"Rudder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... carried away by the preacher's imaginative skill, cried out: "Let go your best bower anchor, or you're lost." In another church, which had its pulpit set at the side instead of at the end, as customary, a sailor remarked critically: "I don't like this craft; it has its rudder amidships." ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... by the wild growth of the strange city and the reclamation of the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded; her retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of solid warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her. But still a ship despite her transformation. The faintest line of contour yet left visible ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... engulfed, with their last breath, cry, 'lo, we are arrived, and our friends are waiting on the quay!' Who, under these circumstances is mad? Is it I? Is it you? I can only drift and wait. It may be that beyond these waters there is a harbour and a shore. But I cannot steer for it, for I have no rudder, no compass, no chart. You say you have. Go on, then, but do not call to me. I must sink or swim alone. And the best for which I can hope is speedily to be lost in ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... that the coil of the rope on deck was foul, and so entangled round his long tiller, that ten seconds would do one of three things,—they would snap his new rope in two, which was a trifle, or they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder, which would cost him an hour to mend, or they would upset those two horses, at this instant on a trot, and put into the canal the rowdy youngster who had started them. It was this complex certainty which ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 gone, A ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... off his coat. He stooped down and unlaced his boots, while the others watched him. It seemed to take him hours. The bows of the great steamer were almost buried in the broken seas; her stern was raised high in the air, showing the screw and the rudder. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... and sot, and sot and heaved, And high his rudder flung, And every time he heaved and sot, A mighty ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from rudder-post to cut-water. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the swell for the shaft, should be about the same thickness, and fitted in as shown in Plate I. The keel should be of lead, tapering from half an inch in the centre to one-eighth at the bow and stern: cut a small hole at Z, and let the rudder-post rest in it. Now fasten in your engine; two screws through the bed-plate will do it. Try the boat in water; if she is down by the stern, tack a piece of sheet lead in the bow inside. Nail your deck in with cut pins. Use one-eighth inch strips one-half inch high for the gunwale as far as the ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... proceeded it was evident that those on her were not going to have an easy time to get to the Bobbsey dock. The wind blew harder and harder, and the sail seemed ready to rip apart. It took both Bert and Harry to hold the rudder steady, and even then the tiller was almost ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... at once, and then, supposing a heavy easterly sea, you must clap on a press of sail to drive the boat. You get ready a bow painter and a stern rope, and the boat, like a bolt set free, flies to the land. Very probably she takes a 'shooter,' that is, gets her nose down and her stern and rudder high into the air, and, all hands sitting aft, she is carried along amidst the hiss and burst of the very crest of the galloping billow. Fortunate are they if this wave holds the boat till she is thrown high up the beach, broadside on, for at the last minute the helm must ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... pull away from the brig, towards the town. Before the men aloft had left the yards, a sudden flaw of wind drove the ship's head off the bank, when her anchor was let go, and she swung head to wind. Her heel, however, was still on the shoal, and the rudder immovable. To get her off, the launch was hoisted out, and the kedge anchor with a hawser, was put into her. While we were engaged in hauling the frigate off the shoal, a boat appeared coming down the harbour, and ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... must be divided into hundredths, and action must be instantaneous, instinctive, and without flaw. McGee felt one of the spreading limbs brush against his right wing tip, felt the plane swerve for a moment, then respond to rudder and aileron. It was a case where one moment he was supremely thankful for flying speed, and the next, as the ground of the level field was flashing under the wheels, wishing that he had held to his ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... a vast, 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 Cross ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. These barges were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... days out, the Pinto's signal of distress is flying; she has broken her rudder. September 8 they discover a broken mast covered with seaweed floating in the sea. Terror seizes the sailors, but Columbus calms their fears with pictures of gold and precious stones of India. ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... 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
... crash, and the Lupetea shook and quivered in every timber, as the mighty avalanche of water fell upon and buried her; smashing the wheel to splinters, snapping off the rudder head, and sweeping the ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;—thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the same ...
— Critias • Plato
... pain which I knew I must inflict, but because I valued his welfare more than my own feelings, I was constrained to be faithful to him. I told him that he was drifting where he ought steer, that instead of holding the helm and rudder of his young life, he was floating down the stream, and unless he stood firmly on the side of temperance, that I never would clasp ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... compel its abandonment; in vain, for its work of destruction goes on. Captain Semmes places sharp-shooters in the quarter boats to pick off the officers; in vain, for none are injured. He views the surrounding devastation—a sinking ship, rudder and propeller disabled, a large portion of the crew killed or wounded, while his adversary is apparently but slightly damaged. He has completed the seventh rotation on the circular tract and is conscious of defeat. He seeks to escape by setting all available ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... to the manner of his kinsman's death: could that be done? "Oh, yes," answered the mysterious one, "nothing is easier." As he was speaking, the table began to creak, as a ship would do in a storm. It was excessively agitated; the noise of the rudder was heard, and at last, after a series of agonizing movements, the whole concern fell over, with a sudden crash. And yet no one appeared to touch it—the passive hand of the venerable exile could ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the true, 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 ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... my church. I do not wish to go. I realize, that I am wholly unfitted for its duties. I feel, that I have made life a failure! In fact, Fillmore, you see before you in your friend George Gaylord, a man who is aimlessly drifting on the sea of life, like a ship without a rudder. A man not yet thirty, without a home, without ambition, hope or purpose! Possibly, I may be in the clutches of some approaching attack of nervous prostration, I ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... "he brought her into Portsmouth without a rudder or forefoot, lower-masts all sprung, and leaking at the rate of two feet per hour!" ergo, he is the fittest man for the representative ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and attitude are a study. Coiled up into the smallest possible space, his chin almost resting on his knees, his hands close to his sides, firmly but lightly feeling the rudder, as a good horseman handles the mouth of a free-going hunter,—if a coxswain could make a bump by his own exertions, surely he will do it. No sudden jerks of the St. Ambrose rudder will you see, watch as you will from the bank; the boat never hangs through fault of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... professed one of their objects to be to resist the current attacks of infidelity. But there would have been no inconsistency in engaging the co-operation of an unbeliever on secular subjects, so long as they retained the rudder in their own hands, and men who were already Hume's intimate personal friends were not likely to be troubled with such unnecessary scruples about their consistency. The true reason both of Hume's exclusion from their secret and of their own abandonment of their undertaking is undoubtedly the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... down into his chair as he thought of this, and going back over the three past dreary years, remembered what a weary blank they were, thought, with a heavy sigh, what a shipwreck his life had been, and how he was now floating about without rudder or compass or anchor, merely a drifting wreck. And as he sits there in the sunshine which streams through the wide, high old window, we will see ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... of freedom and independence. There were no bits of cardboard with the names of stations printed on them to predestine our way; no baggage checks to consign our belongings to fixed destinations. Even at the last moment a change of mind, a change of rudder, and a new way and a new destination ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... my hands along the wall," explained Frank, still in a whisper. "That will bring us to the opening—the smallest possible that would allow the boat to pass into the stream. Then the current will carry us down. I have a rudder, that will hold us in the shadow of the left bank through all the turns. It is a chance—the only one we had. If all goes well, we shall drift down below ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... 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 were fallen away, begin to move, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the Island of Marmora, the marble quarries of which give name to the sea. As we were approaching the entrance to the Dardanelles, we noticed an Austrian brig drifting in the current, the whiff of her flag indicating distress. Her rudder was entirely gone, and she was floating helplessly towards the Thracian coast. A boat was immediately lowered and a hawser carried to her bows, by which we towed her a short distance; but our steam engine ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... 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
... his work. The boat was accurately and beautifully turned—hollow inside—with a deck of glossy wood. The rudder was controlled by finest tackle and hardware. Altogether, it was as ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... steering their craft. One inventor suggested the hoisting of a huge sail at the side of the envelope; but when this was done the balloon simply turned round with the sail to the front. It had no effect on the direction of flight of the balloon. "Would not a rudder be of use?" someone asked. This plan was also tried, ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... tidy cloth coat, pulled half on, and a high pointed cap 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?... Who's ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... crew lowered 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 ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... relieved only by 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 of the boat, we assisted in ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... As the little vessel 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 oarsmen ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... severely "nipped" and strained as to leak a good deal, apparently about four inches an hour; that she was still heavily pressed both upon the ground and against the large mass of ice within her; that the rudder was at present very awkwardly situated; and that one boat had been much damaged. However, about high water, the ice very opportunely slacking, the Hecla was hove off with great ease, and warped to a floe in the offing, to which we made fast ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... 'twas a narrow go. We grazed Rudder Rock! The fool stationed there with the light flashed it a full minute ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... what a rudder is good for," said Faith merrily. "I know that this ship, 'though it be so great, and driven of fierce winds, yet is it turned about with a very small helm whithersoever the governor listeth.' That is what ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... broadsides passed harmlessly over the low deck of the Monitor, or rebounded from the round sides of her iron turret. When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... CHILTERN. Arthur, tell me what I should do. My life seems to have crumbled about me. I am a ship without a rudder in ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... kept for halyards. The sail was already attached to a light yard, so that he had only to secure it to his halyards and hoist it up. This he did, bringing the sheet aft, where he placed himself, with an oar to serve as a rudder. ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... and bow to mortal Chance, believe there is no pilot at all at the rudder of Creation's vessel, no channel before the prow, but the roaring breakers of despair to right and left, and the granite bluff of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and cast off. It was a clumsy, broad-beamed, leaky old conveyance, and that it was as dirty as Hewitt had described it I could feel as I groped for the sculls and got them out. The night was light and dark by turns—changing with the clouds. We shipped the rudder, and Styles steered, or I should probably have run ashore more than once, for the banks were not always distinct, and the channel was narrow and dark. We passed the black forms of several factories with tall chimneys, and then drew out among the Marshes, flat and grey, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... with seventeen of his monks desired to go in quest of this mysterious land. They set forth in a leather boat, bearing with them as their sole provision a utensil of butter, wherewith to grease the hides of their craft. For seven years they lived thus in their boat, abandoning to God sail and rudder, and only stopping on their course to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and Easter on the back of the king of fishes, Jasconius. Every step of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on every isle is a monastery, where ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... motions of the stars. But it could be done in spite of that, when he dozed off for a second, that is, if you chose some other part of the ship from which to start: as it is, it must be the stern, you must even slip down the rudder itself, for that is where the painter that holds the boat in tow is made fast. And there is still something else, Encolpius. I am surprised that it has not occurred to you that one sailor is on watch, lying in the boat, night and day. You couldn't get rid of that watchman ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... knotted. In surf or heavy sea, this construction gave the craft a supple strength. Calking was done with woolen cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk of fir, was set upright in a log with ends shaped like a fishtail. The long oarlike rudder was on the board or side of the ship to the right of the stern, called the starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the opposite side, the larboard or ladderboard. There were ten oars to a side, and ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... rudder; hoist the sail aloft!" commanded Bane the helmsman. "Sound war-horns all! Skoal to the Viking; skoal ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... they "keep everlastingly at it" they will succeed, but this is not so. Working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass. A ship which has broken its rudder in mid-ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident, and if it does find a haven, its cargo may not be suited to the people, the climate, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... to the last scrap of fish, they made a rush for the lake and the boat. There it lay, moving a little on the light waves, a frail little yellow craft without keel or rudder, but something to float in, anyhow. There rippled the lake six miles long, cool and sparkling, and boats were getting out into the mid-water like huge "skimmer-bugs,"[105-1] ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... and forwards on a wild sea of doubt—a vessel without ballast, compass, or rudder—was the mind of the miserable Pollux. The courtier paced for hours up and down a verandah where the cool breeze of heaven could fan him, and where he would be secure from interruption. Ever and anon Pollux tore his beard, or smote his breast; unconsciously giving expression by outward gesture ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... in a circle, had his head turned the wrong way, and marched off, at a right angle, along the side street, with no home visible anywhere, and not a familiar sign in sight. A ship at sea without a rudder, a solitary wanderer in the Great American Desert without a compass, could not have been more utterly astray. The Boy was so demoralized that he forgot his name and address; and when a kindly policeman ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... fine one, she ought to be painted (this, of course, to be done before the sails are finally fastened to the booms and yards), and her name should be tastefully painted on her stern, where of course, a rudder, carefully working on little hooks, is ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... and national usages, affect these characteristic ornaments, which are still seen, in different quarters of the world, to occasion broad distinctions between the appearances of vessels. In one, the rudder-head is carved with the resemblance of some hideous monster; another shows goggling eyes and lolling tongues from its cat-heads; this has the patron saint, or the ever-kind Marie, embossed upon its mouldings or bows; while that is covered with the allegorical emblems of country and duty. Few of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... by, leaning over the edge of the fall, he made a discovery that almost cheered him. Right below, and a little to the left of the rocky pool in which the tumbling stream threw up bubbles like champagne, lay a boat—a boat without oars or mast or rudder, yet plainly serviceable, and even freshly painted. She was stanch too, for some pints of water overflowed her bottom boards where her stern pointed down the beach— collected rain water, perhaps, or splashings ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know every foot as well as a man knows the hall of his own home. All the qualifications must come into play, then memory, judgment, courage, and the high art of steering. "Steering is a very high, art," he says; "one must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stern if he wants to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... few more like that and she's all our own. Now it's my shot. I'll try to knock her rudder away. Wait till she swings. There she comes! There she comes! Over a little. Up a little. Now. Fire." He darted his linstock down upon the priming. The gun roared and upset; the bullets banged out the Snail's stern, and she ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... his paddle more tightly—the paddle that answered the purpose of rudder, and commenced to assist the wind by vigorous strokes. Then Hooja gave the command to some of his archers to fire upon us. I couldn't lie hidden in the bottom of the boat, leaving Juag alone exposed to the deadly shafts, so I arose and, seizing another paddle, set to ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Wait you one minute;" and very soon the door opened, and he dragged me in, gripping my hand as if it were a rudder in a gale, so that it ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... away her mainm'st, and the wreckage knocked a hole in her starboard quarter. Likewise, her stern-post being rotten, she lost a pintle, and the helm began to look fifty ways for Sunday. All o' which caused the skipper to lay to, fix up a jury rudder and run up for the nearest island to caulk and repair. But meantime, and before he sighted land, this unfortunate crew kept puttin' on flesh—and the cause of it hid from them all the time—till there wasn't on the ship a pair of smallclothes but had refused duty. Whereby, coming ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the rudder; she was smiling affably and talking a great deal to entertain her visitors, while she glanced stealthily at her husband. He was ahead of them all, standing up punting with one oar. The light sharp-nosed canoe, which all the guests ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Sailless and without a rudder, On the ocean of the air— Float the choirs of stars harmonious, 'Mid the mists eternal there; Fleecy flocks of clouds elusive Drift across immensity, Leaving ne'er a track behind them, Following their destiny. Hour of parting, hour of meeting They know not,—nor ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... promptly offered Albert and his party seats in the boat on her first trip. There were just four vacancies, he said. The three ladies had stepped aboard, and Albert was following, when the ex-sailor who held the rudder touched his arm and said, "I don't think it's safe, Mr. Charlton, fer nobody else to git in. She's got 'leven now, and ef the wind freshens, twelve would ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... daily, with guns and ammunition stowed in it. It could be fired from, standing, without risk, and be poled over marshy ground barely covered with water, or dragged with ease by the person seated in it, through high reeds, by grasping a handful on each side and hauling on them. A rudder was unnecessary. It was in use for more than three years, and with due care in getting in and out, on a rough shore, and by keeping it well painted and pitched, it never leaked or ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... a very pleasant evening. They sauntered slowly along the pier, until they came to a place where some steps led down to the water. There were several small boats at the foot of the steps, and in one of them was a man doing something to the rudder. Rollo saw that on the other side of the water was another long staircase leading down from the bank there, so as to form a landing-place for small boats at all times of tide. He also looked up and down the harbor, but he could see no bridge, and so he supposed that this must ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... of oysters than any other two-man craft; there was the time when we raided far down in Lower Bay, and mine was the only craft back at daylight to the anchorage off Asparagus Island; there was the Thursday night we raced for market and I brought the Razzle Dazzle in without a rudder, first of the fleet, and skimmed the cream of the Friday morning trade; and there was the time I brought her in from Upper Bay under a jib, when Scotty burned my mainsail. (Yes; it was Scotty of the Idler adventure. Irish had followed Spider on board the Razzle ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... rolls in his own political orb, but each of them is hurried at the same time round the great vortex of his religion. If this general notion be just, apply it to the present case. Whilst a Roman Catholic holds the rudder, how can we expect to be steered in our proper course? His political interest will certainly incline him to direct our first motion right, but his mistaken religious interest will render him incapable of doing ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... of baling her dry. This done, I took stock of my prize, and found that I had come into possession of a twenty-eight-foot gig, in a perfectly sound and undamaged condition, equipped with four sixteen-foot ash oars, a mast and sails, rowlocks, bottom-boards, stretchers, rudder and yoke, baler, boat-hook, and—priceless treasure, under the circumstances—two breakers of fresh water securely lashed to the bottom-boards to serve as ballast. With such a prize as this what might not be possible? With a thankful heart I cast adrift the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... amazing force against (as we supposed) a rock; however, upon heaving the lead, we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bow-sprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who was aloft, furling the main-sheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... broke in fury. There was calm water within this reef, but we could see only one narrow opening into it. For this opening we steered; but ere we reached it a tremendous wave broke on our stern, tore the rudder completely off, and left us at the mercy ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... nor dry. On the fifth day (27th October) a frigate came in from the sea, and they at once attacked her, hoping to find shelter aboard her after the four days of wet and cold. The Spaniards ran her ashore on the point by the Boca Chica, "unhanging her rudder and taking away her sails, that she might not easily be carried away." However, the boats dashed alongside, intending to board her. As they came alongside, a company of horse and foot advanced on to the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... steamship was rolling in a heavy swell, under winds that were as hot as gusts from an open furnace. Under its decks a man lay in an atmosphere of fever and the sickening odour of bandages and stale air. Above the throb of the engines and the rattle of the rudder chain he heard a step going by his open door, and he called in a feeble voice that was cheerful and almost merry, but yet the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... river. She ran foul of the Courier steamer, and unshipped her rudder. She put back for repairs, and won't be down till ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... The rudder-chains clanked; the boat set up a heavy wash as she turned from her course. There was a splashing, and something ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... all the next day and part of the following working on the craft. He overhauled the ignition system, which was the jump-spark style, cleaned the magneto and adjusted the gasoline and compression taps so that they fitted better. Then he readjusted the rudder lines, tightening them on the steering wheel, and looked over the piping ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... altitude. It then swept downward and took a close look at the vessel. Two bombs which fell into the water near the ship, were dropped by the German aviator. The captain of the Blonde ordered that the rudder of his ship be fastened so that she might drive in a circle and her engines were set at full speed, with the intention of making a more difficult target for the airship's bombs. The whistle of the ship was set going and continued to blow in the hope of attracting help ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as even to tighten certain strings about her father's heart which had long been too slack to vibrate with any simple gladness. Her questions were incessant—first about the sails and rigging, then about the steering; but when Malcolm proceeded to explain how the water reacted on the rudder, she declined to trouble herself ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... rope stretched between two wooden machines erected on the opposite sides of the river. The contrivance is simple and effectual, and the passage equally safe and expeditious. The boatman has nothing to do, but by means of a long massy rudder, to keep the head obliquely to the stream, the force of which pushes the boat along, the block to which it is fixed sliding upon the rope from one side to the other. All these rivers take their ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... all the guns 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
... as we never had six feet upon the line. Its bottom was one of black mud, and weeds of enormous length were floating on its surface, detached by the late gales, and which, from the shallowness of the lake, got constantly entangled with our rudder. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... and I 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 and ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... tilted his long rudder-like tail, flattened his crested head until it reminded them of a wicked snake, and suddenly made up his mind ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... however, upon heaving the lead we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bowsprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who was aloft furling the mainsheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ship; but he fortunately saved his life by laying hold of the tail of a large sea-gull, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... all the rest would be ineffectual. In a great machine all its parts are equally necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute at the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... across the enemy's stern, and the well-aimed broadside that raked the Desespere from aft to fore, almost completely placed her at the mercy of the British frigate. The wheel was shot away, the rudder a wreck, the mainmast went by the board, and both dead and wounded lay upon ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she would have liked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit this, and in a moment more the water was rippling after her swift rudder, as she glided away in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes. But when she had left behind her the mouth of the passage, she changed her course and, leaving the Pointe on her left, bore down toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bent upon passing through ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Contrary to all the rules of war, however, the Spanish commodore, in order to prevent the intelligence from arriving in England on an early day, or from being first related by English lips, enjoined Captain Farmer not to sail without his permission, and to ensure compliance, he even unshipped the rudder of his vessel, and kept it on shore for three weeks. This was an insult to the British flag not to be endured. As soon as the proceedings were known in England, all ranks were inflamed with resentment, and eagerly desired that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the 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 THINGS IN ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... way home I asked Brother Petersen how he had gotten along. He said, "When we realized the storm was on hand we packed up our fishing lines and I ordered my partner to take care of the motor and I myself took charge of the rudder. My partner was a saved man but we had a boy who was not saved. I ordered him to be ready to dip out the water if ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... and returned to their owners, while the captors had their commissions taken from them. Such was the experience of one Captain Searles, who in August brought in two Spanish vessels, both of which were restored to the Spaniards, and Searles deprived of his rudder and sails as security against his making further depredations upon the Dons.[214] In November Captain Morris Williams sent a note to Governor Modyford, offering to come in with a rich prize of logwood, indigo and silver, if security ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... been missed. Indeed, so large was the vacuum, that most of the shot fired from this part of the 'Serapis,' at the close of the action, must have gone through the 'Richard' without touching any thing. The rudder was cut from the stern post, and the transoms were nearly driven out of her. All the after-part of the ship, in particular, that was below the quarter-deck was torn to pieces; and nothing had saved those stationed on the quarter-deck but the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... been the boy up to this moment that he had no time to observe closely the shipwrecked pair. Now, however, he cast a curious glance in their direction, as he let go the rudder and sheet-line, and threw out the painter to the man. Eagerly the latter seized the rope, and managed to hold the two ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... new vessel, could not divest himself of uneasiness; for when her stern fell into the sea, it struck with so much violence as to be more like the resistance of a rock than the sea. The water, at the same time, often rushed with great force up the rudder-case, and, forcing up the valve of the water-closet, the floor of his cabin was at times laid under water. The gale continued to increase, and the vessel rolled and pitched in such a manner that the hawser by which the tender was made fast to the buoy snapped, and she went ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever been firm upon the rudder, guiding and governing the education of our youth for years of ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... shadows and when the wind moved, others zig-zagged softly down to join them. The wind was helping them on the water, too, and along came one brown leaf that was shaped like a tiny trireme—its stem acting like a rudder and keeping it straight before the breeze—so that it swept past the rest as a yacht that she was once on had swept past a fleet of fishing sloops. She was not unlike that swift little ship and thirty yards ahead were rocks and shallows where it and the whole fleet would ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... little time longer they remained out over the sea, going through some evolutions to test the rudder control, and then as their present object had been accomplished Tom gave orders to head back to Shopton, which place was reached in ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... Aepyornis; Fra Mauro's story; genus of that bird, condor; discovery of bones of Harpagornis in New Zealand; Sindbad, Rabbi Benjamin, romance of Duke Ernest; Ibn Batuta's sight of Ruc; rook in chess; various notices of. Rudbar-i-Lass, Robbers' River. —— (Reobarles), district and River. Rudder, single, noted by Polo as peculiar, double, used in Mediterranean. Rudkhanah-i-Duzdi (Robbers' River). Rudkhanah-i-Shor (Salt River). Rudra Deva, King of Telingana. Rudrama Devi, Queen of Telingana. Rukh, Shah. Rukhnuddin, Mahmud, Prince ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... bottle? I wished to lock the door, but I had lost the key. She combs her hair with a silver comb. In summer we travel by various vehicles, and in winter by a sledge. To-day it is beautiful frosty weather; therefore I shall take my skates and go skating. The steersman of the "Pinta" injured the rudder. The magnetic needle. The first indicator in most illnesses is the tongue. He put it on the plate of a ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Tom and gave him the necessary instructions. Then he set over his guiding wheel, turning the big rudder at the stern of the Wondership and she acted as obediently as a sea-going craft answering her helm. Never had ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... Beneath, the lower deck ended in a fantail of unusual overhang, around whose edge curved the stout bars of the "bull-ring," to fence it off from the billowing white surge that writhed after the rudder blade and the trailing yawl, so close below. Among the petition's subscribers were several pretty girls of an age at which their only important business was beauty and levity and who gave small heed to the document's purport, readily assuming that nothing they were asked to sign needed ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... "And it also has a rudder that you can unship and use as a safety razor. You might open up a barber shop with it, only the eminent citizens over here don't have any more whiskers than ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 "gull-wing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... aeroplane "yawed" wildly, like a craft without a rudder. Then suddenly it dashed down toward the earth, smoke and flames leaping ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... stated that a well-known yacht failed to win the prize in the late race, because her rudder slipped out of her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support or ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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
... heavily laden with merchandise and passengers, and whose commander and general was Don Mathia de Landecho, encountered many storms on the voyage, so that at one time it became necessary to throw considerable cargo overboard, and they lost their rudder while in thirty-seven degrees of latitude, six hundred leguas from the Filipinas, and a hundred and fifty from Xapon. Seeing themselves unable to continue their voyage, it was decided to put back to the Filipinas. They set about this ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... button and the helicopters, set into the surface of the single sturdy wing, snapped up their shafts and began to spin, effectually slowing the forward motion of the plane. Eyer fish-tailed her with his rudder to help cut ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... Mariana's feet. But that wasn't life, he realized; existence seemed to become more and more heedless of the proprieties, of the simplest concessions to duty. He saw the world as a ship which, admirably navigated a score or more years ago, had jammed its rudder. No one could predict what rocks the unmanageable sphere might ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be only a dream? I can scarcely realize what is going on. It seems to me; I have passed through a year of visions. That I should be at Vauxe again! A roof I once thought rife with my destiny. And perhaps it may prove so. And, were it not for the memory of one event, I should be a ship without a rudder." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... junk, beside the cumbersome rudder windlass, leaning nonchalantly against the great carved rail, were Captain Nathan Falk and Chief Mate Kipping. That the slow craft could not cross our bows, they saw as well as we. Indeed, I question if they cared a farthing whether they sighted ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... it went on, and Ralph began to grow weary of the inconsequence of the debaters, and their entire inability to hold to the salient points; but he still kept his hand on the rudder of the discussion, avoided the fogs of the supernatural and religious on the one side towards which the little old man persisted in pushing, and, on the other, the blunt views of the butcher and the man who had told the foul stories; and contented himself with watching and learning the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... on the value of the impulses of Morality. "The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel," said the hermit to Zadig, and Spinoza had already said the same thing in other words. The passions are by their nature Immoralities. To Morality is left the impulses which guide the rudder, of little value when no ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... seen from the engravings, is fitted with a rudder of a new type, known as Thomson & Biles' rudder, with which it is claimed that all the advantage of a balanced rudder is obtained, while the ship loses the length due to the adoption of such a rudder. It is formed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... the water are all right as long as they are far enough apart; but let these boats drift or be guided too close together, and there is great danger of a collision. Your affections are to you what the rudder is to the boat, and reason is your pilot. They will guide you aright if ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... in the works of his genius—and he has himself told us that his real studies were those lonely and desultory ones of which he has given a copy in the third chapter of Waverley, where the hero is represented as "driving through the sea of books, like a vessel without pilot or rudder;" that is to say, obeying nothing but the strong breath of native inclination:—"He had read, and stored in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though ill-arranged and miscellaneous information. In English literature, he was master of Shakespeare ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... it, returned it in silence, and leaning over the taffrail (the two men were on deck) looked down for some time at the play of the eddies round the schooner's rudder. At last he said without ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... enormous construction, towering there above him. He saw rows of lighted windows, each cased in shining metal; a V-pointed pilot-house—the same where the still figure had dropped over the sill of the open window—a high-raised rudder of artful curve, vast as the broadside of a barn; railed galleries running along the underbody of the fuselage, between the floats and far aft ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... keel is of palm beneath, Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath, And a rudder of palm it ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... out the shabby sail, set the rudder for a long tack downstream, and was off. The breeze was coming in gentle puffs, so that the boat moved slowly through the water, the ripples making a sleepy whisper under the bow and the tiller, now and then, jerking lazily under his hand. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... men inside, seated on water-ballast tanks; sufficient room being left at the ends inside for the accommodation of ten or twelve shipwrecked persons; while a mate near the bow, and the captain near the stern in charge of the rudder, were stationed in recesses in the deck about three feet deep. The whole apparatus was almost cylindrical, and watertight, save in the self-acting ventilators, which could only give access to the smallest portion of water. I considered that, if the lifeboat fully manned were launched into ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone she would ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... The motor's locked up in there with fuel enough to keep her going for three months. I can't stop her or move the rudder without getting into the case, and nothing but dynamite would dent ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... these words 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 ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... obtain a regular commission in the Marine Corps was John E. Rudder of Paducah, Kentucky, a Marine veteran and graduate of the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Analyzing the case for the commandant in May 1948, the Director of Plans and Policies noted that the law did not require the Marine Corps to commission ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... fact, was that he was not a man at all. He was weakest where a real man is strongest. He was merely a chameleon taking his color from whatever he happened to light upon; a handsome boat which could never get anywhere because it had no rudder; an ornamental butterfly driving aimlessly before the nearest breeze. He meant well, in a general way, but his good intentions proved descending paving-stones because he was constitutionally incapable of meaning anything ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... which used to resort in great numbers to the Bay of Islands to refit; at present, besides the Rattlesnake, the only vessel here is a brig from Hobart, bound to California, which put in to this place to get a new rudder. Livestock is plentiful and the prices ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray |
