"Skipper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may make a good sailor," said Aunt Martha. "Indeed, if it were not for these British ships hovering about our shores it is likely that Skipper Cary would have been off to the Banks ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... of boats ply between Bellport and the Great South Beach, whither the summer visitors are in the habit of repairing for the purpose of tumbling in the surf on the outside. In one of these, with a fair wind and a skipper acquainted with the numerous shoals, it is very pleasant to sail across the bay, and then turning round Mastic Point to follow the channel connecting the Great South with East Bay, and so to reach Moriches. From that point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to their lines and, let us hope, to their senses, the remnant of Stabber's band, chased far into the Sweetwater Hills before they would stop, while Henry's column kept Lame Wolf in such active movement the misnamed chieftain richly won his later sobriquet "The Skipper." The general had come whirling back from Beecher in his Concord wagon, to meet Mr. Hay as they bore that invalid homeward from the Big Horn. Between the fever-weakened trader and the famous frontier soldier there had been brief conference—all ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... rougher it grew, And still harder it blew, And the thunder kick'd up such a hullballoo, That even the Skipper began to look blue; While the crew, who were few, Look'd very queer, too, And seem'd not to know what exactly to do, And they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs, "Wind N. E.—blows a hurricane—rains cats and dogs." In short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as That Shakspeare ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... ship came from Norway to Greenland. The skipper's name was Thorfinn Karlsefni, and he was the son of Thord, called "Horsehead," and a grandson of Snorri. Thorfinn Karlsefni, who was a very wealthy man, passed the winter there in Greenland, with Lief Ericsson. He very soon set his heart upon a maiden called Gudrid, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... was nearly abeam now, and several times Jack almost held his breath as the waves lifted the Bessy bodily to leeward and threatened to cast her into the breaking waters but a few fathoms away. But the skipper knew his boat well and humoured her through the waves, taking advantage of every squall to eat up a little to windward, but always keeping her sails full and plenty of way on her. At last they were through the swashway; ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... was sinking rapidly by the head, with the twisting sidelong motion that was soon to aim her on her course two miles down. Murdock saw the skipper swept out; but did not move. Captain Smith was but one of a multitude of lost at that moment. Murdock may have known that the last desperate thought of the gray mariner was to get upon his bridge and die ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... chaff. "But we're quite.... Skipper, he's called. You don't call him captain. He's just like me. He's no better; ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... me when I set sail (I didn't set sail myself, you understand, but the men did it for me, or rather for my friends, Mr and Mrs. SKIPPER, to whose kindness I owe my present position—which is far from a secure one,—but no matter), you said to me, YORICK Yotting has no buffoonery left in him? I too, who was once the life of all the Lifes and Souls of a party! Where is that party now? Where am ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... Prizes! Stow! Stow! Make fast and belay—Heisa! Heisa! One long pull! One long pull! Young blood! More mud! There, there! Yellow hair! Great and small! One and all!" The "yellow hair" refers to the fair-haired Norsemen. What the master told the steersman might have been said by any skipper of our own day: "Keep full and by! Luff! Con her! Steady! Keep close!" But what he told the "Boatswain" next takes us back three hundred years and more. "Bear stones and limepots full of lime to the top" (whence they would make it pretty ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle. Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among the warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants: "Anything going my way, this trip?" He would scorn to do it. Before ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... With him on his way home from Africa he had brought among other MSS. a bundle of notes relating both to his "preliminary canter" and to Zanzibar, and the adventures of these notes were almost as remarkable as those of the Little Hunchback. On the West Coast of Africa the bundle was "annexed" by a skipper. The skipper having died, the manuscripts fell into the hands of his widow, who sold them to a bookseller, who exposed them for sale. An English artillery officer bought them, and, in his turn, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and the old scow, with the head free, swung around and plunged off the ice ledge with a heavy splash into the open water again. Then Reddy, who was almost equally convulsed, came to his senses. "Now you've done it, Dutchy; you're a fine skipper, you are! How do you expect to get us back to shore again?" The steering oar was left behind us on the ice, and there we were drifting on the open water, with no rudder and no oar to ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... Copenhagen pities the young Queen, attributing the coolness which the King shewed towards her, ere he set out on his voyage, to the malicious advice of Holcke." The confusion of this minion may be easier conceived than described; whilst the King, giving the Skipper a handful of ducats, bade him speak the truth and shame the devil. As soon, however, as the King spoke in Danish, the Skipper knew him, and looking at him with love and reverence, said in a low, subdued ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... boat talked incessantly while the band blared on. Strolling Argentines eyed the woman's blond beauty at a respectful distance. They trotted to and fro. They loped. They postured. She paid no attention. To her they were nonexistent. To the American skipper's conversation she replied only with a flicker of the eyelids, a fleeting smile of her lips. Shane she seemed to ignore. She was so clean, so cool, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... dicere formas[7]. Tis the mind of man, and woman to affect new fashions; but to our Mynsatives[8] for sooth, if he come like to your Besognio,[9] or your bore, so he be rich, or emphaticall, they care not; would I might never excell a dutch Skipper in Courtship, if I did not put distaste into my cariage of purpose; I knew I should not please ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... much about such things, but I never mistrusted 'twas necessary for you to go cruisin' like that to collect notes. Seems consider'ble like sendin' the skipper up town to buy onions for the cook. Couldn't the—the feller that owed the money ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... second officer, biting off a chew from a plug of tobacco, "but the skipper can't be seen just now. Just came aboard a little while ago and there was a friend on either side of him. You know how it is," and he winked. "He's below now, sound asleep, and 'twould be as much as my billet's worth to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... sailor of the day who always at the risk of his life sticks to the skipper to the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... generally has some voyager under his special care, and my vis-a-vis, his protegee upon this trip, was a most charming and delightful young lady on her way to rejoin her family in the Far West. The skipper's seat is vacant at breakfast time, and should the weather be rough, at the other meals also. If the elements are very boisterous, the "fiddles" are screwed on to the tables, and on them a lively ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... he or his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know whether you were here, I said you were. The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you—that they would hang about outside for half ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... the Thames. On the way we was tuise stoopt by men of war to know whither their ware any seamen in it, that they might be sent to the fleet: at which we alleadged Captain Blawprine[44] G. Moor was much troubled, for he was exceeding skipper like. To morrow tymously we tooke post about 6 a cloack, and reach Dover about one; yet we got not passage til ij at night. What a distressed brother I was upon the sea neids not hear be told, since its ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... it began to rain, and after the rain came a gale from the eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and ordered the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports closed. This last order seemed an excess of precaution; but Dodd was not yet thoroughly acquainted with his ship's qualities: and the hard cash round his neck made him cautious. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was never so glad to get near a fire in my life. The skipper of the cheese let us get in the engine room and dry out. Can you see that wet bunch of fluffs with all the highlight off and their marcels around their necks. I'll bet there was a whole lot of ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... Master Lirriper hailed the skipper as he appeared on the deck of the Susan. "I have brought you two more passengers for London. They are going ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle's slender and slippery, 320 Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling in loco desipere Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although 'tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to Whitter's poetic imagination. One is the slender body of legendary lore that has come down to us from the colonial days of New England, including a few tales of the trials and persecutions of the early Quaker. "Skipper Ireson's Ride" belongs to this group of ballads. The other favorite field of Whittier's poetic fancy was the humble rural life of his own childhood—"In School-Days" and "Snow-Bound" belong to this class of New England idyls. The latter will always be a favorite with ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... a droll, deprecating glance, and Louis laughed heartily; but James was silent, and as soon as they had entered the little parlour, declared that it would not do to encourage that old skipper—he was waylaying them like the Ancient Mariner, and was ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tyler on his tin gas schooner, thinkin' to mesilf it was a holiday—and all the fun I had was insthructin' the gasoline engineer in the mysteries of how to expriss one's sintimints without injurin' the skipper's feelin's? Well, I landed in the bay and walked about in the woods, which is foine for the smell of thim which is like fresh tar; and one afternoon I find two legs and small feet stickin' out of a hole under a stump. I pulled on the two feet and the legs ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... growing old," the Captain said; "Me dancing days are done; But while I'm skipper of this ship I'll skip ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... story-book salt, hey? Show you a hunk o' wood, and you'll tell me the family history of the skipper of the hooker it came out of, hey? Barry, you're ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... it too late? Is it still possible to survive? The ship is now indeed upon the rocks and the skipper in his bunk below drinking bottled ditchwater. But perhaps a Captain Shotover, drunk on the milk of human kindness rather than rum, will emerge upon the quarterdeck and, blowing his whistle, call all hands on deck before the last rending ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... my men," the skipper said. "In another five minutes, we should be throwing off the ropes and hoisting sails. Now that you have come, we shall do so, at once. The tide is just right for us, and we have ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... landed sixty pipes of Madeira at Boston without paying duty. In the month of June another cargo arrived at Boston, and when the excise-officer stepped on board he was seized and confined below, while the wine was sent on shore. The officer was afterwards liberated, and on the following morning the skipper of the sloop entered four or five pipes at the custom-house, declaring that this was the whole of his cargo. Aware of the falsehood of this statement, the commissioners ordered a comptroller to seize the sloop, and to fix the king's broad arrow upon her. This was the signal for a riot. A mob, headed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lowering a boat," said the old tar, who had first spoken, who was now taking a squint at her through a small pocket telescope; "it is the skipper coming ashore for his papers, mails, and perhaps to jack up ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... superintendence of this new and extensive country was committed, and this body, during the previous year, had sent out an expedition, in a vessel called the 'New-Netherland,' 'whereof Cornelius Jacobs of Hoorn was skipper, with thirty families, mostly Walloons, to plant a colony there.' They arrived in the beginning of May, (1623,) and the old document, from which we ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... odes, but a political education is a great asset to any man. Our Mess President, William, once assisted a friend to lose a parliamentary election, and his experience has been invaluable to us. The moment we are tired of fighting and want billets, the Squadron sits down where it is and the Skipper passes the word along for William. William dusts his boots, adjusts his tie and heads for the most prepossessing farm in sight. Arrived there he takes off his hat to the dog, pats the pig, asks the cow after the calf, salutes the farmer, curtseys to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... dragged up by some sixty men who run along the bank. The bank, however, is usually steep, with dangerous rocks projecting out into the river, and over these the men have to scramble like monkeys, still pulling at their rope. Often neither the boat nor the river is visible from the rocky path, but the skipper of the boat is in constant communication with the towing men by means of drums on board. Six men are always ready to clear the rope if it catches against any projection, and others, who are stark naked, do the same work in the water. On the cliffs along the river, grooves and marks ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... draught. These inlets are so influenced by the action of storms, and their shores and locations are so changed by them, that the cattle may graze to-day in tranquil happiness where only a generation ago the old skipper navigated his craft. During June of the year 1821 a fierce gale opened Sandy Point Inlet with a foot depth of water, but it closed in 1831. Green Point Inlet was cut through the beach during a gale in 1837, and was closed up seven years ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... skipper of the disabled craft. "Hit a submerged log," he explained to Tom, as the work of rescue proceeded. "Stove a hole in the bow, but we stuffed coats and things in, and made it a slow leak. Kept the engine going as long as we could, but I thought ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... he declared. "Doggone you, Van, you know we won't go without the skipper, and you're shovin' us ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that the jury could have brought in no other verdict, considering the nature of the evidence supplied; but many people declared that Captain Hervey of The Diver should have been called. If the deceased had enemies, said these wiseacres, it was probable that he would have talked about them to the skipper. But they forgot that the witnesses called at the inquest, including the mother of the dead man, had insisted that Bolton had no enemies, so it is difficult to see what they expected ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... he said, "that we shall not be able to make her out; the distance is almost too great to distinguish her from other vessels, although the whiteness of her sails would assist us to a recognition. If the skipper got under way at the hour I told him, he ought about this time to be rounding the headland that you see ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... why, ride on it, of course. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' or rather 'lady and gentleman.' Attention! You will both be in marching, or rather in sailing, order by four this afternoon, for at five we start for the Canaries. Now, no remarks; I'm a skipper, and I expect to be obeyed, or I'll put you ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... conjure it all up. The skipper, most likely, had finished his tea, and the mate was hard at work at his, when the leak had been discovered, or some derelict had been run into, or whatever it ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... a fortunate time. For a long while previous Nature had persistently enveloped her face in a veil, giving an air of mystery which the summer guests did not appreciate. The skipper of the yacht which conveys us when we circumnavigate the island tells us "there is a fog factory near by," a statement which, for a few days, we are inclined to credit. The nabobs of Newport, the Sybarites of Nahant, and even the commonplace rusticators at other shore resorts have been served ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... tart, and apple brandy came the short, bright afternoon, passed by Lewis Rand upon the brig from the Indies with Tom Mocket and little Vinie and a wrinkled skipper who talked of cocoanuts and strange birds and red-handkerchiefed pirates, and spent by Gideon first in business with the elder Mocket, and then in conversation with Adam Gaudylock. Lewis, returning at supper-time to the Bird in Hand, found the hunter altered no whit from ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... been discovered and betrayed to the skipper by some officious noodle, and Captain Willis was ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... you I was born at sea. My father was a merchant skipper of Boston. I don't remember him very well, for he died when I was seven, but I have a vague sort of an idea that he was a big man with big dark eyes and a great nose like the beak of a bird. He had run away to sea ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of the river here becomes very difficult, for the water is shallow at this season of the year and there are many sand banks which frequently change their position. Charts are therefore, practically useless and each skipper has to feel his way each voyage. Indeed, the whole time two boys sit on the bows of the vessel with long poles sounding the water and shouting out the depth. It is curious that when the vessel is travelling in shallow water, the engines at once go slow of their own accord. One of the engineers explained ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... down the coast, and seemed happier on their southern limits. She had taken to reading the political papers and speeches, and some cheap American histories. Captain Bunker's crew, profoundly convinced that their skipper's wife was a "woman's rights" fanatic, with the baleful qualities of "sea lawyer" superadded, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the tortoiseshell and the white and the blue—the little blue butterflies that flutter over the gold and red of the cornfields. But the average man does not even know by name such varieties as the Camberwell Beauty, the Dingy Skipper, the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, and the White-letter Hairstreak. As for the moth, are there not as many sorts of moths as there are words in a dictionary? Many men give all the pleasant hours of their ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... world. At their house, and doubtless through their means, Girard saw the ladies of the town, among them one of forty years, a spinster, Mdlle. Gravier, daughter of an old contractor for the royal works at the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who never left her, her cousin La Reboul, daughter of a skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman, too, who really meant to succeed her, though very nearly her own age, being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of Girard's admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were sometimes introduced a few young girls, such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... comment as we hobbled past was, "Dress up those fours!"—and tired as we were, the fours dressed up. When, however, Captain H——, who had gone to the rear of the company to chase up stragglers, came by, his greeting was a little more personal. "All well, H——?" he asked, and our gallant skipper answered, "All present, sir." It showed rather plainly the difference in feeling that existed for some time between those who had been through the Second Battle of Ypres and those who had not—a difference that it took much hard fighting ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... knows, it would be almost an impossibility for sixteen sail-boats to go any where in company without trying their speed, especially if they were sailed by boys. When our heroes stepped into their vessels, each skipper made up his mind that his boat must be the first one to touch the opposite shore. Not a word was said about a race, but every one knew that one would be sure to come off. Every thing was done in a hurry, and the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... be fit for anything. At last he believed that I was in earnest, and with a light heart I turned my back upon Brook-green, and shipped on board the old Rodney. But, I say, old fellow, what sort of a chap is our skipper? He looks like a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... stations, were people whose like she had never before seen. And their speech, plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her, and sometimes puzzled her. Some of the men who rode short distances in the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys. They called the conductor "skipper," and hailed ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Shakspeare covering the stage with Titans, and forming them with Titanic thoughts, and endowing them with Titanic voices, has rendered it indispensable for all the little fellows of the present time to be prodigiously Titanic too. Did you ever hear the skipper of a steamer bellowing and roaring through a speaking-trumpet, when his ordinary voice could have had no effect amidst the awful noises of a hurricane, and the sea and the breakers under his lee? Nothing could be fitter than his attitude on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... and my friend,—his Saturday's work in his ministerial capacity well over when he had completed his two discourses,—had to begin the Sabbath morning early as the morning itself began, by taking his stand at the helm, in his capacity of skipper of the Betsey. With the prospect of the services of the Sabbath before him, and after working all Saturday to boot, it was rather hard to set him down to a midnight spell at the helm, but he could not be wanted at such a time, as we had no other such helmsman aboard. The gale, thickened with rain, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... your old recklessness. You were ever one to take any risk, but I will not hear of such a venture as this. Do you think I will allow the hope of all England to be staked for a pirate? And would you break our commander of her rank? All that Dorothy need do at Portsmouth is to curtsey to the first skipper she meets, and I'll warrant he will carry us ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... white lettering on its body, it was officially one of His Majesty's land ships. It no more occurred to anyone to suggest that it move on and clear the road than to argue with a bulldog which confronts you on a path. I imagined that the feelings of the young officer who was its skipper must have been much the same as those of a man acting as his own chauffeur and having a breakdown on a holiday in a section of town where the population was as dense as it was curious in the early days of motoring. For months he had been living a cloistered life to keep his friends from ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Adventurous Merchant Skippers.—Foreign trade at Athens is fairly well systematized, but it still partakes of the nature of an adventure. The name for "skipper" (naukleros) is often used interchangeably for "merchant." Nearly all commerce is by sea, for land routes are usually slow, unsafe, and inconvenient[*]; the average foreign trader is also a shipowner, probably too the actual working captain. He has no special commodity, but will handle everything ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... old barometer," suggested another, "that he used to have when he was a steamboat skipper. I'm sure he'd let me have it. It's in the attic now, where nobody looks ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Stromness represented the Atlantic Ocean. The Outer Holm we called "America," Graemsay Island was "Africa," and the Ness Point was "Spain," while a small rock that stood far out in the bay was "St. Helena." Tom Kinlay was, by his own appointment, our skipper; Robbie Rosson and Willie Hercus were classed able seamen; and my dog, Selta, and I were called upon to do duty for both passengers and cargo, curiously enough, sailing with the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... parson with his heart in the right place, Poul Anker by name. Jens Kofoed sat in his church; he had been to the wars, and was fit to take command. Also, the two were friends. Presently a web of conspiracy spread quietly through the island, gripping priest and peasant, skipper and trader, alike. Its purpose was to rout out the Swedes. The Hasle trooper and parson were the leaders; but their secret was well kept. With the tidings that the Dutch fleet had forced its way through to Copenhagen with aid for the besieged, and ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... batteries opened both from the south shore and from Isle St Ignace. Carleton's heaviest gun was a 9-pounder; while Easton had four 12-pounders, one of them mounted on a rowing battery that soon forced the British to retreat. The skipper of the schooner containing the powder magazine wanted to surrender on the spot, especially when he heard that the Americans were getting some hot shot ready for him. But Carleton retreated upstream, twelve miles above Sorel, to Lavaltrie, just above Berthier on the north shore, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... which I belonged was proceeding from Rangoon, and one evening, after having come to an anchor abreast of a small inlet just above Elephant Creek, at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, I accompanied the skipper and a friend in the boat up the inlet to a small village to procure a supply of fruit. On our return my companions expressed their determination to bathe; but as I did not feel inclined to do so, I seated myself in the stern, and taking out of my pocket one of Scott's novels, amused myself ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looked at what Captain Luke Miller had given me, I handed the certificate to this skipper, ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... cheerfully. "They put in a new man every revolution. If the wrong party's got in, they've likely shipped your husband's correspondent too, and might be waiting to get a reception for you with nigger soldiers and ball cartridges. Shouldn't wonder if the skipper got wind of something of the kind, and that's why he didn't put in. If your husband hadn't been so well known, you see, we might ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... the long run does much to equalize the pressure of a time of dearth and diminish those extreme oscillations of prices which interfere with the even, healthy course of trade. A government which, in a season of high prices, does anything to check such speculation, acts about as sagely as the skipper of a wrecked vessel who should refuse to put his crew upon ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... stock of patience was at an end, and there was, moreover, a long and undischarged account between himself and his late skipper. He rose and ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and the skipper's sent him up to ride on a boom, and he's got to stay there till he's ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... in small boats from the shore to the ship, and the trip cost two dollars and a half. I waited till I had seen some of the boats make a trip or two, and then choosing one that had a sober skipper, I made the venture. It was said that one drunken boatman allowed his boat to drift into some breakers and all ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... an Autumnal day, when he found himself becalmed off a small island not down on the chart, the skipper felt no little uneasiness. He paced his deck impatiently, occasionally turning his eye to every quarter, surveying the horizon for some sign ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... choking cry, he struck out for the black shape of the tug, now only a short distance away. Somebody heard and flung down a line. He clutched at it and, by good fortune, grasped it. Head downward he was drawn on board by the aid of a long boathook, and hauled, dripping, before the skipper. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... night in Dacy's place at Holdover when the four 'breeds' were waiting for me in the dark room." He put the Colt back in its holster, and stood ruminating. "What was it the burglar fellow said about the skipper of this outfit? 'He's in on more than anybody would think.' Well, I'd better watch myself," and Bat smiled, though his eyes narrowed at the same time; "for when a bald-headed old simp with a flute is on the cross, he's sure to be the limit. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... The rope made fast at your end of the tender," replied the skipper of the craft impatiently; for the sergeant was entirely ignorant of nautical terms. "Take the end of the rope in your hand, and jump ashore as soon as it ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... lingers and reflects a bit of scenery, but for the most part it can only catch gleams of color that mingle with the prevailing tone and enrich without usurping on it. This volume contains some of the best of Mr. Whittier's productions in this kind. "Skipper Ireson's Ride" we hold to be by long odds the best of modern ballads. There are others nearly as good in their way, and all, with a single exception, embodying native legends. In "Telling the Bees," Mr. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Hopperdown, who had been boatswain on the Bonny Lass at the time that she so regrettably lost her passengers overboard. He too had been at Leeward Island, and may have somewhat wondered and questioned as to the happenings during the brig's brief stay there. He saw and recognized his old skipper hobbling along the Bristol quays, and perhaps from pity took the shabby creature home with him. Hopperdown dealt in sailors' slops, and had a snug room or two behind the shop. Here for a while the former ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... brief over my act of folly. Instead of making at once for Stimcoe's, I bent my steps towards Market Strand. The St. Mawes packet lay there, and I stood on the edge of the quay, watching her preparations for casting off—the skipper clearing the gangway and politely helping aboard, between the warning notes of his whistle, belated marketers who came ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone, skipper." ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... regarded as guests by the staff officers. Peter had met Kohlvihr in Warsaw before the thought of war—a good-tempered, if dull and bibulous old man, he had seemed in the midst of semi-civilian routine; but a different party here afield. Peter recalled the saying of old sailors that you never know a skipper until ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... first presented himself to the Captain of the Hydrographer, the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored tolerance—good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had combative red-gold hair. His steel eyes were shaded by long straw-colored lashes; ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... was falling, I stumbled across three of the disgraced and disfigured fishermen. They were alone and forlorn. They had no hut and did not know what would happen if another wet night swept over them. One happened to be the skipper of one of the trawlers which had been sunk and he vehemently denied the charge that they had been guilty of laying or sweeping mines. They were attending to their trawls when they were ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... occurred that morning which for a time drove the unpardonable armistice from Brock's thoughts. A heavy mist hung over the water. It hid the shore. Deceived by this, the skipper of the Chippewa, who thought he was in Fort Erie harbour, discovered, as the fog lifted, that they were on the American side and close to Buffalo. The situation was perilous and dramatic. With the melting of the haze the wind ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate underwing ground into down as he rolls and flutters; for the first shot rarely kills at once with an amateur; there's too much excitement. Splendid sport, that! but I'm not going into it second-hand. I promised to tell you a story, now the skipper's fast, and the night is too warm to think of sleep down in that wretched bunk;—what another torture Dante might have lavished on his Inferno, if he'd ever slept in a fishing-smack! No. The moonlight makes me sentimental! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... at Douarnenez. The diligence had gone. A fishing-boat was starting for Audierne. He decided to go by it. Breton fishermen are usually shy of storm to foolishness, and one or two of the crew urged the drunken skipper not to start, for there were signs of a south-west wind, too friendly to the Bay des Trepasses. The skipper was, however, cheerfully reckless, and growled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... skipper had turned her round and was making headway against the waves, but still her bow would not lift, and the captain wept still more. His womanish behaviour disgusted me. At last a quiet passenger, an experienced ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... waves like a feather, and thrust her bows under so far, that John had to waste some of his enthusiasm upon the baling kettle. Paul had not hoisted the jib, for the mainsail was all the old craft could stagger under, and her youthful skipper expected soon to be obliged to reef. The Flyaway was at the eastward of the island, driving over and through the waves like a phantom. The spray was dashing over her bows, and her jib was wet several feet above the boltrope. She was working to windward till she could clear the ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... hear what the skipper said on board that schooner?' pursued the captain. 'Well, I tell you he talked straight. The French have let us alone for a long time; It can't last longer; they've got their eye on us; and as sure as you live, in three ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the course of my life met with or heard of more than once or twice, people of the same names, and those very uncommon ones, who were in no way related to each other; nevertheless, I venture to tell your correspondent J. F. M. that about twenty years ago there was living the skipper of a coasting vessel, trading between Bridport and London, named Caleb Clark. He or his family are probably ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... Hudson, and a right good skipper was I; and my name will last to the world's end, in spite of all the wrong I did. For I discovered Hudson River, and I named Hudson's Bay; and many have come in my wake that dared not have shown me the way. But I was a ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Norway and had a prosperous voyage, and Audunn spent the following winter with the skipper Thorir, who had a farm in Morr. The summer after that, they sailed out to Greenland, where they stayed for ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... walking his quarter-deck, With a troubled brow and a bended neck; One eye is down through the hatchway cast, The other turns up to the truck on the mast; Yet none of the crew may venture to hint "Our skipper hath ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... sailed their ships from India and the Far East across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea, whence they transferred their cargoes to caravans which completed the trip to Cairo and Alexandria. By taking advantage of monsoons,—the favorable winds which blew steadily in certain seasons,—the skipper of a merchant vessel could make the voyage from India to Egypt in somewhat less than three months. It was often possible to shorten the time by landing the cargoes at Ormuz and thence dispatching them by caravan across the desert of Arabia to Mecca, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... had a plan by which the lot of us could have made a lot of money. Needless to say, we were ready enough to go in with them. Already they had a scheme of getting a ship such as they particularly needed. There was at that time lying at Hong-Kong a sort of tramp steamer, the Elizabeth Robinson, the skipper of which wanted a crew for a trip to Chemulpo, up the Yellow Sea. Salter Quick got himself into the confidence and graces of this skipper, and offered to man his ship for him, and he packed her as far as he could—with ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... not been too dark for the shade of the enemy to be perceived, so his skipper gave one of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the gossip and made this man put his wife right, forcing through her an elucidation of the silly affair in such a way as to spare Helen's feelings and cover the busy-tongued magpies with confusion. Yet he hesitated. It is a wise skipper who trims his sails to every breeze. He thanked his informant and left him. Entering the lobby, he saw the girl hurrying ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Johnny Heinhold who secretly warned me across the bar that I was getting pickled and advised me to take small beers. But as long as Captain Nelson drank large beers, my pride forbade anything else than large beers. And not until the skipper ordered his first small beer did I order one for myself. Oh, when we came to a lingering fond farewell, I was drunk. But I had the satisfaction of seeing Old Scratch as drunk as I. My youthful modesty scarcely let me dare believe that the hardened old buccaneer ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... whom he was now calling, at her especial request, "Aunt Clara." She readily understood any affair that he chose to explain to her; understood about his shell and said it was the most beautiful thing in all the world. She understood, too, and was deeply sympathetic about Skipper, the dog. Skipper was one of a series of puppies that Bean had appropriated from the public highway. Some had shamefully deserted him after a little time of pampering. Others, and these were the several that ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Ah!" said the skipper. "What o' the Barbary rovers, then! They lack slaves and are ever ready to trade, though they be niggardly payers. I never heard of none that returned once they had him safe aboard their galleys. I ha' done some trading with them, bartering human freights for spices and eastern ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Climbing-fish, n. a fish of the north of New South Wales and of Queensland, Periophthalmus australis, Castln., family Gobiidae. Called also Skipper. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... parents an' guardeens, an' handed her over safe an' sound. They—the guardeens—was gret people whar they lived, an' they wanted to give Father a pot o' money; but he said he warn't that kind. 'I'm a Yankee skipper!' says he. ''Twas as good as a meal o' vittles to me to smash that black feller!' says he. 'I don't want no pay for it. An' as for the lady, 'twas a pleasure to obleege her,' he says; 'an' I'd do it agin any day in the week, 'xcept Sunday, when I don't fight, ez a rewl, when I kin help it.' ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Ballads" grew out of this very power of clinging to the same places and the old loves, and what an incomparable group they make! "Telling the Bees," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "My Playmate," "In School Days," are sufficient in themselves to set the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the thin old fellow, with the black coat, faded yellow-green on the shoulders, who was talking to Skipper ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... if he had been asked an inaudible question, and tried again. Nothing happened. "Skipper," he said over his shoulder, "Have a quick look at the meters behind you there. Are ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best, And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde, And a secret her skipper had never confessed, Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride; And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome, The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin. O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home, But nobody knew where ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... to go to my stateroom on "Waterspin" to change wet clothes for dry ones, and when I was ready to take up my part of skipper, no one was on deck save the Chaperon and Tibe—a subdued Tibe buttoned up in a child's cape, which his mistress insisted on buying in Amsterdam for him to ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the opportunity of commanding the ship and escaping, but would not adventure upon it without his advice. He said, Let all alone, for the Lord will set all at liberty in a way more conducive to his own glory and our own safety. Accordingly when they arrived, the skipper who received them at Leith, being to carry them no farther, delivered them to another to carry them to Virginia, to whom they were represented as thieves and robbers. But when he came to see them, and found they were all grave sober ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... want?" the skipper demanded. "This man," said one of them, pointing to D'ri. "He's a British sailor. We ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... the skipper, moving up and taking a look, "it p'ints d'rectly to labbard, an' there's ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... western islands occupied two years, and I became an expert skipper as time went on, and many, many hours he and I sat up together and perused the wonderful books he had, and discussed a wide range of subjects which the readings suggested. It was a feast for me, and it was such a pleasure to him, which I ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... pardon, marm," said the coxswain, after standing silent about a minute, "but could not you do the piping after the youngster's gone? If I stay here long I shall be blowed up by the skipper, as sure as ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... battering sails frozen stiff as iron. It was Peru we were bound for,—Peru where the submarine city lay beneath uncounted fathoms waiting for us. The captain and I were the only ones Acuma, the half-breed, had taken into his confidence; all the others sailed on a blind errand, trusting to the skipper, who was a shrewd man and severe. And the brigantine wallowed around the Cape and toiled on and on up the coast, and every day Acuma grew more restless; every day he cast about the water with eyes that seemed to pierce to the very ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... unquestioned master of their lives; and except for civility, they bestirred themselves like so many American hotel clerks. The spectator was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which the skipper of a trading dandy ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many a messenger riding past, And many a skipper whose ship sails fast; But none of them all, though he rides or rows, Flies as free as the heart of Great Heart goes, Free as the eagle and full as the tide: 'And over the valley and on let ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... away these first days of the family's return to their town house, old Aaron Rockharrt was sifting the evidence of the story told by Captain Ross; he proved the truth of the skipper's account; and he failed to connect the young man's late visit on that fatal night with the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... steamer Dacia, which was formerly under German registry and belonged to the Hamburg-American Line, and takes her to Brest; a French prize court will determine the validity of her transfer to American registry; British skipper reports that the German converted cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich sank a British ship and a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The skipper predicted like a prophet. The ship was in the bay, and it was midnight or nearly so; for certain stars had climbed into certain quarters of the sky, and after their fashion were ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... schooner came round the point, running before the sea. She might have got clear away, because it was easy enough for her, had she clawed a short way out, risking the beam sea, to have made the harbour where the fishers were. But the skipper kept her close in, and presently she struck on a long tongue of rocks that trended far out eastward. The tops of her masts seemed nearly to meet, so it appeared as if she had broken her back. The seas flew sheer over her, and the men had to climb ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... but I begin to love you, for you play the game very proper and soundly. Reuben, Jeremy, and Black Dick alone are in the plot; so why should more escort her? For the skipper and crew have their ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Nigel, my son," interrupted the captain, firmly. "Mr Moor is second mate. I say so, an' if I, the skipper and owner o' this brig, don't know it, I'd like to know who does! Now, look here, lad. You've always had a bad habit of underratin' yourself an' contradictin' your father. I'm an old salt, you know, an' I tell 'ee that for the time you've bin at sea, an' the opportunities you've had, you're ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... ter speak boas'ful, after the tone you took with me this mornin'"—Bill spoke with scarcely dissembled pride—"but that's where the cleverness comes in. You see, there ain't no skipper to 'er— leastways not till ter-morrow. The old man's taken train an' off to Bristol, to attend a revival meetin', or something o' the sort—bein' turned pious since 'is wife died, w'ich is about eighteen months ago. I got that from the mate, when 'e shipped ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... captain of the sloop-o'-war Jamestown could not have sent a squad of men after me with instructions to bring me back off foreign soil dead or alive, but in practice that is just what he would have done. Theory and practice have a habit of differing, especially in the actions of an irate skipper who sees one of his best ward-room stewards ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... enough to drink, and was drugged and crimped as they were. I hadn't thought of that. A poor devil of a ticket of leave man, about my size, was knocked down for me, and," he added, suppressing a laugh, "will be buried, deeply lamented, in the chancel of Dornton Church. While the row was going on, the skipper, fearing to lose other men, warped out into the stream, and so knew nothing of what happened to me. When they found what they thought was my body, he was willing to identify it in the hope that the crime might be charged to the crimps, and so did the other sailor witnesses. But my brother Bill, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which are fit for the open sea. They will carry from twenty-five to fifty cords of wood, on which a profit is expected of a dollar and upwards. They have usually about three hands, the captain, or skipper, included. The men used to be hired, when I entered the business, for eight or ten dollars the month, but they now get nearly or quite twice as much. The captain usually sails the vessel on shares (unless he is himself owner in whole, or in part), ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... lingua franca of many tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a free or common accent among English-speaking men who follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New England Port; from a cockney skipper, even a Scotsman sometimes learns to drop an h; a word of a dialect is picked up from another band in the forecastle; until often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask for the man's place of birth. So it was with Mr. Jones. I thought him a Scotsman who had ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said as the skipper lit his pipe, "I daresay you would like to hear how we came to be ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing, we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts of vikings, and we knew that our skipper was master of the situation. He had steered through many a storm with firm hand and sea-wise eye. As they passed us, the large craft and the gunboats in the harbour saluted and the seamen shouted applause for the master of the only little sail-boat that ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Of course, we've got a real white man for a Skipper—and the Commander, too: that goes a long way. And they're away from drink and—other things that ain't good for 'em. Everybody has more leisure to devote to them than in peace-time: their amusements and recreations ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... silent, till Bartholomew spake, saying: "The end of it is, son, that this is Monday, and that thou shalt go aboard in the small hours of Wednesday; and meanwhile I shall look to it that thou go not away empty-handed; the skipper of the Katherine is a good man and true, and knows the seas well; and my servant Robert the Low, who is clerk of the lading, is trustworthy and wise, and as myself in all matters that look towards chaffer. The Katherine is new and stout-builded, and should be lucky, whereas she is ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... other things, also, tending to make my lot on ship-board very hard to be borne. True, the skipper himself was a trump; stood upon no quarter-deck dignity; and had a tongue for a sailor. Let me do him justice, furthermore: he took a sort of fancy for me in particular; was sociable, nay, loquacious, when I happened ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat down last, was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown, and was mostly hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a Northerner, the abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark of the other element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable looked at him hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they sat next to each other at one side of the table, and faced the three landsmen. Again ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... was a skipper once—but never mind that now. But if you want to make a piece of money out of salvage I'll tell you how if you make it ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... wreck of the Grampus, and Captain Len Guy had now uttered it for the first time. It occurred to me then that Guy was the name of the captain of the Jane, an English ship; but what of that? The captain of the Jane never lived but in the imagination of the novelist, he and the skipper of the Halbrane have nothing in common except a name which is frequently to be found in England. But, on thinking of the similarity, it struck me that the poor captain's brain had been turned by this very thing. He had conceived the notion that he was of kin to the unfortunate captain of the ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... them with bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat's flesh, and some European corn, what little the rats had spared: and for liquors, I found several cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters, and four or five gallons of rack, which I stowed by themselves. By this time the tide beginning to flow, I perceived my coat, waistcoat, and shirt, swim away, which I had left on the shore; as for my linen ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... lying twenty-five miles (American measure seventy-five miles) on both sides of the river, upwards." In another document we learn that "The West India Company being chartered, a vessel of 130 lasts, called the 'New Netherland' (whereof Cornelius Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper), with thirty families, mostly Walloons, was equipped in the spring ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... there in the "days of the empire" and everything in me quivered with longing to revisit the place where I spent my golden period of adventure. We booked on the old Yuen Sang, a friend of former days, and the skipper, Captain Percy Rolfe, handsome, cultured, and capable, was still in command. He loves the China Sea and has steadfastly refused to be lured away by offers of greater ships and more important commands. When we engaged our passage the agent ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... cried the skipper; "here it is at last, solid as the fluke of an anchor. Toss me the powder-flask Harry; look sharp, else ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Coacoanut Grove was planned to-day—time, 4:30 P.M.—the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself. I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and another whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing. Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was along with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moved perhaps by sympathy, promised not only to arrange the matter for him but to see that he made a good bargain. After a little while Walker found himself the owner of the ship. He went back to her and had what he described as the most glorious moment of his life when he gave the skipper notice and told him that he must get off his ship in half an hour. He made the mate captain and sailed on the collier for another nine months, at the end of which he sold ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... that Puritan spirit by the presence of Queen Mary's pupil, he wrapped his cloak about him and went out to study the weather, and inquire for lodgings to which he might remove Cicely. He saw nothing he liked, and determined on consulting his old mate, Goatley, who generally acted as skipper, but he had first to return so as not to delay the morning meal. He found, on coming in, Cicely helping Oil-of-Gladness in making griddle cakes, and buttering them, so as to make Mr. Heatherthwayte declare that he had not tasted the like ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notwithstanding the contending force of the current, the boat careened to her task, and made very good progress through the water. While the gallant little bark pursues her way, we will introduce her skipper ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... football, had left a very different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to; and even with persistence and industry he had not shone brilliantly in the scientific courses he had elected. The venerable dean once said that Fred was a digger, not a skimmer and skipper, and that he would be all right if only he dug long enough. He was graduated without honors and went South to throw in his fortunes with his father's Mexican projects. He was mourned at the college as the best all-round player a Madison eleven had ever boasted; but ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... at the same time Lieut. Langdale was appointed 2nd in Command of "C." There were also other changes, for Major R.E. Martin was given Command of the 4th Battalion, and was succeeded as 2nd in Command by Major W.S.N. Toller, while Captain C. Bland became skipper of "A" Company. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... not appear, and it was getting darker and darker every minute. Something must have attracted the attention of the skipper on shore, and he had doubtless landed. But while Corny was waiting for his cousin, he saw two men making their way through the grove on the other side of the fence towards the river. One of them he recognized, and gave a peculiar whistle, ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... moonlight nights by the spirit of a woman who had perished in the wreck. It had been a French vessel, wrecked five years before, and all on board were drowned—six men and one woman, the wife of the skipper. They had all been buried in one grave in the little cemetery that was on the top of the headland; and it was easy to see how the superstition of the haunting came about, for as the curate watched the spray on the rock near the wreck rise up in the moonlight and fall back into ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... when, on this May morning, Gallop, being forced to hug the shore by stormy weather, saw a small vessel lying at anchor in a cove, he immediately ran down nearer, to investigate. The crew of the sloop numbered two men and two boys, beside the skipper, Gallop. Some heavy duck-guns on board were no mean ordnance; and the New Englander determined to probe the mystery of Oldham's disappearance, though it might require some fighting. As the sloop ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... watch. "Well, don't be in too much of a rush to get them here, Colonel. We don't want them till after lunch. Delay them on Isobel; the skipper can see that they have their own lunch aboard. And entertain them with some educational films. Something to convince them that there is slightly more to the Empire than one ship-of-the-line, two cruisers ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... reason or the other, the whole ship's company, except the skipper and myself, call her 'missus.' She gazed on him like an ox-eyed Juno; you ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... poop deck, seeking to gain glimpse of the skipper, but was unable to determine his presence among the others. There were a number of persons gathered along the low rail, attracted by the unusual spectacle, and curiously watching us being herded aboard, and dispatched below, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... by no means unpleasant, excepting that it bore evident traces of past habits of intemperance; as far as his features went, they certainly reminded Harry of Mr. Stanley's portrait. The sailor's dress was that which might have been worn by a mate, or skipper, on shore; he appeared not in the least daunted, on the contrary he was quite self-possessed, with an air of determination about him which ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... all, Herb," growled he as he drew near Jim. "Dolph and the skipper have gotten into some kind of a scrape, but what the trouble is I can't figure. I'd have gone out to them in the other dory, but I couldn't find any oars. We'd better call Shane and Parsons away from guarding those ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... if these here derelicts was to foul us, skipper and crew," he observed ruefully. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... board to carry the Commander ashore. But being late in the evening, and my Consort sick of an Ague and Fevor, we thought it better for us to stay until Morning, to have a day before us. The next morning we bid the Skipper farewel, and went ashore in the first Boat, going strait to the Court of Guard: where all the Soldiers came staring upon us, wondring to see White-men in Chingulay Habit. We asked them if there were no ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the skipper of the second skiff, "do you notice that where we make this turn to the left the bushes along the point are kind of frayed, like something had rubbed against 'em a ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... have plenty of wind presently," the skipper said. "See how light the sky is to the south. There will be white tops on the waves in an hour ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Wharton Sale of the Southwicks The Courtship of Myles Standish Mother Crewe Aunt Rachel's Curse Nix's Mate The Wild Man of Cape Cod Newbury's Old Elm Samuel Sewall's Prophecy The Shrieking Woman Agnes Surriage Skipper Ireson's Ride Heartbreak Hill Harry Main: The Treasure and the Cats The Wessaguscus Hanging The Unknown Champion Goody Cole General Moulton and the Devil The Skeleton in Armor Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... you've got a tight craft of your own,—somewhat scrubbed, no doubt, with rough usage, but sound,—so it's time for you to look out for rudder, compass, and charts, and it seems to me that thems to be found with young Mister Allfrey, so you'd better go an' git him to become skipper o' your ship without delay. You see, sir, havin' said that to myself, I've took my own advice, so if you'll take command of me, sir, you may steer me where you please, for I'm ready to be your sarvant for love, seein' that ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... scarcely accept the conjecture of "F.C.B.," however ingenious (No. 21. p. 339.), I am tempted to offer a note on the business or calling of a shipster. It had, I believe, no connection with nautical concerns; it did not designate a skipper (in the Dutch use of the word) of the fair sex. That rare volume, Caxton's Boke for Travellers, a treasury of archaisms, supplies the best definition of her calling:—"Mabyll the shepster cheuissheth her right well; she maketh surplys, shertes, breches, keuerchiffs, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; "O whare will I get a skeely skipper, To sail this new ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... opinion of the picture till he had first examined the catalogue; and, finding it was done by an Englishman, he pulled out his eye-glass. "Oh, sir," says he, "those English fellows have no more idea of genius than a Dutch skipper has of dancing a cotillion. The dog has spoiled a fine piece of canvas; he is worse than a Harp Alley signpost dauber. There's no keeping, no perspective, no foreground. Why, there now, the fellow has actually ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... find out tomorrer," said our skipper, "now we're headin' for Pingree's Beach to see if we can get a mess of clams of old man Haskell. Then we'll have dinner, and we can run over to the inlet at Little Duck in an ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... as most women, poor things, think themselves obliged to do. In her hands there was no danger that he would be tempted to excesses in golf. She was really afraid of all boats, but she was willing to go out with him in the sail-boat of a superannuated skipper, because to sit talking in the stern and stoop for the vagaries of the boom in tacking was such good exercise. She would join him in fishing from the rotting pier, but with no certainty which was a cunner and which was a sculpin, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... skipper? What's wrong?" said the equable voice of Jerrold, emerging with cigarette between his teeth through the sliding ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... her Maria. Her mother had named her Columbine, and Columbine she had become to all who knew her. Her mother dying when she was only three, Columbine had been left to the sole care of her wastrel father. And he, then a skipper of a small cargo steamer plying across the North Sea, had placed her in the charge of a spinster aunt who kept an infants' school in a little Kentish village near the coast. Here, up to the age of seventeen, Columbine had lived and been educated; but the old schoolmistress ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... quiet. It was late of a dirty night, but the schooner lay in shelter from the roaring wind; and the forecastle lamp was alight, the bogie snoring, the crew sprawling at case, purring in the light and warmth and security of the hour.... By and by, when the skipper's allowance of tea and hard biscuit had fulfilled its destiny, Tumm, the clerk, told the tale of Whooping Harbor, wherein the maid met Fate in the person of the fool from Thunder Arm; and I came down from the deck—from the black, wet wind of the open, changed to a wrathful ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... life. Silly sort of life, he called it. No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine men came out of it—he admitted—but no more chance in the world if put to it than fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great name as a skipper. Big man; short side- whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice. A good fellow, but no more up to ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad |
