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More "Oar" Quotes from Famous Books



... years of freedom had augmented my inveterate dislike of office, you may suppose that I made a gallant resistance—quite a la Danoise; but at last I could not help taking an oar with old friends in a boat which they believed to be sinking, and in which they fancied I might be of some use. If the Government had been as clear of some of the worst shoals a fortnight ago as it is now, nothing would have ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... home again! bend to the oar! Merry is the life of the gay voyageur He rides on the river with his paddle in his hand, And his boat is his shelter on the water and the land. The clam in his shell and the water turtle too, And the brave boatman's shell is his birch bark canoe. So pull ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... thundering water beating them down into the awful chaos, and the shudder-engendering ideas connected with the fierce fish waiting to attack and literally devour them alive, changed his position so as to kneel down in the bottom of the boat, facing the second oarsman, lay his hands upon the oar, and help every pull with a good push. Briscoe followed his example, and the strength of six was thus brought ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... appearance of desperate philosophical resolution. When he had made the circuit of the whole, the old man, with his own hands, shoved the boat into the current, wishing God to speed them. Not a word was spoken, nor a stroke of the oar given, until the travellers bad floated past a knoll that hid the trapper from their view. He was last seen standing on the low point, leaning on his rifle, with Hector crouched at his feet, and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... about his dealings with his host, and Flosi says he will pull an oar with him, so that his marriage bargain might be struck, and buy the ship of him afterwards. The Easterling was glad at that. Flosi offered him land at Borgarhaven, and now the Easterling holds on with his suit to his host when Flosi ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... reasons that opposed my entrance into that peaceful harbour which death presented to my view; and they were soon reinforced by another principle that sanctioned my determination to continue at the servile oar of life. In consequence of unfavourable winds, our vessel for some days made small progress in her voyage to Holland, and near the coast of Gallicia we were joined by an English ship from Vigo, the master of which gave us to understand, that before he set sail, a courier had arrived from Madrid at ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... shooting, and skating, all were connected with his highland home." He was "healthy and active; a brave, blithe-hearted, impetuous, most generous and upright boy." Of his childhood another record is: "A gray-eyed, light-haired, ruddy boy, nimble as a deer and gay as a bird; on the lake, plying his oar lustily or trimming his sail to the mountain breeze; and whenever he found a wave high enough to lift his little boat, his veins would thrill with a strange delight, and he would ask himself whether this was ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... the elegant young men who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of St. Mark's. In his "Miracle of the True Cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely figures as they stand to ply the oar, and does not reject even such an episode as a serving-maid standing in a doorway watching a negro who is about to plunge into the canal. He treats this bit of the picture with all the charm and much of that delicate ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... aid, shall some companion ask, For help or comfort in the tedious task; And what that help—what joys from union flow, What good or ill, we next prepare to show; And row, meantime, our weary bark to shore, As Spenser his—but not with Spenser's oar. {2} ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... her eyes they were almost dazzled by the rays of the sun. The high towers of a great city rose before her, and Dumb William, with his oar upright, was standing in the boat, pushing and guiding it through the lively confusion of many vessels, gay with their pennons and streamers, whose crews were either gazing idly at passers-by, or else were busily loading ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... He was haunted by what might have happened. Soon he became a timid, shrinking lad, utterly lacking confidence in the strength of his arms and his skill with an oar and a sail; and after that came to pass, his life was hard. He was afraid to go out to the fishing-grounds, where he must go every day with his father to keep the head of the punt up to the wind, and he had a great fear of the wind and the fog and the breakers. But he was not a ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... fearing that he might thus lose much cloth, threw obstacles in the way, and most unjustly demanded as large a passport-fee for my crossing as had been given to the other chief; which demand we were obliged to comply with, or the men would not take up an oar. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to each one of them they give an oar; and having told them to look at the backs of the men before them they make them bend forward as far as they can and at the same moment, and having put the end of the oar into the water pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... call'd his seamen good, they muster'd on the shore, Waved in the gale the snow-white sail, and dash'd the sparkling oar; But by the flood that maiden stood—loud rose her piteous cry— "Oh! go not forth, my dear, dear sire—oh, go not forth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... breakers, swallowed up with all hands, together with all the provisions and water for our sustenance. I will not attempt to describe the agony of the steward's wife, who saw her husband perish before her eyes. She fainted; and it was a long time before she came to again; for no one could leave his oar for a minute to assist her, as we pulled for our lives. At last she did come to. Poor thing! I felt for her. Toward night the wind lulled, and we had every appearance of fine weather coming on; but we had nothing ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... and refreshing. 'What,' said he, 'my poor, little, good fellow, they sent you to the galleys! What did they mean to do with you? What a conscience they must have to put in fetters and chain to the oar a man who had committed no crime beyond praying to God in bad French!' He turned several times to me, denouncing persecution. He summoned into his room some persons who were staying with him, that they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... up of cooks and stewards, mostly the former, I think; their white jackets showing up in the darkness as they pulled away, two to an oar: I do not think they can have had any practice in rowing, for all night long their oars crossed and clashed; if our safety had depended on speed or accuracy in keeping time it would have gone hard ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantest thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It was larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possess an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to the cadence of Neapolitan barcaroles and folk-songs, full of rhythmic movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at last the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew a long, regretful breath, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace-gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandon'd sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... The Stroke Oar of this Food Bazaar had been in the Business for 20 years, and she had earned her Harp three times over. The Prune Joke never touched her, and she had herself trained so as not to hear any sarcastic ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... reading a very famous book, which all children know and love; and the name of which I'll tell you by and by. So busily was I reading, that I never minded the tide; and presently discovered that I was floating out to sea, with neither sail nor oar. At first I was very much frightened; for there was no one in sight on land or sea, and I didn't know where I might drift to. But the water was calm, the sky clear, and the wind blew balmily; so I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... tiff with the traders, and more fear of insurrection at home than appetite for wars abroad. The plenipotentiary had been placed under my protection; and we solemnly saluted when we met. He proved an excellent fisherman, and caught bonito over the ship's side. He pulled a good oar, and made himself useful for a whole fiery afternoon, towing the becalmed Equator off Mariki. He went to his post and did no good. He returned home again, having done no harm. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and gray—my memory forgets everything now but my own crimes, and the crimes of those that are still worse than myself—old I am, and wicked, and unrepenting—but I shall yet live to pour the curses that rise out of an ill-spent life into his dying oar, until his very soul will feel the scorches of perdition before its everlasting tortures come upon it in hell. I am old," she proceeded, "but I will yet live to see the son that cursed his mother, and threatened ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... the old gentleman pulls as good an oar as any of us," retorted another man, in a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... aid of the family rockaway the entire party were at the boat-house before the sun had passed much beyond the meridian. Burt, from his intimate knowledge of the channel, acted as pilot, and was jubilant over the fact that Amy consented to take an oar with him and receive a lesson in rowing. Mrs. Marvin held the tiller-ropes, and the doctor was to use a pair of oars when requested to do so. Webb and Leonard took charge of the larger boat, of which Johnnie, as hostess, was captain, and a ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... growing prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or pleasure,—all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted voyages; but what is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... low waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or six to each oar, and down the centre, between the two banks, the English could see the slave-drivers walking up and down a long gangway, whip in hand. A raised quarter-deck at the stern held more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and their gun-barrels; as they neared, the English could hear ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... of men to whom fear was almost unknown, the stalwart Vikings of the North, whose oar-and sail-driven barks now set out from the coasts of Norway and Denmark to ravage the shores of southern Europe, now turned their prows boldly to the west in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... his right oar, the boy who had sung turned the boat's prow toward the shore, and Lady Holme saw a large, lonely house confronting them on the nearer bank of the lake. It stood apart. For a long distance on either side of it there was ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... across like oars. The masts are hung with young white cocoa-leaves. This toy, which they call Hanmai, they place between two palongs, each rowed by a crew of stout young men, with a piece of rattan, as a towing-rope, fixed to it. Every rower carries five spears, besides his oar. They now wait with great eagerness for the pater's further orders. He has meanwhile begun his work, which he finds either hard or easy of performance, according as the patients are rich or poor. He is stark naked, ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel

... hardest home, You've parlour-pastime left and (who'll Not honour it?) ale like goldy foam That frocks an oar ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... we passed great flocks of sea fowl floating on the water, coming frequently almost within an oar's length, but always just out of reach. We were in worse condition than the Ancient Mariner, with food as well as water everywhere about us, and not a morsel or a drop to eat or drink. Thirst is harder to endure than hunger, and ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober

... roared Badding, tugging at his oar. "Saint George for England! Saint Leonard for ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Warner and Hues was constantly passing by the Thames between Sion and the Tower, some three or four hours by oar and tide. They were all three pensioners, or in the pay, of the Earl, though the last two were on a very different footing from that of Hariot as to emoluments and responsible position. They were, however, companions of both the Earl and Sir Walter, and, if tradition ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary. Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and constituent, the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote: Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... look out for a cleaner place to land than this, for the mud seems to be about knee-deep," suggested Christy, as he tested the consistency of the shore with an oar. ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic

... and walked by the side of the River. He had not gone far before he came upon a boat that had drifted into an eddy. It lay there rocking, and a long oar rested against the seat. ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... lost before the Norsemen learned to support the masts of their winged dragons by means of bull's-hide ropes! How many shiploads of men were laid at the mercy of the travelling seas before the Scandinavians learned to use a fixed rudder instead of a huge oar! Not a bolt or rope or pulley or eyelet-hole has been fixed in our vessel save through the bitter experience of centuries; one might write a volume about that mainsail, showing how its rigid, slanting beauty and its tremendous power were gradually ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... sentiments consoled his grief, and animated his industry, found that they had now coasted the headland, and saw the whales spouting at a distance. He therefore placed himself in his fishing-boat, called his associates to their several employments, plied his oar and harpoon with incredible courage and dexterity; and, by dividing his time between the chace and fishery, suspended the miseries of absence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... fellows can handle an oar?" Frere went on. "There, curse you, I don't want fifty! Three'll do. Come ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... made her appearance, a sprightly young woman about 26, and we all started in their canoe for their home at Skidegate, where I had been invited. En route while passing a pipe from the chief to his wife, my oar caught in the water, giving the canoe a sudden lurch which would have been quite alarming to most feminine nerves, but not to the Princess for she laughed so heartily over the mishap, that I saw a smile spread over the big face ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... into the boat and at once began to bale out the puddles with his saucepan. He then drew the boat alongside of the jetty, helped Hortense in and used the one oar which he shipped in a gap in the stern to ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... beached, lend a hand too and a score of stout fellows breast the long oars which serve for capstan bars. A little higher still. Now prop her securely and make all snug and ship-shape, and make fast the blade of an oar to one of the forward tholes, with the loom on the ground, for a ladder. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... guide me, where the dashing oar Just breaks the stillness of the vale, As slow it tracks the winding shore, To meet the ocean's ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... than I am, or than I ever have been! They are contented in obscurity; I was discontented even in the full blaze of celebrity. But my fate is fixed. I embarked on the sea of politics as thoughtlessly as if it were only on a party of pleasure: now I am chained to the oar, and a galley-slave ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... yesterday was the regatta at Joinville-le-Pont; at six o'clock in the morning the rendezvous at Bercy, at The Mariners, for the crew of the Marsouin; the sun is up; a glass of white wine and we jump into our rowing suits, seize an oar and give way—one-two, one-two—as far as Joinville; then overboard for a swim before breakfast—strip to swimming drawers, a jump overboard, and look out for squalls. After my bath I have the appetite of a tiger. Good! I seize the boat by one hand and I call out, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... daily conveyed in water-canoes, which come under the dam called the Varadouro, and are filled from twenty-three pipes, led so as to fill the canoes at once, without farther trouble. We saw seven-and-twenty of these little boats laden, paddle down the creek with the tide towards the town. A single oar used rather as rudder than paddle guides the tank to the middle of the stream, where it floats to ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... good, but becomes so through fulfillment of relations. Each thing or person is surrounded by many others. To them it must fit itself. Being but a part, its goodness is found in serving that whole with which it is connected. That is a good oar which suits well the hands of the rower, the row-lock of the boat, and the resisting water. The white fur of the polar bear, the tawny hide of the lion, the camel's hump, giraffe's neck, and the light feet of the antelope, are all alike good because they adapt these ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... an't I?" quoth the descendant of King Duncan, a little frightened, and suiting the action to the word; "I'm a-pewlin," and here his oar missed the water, and over he tumbled with a great splash in the bottom of the boat. "I'm a-pewlin," he whined, as he regained his seat and the oar, "and all I want is to ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... icy water and sank, and a wave rolled over him. He came up quickly, owing to his life-preserver, and gasped for breath, and was choked by another rushing wave and then pounded on the head by an oar in the hands of a struggling sailor. He managed to get out of the way, and struck out to get clear of the vessel. He knew how to do this, thanks to many "swimmin'-holes"—including the one he had visited with the Candidate. But he had never before ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... keep up with them in rowing, because they go with incredible speed, and with these canoes they navigate among these islands, which are innumerable, and carry on their traffic. I have seen in some of these canoes seventy and eighty men, each with his oar. In all these islands I did not notice much difference in the appearance of the inhabitants, nor in their manners, nor language, except that they all understood each other, which is very singular, and leads me to hope that their Highnesses will take ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... of Pharaoh, looking out through the lattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves of papyrus ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however, that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far easier to condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain from questioning, in secret, whether some of us—and Zenobia among the rest—would so quietly have taken our places among these good people, save for the cherished consciousness ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... those who have frequented in summer any part of our coasts, who have never seen that beautiful greenish light which is then so often visible, especially on our southern shores, when the water is disturbed by the blade of an oar or the prow of a boat or ship. In some cases, even on our own shores, the phenomenon is much more brilliant, every rippling wave being crested with a line of the same peculiar light, and in warmer seas exhibitions ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... still! Never mind what she did. All is, she showed 'em and she cured 'em and she saved 'em. But meanwhile her meddlesome old father had got worried, not understandin' what was goin' on, and he put his oar in. He wrote for the young chap she was engaged to to come down and help cure HER. The ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... we shall see. Well, I won't put my oar in—isn't that kind of me? But, indeed, your Captain Duchesne looks thoroughly ripe for a flirtation, and it will be as much as I can do to keep my ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... but jumped into the little contrivance. A sort of oar lay in the bottom. He thrust ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... in another moment was cleared up, and by the dastardly skipper himself, I was still standing by the taffrail, when the davit-tackle was cut, and saw the gig-oars shoved out and ready to pull away. The skipper himself grasped an oar. At that moment he looked up and noticed me. He half rose from his seat, and in drunken accents ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... for his devoted love to his master he would gladly have accompanied us. He and his companions waited till we had embarked in our own canoe, and cast off from the shore. A light breeze was blowing down the river. We hoisted our mat sail, and Domingos taking the steering oar, we recommenced our voyage down the river. The Indians then set forth on their toilsome one up the stream, having to paddle with might and main for ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... and Jim, the man who is pulling bow oar, picks up his harpoon. A minute later it flies from his hand, and is buried deep into the body of the quivering animal, cutting through the thick blubber as a razor would cut through the skin of ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... filled with the deepest admiration for these men of the coast, and his determination to follow their arduous calling when he grew big enough to take an oar ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... he missed catching Zappa, he could not again bring himself up, and souse overboard in the water he went, his head fortunately escaping the gunnel of the pirate's boat by a few inches. In revenge, an old pirate attempted to give him his coup de grace with the blade of his oar, but missed him. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... struck by the silence, she looked up in terror. There in front of her she saw a boat drifting, and in the boat her boy, her little lad of eight years old, who was laughing right merrily, paddling as well as he could with one oar that he could hardly hold, and crying out, "I am going to see what there is behind the mist, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... Captain Delano, on one side, again clutched the half-reclined Don Benito, heedless that he was in a speechless faint, while his right-foot, on the other side, ground the prostrate negro; and his right arm pressed for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent forward, encouraging his ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... deck of the ship of Life Our loved and lost we lower. And calm and steady, his small boat ready, Death silently sits at the oar. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow: Th' heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass, The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad. I am acquainted with sad misery As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar; Necessity makes me suffer constantly, And custom makes it easy. Who do I ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... advantage in producing this effect is a very material point. The mode universally adopted by Nature is the oblique waft of the wing. We have only to choose between the direct beat overtaking the velocity of the current, like the oar of a boat, or one applied like the wing, in some assigned degree of obliquity to it. Suppose 35 feet per second to be the velocity of an aerial vehicle, the oar must be moved with this speed previous to its being able to receive any resistance; then if it be only required ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... sun on his shoulders and trotted home. That evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill. But the other man owned he could not have kept the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... the current, heading to weather Sant' Elena. Lawrence took an oar silently. He liked the rush on the forward stroke, the lingering recovery. The evening puffs were cool. They slid on past a ghostly full-rigged ship from the north, abandoned at the point of Sant' Elena, until the black mass of trees in the Giardino Pubblico ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... "It was very much this kind of night, and we were lying, reefed down, off one of the Russians' beaches, when I asked for volunteers. I got them—two boats' crews of the finest seamen that ever handled oar ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... look of much perplexity, yet rising and bowing, said "I don't mean, Sir, to be so rude as to put in my oar, but if I did not take you wrong, I'm sure just now I thought you seemed for to make no great 'count of riding, and yet now, all of the sudden, one would think you was a speaking ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... Anders, Ivitchuk, Akeetolik, and Tekkona. The interpreter had been given to Alf because he was not quite so muscular or energetic as the Captain or his brother, while Anders was eminently strong and practical. The Eskimo women counted as men, being as expert with oar and paddle as they, and very nearly as strong as ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... committed it to the current. With her hand clasped in his, her head resting softly upon his shoulder, while his arm fondly encircled her slender waist, they glided down the rapid River of the Mountains. No sail was raised to catch the breeze; no oar was used to impel them through the water; yet, ere the maiden had time to breathe, the light canoe was gliding, rapid as thought, down the mid-waves of the current. Then ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... all the history of exploration have we a more poetical account of the launching of a ship for distant lands: "Then they have stored her well with food and water, and pulled the ladder up on board, and settled themselves each man to his oar and kept time to Orpheus' harp; and away across the bay they rowed southward, while the people lined the cliffs; and the women wept while the men shouted at the starting of that gallant crew." They chose a captain, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... man, holding on to the chain. Being armed, the white men threatened to shoot. Manfully did the black men stand up for their rights, and declare that they did not mean to give up their boat alive. The parties speedily came to blows. One of the white men dealt a heavy blow with his oar upon the head of one of the black men, which knocked him down, and broke the oar at the same time. The blow was immediately returned by Thomas Sipple, and one of the white men was laid flat on the bottom of the boat. The white men ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... their rallying and reboarding the ship; for after they got into their boats, many lances were thrown into the ship, which occasioned the fire of musquetry to be kept up something longer than it would have been. I saw the Raja pulling at an oar himself, and did every thing in my power to prevent his being shot: for as every person knew him by his dress, it was probable he might be particularly marked; I fear much he was wounded, perhaps mortally, notwithstanding my endeavours to save him, as he dropt his oar several times: during the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... clan of grey Fingon, whose offspring has given Such heroes to earth and such martyrs to heaven, Unite with the race of renown'd Rorri More, To launch the long galley and stretch to the oar. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... we tossed about, while the chief held the steering-oar and his men paddled through a welter of jeweled color that threatened momentarily to toss us on the rocks. If we smashed on them we were dead men, for even had we been able to climb them the high tide would have drowned us against the wall of the cliffs. No man showed the slightest fear, though ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... simply a record of unrelaxed toil day after day, Sturt and M'Leay taking their turn at the oar like the rest; added to which the blacks gave them far more trouble than before. At the fall above the junction of the Darling they once more met the friend who had saved them from coming into conflict with the natives on the 24th January; he and some of his tribe ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... landing up-stream anywhere, so loose my oars or I'll leave them to thee, the ferryman growled, and we shall be twirling about stream till midday and after. But I can row, Joseph said. Then row! and the ferryman put the other oar into his hand. But we shall be quicker across if thou'lt leave them to me. And as this seemed to Joseph the truth, he fell back into his seat, and did not get out of it till the boat touched the bank. But he jumped too soon and fell into the mud, causing much laughter ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... officers conceived it to be his duty to seize one of the native canoes. This chanced to belong to a great man named Pareea, who soon afterwards claimed his property. The officer refused to give it up, and a scuffle ensued, in which Pareea was knocked on the head with an oar. The natives immediately attacked the sailors with a shower of stones, which compelled them to retreat precipitately into the sea and swim off to a rock at some distance from the shore, leaving the pinnace ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... he said, Good-night! and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... and, as I was acting quartermaster, I took a boat and pulled down to get the mail. I reached the log-but in which the pilots lived, and saw them start with their boat across the bar, board the steamer, and then return. Ashlock was at his old post at the steering-oar, with two ladies, who soon came to the landing, having passed through a very heavy surf, and I was presented to one as Mrs. Ashlock, and the other as her sister, a very pretty little Minorcan girl of about fourteen ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... was sinking down into the golden waters, this maiden walked along the strand watching and listening for some longed-for sound. Then the measured splash of an oar would be heard approaching in the twilight, and a little boat would be drawn up on the shore, a youthful boatman would spring joyfully forth, and lovingly greet the maiden. There this pair of lovers wove dreams about the time from which ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... extraordinary influence in that body [the Pennsylvania House of Representatives]; the more remarkable as I was always in a party minority. I was indebted for it to my great industry and to the facility with which I could understand and carry on the current business. The laboring oar was left almost exclusively to me. In the session of 1791-1792, I was put on thirty-five committees, prepared all their reports, and drew all their bills. Absorbed by those details, my attention was turned exclusively to administrative ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... passes from your life, Unshadowing you all. I see ye stand Safe in the port,—as on a margent shore Clustered in sunlight,—while my bark moves on. I am not of ye; I am far away And long ago; one of those Argonauts That in the western seas, with sturdy oar, Urging their venturesome and sacred bark, Steered a new course,—a band, a brotherhood,— And, though a Judas, I was one of them. Get me my uniform. I wore it last On that last day on which ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... you say anything. What I've got to say is somethin' that ain't just come into my mind. It's somethin' that's kept me awake of nights an' I've got to say it. I've sat here an' listened, an' I ain't put in my oar, but I can't be muzzled, an' you might as well hear me out—because there ain't power enough in the world ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... oarsman,—and dropping down the Leven, and past the Castle, had gained the broad Clyde, drifted into mid-stream, and there, lying on our oars, had patiently waited until the great puffing steamer of the Hutcheson line, from Glasgow, hove in sight. Then, raising one oar as a signal, we had hailed the monster, which, condescendingly relaxing her speed, had suffered our boat, tossing like a feather on the steamer's mighty swell, to come in palpitating, timid fashion under the shadow of her paddle-box, where the strong arms ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... few months ago on the Thames with the oar The 'Varsities met in a contest of strength, 7 to 2 were the odds that the Dark Blues would score A win, which they did—by a lucky half-length: And last week, when the thousands assembled at Lord's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... Braga-beaker, Brave Ranald I pledge; In good liquor, which lightens Long labor on oar-bench; Good liquor, which sweetens The ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... An oar splashed in the water sent the drops flying into the blue air, to glimmer there in silver brightness a moment, like a patch of the starry Milky Way on a ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... rowed 'way out on the Daisy Sea, with a really-truly oar, Out of a really-truly boat, and what could you ask for more? Her sea and her boat were make-believe, but the daisy waves dashed high, And 'twas pleasant to know if the boat went down that her frock ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various

... Aooo! It was the gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain, lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met, disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... bridge,—which, as the thermometer was standing at eighty in the shade, was an inconsiderate proceeding. "I don't think I am quite up to that," said Dolly Longstaff, when it was proposed to him to take an oar. "Miss Amazon will do it. She rows so well, and is so strong." Whereupon Miss Amazon, not at all abashed, did take the oar; and as Lord Silverbridge was on the seat behind her with the other oar she probably ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... with bending sails Helm'd his bold course to fair HIBERNIA'S vales;— Firm as he steps, along the shouting lands, Lo! Truth and Virtue range their radiant bands; 375 Sad Superstition wails her empire torn, Art plies his oar, and Commerce pours ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... removing their shoes and going ashore in their bare feet, but as they started to do so, the men grinned and stopped them. Yorke, with his twisted mouth leering and his gray head streaming with perspiration, lay on his oar and gave ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or six to each oar, and down the center, between the two banks, the English could see the slave-drivers walking up and down a long gangway, whip in hand. A raised quarter-deck at the stern held more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and their gun-barrels; ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... little boat. It looked as though death was staring us in the face. My brother saw that he could escape; but as he thought that probably the boatman and I would both be drowned, he stayed with us and did all he could to help get the oar. The boat was full of water. We were all drenched and sat there in the water until we got back to the ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... objection to guides might have taught you a sharp lesson. It 's like declining to have a master in studying a science—trusting to instinct for your knowledge of a bargain. One might as well refuse an oar ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar. Poor little Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when there were many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere feather-weight, and quick-witted enough to serve well in the important office where brains are ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... an oar that is freezin' to his fingers, He's a-clingin' in the riggin' of a wreck, He knows destruction's nearer every minute that he lingers, But it do'n't appear ter worry him a speck: He's draggin' draggled corpses from the clutches of the combers— The kind ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... sleeping in the stern, with head pillowed on his arm. Herman awoke him with a German oath, and the way the fellow sprang up, his eyes popping open, was evidence of the treatment he was accustomed to. A hasty application of an oar brought the boat's nose to the bank, and I was thrust in unceremoniously, the three others following, each man shipping an oar into the rowlocks. Herman alone remained on shore, scattering the embers of a small fire, and staring back toward the house. A few moments we ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... the greatest alarm; "grasp this oar." And he reached out his oar to Washington, who had already caught hold of one of the raft-logs. A severe but short struggle, and he was on ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... fellow, so it is of all the rest. The things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so. To judge of great, and high matters requires a suitable soul; otherwise we attribute the vice to them which is really our own. A straight oar seems crooked in the water it does not only import that we see the thing, but how and after ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... Wort had been very anxious to pull an oar, and Will gratified them. But the governor could not row. Will had urged him to stop. The governor's resoluteness sometimes ran into obstinacy, and it ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... over the fire by their bucket handles, from the tripod or other means of getting over the fire. Sometimes the bough of a tree high out of the reach of the flames will do. Sometimes a stick or oar thrust into the bank or in a crevice of the wall behind the fire is more convenient than a tripod. Again, you can do without any hanging at all, making a little fireplace of bricks or stones and standing the saucepans ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... their strength. At one o'clock I landed at my former encampment. The Padre had, of course, left the oars, sail, and blankets. My skiff was rigged in a moment; and out of the blankets, those in the long-boat managed to make a sail, an oar and a long pole tied together answering for a mast. In doubling the northern point of the bay, I perceived the Mexican schooner and many boats, pretty far at sea. No doubt they were ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... her little toe in a place where she's sensitive. Come at noon and see if you can stretch out wider This thing that troubles her, loosen its tightness." And so you view the result. Observe my case— I, a magistrate, come here to draw Money to buy oar-blades, and what happens? The women slam the door full in my face. But standing still's no use. Bring me a crowbar, And I'll chastise this their impertinence. What do you gape at, wretch, with dazzled eyes? Peering for a tavern, ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... have given away the fact that he had done things. They were large, broad; the knuckles heavy; the palms calloused by something rougher than oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... us acquainted with our betters. If you are a young person who read this, depend upon it, sir or madam, there is nothing more wholesome for you than to acknowledge and to associate with your superiors. If I could, I would not have my son Thomas first Greek and Latin prize boy, first oar, and cock of the school. Better for his soul's and body's welfare that he should have a good place, not the first—a fair set of competitors round about him, and a good thrashing now and then, with a hearty shake afterwards ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... tiller, allowing the raft to rise and fall on the waves. The wind being aft, and the sail square, all he had to do was to keep his oar in ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... as work, may bring out hand-craft. The gun, the bat, the rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports, are good training for the hand. Walking insures fresh air, but it does not train the body or mind like games and sports which are played out of doors. A man of great fame as an explorer and as a student of nature (he who discovered, in the West, bones ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... last phalanx, have that slight and indefinite adjustment of the bones, with much intervening cartilage, which fits the leg to be both a flexible and forcible instrument of natation, much superior to the ordinary oar-blade of the boatman. On the contrary, in Cetiosaur, as well as in Megalosaur and Iguanodon, all the articulations are definite, and made so as to correspond to determinate movements in particular directions, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... any help," panted Corrie, standing erect and dishevelled, fiery blue eyes on his floundering enemy. "He's had enough, I fancy. Here, the water is only five feet deep, you chump! Not that way! Throw me an oar, Gerard—he'd drown himself in a saucer. Here, catch hold, you. What's ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... of Pelias, fare thee well, May joy be thine in the Sunless Houses! For thine is a deed which the Dead shall tell Where a King black-browed in the gloom carouses; And the cold grey hand at the helm and oar Which guideth shadows from shore to shore, Shall bear this day o'er the Tears that Well, A Queen of women, ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... But just as her boat would near the other, a chance current or a puff of wind would take the canoe just out of her reach. Paddling now with one oar she came very near the unsteady little craft, so near that Gladys suddenly decided to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... roared the Squire, as usual relieving his feelings on his retainer. "You are always shoving your oar ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... if his physical prowess permitted, he would take his revenge on the spot by administering a sound thrashing to the transgressor. It is on record that one trader, in the early days of Moose Factory, broke an oar while chastising an Indian who had failed ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... a few months in St Andrews in 1547, when the castle capitulated to the foreign fleet, and he and his companions were flung into the French galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at the oar under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and the heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count the cost of the choice so recently made. It is a tribute to his constancy that men chiefly remember this dark time by its spots of colour—as when, at Nantes, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... at the seashore. After her vacation she returned to school, and repeated the previous year's experience,—constant, sustained work, recitation and study for all days alike, a hemorrhage once a month that would make the stroke oar of the University crew falter, and a brilliant scholar. Before the expiration of the second year, Nature began to assert her authority. The paleness of Miss A's complexion increased. An unaccountable ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... the breeze at the stern. Not the least interesting part of the spectacle are these same oarsmen, as they ply. their long unwieldy sweeps in admirable unison; the sleeves of their coats are almost as broad as the body of the garment, and at every sweep of the oar these all flap up and down together in a manner most ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... senior officer, now took the lead, and the other two boats followed a little more than an oar's length apart. Mr Tarwig's boat carried an ensign, and as he approached the stranger he unshipped the flagstaff and waved it so that it might clearly be seen. The boats had now got within hail of the merchant vessel. The British colours were still ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... the long sweeping oar, balanced on a pivot at either end, with the handle reaching almost to the middle of the boat. That portion considered the stern (although in no respect did it differ from the bow) had the covered space, used as sleeping quarters for the females. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... it up, but he could do nothing with it. If it had been an oar, now, it might have been of some use. He tried to pull up the seat, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... um, little brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing; and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her nipped finger, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... that riz my hair, by huck! It was kinder like a groan and a smothered screech, an' I swan to man if it didn't seem to come right out of my pinkey! Scart! Waal, it did give me something of a jump, an' that I won't deny. If Sile had a-bin there he'd kerwollopsed. I riz right up with an oar in my hand, ready to slam it over ther head uf any dad-bum thing that wiggled round the pinkey. Jest then I heard that sound ag'in, an' I made out it come from the point of rocks that makes off inter ther harber. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward—perhaps with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of self-assertion. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... no river on earth that has heard so many vows of love as the St. Lawrence; for there is not a Canadian boatman that has ever passed up or down the river without repeating, as the blade of his oar dropped into the stream, and as ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,—a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... beautiful, and the most unselfish person I ever saw. She was perpetually trying to lighten my labor. She insisted on taking an oar and trying to row. She bore up most uncomplainingly against our hardships. In fact, she acted like a regular brick. Of course, before I had talked with her half an hour I was head over heels in love ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... yanked again and Pa began to pull him in. I hung on, and let the line out a little at a time, just zackly like a fish, and he pulled, and sweat, and the bald spot on his head was getting sun burnt, and the line cut my hand, so I wound it around the oar-lock, and Pa pulled hard enough to tip the boat over. He thought he had a forty pound musculunger, and he stood up in the boat and pulled on that oar-lock as hard as he could. I ought not to have done it, but I loosened ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... burned rocket after rocket after rocket. There was no effect that Joe could detect, of course. It would have been like noticing the effect of single oar-strokes in a rowboat miles from shore. But the instruments on Earth found a difference. They made very, very, very careful computations. And the electronic brains did the calculations which battalions of mathematicians would have needed years to work out. The ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... the falls. It would therefore have been no very difficult feat to paddle across, if his aching arms had had an atom of strength left in them. As soon as he was beyond the reach of flying stones he seated himself in the stern, took an oar, and after having bathed his throbbing forehead in the cold water, managed, in fifteen minutes, to make the further bank. Then he dragged himself wearily up the hill-side to Colonel Hook's mansion, and when he had given his message to Viggo, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... is a depth of 15 fathoms, with a clean bottom, at a short distance from the shore; and all along the coast there are soundings with clean bottom, and not a single sunken rock. Inside, at the length of a boat's oar from the land, there are 5 fathoms. Beyond the limit of the port to the S.S.E. a thousand carracks could beat up. One branch of the port to the N.E. runs into the land for a long half league, and always the same width, as if it ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... oar, taking most unguardedly a privilege of relationship. "Of course, you are the best judge of how you feel yourself, Aunt Caroline, but we are told there are some steps to ascend when we get there—and you know how ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... at the oars told how willing the men were to obey; but the strength of the strong man was gone. One of the poor fellows washed us twice in recovering his oar, and then gave out; and the other was nearly as far gone. Mr. Larkin sprang forward and seized the deserted oar. "Lie down in the bottom of the boat," said he to the man; "and, captain, take the other oar; we must row ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... the bow. His muscles too, had gained strength and hardness by rowing. It was his constant habit of an evening, when well away from the crowded canals in the gondola, with Giuseppi, the son and assistant of his father's gondolier, to take an oar, for he had thoroughly mastered the difficult accomplishment of rowing well in a gondola; but he only did this when far out from the city, or when the darkness of evening would prevent his figure ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... conveyance of passengers and their effects, and are kept scrupulously clean for that purpose. They pull from three to six oars, according to their size. The oarsmen are all seated forwards, whilst a woman, generally with a child fastened to her back, both propels and steers with a long oar from the stern, which she manages with great dexterity, appearing to work harder, and with better effect, than her lazy lord, (who has generally the bow oar,) at the same time keeping a bright lookout ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... no water could penetrate the seams. Ten branches of red willow were placed within, the ends being bent upward and fastened by withes to two other saplings, which extended the whole length of the boat at the inside of the gunwale. The ten pieces were the [t]ici-iki[p]ada^{n}. The rudder or steering oar (i[|c]isa^{n}['][|c][)e]) was fashioned like the oars (mandu[|c]ugahi), with the blade flat and of the breadth of two hands. The rowers (u[|c]ugahi aka) sat near the bow, and the steersman ([|c]isa^{n}['][|c]a aka) took his seat at ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... was finished, and an hour spent in resting, the boats again got ready to advance. But, unfortunately, a light breeze which had hitherto favoured them, now ceased to blow, and they were in consequence compelled to make way only with the oar. The tide also ran strong against them, at once increasing their labour and retarding their progress; but all these difficulties appeared trifling to British sailors; and, giving a hearty cheer, they moved steadily onward in ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... overhauled, and a larboard and starboard boat was launched and manned, and in a few minutes they were dashing over the waves, the men pulling that steady, strong, and even stroke which gives such propelling force to the whaleman's oar. The men on board cheered, and their cheers seemed to quicken the action of the boatmen. The sturdy old captain watched their progress through his glass, every few minutes giving expression to his feelings in words ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... does to Egyptian bondage draw, Bids us make bricks, yet sends us to look out for straw: Some she condemns for life to try To dig the leaden mines of deep philosophy: Me she has to the Muse's galleys tied: In vain I strive to cross the spacious main, In vain I tug and pull the oar; And when I almost reach the shore, Straight the Muse turns the helm, and I launch out again: And yet, to feed my pride, Whene'er I mourn, stops my complaining breath, With promise of a mad ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... half-drowned to the rigging, were looking towards the shore, they had better look elsewhere. The sea, like the wind, treated Yport as the mouth of a funnel, and a hundred cross currents were piling up such waves as no boat could pass, though the Yport women were skilful as any man with oar or sail. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... leave of the people over at the house, for he descended the steps and went to join Beaudelet, who was out there with an oar across his shoulder waiting for Robert. They walked away in the darkness. She could only hear Beaudelet's voice; Robert had apparently not even spoken a word of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... took our places for a long pull up the lakes. There were two sets of rowlocks, with oars to match. Fred took one pair and Farr the other. Spot lay down on Farr's coat behind his master. I took the stern seat and steering oar. Scott had the bow seat ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various

... he couldn't; for," said the boatman, dropping his oar, which I did not like at all, "for, mind you, ma'am, it was all done in the clap of one's hand," and he ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... preached only for a few months in St Andrews in 1547, when the castle capitulated to the foreign fleet, and he and his companions were flung into the French galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at the oar under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and the heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count the cost of the choice so recently made. It is a tribute to his constancy that men chiefly remember this dark ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... pointed stem and stern, is generally gaily painted and named appropriately "Water Bubble," "Fairy," or something equally ingenious. It looks easy when you see a lass gracefully paddling herself along with a double oar; it is anything but as easy as it looks. This class of canoe is a very unstable craft. I have tried to navigate one, and spent the whole time in the water—simply could not keep inside the tub. This I much regretted, for it must be thoroughly enjoyable ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... that rubber boot," said Snap. "And then he'll know the boat is his." The sight of the rubber boot on the top of the oar was a comical one and the boys had to laugh as they ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... hens and cats. Then he will go into the house again, and rock while the old man finishes his coffee, sure of a greeting, confident in a sense of entire good-fellowship, until the meal is finished, and James Parsons is ready to take his coat and a red-bladed oar, and set out. Then the boy is like a setter off for a walk,—all sorts of whimsical expressions in his face, of absolute delight; every form of extravagance in his bearing. The only trouble is, one has to laugh too much; but with all this, something ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... irritated, perhaps, by the clumsy veterinaryship of a village smithy, began suddenly to rear and plunge, and set at defiance the old dunderhead by whom it was held!—The ass of a ferryman, in his eagerness to lend his aid, let go his oar into the stream; and between the awkwardness of some and the rashness of others, in a moment the whole party were carried round by the eddy of the Dyle!—The next, and Ulrica was struggling in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... galley's oar, and some must tend the steed— This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jerreed. Oh! some are for the arsenals, by beauteous Dardanelles; And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy dells. The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... rose to the emergency and, pulling frantically at the oars, succeeded in reaching the point from which the call seemed to come. The scared faces of Jock and Alan rose from the bracken, and in another moment they had leaped into the boat, nearly upsetting it as they did so. Alan seized an oar, and he and Sandy together got the boat out of sight behind a bend in the shore. Here they hid among the bushes on the bank until they saw the man appear at the landing-place, scan the lake carefully, and then go back into the woods, calling the dog to go with ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... too, and the boat is new and handsome, graceful with the beautiful lines of a northern shipwright's designing. She has mast and sail and one steering oar, but neither rowlocks nor other oars to fit in them. One of the men is pacing quietly up and down the sand, as if on the quarterdeck of a ship, and the other ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... your lips and kiss me again, we have but a moment more, Before we set the sail to the mast, before we loosen the oar. Good-bye to you, and my thanks to you, for the rest you let me share, While this night drifted away to the Past, to join the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... hen if I had not resented it finally. I am glad that I faced Conway, and asked no favors, and got rid of him forever. I am glad that Phil Adams taught me to box, and I say to all youngsters: Learn to box, to ride, to pull an oar, and to swim. The occasion may come round, when a decent proficiency in one or the rest of these accomplishments will be of service ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Daddles and Jimmy rowing. A breeze had sprung up and the bay was a little choppy, so we splashed and bumped along at no great speed. Mr. Daddles did not pay much attention to the management of his long oar, but got into a discussion with Jimmy about what they would buy with their share of the treasure. Jimmy said his first choice would be a sailing yacht. Next, after that, he thought he should buy a steam-yacht. Mr. Daddles said he should ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... Madame Goesler. "One dash from a peccant oar would destroy the whole symmetry of my dress. Look. That green young lady has already ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... travail of the soul as in a serene and effortless self-commitment to a power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. We had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. How greatly we have been disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against it, we all know well enough to-day. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... covered half the distance to the island. They could now make out three figures in it, one steering, each of the other two wielding an oar. The lake was glorious in the strong sunshine. All the little ripples to the ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... together and partly close, presenting only a narrow front—almost an edge—of resistance to the water; then, when he makes a backward stroke, the toes spread far apart and, with the connecting membranes, are converted into a broad, propelling oar. Is it not a wonderfully ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... she re-composed herself, and accepted of a restorative glass of wine from my spark, who had left me to fetch it to her, whilst her own was readjusting his affaire and buttoning up; after which he led her, leaning languish-ingly upon him, to oar stand ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... are swifter. The alligator, by means of his webbed feet, and particularly his flat tail—which acts on the principle of a stern-oar to a boat, and a rudder as well—can pass through the water as swiftly as most of the finny tribe. It is not by hunting it down, however, but by stratagem, that the alligator secures ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... up astern. It broke and half buried her in rushing foam, but she lifted, lurched ahead, and did not strike again. The men were nearly knee-deep as they baled the water out and one was afterwards idle because his oar had gone. In spite of this, they made the creek and drifted quietly into the gloom of the mangroves with the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... and called him Zeus, the son of the king of the Immortals. For though he was but fifteen, he was taller by a head than any man in the island; and he was the most skilful of all in running and wrestling and boxing, and in throwing the quoit and the javelin, and in rowing with the oar, and in playing on the harp, and in all which befits a man. And he was brave and truthful, gentle and courteous, for good old Dictys had trained him well; and well it was for Perseus that he had ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... his great annoyance, his oar stuck fast in the oar-lock, and he straightway did that very unsailorly thing known as ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... an innocent face as if he couldn't harm a fly and whom I was careless enough to admit to my house is, unfortunately, a man behind whose mask the most shameless impudence lies in wait. I and my house are in the service of true propriety. Do you want to besmirch the escutcheon of oar honour as the sister of this fellow seems to have done—a girl who disgraced, her parents by coming to an end in the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... in trust for those who need your succor: A flash of fire by night, a loom of smoke by day, A rag to an oar shall be to you the symbol Of your faith, of your creed, of the law which ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... report their wrecks never spin out their prosy yarns to me. The first thing I do is to let them know just what I want of them; and not an inch beyond that does a man of them go, at least while I am managing the business. There are times when John J. Laylor comes in, and puts in his oar, and wants to hear the whole story; which is pure stuff and nonsense, for John J. Laylor doesn't know anything more about a ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... with admiration and delight on this truly admirable and extensive pile of national architecture; the gentle breeze from the river, the occasional dash of the oar, and the activity which appeared on board the different vessels; together with the view of London Bridge on one side, over which he could perceive pedestrians and vehicles of various kinds passing and repassing, and the Tower on the other, conspired to heighten ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... at the melancholy looking Abbey of Haute-Combe, the burying-place of the Sardinian kings, who lie prostrate there before the hills, like pilgrims come at last to their journey's end. The silence of the landscape was broken by the even rhythm of the strokes of the oar; it seemed to find a voice for the place, in monotonous cadences like the chanting of monks. The Marquis was surprised to find visitors to this usually lonely part of the lake; and as he mused, he watched the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... the weight in the boat with judgment. Although there seemed to be no real danger, he knew very well the nature of the treacherous current. Ruth slipped into the bow seat with her oar, and Uncle ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... we began our descent. Near the summit the traces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., after a while, that we had lost it. He said, he thought that was of no consequence, we could find oar way down. I thought however it was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged over in the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stood still because so tired that I did not like to waste any labor. Soon he called to me that he had found it, and I followed in the direction ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... they were all a little mad. They saw the Sam Shui—the boat of the commanding officer of the Visayas—in the distance, but were too low to be sighted by her. They wore their finger ends down, tearing a plank off the side to use for an oar. Meanwhile the current carried them down closer to the Panay coast, and on the third day they were close enough to fall in with one of the big fishing paraos. This carried them into Panay, a town five or six miles east of Capiz. Captain B—— had just ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... some boys down the avenue, but they don't know as much about good times as Dorothy does. Why, she can swim, row, paddle, climb trees, and goes in for almost any sport that's on. Last week she swam so far in the sun she couldn't touch an oar or paddle for days, her arms were so blistered. But she didn't go around with her hands in a muff at that. Dorothy's all right," ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... his ears. At any rate his beard came adrift on the side nearest to me. The man was wearing a false beard. He remedied the matter at once, very cleverly, so that I may have been the only witness; but I saw that the boatman was in the man's secret, whatever it was. He pulled hard on his starboard oar, bringing the boat partly across the current, thus screening him from everybody except the workers in the ships. It must have seemed to all who saw him that he was merely pulling to ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... trimmed the Arrow's sail, for the breeze had sunk again, and swept slowly out with one oar suspended. A waning moon was rising behind the trees, it fell upon the little quay that had been built that summer, and seemed with its hollow beams still to continue the structure upon the water. The Arrow floated in the shadow just beyond. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... he took a locket from his bosom; and I heard him speak, Will, and he said: "Here's the picture of my fair and true lady; drink to her, SeA-ors, all." Then he spoke to me, Will, and called me, right up through the oar-weed and the sea: "We have had a fair quarrel, SeA-or; it is time to be friends once more. My wife and your brother have forgiven me; so your honour ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... become obsolete, received not a few from the Teutonick. It is certain, that the English, German, and other Teutonick languages, retained some derived from the Greek, which the Latin has not; as, ax, achs, mit, ford, pfurd, daughter, tochter, mickle, mingle, moon, sear, oar, grave, graff, to grave, to scrape, whole, from [Greek: axine], [Greek: meta], [Greek: porthmos], [Greek: thygater], [Greek: megalos], [Greek: mignyo], [Greek: mene], [Greek: xeros], [Greek: grapho], [Greek: holos]. Since they received these immediately from the Greeks, without the intervention ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... obediently shipped his oars; with a deft twist of one oar, Murphy straightened the boat and shot neatly in alongside the submarine, the deck of which was less than three feet above the water. As Cappy Ricks had anticipated, the men on that deck promptly snagged the boat at bow and stern with boat ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... lazy porpoises being towed along by the fussy little steamer. If they are coming in with the tide, so that the current helps them, they do not need the steam-tug; but men stand up at one end and help the barge along, and guide it by a huge oar called a sweep. Some of these men and their wives live always on these barges, and earn their living by taking things up the river. There is only a tiny dirty little cabin, the size of the smallest room you ever saw, and so Mrs. Bargeman can't bring fine frocks with her; but that doesn't matter, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... of his room, proceeded down to the port, and at once took their seats on the benches of the galley, one foot being chained to a ring in the deck, the other to that of a companion at the oar. The slaves were more cheerful now. As there was no work to do at present, they were allowed to talk, and an occasional laugh was heard, for the sun and brightness of the day cheered them. Many, after years of captivity, had grown ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... over him, a bossed, plaited shield, [2]curved, with an engraved edge of silvered bronze,[2] [3]with applied ornaments of red gold thereon,[3] and a boss of red gold; a lengthy sword, as long as the oar[4] of a huge currach [5]on a wild, stormy night,[5] [6]resting on the two thighs[6] of the great haughty warrior that is within ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah; of the Jew; of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... boat. In it were a young man about eighteen years of age, and a boy about twelve, who had got into the punt to amuse themselves, and, happening to lose one of their oars, were drifted to sea. They had been thirty-six hours without refreshment of any kind, and with only one oar and a bit of board, which they had formed into something like another; they were quite exhausted with fatigue, and their hands very much blistered. When we picked them up, there was a strong breeze blowing ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... anything to which we are accustomed. They began with a formal betrothal. In a log hut sat the bride's family, the mother spinning at one of the wooden erections so closely resembling an oar. The father and his friends were meantime gathered round a table drinking small beer (Kalja) from large wooden pots, or rather buckets, called haarikka. Each man helped himself out of the haarikka by dipping ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... sky, or paddling in and out among the pond-lilies. I had idled, too, on the lagoons of my beloved Venice, listening to Luigi crooning the songs he loves so well, the soft air about me, the plash of my gondolier's oar wrinkling the sheen of the silver sea. It had been a very happy summer; full of color and life. The brush had worked easily, the weather had lent a helping hand; all had been peace and quiet. Ofttimes, when I was happiest, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... went so high that the boat could not escape, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor, if we had, could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar toward the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... eaten, then the faithful thane, Saint Andrew, thanked the noble Counselor, Upon the ocean, on the oar-swept sea:— "For this repast may God, the righteous Lord, Ruler of hosts, who sheds the light of life, Grant thee reward, and give thee for thy food The bread of heaven, e'en as thou hast shown Good will and kindness ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... bachelor is only half of a man, which is a correct way of expressing his status in society. Why, my dear sir, you might as well expect to pull across the Atlantic Ocean in a water-logged skiff, with only one oar, and make a successful voyage of it, as to pull across the ocean of life without the help of a good woman. And I have my suspicions of the morals, as well as my contempt for the taste of a man, who can wander through this country and see as many bright eyes, ruby ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... past, his first thought was for his wife. He caught sight of a shapeless something at the further side of the whirlpool, and with all his strength beat round towards it. It was Olive, clinging to an oar. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... Dutens told me of it very lately, and actually borrowed it for me; and but yesterday my French bookseller sent me three-and-twenty other volumes of those M'emoires Historiques,(583) which I had ordered him to get for me, and which will keep my eyes to the oar for some time, whenever I have leisure to sail through such an ocean; and yet I shall embark with pleasure, late as it is for me to undertake such a hugeous voyage: but a crew of old gossips are no improper company, and we shall ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Ralph was sitting in an open boat, listening to the measured oar-strokes of the boatmen who were rowing him out to the nearest stopping-place of the steamer. The mountains lifted their great placid heads up among the sun-bathed clouds, and the fjord opened its cool depths as if to make room for their vast reflections. Ralph ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... countenance, but went on hammering at his boat as if he cared not at all, till observing that one of the soldiers was looking hard at Edmund, he called out, "I say, Ned, what's the use of loitering there, listening to what's no concern of yours? Fetch the oar out of yon shed. I never lit on such a lazy ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mother's cabin home, that lay Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay; The dashing of his brethren's oar; The conch-note heard along the shore;— All through his wakening bosom swept; He clasped ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave each other know Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part, Rooted in the mighty Heart, But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed, Whence camest ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the changing light on the mountains? Down at the wharf, when the small boats put off for the steamer, one can well entertain himself. The small boat is an enormous thing, after all, and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps, one of which is pulled, and the other pushed. The laboring oar is, of course, pulled by a woman; while her husband stands up in the stern of the boat, and gently dips the other in a gallant fashion. There is a boy there, whom I cannot make out,—a short, square boy, with tasseled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... but this water-road could have consoled me for the thought that there would be no more motoring for a week. And clearly it was a road of which it was necessary for the gondoliers to know every oar-length; for it was defined by stakes, standing up out of the lagoon singly, or gathered into clusters like giant bunches ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... my age I was never last, or even among the last, in anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I was sure to sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I pulled an oar with others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed for a prize, some unforeseen accident prevented my winning it at the last moment. Nothing to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the reputation of being unlucky, until my companions felt ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... shallows; others lay submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,—a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet haunted everywhere with ambushed danger. It was twenty ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... themselves to her parents and, hastily summoning help, Mr Darcy ran to the lake. The boat was loose and floating on the water, with an oar beside it, and a coat of Willoughby's on the bank; instantly the worst was feared and Tippoo forgotten. The lodge-keeper and his men were summoned with drags, poor Mrs Darcy on the bank wringing her hands in ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... of pulling away he raised an oar with the intention of striking Flaggan when he should rise. It was a fatal mistake. He did indeed strike him, and on the head too; but that was the most invulnerable part of the Irishman's body. Ted grasped the oar, caught the gunwale of the boat, and in a moment overturned it and ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... evidently reconsidered her resolution to let things take their wrong-headed course, and in virtue of her prerogatives as match-maker and mender, had thrust her oar into the very muddy whirlpool boiling about the bark ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... London without being very ill-natured to a large number of people. Many of those who would think they had a right to be asked would—though on other occasions no doubt welcome enough—be as much out of place in a ballroom as a man would be in a boat race who could not handle an oar." But she was, so she added, going to make an attempt at reviving a kind of entertainment to which no such difficulties would attach themselves. During the months of the coming winter she proposed to send out cards to all her more intimate acquaintances; announcing that she would always be at ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... day by day of nothing else. His mind was as caught as a galley slave, as unable to escape from tugging at this oar. All his universe was a magnetic field which oriented everything, whether he would have it so or not, to this one ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... scene appear to me more amusing and refreshing. 'What,' said he, 'my poor, little, good fellow, they sent you to the galleys! What did they mean to do with you? What a conscience they must have to put in fetters and chain to the oar a man who had committed no crime beyond praying to God in bad French!' He turned several times to me, denouncing persecution. He summoned into his room some persons who were staying with him, that they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... up and Ben saw a man plunge from the rocks into the boiling waters. He bent to the oar, his boat rushed through the waves, and as he came one way, that white face moved steadily from the shore. The waters were buffeted fiercely around it. Some mighty power seemed to sweep back the storm ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... time," said he. "Tain't quite high tide yet. You'll have time to get ashore before she moves. Hullo, Wade! Whar's that oar?" ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... an interval broken only by the occasional sweep of the great steering oar as Cavendish coaxed the raft out toward the channel. The thought of Charley Norton's murder rested on Carrington like a pall. Scarcely a week had elapsed since he quitted Thicket Point and in that week the hand of death had dealt with them impartially, and to what end? Then the miles ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... wakened by the movement of the boat, and looking out they saw that they were in motion. A man in a white suit and a red sash was paddling the gondola with a long oar, and he was singing a very beautiful song, and the moonlight was on the water. And they passed many other gondolas, and all the men who paddled were ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel

... Marlow, and Hogg could arrive from London, and here they were within reach of the river. No long time elapsed before they were tempted to experience again the delights of a holiday on the Thames. So Mary and Shelley, with Peacock and Charles Clairmont to help him with an oar, embarked and went up the river. They passed Reading and Oxford, winding through meadows and woods, till arriving at Lechlade, fourteen miles from the source of the Thames, they still strove to help the boat to reach this point if ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... you hadn't come? Oh, Poleon! you don't know what you saved me from." She leaned forward and laid a tiny, grateful hand on the huge brown paw that rested on his oar. "I wonder if ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... a curving of the rays of light caused by their entering the earth's atmosphere, which is a denser medium than the very light ether of the outer sky. The effect of refraction is seen when an oar is thrust into the water and looks as if it were bent. Refraction always causes a celestial object to appear higher than it really is. This refraction is greatest at the horizon and diminishes toward the zenith, where it disappears. Table ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... made out of more heroic stuff. The spirit of adventure had not died within him. His faith is full of the finest romance. "Come," said Jesus and immediately I see Peter drop his oar and begin to climb down out of the boat to go ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... The oar indeed and home with sails Flax-tissued, swelled with favoring gales, Staunch to the wave, from spear-storm free, Have to this shore escorted me, Nor so far blame I destiny. But may the all-seeing Father send In fitting time propitious ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the ocean ways, And dangerous the deep, And frail the fairy barque that strays Above the seas asleep! Ah, toil no more at sail nor oar, We drift, or bond or free; On yon far shore the breakers roar, But, oh, Love! kiss ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... money?" cried Bodlevski, who had struck him with the handle of the oar. "Get his coat open!" and the baroness deftly drew the thick packet from the breast pocket of his coat. "Here it is! I have ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... an old oar at the bottom of the boat, and somehow or other, after lengthy efforts, I made fast to the harbour. Making my way along the shore towards my hut, I involuntarily gazed in the direction of the spot where, on the previous night, the blind boy had awaited the nocturnal ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... fair-weather trade. Their working season was in the winter. Sharp winds and rough seas had to be faced, and when these were contrary it required no small strength to pull their heavy boats against them hour after hour, and mile after mile, to say nothing of the management of the cumbrous steering-oar, twenty-seven feet in length, to handle which the steersman had to stand ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... herself at the hut window, at the hut door. When Fanny turned back to whistle again she saw her standing up in the boat, which, freed, was drifting out towards them—saw her scatter the ice with her oar—and the boat, pushed upstream, came drifting down towards them in a curve to hit the bank at their feet. The girl stepped out, smiling, happy, pretty, undimmed by the habit of trade. The man got in and sat down, the dog ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... happen to stop it, there are other means of making the U. S. Customs look foolish. Each of us contributes valuable and essential services, mademoiselle, the skipper, my kid-brother, even I—and I pull a strong oar with the New York Police Department into the bargain. But there's a vacancy in our ranks, the opening left by the death of de Lorgnes, an opening that nobody could hope to fill so well as you. So we put it up to you squarely: If you'll sign ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... fighting for every yard of her progress. Flags stood out straight in the blue sky traversed by swift white clouds. Huge rudder-less barges, each with a dwarf in the stern struggling at a giant's oar, were borne westwards broadside on like straws upon the surface of a hurrying brook. A launch with an orchestra on board flew gaily past. Tugs with a serpentine tail of craft threaded perilously through the increasing traffic. Railway trains, cabs, coloured omnibuses, cyclists, and footfarers ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... loved thy wild abode, Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore; Where scarce the woodman finds a road, And scarce the fisher plies an oar; For man's neglect I love thee more; That art nor avarice intrude,— To tame thy torrents' thunder-shock, Or prune thy vintage of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... you Dutch hog!" was the laconic rejoinder from Atkins, as he leant upon his steer-oar and surveyed the captain and Chard with an air of studied insolence. "I'll take no orders from a swab like you. If Miss Remington wants to stay in my boat she shall stay." Then turning to Tessa he said so loudly that both Chard and captain could hear, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... proper are applicable to the purpose of the taxidermist, though some of the oar-weeds can be used, and many of the red sea-weeds (Rhodosperms) can be floated out in water and carelessly arranged on paper, if wanted for fitting-up purposes, or more carefully arranged if for a collection. After washing, these small plants adhere by their ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... the boat, Haste—haste to yonder shore! And ample wealth shall well reward, Ply swift and strong the oar. ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... stopped dead still. Investigation revealed that the gasoline had given out. "Why didn't I think to fill her up before we left?" said Sahwah impatiently. "Here we are, out in the middle of the lake with never an oar or a paddle, and not a bit of breeze blowing. Why, we aren't even drifting!" To all appearances it looked as if they were becalmed there for the rest of the afternoon, until they would be missed from camp, and Gladys said ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... your oar, Jedidiah Burbank!" she said. "I guess I know what I'm about. If it was leap-year fifty times over, I wouldn't offer myself ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... thy merchandise, With all the men of war, that are in thee, Shall fall into the heart of the seas in the day of thy ruin. At the sound of thy pilot's cry the suburb's shall shake; And all that handle the oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of the sea, They shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the land, And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... river, being a quiet reach among solitary meadows. She remembered that there was a shabby little house standing by itself on the bank where boats could be hired, for they had put in there once to replace an oar, having lost one down a weir in the neighborhood. The weir had not been on the main stream, but they had come upon it in exploring a backwater. It could not be ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... Madge Morton were good oarsmen. Indeed, they were almost as much at home on the water as they were on land. Each girl wore a tiny silver oar pinned to her dress. Only the week before Madge had won the annual spring rowing contest; for Miss Tolliver made a special point of athletics in her school, and fortunately the school grounds ran down to the bank ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... who never secret kept, The peevish, blustering railer! Told it the Oar, as on he swept; The Oar informed the Sailor. The Sailor whisper'd it to his fair, And she—she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... not pull an oar, and you can pull a rope," said Grady, "so you are a trifle more useful now than you were before; and begorra you ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... along the flowery bank, While many a bending seagrape[1] drank The sprinkle of the feathery oar That winged me round this ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... daughter, hand on oar and face against the night. Maid and man whose names are beacons ever to the north. ...... all the madness of the stormy surf Hounds and roars them back, but roars and hounds them back ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... as if he would never get them free. His tail was shaped somewhat like a paddle set on edge, for a long, narrow fin ran from the middle of his back clear around the end of it and forward again on the under side of his body, and with this for an oar he struggled and writhed and squirmed, and went bumping blindly about among the pebbles like a kitten with its head in the cream pitcher. And at last, with the most vigorous squirm and wriggle of all, he ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... the spacious circuits of her musing proposed to herself of highest hope and hardest attempting." No doubt at first, in thus deferring the work of his life, he thought the delay would be for a brief space. He did not foresee that having once taken an oar, he would be chained to it for more than twenty years, and that he would finally owe his release to the ruin of the cause he had served. But for the Restoration and the overthrow of the Puritans, we should never have had the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... has attained this stage of development it begins to move about in the ovolemma. This causes the membrane to burst. The larva emerges from it, and swims about in the sea by means of its oar-like tail. These free-swimming larvae of the Ascidia have been known for a long time. They were first observed by Darwin during his voyage round the world in 1833. They resemble tadpoles in outward appearance, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... overlordship of women! Clearer thinking than we, they see the menace of femininity. We of the West will soon see that woman has been the passenger in the rather frail life-boat of the world. And in self defence we shall put her overboard before long—unless—unless—she takes an oar." ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... save the brig, the captain and I, with a few men, quietly let down into the water the aft hatch, one of those big doors they cover the hatchways with, and when that was resting on the water it made a very good raft for one man. And I got down on it, with my water-glass and an oar. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, . . . . ; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... night, With bated breath And muffled oar, Without a light, As still as death, We'll steal ashore. A clergyman Shall make us one At half-past ten, And then we can Return, for none ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... desired to help him in any way in my power, led to a friendship which lasted till his lamented death in 1896. I fancied at the time that my aid did him good, but I think now that the opposition had spent its force before I put in my oar by some letters to the press. South Australians became afterwards appreciative of the work done by Mr. Hartley, and proud of the good position this State took in matters educational among the sister ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... said he felt rather unwell, and would stay at home. An oar happened to be wanted in the regimental gig, which Sir Henry offered to take. He was soon accoutred in the dress of an absent member, and in a short time was discharging the duties of his office to the satisfaction of all; for he knew every secret of feathering, and had not caught ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... but in a sorry condition. A large piece had been split out of one end, and a fearful chink was visible nearly to the water line. Freed from the treetop, however, and calked with a little moss, it floated with two aboard, which was quite enough for our purpose. A jack and an oar were necessary to complete the arrangement, and before the sun had set our professor of wood-craft had both in readiness. From a young yellow birch an oar took shape with marvelous rapidity,—trimmed and smoothed with a neatness ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... more of my fellows, together with fourscore Italians and Spaniards, were sent forth in a galiot to take a Greek carmosel, which came into Arabia to steal negroes, and went out of Tripolis unto that place which was two hundred and forty leagues thence; but we were chained three and three to an oar, and we rowed naked above the girdle, and the boatswain of the galley walked abaft the mast, and his mate afore the mast, and each of them a whip in their hands, and when their devilish choler rose they would strike ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... Ben had a large and sharp knife in his pocket, and he began to whittle the board like a typical Yankee. Deck put his staff into the scull-hole, and made an effort to steer the tender, and thus prevent her from whirling. As a rudder it was a failure; but as an oar, heaving around the stern, he succeeded with much exertion in making a tolerably ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... and if some god were to ask of it whether it is content with its own unimpaired and uncorrupted senses, or whether it desires something better, I do not see what more it could ask for. Nor while speaking on this topic need you wait while I reply to the illustration drawn from a bent oar, or the neck of a dove; for I am not a man to say that everything which seems is exactly of that character of which it seems to be. Epicurus may deal with this idea, and with many others; but in my opinion there is the very greatest truth in the senses, if ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... tiller, Mahomed!" I roared in Arabic. "We must try and shoot them." At the same moment I seized an oar, and got it out, motioning ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... which all children know and love; and the name of which I'll tell you by and by. So busily was I reading, that I never minded the tide; and presently discovered that I was floating out to sea, with neither sail nor oar. At first I was very much frightened; for there was no one in sight on land or sea, and I didn't know where I might drift to. But the water was calm, the sky clear, and the wind blew balmily; so I waited for what ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... duck-pond. And Captain Robin, being well-to-do, and established with every thing except a wife, and pleased with the pretty smile and quiet ways of Joan—for he never had heard of her money, mind—put his oar into the sea and rowed from Flamborough all the way to Filey Brigg, with thirty-five fishermen after him; for the Flamborough people make a point of seeing one another through their troubles. And Robin was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... from their own imprudence. To this class may be reduced the Grecian Prodigals, who were detained in the service of their creditors, till the fruits of their labour were equivalent to their debts; the delinquents, who were sentenced to the oar; and the German enthusiasts, as mentioned by Tacitus, who were so immoderately charmed with gaming, as, when every thing else was gone, to have staked their liberty and their very selves. "The loser," says he, "goes into ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... Juan came to pay his fees To Charon, by the caverned water's shore, A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes, Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar. ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker

... lose countenance, but went on hammering at his boat as if he cared not at all, till observing that one of the soldiers was looking hard at Edmund, he called out, "I say, Ned, what's the use of loitering there, listening to what's no concern of yours? Fetch the oar out of yon shed. I never lit on such a lazy comrade ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... falls on the stage and his misadventures as an actor. "This personage of comic romance," said he, "who has leapt from the trestles of Punch to the tribune of the Jacobins, rushes at me, as though to strike me with the oar the Swiss have brought ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... Highlands which he had once taken with Dr. Dohrn, when, on a rough day, they were being rowed across Loch Leven to Mary Stuart's castle. The boatman, unable to make head single-handed against the wind, asked them each to take an oar; but when they landed and Huxley tendered the fare, the honest fellow gave him back two sixpences, saying, "I canna tak' it: you have wrocht as hard as I." Each took a coin; and Huxley remarked that this was the first sixpence he had earned by manual labour. Dr. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... but the whale yanked again and Pa began to pull him in. I hung on, and let the line out a little at a time, just zackly like a fish, and he pulled, and sweat, and the bald spot on his head was getting sun burnt, and the line cut my hand, so I wound it around the oar-lock, and Pa pulled hard enough to tip the boat over. He thought he had a forty pound musculunger, and he stood up in the boat and pulled on that oar-lock as hard as he could. I ought not to have done it, but I loosened the line from the oar-lock, and when it slacked ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... The old, old story was evidently being rehearsed under there, but the occasional splashing of the ice-cold water made it seem like very chilling business; still we all know it is not. Our decoys had not been brought in, and I distinctly heard some ducks splash in among them. The sound of oar-locks in the distance next caught my ears. They were so far away that it took some time to decide whether or not they were approaching. But they finally grew more distinct,—the steady, measured beat of an oar in a wooden lock, a very pleasing sound coming over still, moonlit waters. It was an ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... Sara opened her eyes they were almost dazzled by the rays of the sun. The high towers of a great city rose before her, and Dumb William, with his oar upright, was standing in the boat, pushing and guiding it through the lively confusion of many vessels, gay with their pennons and streamers, whose crews were either gazing idly at passers-by, or else ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... as places could not be spared for more than two, or at most three seamen to each boat, who were always stationed, one at the bow, to use the boat-hook in fending or pushing off, and the other at the aftermost oar, to give the proper time in rowing, while the middle oars were double- banked, and rowed by ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... delight in it, is a slavery, a bondage, not a business: the shop is a bridewell, and the warehouse a house of correction to the tradesman, if he does not delight in his trade. While he is bound, as we say, to keep his shop, he is like the galley-slave chained down to the oar; he tugs and labours indeed, and exerts the utmost of his strength, for fear of the strapado, and because he is obliged to do it; but when he is on shore, and is out from the bank, he abhors the labour, and hates to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... quarries, panted in the vapour-baths, shrieked under torture, passed through the hands of many masters, and experienced every frenzy. At last, one day, in despair, he had flung himself into the sea from the top of a trireme where he was working at the oar. Some of Hamilcar's sailors had picked him up when at the point of death, and had brought him to the ergastulum of Megara, at Carthage. But, as fugitives were to be given back to the Romans, he had taken advantage of the confusion to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more conscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion. The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an epical event and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... Pennsylvania House of Representatives]; the more remarkable as I was always in a party minority. I was indebted for it to my great industry and to the facility with which I could understand and carry on the current business. The laboring oar was left almost exclusively to me. In the session of 1791-1792, I was put on thirty-five committees, prepared all their reports, and drew all their bills. Absorbed by those details, my attention was turned exclusively to administrative laws, and not to legislation properly so called.... ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... They revile Our "Ruskinismo," do these souls of dust, Who care not for their sumptuous marble pile, Oh, sons unworthy of their splendid trust! With his oar broken, and his dry keel thrust, Unused ashore, the Gondolier recalls Gay days and nights of glory, such as must Too oft remind him who his land enthrals, And flings a sordid cloud ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... travelers have come suddenly upon alligators crawling amid prairies or woods, in the most unexpected manner. The alligator as a rule is very wary, but at times sleeps quite soundly. I saw one struck twice with an oar before ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... soldiers reached the shore and began to fire upon the occupants of the boat. Marguerite crept under the seat, while the men tried to dodge the bullets. One bullet pierced the Count's hat, two pierced Richard's oar. The little boat, which was scarcely an inch above the water, rocked and rolled and almost capsized, but the occupants escaped without injury and finally reached the opposite shore ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne

... an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English with the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend perspiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up. And there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of us. It appeared that the champion canoeist ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Why shouldn't I, in the name of goodness? Let me tell you I can pull a good oar still. If only I had had my flannels! You seem to think I'm fit ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... way through the trees of the opening; evidently the splash of his oar was caught by the owner of the noisy voice, for before he could see any one a silence succeeded to the noise, a sudden absolute silence, ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... fair, and when he reaches her side, and lifts her veil, eager to embrace the tempter, a hideous skeleton grins and gibbers at him. The siren voices sing to you from the smiling island, and their white arms and golden harps and the flowery grass draw you from the wet boat and the weary oar; but when a man lands he sees the fair form end in a slimy fish, and she slays him and gnaws his bones. 'He knows not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.' Yes! every sin is a mistake, and the epitaph for the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... short, they persuade him to shut his eyes, that he may with greater perspicuity distinguish the road he is to travel: once arrived at this influence, they indelibly fix their lessons; irrevocably chain him to the oar; by holding up to his view the punishments intended for him by these imaginary beings, in case he refuses to accredit, in the most liberal manner, their marvellous inventions; this argument, although it only supposes the thing in question, serves to close his mouth—to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... have thrown the line for her, in his distraction let her drop her oar and throw the line herself, and then we scrambled aboard without hearing any more of ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... heavy rapids, over which it was necessary to track, and in some places to double the crews. Each boat had a tow line of fifty feet, and in tracking the end was taken ashore by one of the crew of two, while the boat was kept off the bank by the other man with an oar. At the Horseshoe Rapids, ten miles above Gull Island Lake, an accident happened which threatened to put a stop to further progress of the expedition. While tracking around a steep point in crossing these ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... The Arms they use are long spears or Lances, a Staff about 5 feet long. Some of these are pointed at one end like a Serjeant's Halberd, others are round and Sharp; the other ends are broad, something like the blade of an Oar. They have another sort about 4 1/2 feet long; these are shaped at one End like an Axe, and the other is made with a Sharp point. They have short Truncheons about a foot long, which they call Pattoo Pattoas; some made of wood, some of bone, and ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... brigantines were now afloat on the lake, fully equipped, and manned by expert sailors, and were found to obey both sail and oar to a wish. When Montezuma learnt this, he requested to go a-hunting to a certain district which was full of game, all other persons being prohibited from hunting there under pain of death. Cortes granted permission, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... no country, in the nineteenth century, interfere with the speculations of a philosopher in his closet, but it might, and must, steady the weak and wavering opinions of the multitude. There is something really pitiable in the effect produced by the want of this rudder oar. I knew a family where one was a Methodist, one a Presbyterian, and a third a Baptist; and another, where one was a Quaker, one a declared Atheist, and another an Universalist. These are all females, and all moving in the best society that ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... sinks low; For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach's whoop and shout, For the minute-gun, the counting and the long dishevelled rout, For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that's still in doubt, For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about In the land where the dead ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom of a staunch cutter. Once there was a goodly hammer cemented ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... took hundreds of gallons of rum and egg (at my expense) at the various houses of note above and below bridge; not by any means because he liked it, but to cure a weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had particularly recommended it - may be explained as rowed by three men, two pulling an oar each, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... shock. And here I feel it just to pay a tribute of admiration to the cook, who on these occasions never failed to exhibit an immense amount of misdirected energy, breaking—I remember—at the same moment, both the cabin sky-light, and an oar, in single combat with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... own course," said the old man. "Miss Amory is a dev'lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play her own cards; and I'm doosid glad you are out of it—doosid glad, begad. Who's this smoking? Oh, it's Mr. Strong again. He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I tell you, don't meddle in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... life under its roof was indeed an ideal existence. I was their constant guest and although it was a simple life it teemed with beauty and interest. Our days were spent principally out of doors and the sources of amusement were always near at hand. As all of the Kembles were experts with the oar, we frequently spent many hours on the Hudson. Another unfailing source of pleasure was a frequent visit to West Point to witness the evening parade. As we knew many of the cadets they frequently crossed the river to take ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... chorus of which was 'Hatyin foam foam eri', with words of his own[486]. The tune resembled 'Owr the muir amang the heather'. The boatmen and Mr. M'Queen chorused, and all went well. At length Malcolm himself took an oar, and rowed vigorously. We sailed along the coast of Scalpa, a rugged island, about four miles in length. Dr. Johnson proposed that he and I should buy it, and found a good school, and an episcopal church, (Malcolm[487] said, he would come to it,) and have a printing-press, where ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... shall see. Well, I won't put my oar in—isn't that kind of me? But, indeed, your Captain Duchesne looks thoroughly ripe for a flirtation, and it will be as much as I can do to keep ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the lake; His oars a softened click-clack make; On all that water bright and blue, His boat is the only one in view; So, when he hears another oar Click-clack along the farthest shore, "Heigh-ho," he cries, "out for a row! Echo is out! heigh-ho—heigh-ho!" "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho!" Sounds from the distance, faint ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... in his preparatory school and college in several lines of athletics. But a boy in his position would scarcely become a professional baseball player or pull an oar for a living. To tell the truth, Tom had never shown much aptitude for his father's business. Dry goods ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... weight less, feels the irksomeness of the burden more than the old bowed one. With strength goes the wild love of movement, and the cross that prevents the free play of a single muscle is felt grievous as the fetter that chains a man to the oar. But this day—and what man has to do with yesterday or tomorrow? —the sun shone as if he knew nothing, or as if he knew all, and knew it to be well; and Cosmo was going home, and the love of his father was a deep gladness, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... {446} Daughter of Pelias, in the realms below, Immortal pleasures round thee flow, Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine. Be the black-brow'd Pluto told, And the Stygian boatman old, Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide, The dead conveying o'er the tide,— Let him be told, so rich a freight before His light skiff never bore; Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes The noblest of her sex her ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... distance. Two boats were lying in a small stream which emptied itself into the lake, so I pressed one of them into my service, and was soon out upon the water. The boat was old, badly built, and rickety. The starboard oar was cracked, and the port oar had been broken in two and mended with bands of iron. The bottom was several inches deep in water, the thwarts were not securely fastened, nor were they at right angles to the keel. Out in the loch the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... chieftain of the West Coast. Presently she made her appearance, a sprightly young woman about 26, and we all started in their canoe for their home at Skidegate, where I had been invited. En route while passing a pipe from the chief to his wife, my oar caught in the water, giving the canoe a sudden lurch which would have been quite alarming to most feminine nerves, but not to the Princess for she laughed so heartily over the mishap, that I saw a smile spread over the big face of the old chief. An hour brought us ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... to aid the progress of the passenger. This gave an air of singularity and wildness to the place, which was aided by the boldness of the surrounding scenery. The street bore all the marks of the occupation of the inhabitants—nets hanging to dry—strings of fish—an old oar—or a "fisher's wife" broiling fish for her husband's breakfast—met the eye on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... English gentleman, Karl used a small wharf at which sloops loaded and unloaded their cargoes. Ashburner said something of this to Karl, and Karl said something of ice in the spring, freshets in the fall, and low water in the summer; but Harry Benson, as usual, put in his oar, and explained the matter more fully, and no doubt more truly: "You see, Ashburner," said he, "the fact is, we are not a sporting people; our gentlemen rarely ride, and our ladies never walk. In England, every one knows, or pretends to know, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... despatched to convey us on shore. These Indian canoes consist of long narrow stumps of trees, hollowed longitudinally. On either side is nailed a palo de balzas, viz., a beam of a very porous kind of wood. One Indian sits forward, another more backward, each having a short wooden shovel-shaped oar, with which they strike the water right and left, and thus scull the boat onward. The passengers must crouch or kneel down in the middle, and dare not stir, for the least irregularity in the motion would upset the boat. We landed safely, and amused ourselves ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... to my indolent and careless disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the moment. When the weather was calm, I frequently went immediately after I rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. The receiver had taught me to row with one oar; I rowed out into the middle of the lake. The moment I withdrew from the bank, I felt a secret joy which almost made me leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my being out of the reach of the wicked. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... stinkpots at her mastheads and boarding-nets hung round her. Of course he was to escape in the end, but so narrowly that all possible sail had to be crowded on to his little ship, and the whole crew set to work the big oar at the stern, while every soul on board shivered and shook as men should when pirates are ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... time I had kept my temper, and refrained as far as might be from any interference, for I saw (in our friend's mulish humour) he always contrived to twist it to our disadvantage. But now came the acute point. Young Frank now took an oar. He was a little fellow, near as frail as myself, and very short; if he weighed nine stone, it was the outside; but his blood was up. He took stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow, and set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly, a kind of race competition—almost race ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... toward the north. The sea-breeze blew her hair into her face. Perhaps on the ocean whence it came the high waves would, in a few hours, be tossing the ship on which her father and brother, seated at the oar, would be toiling as disgraced galley-slaves. That must not, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to quarantine this fellow, in the long run, Bluewater! I do believe if I were to take him to Lambeth Palace, or even to St. James's, he'd thrust his oar into the archbishop's benedictions, or the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... had been sent to cover the bank in both directions were now coming in. Through the stillness of the night there sounded the thump of oar-locks. Seeing that the stranger did not seem to take his hint, Lewis raised ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... again pass to the open canal we would watch the boats. I did not know there were so many boats in all the world. They floated slowly past us— big boats, little boats, those that went by sail, and those that went by oar. There were the boats of mandarins and merchants, those for passengers, and great unwieldy boats for rice. We saw the fishing-boats with their hungry, fierce-eyed cormorants sitting quietly in their places, waiting for the master to send ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... a short time ago," said Emery. "Let's return to our mutton. Thornton was kicking because Merriwell has made a try for the eight, and seems to stand a good show of getting there. I don't see where Thornton's growl comes in. He can't pull an oar." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips in concert ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... ballasted so that its lid, or deck, was almost awash; and near its stern was a box containing clock movements that would go for about ten minutes, upon the withdrawal of a peg outside, and then would draw a trigger and explode the charge. This wondrous creature had neither oar nor sail, but demanded to be towed to the tideward of the enemy, then have the death-watch set going, and be cast adrift within hail of the enemy's line. Then as soon as it came across their mooring cables, its duty was to slide for a little way along them in a friendly manner, lay hold ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... their way out to us. In the fortnight following the last bombardment of the city I enlisted no less than nine such recruits, six being from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton; and Bull, the former Harvard oar, who had been back to the States crippled after the first fight, actually got back to us as a stowaway on one of the transports, bound to share the luck of the regiment, even if ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... and thy son—that thou leave not my body unburied in the palace halls, lest I bring on thee the anger of the gods. But on thy return to Circe's isle burn my body, together with my armor, and pile up a mound of earth over my ashes. Plant my oar upon my tomb—the oar with which I used to row while ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... my oar once more, when the sea was calm, I was amused by disturbing the innumerable young star fish which floated just below the surface; I had never observed them before, for they have not a hard shell like those which I have seen on the seashore. They look like thickened water with a ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... he wished to see her under all aspects, and travelled incessantly, first in his native province, amid the meadows and waters of Normandy, then on the banks of the Seine along which he coasted, bending to the oar. Then Brittany with its beaches, where high waves rolled in beneath low and dreary skies, then Auvergne, with its scattered huts amid the sour grass, beneath rocks of basalt; and, finally, Corsica, Italy, Sicily, not with artistic enthusiasm, but simply to enjoy the delight of grand, pure ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... replied the old man, "because he who shows pity to others deserves their help when in need of it. But take the oar and row to whatever ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... wished again to occupy the excellent villa we had. Not knowing what answer to make to the first question, we had passed to the second—somewhat illogically. The second had proved more heatedly disputable than the first. Finally Jill had looked up from a letter to Piers and put in her oar ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... eighteen months they had been constantly together, and it was the sailor's companionship and cheerfulness that had lightened the first days of his captivity; and had it not been for his advice and support he might now have been tugging at an oar in the bey's corsair galley. Ever since they had been at Cadiz he had daily spent an hour or two in his society; for when work was done they generally went for a walk together on the fortifications, and talked of England and discussed the possibility ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... pieces of cord with him, but neither powder nor shot. Of the cord he made nooses and caught eider-ducks, by which, and their eggs, he kept himself alive; in the night, he crept under an overhanging rock to sleep. At length he discovered a piece of wood floating to the shore; of this he made an oar, and, getting on a flake of ice, rowed himself to an island nearer the main land, whence he reached two more islands nearer still. About the beginning of August, he observed two boats steering towards the south, and made signals: these were not noticed by the first, which ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... of a little skiff, half hidden among the bulrushes that fringed the lake; and leaping into the boat, without aid of oar, he was wafted out into the middle of the lake, to the place where, out of the water, rose the arm and sword. And leaning from the skiff, he took the sword from the hand, which forthwith vanished, and immediately thereafter the skiff ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... night they were coasting inside the Rhoeteian shore, with the land of Ida on their right. And leaving Dardania they directed their course to Abydus, and after it they sailed past Percote and the sandy beach of Abarnis and divine Pityeia. And in that night, as the ship sped on by sail and oar, they passed right through the Hellespont dark-gleaming ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... usually towed, but are sometimes fitted with some kind of engine; the men in charge of them are known as bargees. On tidal rivers barges are often provided with masts and sails ("sailing barges"), or in default of being towed, they drift with the current, guided by a long oar or oars ("dumb-barges"). Barges used for unloading, or loading, the cargo of ships in harbours are sometimes called "lighters" (from the verb "to light" to relieve of a load). A state barge was a heavy, often highly ornamented vessel used for carrying passengers on occasions ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Goldees make canoes of birch bark, quite broad in the middle and coming to a point at both ends. In general appearance these canoes resemble those of the Penobscot and Canadian Indians. The native sits in the middle of his canoe and propels himself with a double-bladed oar, which he dips into the water with regular alternations from one side to the other. The canoes are flat bottomed and very easy to overturn. A canoe is designed to carry but one man, though two can be taken in an emergency. When a native sitting in one of them spears a fish he moves only his ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... he said, "that nothing is impossible—to have you here beside me. I said, that day at Surbiton, 'There's many good things in life, but there's only one best, and that's the wild-haired girl who's pulling away at that oar. I will make her my Grail, and some day, perhaps, if God wills, she ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... one loop of rope over his shoulders, put the other looped rope into his hand, then laid an oar on the mud. "Now, go; the rushes will hold you when you get ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... the stern of the boat, another splintered the end of an oar, and then the rifleman's nerves must have got the better of him. The succeeding shots fell wide, and I whooped like a madman as I drove the boat on to the green tongue of land. Springing out hastily I made a dash across ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... the day our whole household, old and young, set forth for a boating excursion on the lake. Dividing our party in two boats, we pulled about a mile up the left shore. Lake Leman was before us in all its loveliness; and we were dipping our oar where Byron had floated past scenes which scarce need to become classic to possess a superior charm. The sun was just gone behind the Jura, leaving a glorious sky. Mont Blanc stood afar behind a hazy veil, like a spirit half revealed. We saw it pass before our eyes as we moved. "It stood ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... curving of the rays of light caused by their entering the earth's atmosphere, which is a denser medium than the very light ether of the outer sky. The effect of refraction is seen when an oar is thrust into the water and looks as if it were bent. Refraction always causes a celestial object to appear higher than it really is. This refraction is greatest at the horizon and diminishes toward the zenith, where it disappears. Table 20A in Bowditch gives the correction ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... that hails them from the nearer shore: 'Lads, have ye any meat?' And they answer it with a half surly and wholly disappointed monosyllabic 'No!' It is an emblem for us all; weary and wet, tugging at the oar in the dark, and often seeming to fail. What then? If the last cast has brought nothing, try another. Out with the nets once more! Never mind the darkness, and the cold, and the wetting spray, and the weariness. You cannot expect ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... three inches, and there was water enough and to spare on the flats, the sea-weed, growing thick as grain in the harvest-field, and half floating where the depth was three or four feet, collecting round the sharp bow as a long tress of hay gathers round a tooth of a rake, and burying the oar-blade, impeded all progress, and obliged me to pull almost double the distance against the rapid tide-set of the circuitous channels. I worked through the bends and reaches, till the deep, strong current of Shirley Gut was to be stemmed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... boat, which at once pushed off. The men rowed easily, for they were anxious to hear the particulars of the report which had circulated through the ship. Bill Hardy was rowing the stroke oar, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... evidently already taken leave of the people over at the house, for he descended the steps and went to join Beaudelet, who was out there with an oar across his shoulder waiting for Robert. They walked away in the darkness. She could only hear Beaudelet's voice; Robert had apparently not even spoken a word of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... as a continuous oar. Such a wheel is shown in Fig. 33. As the wheel goes around the paddle dips into the water and pushes the boat forward. If the direction of the boat is to be reversed, the rotation of ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... you took the bow and arrows. This being done, the sea will swell and rise up to the foot of the dome that stands upon the top of the mountain; when it is come up so high, thou shalt see a boat with one man and an oar in each hand. This man is also of metal, different from that thou hast thrown down; step on board to him without mentioning the name of God, and let him conduct thee. He will in ten days time bring thee into another sea, where thou shalt find an opportunity to get home to thy country ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... house again, and rock while the old man finishes his coffee, sure of a greeting, confident in a sense of entire good-fellowship, until the meal is finished, and James Parsons is ready to take his coat and a red-bladed oar, and set out. Then the boy is like a setter off for a walk,—all sorts of whimsical expressions in his face, of absolute delight; every form of extravagance in his bearing. The only trouble is, one has to laugh too much; but with all this, ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... lived for half a century, he begins to think that he may possibly grow old some day, and I would provide myself with a young partner, who may take the laboring oar in my business when age compels me ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... artful confederates were at work. The same day, about an hour before daylight, two men, dressed as foreigners, landed from a six-oar galley, and called on a gentleman of Northfleet, and handed him a letter from an old friend, begging him to take the bearers to London, as they had great public news to communicate; they were accordingly taken. About twelve or one the same afternoon, three persons (two of whom ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... memorable incidents of the cold; but the most singular adventure was that of the old man employed at the Armenian Convent to bring milk from the island of San Lazzaro to the city. One night, shortly after the coldest weather set in, he lost his oar as he was returning to the island. The wind, which is particularly furious in that part of the lagoon, blew his boat away into the night, and the good brothers at the convent naturally gave up their milkman for lost. The winds and waters drifted him eight ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... the shades of Theseus, and Pirithous, and the old heroes; but he had conversed enough with horrors; therefore, covering his face with his hands, that he might see no more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and pushed off. The bark moved of itself without the help of any oar, and soon brought him out of the regions of death into the cheerful quarters of the living, and to the island of Aeaea, whence he ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... impatient sweep with her paddle. The prow of the canoe dipped and was motionless. Rome had caught the stern, and the girl wheeled in hot anger. Her impulse to strike may have been for the moment and no longer, or she may have read swiftly no unkindness in the mountaineer's steady look; for the uplifted oar was stayed in the air, as though at least she would ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.

... the quarter-deck awaiting our fate—"come, boys; we three shall stick together. You see it is impossible that the little boat can reach the shore, crowded with men. It will be sure to upset, so I mean rather to trust myself to a large oar. I see through the telescope that the ship will strike at the tail of the reef, where the waves break into the quiet water inside; so, if we manage to cling to the oar till it is driven over the breakers, we may perhaps gain the shore. What say ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... who is smitten with love for this devil of a Blanche. And there is this Frenchman, too, with his mysterious influence over you. Yet, you actually ask me such a question! If you do not tell me how things stand, I shall have to put in my oar and do something. Are you ashamed to be frank with me? ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... snorted right out two or three times," said the Clockmaker; "I had to pucker up my mouth like the upper eend of a silk puss, to keep from yawhawin' in her face, to hear the critter let her clapper run that fashion. She is not the first hand that has caught a lobster, by puttin' in her oar afore her turn, I guess. She'll mind her steps next hitch, I reckon." This was our last ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... hold your lives in trust for those who need your succor: A flash of fire by night, a loom of smoke by day, A rag to an oar shall be to you the symbol Of your faith, of your creed, of the law ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the scattered perfections of the animal world. He even succeeds ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... shot out around one of the frequent turns in the river, the gleam of other oars, the high prow of a larger galley, and across the water came the oar-song of a larger company of rowers. Helena started ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... training in the world for boy and youth and man. If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable skiff. He will do the rest. He won't need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar. Then he will begin to talk keels and centreboards and want to take his blankets out and stop aboard ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... And don't you," added Webster, "go shoving your oar in when your social superiors are talking! I've had to speak to you about that before. My remarks were ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Spirit! being's End and Source! O check thy chariot in its fervid course; Bend from thy throne of darkness and of fire, And with one smile immortalize oar lyre!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... within him his heart quaked by reason of the strangeness: and he longed to get to land, groaning terribly through the stress of chilling fear. He put out his tail upon the water and worked it like a steering oar, and prayed to heaven that he might get to land. But when the dark waves washed over him he cried aloud and said: 'Not in such wise did the bull bear on his back the beloved load, when he brought Europa across the sea to Crete, as this Frog ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... creatures they were, that barkt against the moon. I'll give you better counsel as a friend: Cobblers their latchets ought not to transcend; Meddle with common matters, common wrongs; To the House of Commons common things belongs. Leave him the oar that best knows how to row, And state to him that best the state doth know. If I by industry, deep reach, or grace, Am now arriv'd at this or that great place, Must I, to please your inconsiderate rage, Throw down mine honours? Will nought else assuage Your furious wisdoms? ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... level ground above the beach the tents and caravans are drawn up in orderly array. Stretching away from the shore is the bay, lying calm and unruffled under the summer sky, except when its glassy surface is rippled by the dip of an oar or churned into froth by the restless pulsations of a passing steamer. Across the bay the hills rise beautiful and purple-blue through the evening glow, throwing out encircling arms around the villages dotted thick and white along their base, as the arms of ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... introduced into the boiler or pot and steam was generated, she was again ready to start on another expedition." The boat was a yawl about eighteen feet in length and six feet beam. She was started at the buoy with a small oar when the propeller was used. The boiler was a ten or twelve gallon iron pot. This boat with a portion of the machinery was abandoned by Fitch, and left to decay on the muddy shore. Shortly after this he died in Kentucky in 1798. Had he lived, or, had the fortune like Fulton, to find such ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... Under sail and oar, a hundred boats put off from the shore to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the strange island became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... and licentiousness, but great crimes are rare. If you have occasion to hire a boat for a sail in the harbor, be sure to find and employ "Bushy," a tall, intelligent darkey, the best boatman and stroke-oar in Nassau. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... with his head should pay the penalty. This fiat he with heart uplift sent forth, As little knowing what the gods ordained. Obedient to the word, our seamen all Prepared their evening meal, then every man In order to the rowlock lashed his oar. Soon as the light of evening died away And night came on, each man who plied the oar Went to his ship with all the men-at-arms, And the word passed along the lines of war. Then they put forth, each in his place assigned, And through the live-long night the captains kept ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... presents of chocolates. But presumably they are not allowed to eat them, so that these can do little to alleviate their sufferings. It is true also that for ever after (if their wives allow it) they can hang an enormous oar on the wall and contemplate it after dinner. But, after all, I can do that too, if I like; for I too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... the shore. The boats were afloat and laden before one knew it. Mr. Marlboro' and Eloise were just one instant too late. Laura Murray shook a triumphant handkerchief at them, and St. George feathered his oar, pausing a moment as if he would return, and then gave a great sweep and his boat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... Race is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. To begin with, it involves great muscular exertion; but this is not unpleasant, and, as I shall presently show, is not dangerous. Further, it ties the aspirant to his oar for at least ten weeks, which is perhaps its greatest disadvantage; and it involves intense application and a pretty good temper under remarks from the "coach" that are sometimes almost more than caustic. But against these drawbacks are to be ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... of the canoes, so filled with men any movement was almost impossible, yet of this I did not complain for my Uncle Chevet was next to me, and Cassion took place at the steering oar in the stern. To be separated from him was all I asked, although the very sound of his harsh voice rasping out orders, as we swung out from the bank rendered me almost frantic. My husband! God! and I was actually married to that despicable creature! I think I hardly realized ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... change, Who strayed content along a sunlit beach Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange Commingled noise: looked up; and gasped for speech. For in the bay, where nothing was before, Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes, With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar, And fluttering ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... courage and endurance (for one could see that it was no child's-play, from the pale faces, and panting lips), their strength and activity, so fierce and yet so cultivated, smooth, harmonious, as oar kept time with oar, and every back rose and fell in concert—and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse of the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... firmly, "I want you to keep that boresome old man occupied while I talk with these women. I don't want him putting in his oar." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... them, and, in so doing, to modify seriously the fortunes of many others. Arnold having one day pulled out on the open lake, in his venturesome manner, Pellew gave chase in another boat. The Americans being hard pressed and capture probable, Arnold unbuckled his stock and himself took an oar. So nearly caught was he, that he had to escape into the bushes, leaving behind him stock and buckle; and these, as late as sixty years after, remained in the possession of Pellew's brother. Had he thus been deprived of the opportunity that Saratoga gave him the next ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... they will let a human being perish, and so near the shore, when an oar held out would save his life?" was the agonising question at my heart, as I gazed, half-maddened by excitement, on the fearful spectacle. The eyes of a multitude were fixed upon the same object—but not a hand stirred. Every one seemed to expect from ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... he pulled the two bow oars of Ellidi; but either oar was thirteen ells long, and two men pulled ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... who had nearly forgotten his swollen jaw under the excitement of the moment. "I see the oar we tied onto the line that Frank fastened to the cable. It's right ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... him Brand, the son of the former president, and about twelve hundred well-mounted men. Crossing the Orange River at Sand Drift, north of Colesberg, upon December 16th, they paused at Kameelfontein to gather up a small post of thirty yeomen and guardsmen under Lieutenant Fletcher, the wellknown oar. Meeting with a stout resistance, and learning that British forces were already converging upon them, they abandoned the attack, and turning away from Colesberg they headed west, cutting the railway line twenty miles to the north of De Aar. On the 22nd they occupied Britstown, which ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Flosi all about his dealings with his host, and Flosi says he will pull an oar with him, so that his marriage bargain might be struck, and buy the ship of him afterwards. The Easterling was glad at that. Flosi offered him land at Borgarhaven, and now the Easterling holds on with his suit to his host when Flosi was by, and Flosi threw in a helping ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... so much the greater is the subjection; for the cause being multiplied, so is the effect multiplied. Wherefore it is to be known that there are things which are such pure or simple Arts that Nature is their instrument; even as rowing with an oar, where the Art makes its instrument by impulsion, which is a natural movement; as in the threshing of the corn, where the Art makes its instrument, which is a natural quality. And in this especially a man ought to be subject to the chief and master of the Art. And ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... in sculling, we came within a quoitcast of the unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded toward us through the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on the surface of the water; but the eddying current sucked him down; and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on the vacant sea before us: but a breathing ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... with fruit, fowls, eggs, apes, parrots, shells, and such like wares, with which the owner drives a profitable trade with the ships. He sits on a little bench in the midst of his merchandize with a short, broad oar in either hand; with this he propels his fragile vessel; which is often not more than an inch or two above the water's edge. After we had exchanged our pure Spanish piastres, which is the coin they ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... was made out of more heroic stuff. The spirit of adventure had not died within him. His faith is full of the finest romance. "Come," said Jesus and immediately I see Peter drop his oar and begin to climb down out of the boat ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... that creek, overspread by the wild shrubs," answered Pausanias; "a few strokes of the oar, and I am where thou seest. And in truth, without thy summons, I should have been on board ere sunset, seeing that on the morrow I have ordered a general review of the vessels of the fleet. Was that to be the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... gracefully-curved papyrus blossoms. Two little platforms surrounded by balustrades on a panelled ground are at the prow and on the poop, like quarter-decks. The pilot stands upon the one, and the steersman before the other, with a large oar in his hand. This oar takes the place of the modern helm. Twelve boatmen in solid silver are rowing under the orders of these two officers; Kames himself being seated in the centre, hatchet and sceptre in hand. Such were some of the objects buried with one single mummy; ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... which are even more enchanting than its intense tints. Fishes, apparently of gold and rose-color or of a radiant blue barred and banded with silver, dart, plunge and chase each other after the fragments of biscuit we throw overboard. Films of crystal and ruby oar themselves gently along the upper surface or float like folded sea-flowers on the motionless water. A flock of tiny sea-mews, half the size of the fish, are screaming shrilly and darting down on the shoal; but as for their catching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... two men," says he, "and they rowing round with poteen before the cocks crowed, and the oar of one of them caught the body, and they passing the black ...
— Riders to the Sea • J. M. Synge

... scrambled to their feet and responded. Their cheers rang out. One of them, moved to enthusiasm, seized his oar and beat the water with the flat of the blade. Like a man with a flail he raised the oar high and brought it down with loud smacks on the water, splashing up sparkling drops, rocking the boat in which he stood. He was not a native of Salissa, not a subject of the Queen, but his action expressed ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... their graceful wings and uttering at intervals that peculiar wild cry that in solitary haunts sounds so intensely mournful. Errington gazed about him in doubt for some minutes, then suddenly his face brightened. He sat down again in the boat and resumed his oar. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also that that prince ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... sail had been hoisted; it filled out slowly and, obeying the long rough oar which Bostock used as a scull, the raft behaved splendidly, leaving the long dark hull of the steamer behind, and steadily nearing the yellow stretch of sand backed by an enormous ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... dreams, awoke her. A man of very uncouth and rough appearance was standing over them, and two of his companions were looking on, from a long heavy boat which had come close to the bank while they were sleeping. The boat had neither oar nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses, who, with the rope to which they were harnessed slack and dripping in the water, were resting ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... one of them tipped over an alligator in the water. He was a little fellow, and made off with all his might, to the great amusement of the party. The men had not taken half a dozen strokes more, before another alligator was turned over by an oar. This was a larger one than the other, and his head was lifted entirely out of the water. At the same moment Cornwood, who was standing in the bow of the boat, aimed a revolver ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic









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