rushing in, would sink her. There was a tank on either side, and one each fore and aft. If it was desired to sink straight down all four tanks were filled at once. If the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Mauser bullets buzzing like hornets across her deck. How she lived to get where she was wanted is a mystery; but she did, and they sunk her just inside the Estrella battery. At the last they could not steer her, because her rudder was knocked away. So they anchored, waited as cool as cucumbers for the tide to swing her into position, opened all their sea-valves, touched off their torpedoes, ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe |
