"Landsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... primitive Negritos.[254] For centuries Arabs held the coast of East Africa, where their narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, with whom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in type of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. The Greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate, unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative, open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[255] To-day the distribution of the Greeks ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel, I sprang up quickly—and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman in his first ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... finely. Cardatas, who owned a share in her, had sailed upon 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. It was not impossible that the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... exaggeration; indeed if any fault is to be found, it is that he takes occurrences involving much labour and hardship as such matters of course, that it is not easy for the reader, especially if he be a landsman, to ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... that the American could pick out the crew of range finders working in the fighting tops; he could glimpse the huge guns in the forward turrets as they flashed and roared amid shrouds of smokeless powder haze. Madden realized he was seeing what every landsman dreams of seeing: a naval battle. For some inscrutable reason, Caradoc had headed the Vulcan clear around and now faced the enemy, like a rat terrier amid ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... on her future life. On the 5th August, the Godolphin, twenty-one days from Mocha, approached Bombay, but being unable to make the harbour before nightfall, anchored outside; a proceeding that would appear, even to a landsman, absolutely suicidal in the middle of the monsoon, but was probably ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... the sea that sound," said the captain. "This is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida. It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close with your vessel to make New York harbor—there; and all along it, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, runs the bar—so. Broken, but so much the worse. A nor'-easter drives you on it, sure. I've known from sixteen to twenty wracks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to 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 ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 can't understand. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... To the landsman at home or the sailor at sea, With nausea, scurvy, or canker maybe, 'Tis never in language to overexalt The potent preservative virtue of salt— A crystal commodity wholesome and good, A cure for disease, and a ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... nothing more confusing to a landsman, sahib, than a crowded harbor at night. The many search-lights all quivering and shifting in the one direction only made confusion worse and we had not been moving two minutes when I no longer knew ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... house in perfect order; and there is always something to be done. But we are lazy; we toil not, neither do we tar ropes, and our main business is to get up a thoroughly good appetite while we watch the deft sailor-men going about their business. It is my belief that a landsman might spend a month without a tedious hour, if he would only take the trouble to watch everything that the men do and find out why it is done. Ages on ages of storm and stress are answerable for the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Chinese to come in contact with foreign sailing vessels which approached China in the earliest days. They sold their wares to the foreigners; they piloted their boats into port; they did the laundry work for the ships. In many ways they showed friendliness to the foreigners while as yet the landsman viewed the new-comers with suspicion. Their women were grossly corrupted by contact with ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... the cargo was all on board, and the Fanny sailed for England. The voyage was accomplished without adventure. As soon as the vessel entered dock and the crew were discharged Ralph landed, and having purchased a suit of landsman clothes, presented his kit to a lad of about his own age, who had been his special chum on board the Fanny, and then made his way to the inn from which the coaches for Dover started. Having secured a place for next day, dined, and ordered a bed, ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... cold often pinched Were my freezing feet, by frost bound tight 10 In its blighting clutch; cares then burned me, Hot around my heart. Hunger tore within My sea-weary soul. To conceive this is hard For the landsman who lives on the lonely shore— How, sorrowful and sad on a sea ice-cold, 15 I eked out my exile through the awful winter . . . . . . . . deprived of my kinsmen, Hung about by icicles; hail flew in showers. There I heard naught but the howl of the sea, ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... the "Ays?" and brief inquiries by which he encouraged Goatley to proceed in the story of voyages and adventures, and she could not wonder when Goatley said, "Your heart is in it still, sir. Not one of us all but says it is a pity such a noble captain should be lost as a landsman, with nothing to do but to lock ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I am 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, according ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the whole business, though, to us poor half-starved wretches, was the plentiful supply of fresh meat. Porpoise beef is, when decently cooked, fairly good eating to a landsman; judge, then, what it must have been to us. Of course the tit-bits, such as the liver, kidneys, brains, etc., could not possibly fall to our lot; but we did not complain, we were too thankful to get something eatable, and enough of it. Moreover, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... I stand, Neither on sea, nor yet on land; Angels watch me on either hand. If you be landsman, come down the strand; If you be sailor, come up the sand; If you be angel, come from the sky, Look in my glass, and pass me by; Look in my glass, and go from the shore; Leave me, but ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... command of 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 ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... bit of a gale spring up, and the great steamer begin to climb up the waves and then seem to be falling down, down, down in the most horrible way possible, than I began to prove what a thorough landsman I was, and, like a great many more ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... bustle and confusion aboard the U.S.S. Plymouth, at that moment lying idle in a British port, that the landsman would commonly associate with sailing orders to a great destroyer. Blowers began to hum in the fire rooms. The torpedo gunner's mates slipped detonators in the warheads and looked to the rack load of depth charges. The steward made a last trip across ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... coincidences one finds in the manners and speech of antiquity 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... It 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 ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... and I rather think Mr. Brown will want me on deck." We followed, for there was the prospect of seeing topsails reefed,—the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock heavier. The topmasts were working, the lee-shrouds and backstays straining out into endless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... volunteer seamen have arrived here this last week that upwards of L4000 bounty is to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral Dacres.' At the time the bounty was L2 10s. for an A.B., L1 10s. for an ordinary seaman, and L1 for a landsman. Taking only L4000 as the full amount paid, and assuming that the three classes were equally represented, three men were obtained for every L5, or 2400 in all, a number raised in about a week, that ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... have had 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 ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... add the fact that they are, except under very occasional circumstances, floating palaces and not reeling or tossing ones. The only hotel to which I can honestly compare the "Campania" is the one at San Francisco in which I experienced my first earthquake. But even the veriest landsman of them all can enjoy the passage of Long Island Sound in one of these stately and stable vessels, whether sitting indoors listening to the excellent band in one of the spacious drawing-rooms in which there is absolutely no rude reminder of the sea, or on deck on a cool summer night ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... sea-level. The ptarmigan, with their home above tree-line, amid eternal snows, are wonderfully self-reliant and self-contained. The ouzel, too, is self-poised, indifferent to all the world but his brook, and showing an appreciation for water greater, I think, than that of any other landsman. These birds, the ptarmigan and the ouzel, along with the willow thrush, who sings out his melody amid the shadows of the pines, who puts his woods into song,—these birds of the mountains are with me when memory takes me back a solitary visitor ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... any battery on this Fox-hill, it shall be constructed and manned by blue-jackets. I have a large draft of them now at discretion. Every man in Springhaven will lend a hand, if paid for it. It would take at least a twelvemonth to get it done from Woolwich. A seaman does a thing before a landsman ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... as one writing me in Paris characterized the men of that valley. This awkward landsman on water was born in a cabin in the Kentucky wilderness, a house replaced by one of unhewn timber, without door or floor or window, probably not better than the meanest of the gypsy houses just outside ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... such hospitable reception would forever have incapacitated us for the service of the Russian American Telegraph Company! I had only time to cast a hurried glance back at the Major. He looked like a frightened landsman straddling the end of a studdingsail-boom run out to leeward on a fast clipper, and his face was screwed up into an expression of mingled pain, amusement, and astonishment, which evidently did not begin to do justice to his conflicting ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... by the A——, toute rayonnante de joie. A fair wind and a bright blue sea, cool and refreshing breezes, the waves sparkling, and the ship going gallantly over the waters. So far, our voyage may have been tedious, but the most determined landsman must allow that the weather ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... course it was small, though it seemed large to Christy who had spent so much of his leisure time in the cabin of the Florence, his sailboat on the Hudson. It was substantially fitted up, with little superfluous ornamentation; but it was a complete parlor, as a landsman would regard it. From it, on the port side opened the captain's state room, which was quite ample for a vessel no larger than the Bronx. Between it and the pantry on the starboard side, was a gangway leading from the foot of the companion way, by which the captain's ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... author of a curious composition entitled The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548, seems to be the only man who took more interest in the means than in the ends of seamanship. He was undoubtedly a landsman. But he loved the things of the sea; and his work is well worth reading as a vocabulary of the lingo that was used on board a Tudor ship. When the seamen sang it sounded like 'an echo in a cave.' Many of the outlandish words were Mediterranean ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... about the ocean altogether with my eyes shut, and had managed to pick up a fair amount of nautical knowledge. I did not intrude it unnecessarily; I had a notion that I was regarded with a somewhat jealous eye by those who considered me a mere landsman. I certainly understood more about navigation than Mr Kydd, but that is not saying much. There were few things which I could not do, from handing, reefing, and steering, to turning in a dead-eye, and setting up the rigging; and few situations in ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... would still be under the watchful eye of another Father, who guards and guides the sailor afloat amidst the stormy waters of the deep as well as the landsman ashore, and whose love and forethought are more to be trusted even than that of our earthly parents, prize us as ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to take a cruise about the fleet, and I'll spin you no end of yarns if you like to come, sir," said old Bob, with a twinkle in his eye, as his wherry was see-sawing alongside in a manner most uncomfortable to a landsman. ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... land and Amherst Isle, or the Isle of Tanti, owned 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 ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... exerting his 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 ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 heavy sea. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... 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 it ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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, finding ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Store, if 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
... have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike—a group of somewhat dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name of captain, and bits of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... out, and packed away, and then kneel down and inspect (in a pair of Mackintosh leggings, and your oldest coat) the crawling heap of shells and zoophytes which remains behind about the decks, and you will find, if a landsman, enough to occupy you for a week to come. Nay, even if it be too calm for trawling, condescend to go out in a dingy, and help to haul some honest fellow's deep-sea lines and lobster-pots, and you ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... proposed that the command should be given to him, and he, for one, would willingly be under his orders. To this proposal, the carpenter and mate immediately agreed, and at last two of the seamen. I was left alone, but I resisted, saying, that I was not going to be ordered about by a landsman, and that if I were to obey orders, it must be from a thorough-bred seaman. The other two sailors were of my way of thinking, I was sure, although they had given their consent, and I hoped that they would join me, which they appeared very much inclined to do. Your father spoke ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... a ship in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... he first turned landsman up to the present date, has been adding fresh laurels to his fame. His recent career in exploring new routes across the great western girdle of prairies and mountains is so well known through his valuable and interesting reports as not to require recapitulation at our hands. His life has ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Certainly, never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career. Not even in that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom which so ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... done in establishing a republic, what France was doing by her revolution, got into the veins and minds of some men in England, but it got into the veins and minds of the sailor first; for, however low his origin, he had intercourse not given to the average landsman. He visited foreign ports, he came in touch with other elements than those ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... true. She was running away from us easily. Now she was hull down. Now we could see only her topgallant-sails. Now she again had disappeared. But this time we had found, besides her general appearance and the cut of her sails, which no seaman could mistake, a mark by which any landsman must recognize her: on her fore-topsail there was a white ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... wheel looked silently forward, with that exasperating unconcern of any landsman's interest peculiar to marine officials. The passenger turned impatiently ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Mr. Randall was a landsman, and had a proper respect for squalls and tempests, even on a fresh-water lake. He heard the announcement of Lawry Wilford with a feeling of dread and apprehension, and straightway began to conjure up visions ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... stumps of lower masts, the highest less than twenty feet above the deck. Sir Hotham Ward was now in the worst plight he had been, in that day, his ship being unable to advance a foot, her drift excepted, until everything was cut away. To the landsman it may appear a small job to cut ropes with axes, and thus liberate a vessel from the encumbrance and danger of falling spars; but the seaman knows it is often a most delicate and laborious piece of duty. The ocean is never quiet; ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... which has led to the conception of a divine being. But our surprise ceases when we realise how manifest and universal are the parts played by the wind in relation to man's weal or woe—they bring the rain, they drive the storm, they clear the air. The landsman knows much— the sailor more. Guy de Maupassant makes the sailor say, "Vous ne le (vent) connaissez point, gens de la terre! Nous autres, nous le connaissons plus que notre pere ou que notre mere, cet invisible, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... pilot of the 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 me nought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... thirty years later. That life of peril which casts the seaman much at the mercy of 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, seamen of the generation to which I myself belonged as firm believers ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... unwieldy armament is a sign that they are thoroughly terrified, and seek safety in a huge crowd of ships. The firmness and discipline which they have acquired by long experience of land warfare will avail them little on the sea For courage is largely a matter of habit, and the bravest landsman is a mere coward when he is taken away from his own element, and set down on the heaving deck of a war-galley where he can hardly keep his feet. The disorganized multitude with which we shall have to deal is a mere mob, held together by the authority of Sparta, demoralized by their late defeat, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... would fall back and nearly carry away every stitch of canvas with the shock. If the ship was bad, the crew was ten times worse. What Dawkins said turned out to be literally true. Every ill-conducted, disorderly fellow who had been up the gangway once a week or so, every unreclaimed landsman of bad character and no seamanship, was sent on board of us: and in fact, except that there was scarcely any discipline and no restraint, we appeared like a floating penitentiary of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... establishment contained, at this time, many specimens of American naval architecture of choice description; amongst the rest, a frigate and several other ships of war lying in ordinary. Everything appeared to indicate good management and efficiency, as far as a landsman could judge. This was very discernible on board the vessels we were allowed to inspect, where the utmost order and cleanliness prevailed. The officers, I thought, seemed to exact great deference from the men, and their martinet bearing ill accorded with a republican service, being decidedly more ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... had 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 market-place ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the command of Captain Brewis—a most capable and courteous officer, but a strict disciplinarian. To a landsman, his control of the various ships and his forethought in obtaining supplies seemed little short of marvellous. I had the good fortune to be associated with Captain Brewis on the passage from Colombo to Alexandria on board the —— ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... painter of flowers; then is he an artist or a botanist? Is he a marinist; then, as a landsman has he made you feel like one, or has he painted for you water that can be walked on without faith? Has he shown you the dignity, the vastness, the tone, and above all the movement ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... wounded man. We got a mattress, and carefully carried him down into the cabin, where he was placed under the skylight on a sofa, so as to obtain sufficient air. I saw at once, by his appearance and dress, which was what any landsman might wear on board ship, that he was not a seaman; and I suspected, moreover, that he was a gentleman; not of course that, whatever his rank, we should have made any difference in our treatment of him. We had him stripped and wrapped ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the harbor. As soon as each transport was loaded it pulled away from the pier and dropped anchor in the stream. When all our troops were on board the "Megantic" we cast loose, pulled up the stream off Cape Diamond, and "dropped our hook," as a landsman in the ranks was heard to remark. The hotels and boarding houses of the City were filled with friends of the men who had come on excursions to bid the soldiers good-bye. The City was full of life and activity and brilliantly ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... I supposed that I should pass very well for a jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed 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 trowsers, tight round the hips, and thence hanging long and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... this world is governed by fixed laws, 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 ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... notion as to how or when her brother would return. The fact of the matter was that had not her brother had in his possession a note from the captain asking him to come aboard, and had he not known the penalty for not returning a landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled seaman would have carried him to Seattle, leaving Beth to shift for herself. He reached home on a gasoline schooner some ten days after ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... was a sailor," the Inspector went on, dropping again into his sing-song monotone, "by the extraordinary agility needed to climb up the thirty feet of bare brick wall to the window—a landsman could not have climbed more than twenty; the fact that he was from the East Indies we knew from the peculiar knot about his victim's neck. We knew that he had a ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... the gallant Admiral earned further cheers for a capital maiden speech on the Naval Estimates. These were introduced by Mr. LONG, who told the story of the Navy's triumph with all a landsman's enthusiasm. Its future size may to a certain extent depend upon the Judgment of Paris, but he was certain that, come what may, the Nation would always insist on having a Fleet sufficient for our needs—a sentiment which received the welcome ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... 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 diminishing and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... out, by cross questioning, whether one had rightly understood anything which they had asserted. Their sight was remarkably acute; it is well known that sailors, from long practice, can make out a distant object much better than a landsman; but both York and Jemmy were much superior to any sailor on board: several times they have declared what some distant object has been, and though doubted by every one, they have proved right, when it has been examined through a telescope. They were quite conscious ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... carry was being made for a life-or-death effort to win the weather gage. Thus beat the heart of naval England that momentous night in Plymouth Sound, while beacons blazed from height to height ashore, horsemen spurred off post-haste with orders and dispatches, and every able-bodied landsman stood to arms. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... 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 it ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pitying look on the ignorant landsman. "I could tell you that, sir," he said, in a tone of lofty ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... and it is never a pleasant or easy task for a landsman, much less a landswoman, to clamber by a rope-ladder some twenty feet up the side of a rolling ship. However, all the ladies acquitted themselves nobly, some even going up without a rope round their waists. The little Japanese ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... 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
... wind had sprung into a gale, and the Sea Queen was running under bare sticks. The water rolled heavily from the southwest, and the yacht groaned under the buffets. It became difficult to stand—at least, for a landsman. We had hitherto experienced such equable, fine weather that I think we had taken for granted that it must continue. But now we were undeceived. The yacht pitched uneasily and rolled to her scuppers, and it was as much ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... to attract the attention 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 or severe, as ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... in Sendennis, in Sussex, and my earliest memories are full of the sound and colour and smell of the sea. It was above all things my parents' wish that I should live a landsman's life. But I was mad for the sea from the first days that I ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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
... thrilling suddenness 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 the mystery ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... serge suit, or weather pilot or pea-jacket of rough cloth or "witney," or blue serge or flannel coat with naval white duck trousers. The cap, blue or white cloth or duck. White flannels are also worn, but they are not so appropriate. In the evening, usual formal landsman's costume. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... could be trusted on a treasure-hunt is perhaps the most difficult to find in the whole world; and when you've found one to rely upon, your troubles are only just beginning. The main trouble is with the ship, and that's what no landsman can ever understand. A ship's the most public thing under heaven. You think of her, maybe, as something that puts out over the horizon and is lost to sight for months. But that helps nothing. She must clear from a port, and to a port sooner or later she must return; ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... 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 Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... ships-of-war. Every man that has ever been aboard of one of those floating hells knows what liberty is not, well enough. No taxing of us by a Parliament on t' other side of the world, neither. No king but the captain. Freedom! So free that the lubberliest landsman on shore has a right to govern himself—if he can—subject to discipline and the commands of his superior officer, of course; and, besides, it's like a man's wife; if he's got to have one, he may beat her and abuse her, perhaps, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... doubted the justice of his case, but he had begun to have some dread of unjust success on the part of his enemies. It was delightful to him thus to hear that their cause was surrounded with such rocks and shoals; such causes of shipwreck unseen by the landsman's eye, but visible enough to the keen eyes of practical law mariners. How wrong his wife was to wish that Bold should marry Eleanor! Bold! why, if he should be ass enough to persevere, he would be a beggar before he knew whom he was ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... statue of Horace Walpole's mother, and the ugly {101} monument of General Monck against the wall. Monck himself deserves far more recognition than he usually receives. His share in the restoration of Charles II. was by no means his sole achievement, and he had, although a landsman and a soldier by training, previously distinguished himself on the sea in company with Admiral Blake, and later on he co-operated with his former foe, Prince Rupert, in many an action with the Dutch fleet. ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... 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 necessaries of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... {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 consent. Whether fog or clear, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... taught me that these great beasts are as terror-stricken by this phenomenon as a landsman by a fog at sea, and that no sooner does a fog envelop them than they make the best of their way to lower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... earlier part of his life, on the River Congo, or that he was familiar with the soundings of Loango Bay. As he returned from his voyages, bringing more and more money, he enlarged his estate, and grew more and more respectable, retiring at last from the sea, to become a worthy landsman; he paid taxes to church and state, and even had a silver communion cup, among the pewter service used on the occasion of the Lord's Supper; but he never was brought to the approval of that project of ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... but, remembering that he was her host, refrained from the only comments she felt to be suitable to the occasion. Under the tactful guidance of Edward Tredgold the conversation was led to shipwrecks, fires at sea, and other subjects of the kind comforting to the landsman, Mr. Chalk favouring them with a tale of a giant octopus, culled from Captain Bowers's collection, which made Mrs. Stobell's ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of Chowan river, and returned to Edenton, where we arrived at 8 a.m. Captain J. A. J. Brooks and I went ashore, and called on Messrs. Samuel B——, Henry B——, and Mr. M——. In the afternoon, we interred Matthew Sheridan, landsman, who had died of typhus fever. At 5 p.m. we returned to ship and got under weigh and proceeded down the Albemarle Sound to Laurel Point, where we arrived at 9 p.m., and anchored. The weather ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... Antarctic exploration, as well as whaling voyages, comprise much reading that is as interesting to the landsman as to the sailor. Most of its literature is within easy reach of the collector of modest means, though the earlier volumes are naturally increasing gradually in price. One of the hardest to obtain is William Scoresby's 'Account of the ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... was a landsman, and had soon shown that he was totally unfit for a sailor. Dick Todd had entered as a boy. He was not worth much, and had become a great chum of Sykes'. Still, from the little I had seen of them, I did not think that they would have been guilty ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately damning his soul and praying ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Channel that no land was visible, and the entire horizon presented that chill and wintry aspect that belongs to gloomy and driving clouds, to which streaks of dull light serve more to give an appearance of infinite space than any of the relief of brightness. It was a dreary night-fall to a landsman's eye; though they who better understood the signs of the heavens, as they are exhibited on the ocean, saw little more than the promise of obscurity, and the usual hazards of darkness in a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Silverstrand that day. But to launch another boat to search for the missing one was out of the question. The great seas that came hurling into the little fishing-harbour were sufficient proof of that, even to the most inexperienced landsman. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... interesting to a landsman than the manner in which a sailor handles huge, dripping hawsers or cables and with a few deft turns makes then fast to a pier-head or spile, in such a way that the ship's winches, warping the huge structure to or ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... 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 ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... 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
... can tell you, that of all the trades going, there is none equal to it. You see, my hearty, I have been on board of a man-of-war—not that I'm a sailor, or was ever bred to the sea—but I was shipped as a landsman, and did duty in the waist and afterguard. I know little or nothing of my duty as a seaman, nor was it required in the station I was in, so I never learnt, although I was four years on board; all I learnt was the lingo and slang—and that you must contrive to learn ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared with that which permeates and saturates the mind of the typical sailor. A gentleman with whom I was long and closely associated held ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... occult about this art of seeing land. The landsman's eyesight is good; he prides himself a little upon it. He looks; and for him the land isn't there. The seaman's eyesight is no better; he looks, and for him the land is so plainly in view that he cannot understand your failure to see it. He is secretly pleased, though,—and may pretend impatience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... 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, so be careful." ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... inland! It is therefore probable that the millions of islands which now fringe these shores, formed, at some remote period, one continuous strip of land. How vessels ever find their way, say from Hangoe to Nystad, is a mystery to the uninitiated landsman. At a certain place there are no less than 300 islands of various sizes crowded into an area of six square miles! Heaven preserve the man who finds himself there, in thick weather, with a skipper who does ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... I think we were any distance from a mile to two miles away. It is difficult for a landsman to calculate distance at sea but we had been afloat an hour and a half, the boat was heavily loaded, the oarsmen unskilled, and our course erratic: following now one light and now another, sometimes ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... humility do the maritime Ionians practise when they accept the hegemony of a Spartan landsman; enough of submission do the free citizens of Hellas show when they suffer the imperious Dorian to sentence them to punishments only fit for slaves. But when the Spartan appears in the robes of the Mede, when ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... 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 than seven ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shall be glad to have you again, for the chap who has been in your place is a landsman, and he don't know a marling-spike ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... pilot-house and there was a fellow of about forty at the wheel. I said '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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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
... 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
... brig, and cruised for some time off the coast of Africa, hunting for slavers; and returning after a while from this enterprising employment, he received a sort of amphibious appointment at Devonport. What his duties were here, the author, being in all points a landsman, is unable to describe. Those who were inclined to ridicule Captain Cuttwater declared that the most important of them consisted in seeing that the midshipmen in and about the dockyard washed their faces, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... with the help of the pilot. For more than two thousand 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
... grow harder to understand the more we think about them. It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast. A strange instance of man's unconcern and brazen boldness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decisive fight took place; but on the way he had captured some French and Spanish ships near Gibraltar; and what with skirmishes and sickness, his voyage did not want for risk and episode at any time. Digby the landsman maintained discipline, reconciled quarrels, doctored his men, ducked them for disorderliness, and directed the naval and military operations like any old veteran. At Scanderoon [now Alexandretta in the Levant] the French and Venetians, annoyed by his presence, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... one of the finest of his novels, 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 with eyes of critical detachment, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... from going to them if I would, Benjamin. There my power stops. You old sailors have superstitions or beliefs, and I, a landsman, have a conviction, too. The invisible prophets tell me that ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... tongue he's got!" remarked Buzzby. "Before I'd go to sea with a first mate who jawed like that I'd be a landsman. Don't ever you git to talk too much, Master Fred, wotever ye do. My maxim is—and it has served me through life, uncommon—'Keep your weather-eye open and your tongue housed 'xcept when you've got occasion to use it.' If that fellow'd use his eyes more and his ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... defenders of the faith but wrought into the hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached Christianity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the advance of knowledge ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... manufactured "out of nothing." Her seams, those which the sun had opened, were caulked neatly; her deck was clean and white; she was partially rigged, with new and old canvas and ropes; and to his landsman's eyes she looked almost fit for sea. But when he said as much to Seth, the ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... of rising morning the brigantine would not have appealed very strongly to a landsman, or even to a yachtsman. As Barry discovered later, at breakfast, Little was sadly disappointed at the lack of polished brass-work, the bareness of the paint, the all-round creakiness of the ancient fabric. But to a seaman's eye the absence of brass meant a pleasing lack ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle |
