"Messmate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasure of enjoying the society of the ladies, without interruption, and found many opportunities of saying a few words to Isabella. In this, he was again much beholden to the skilful manoeuvring of his messmate, Coffin, who was already higher in the good graces of the mother and daughters than Morton, who, though a handsome man, had not so much of that dashing, off-hand, sort of gallantry as the other; and which goes an ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally 'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck; that 'sincere' is without wax, (sine cera,) as the best and finest honey should be; that a 'companion,' probably at least, is one with whom we share our bread, a messmate; that a 'sarcasm' is properly such a lash inflicted by the 'scourge of the tongue' as brings away the flesh after it; with much more in the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... characteristic acts of self-devotion was his springing overboard into the waters of Malta Harbour in order to save the life of a middy messmate, Cobbett by name, who had accidentally fallen overboard. What made this action an especially noble one was the fact that Cobbett was one of the greatest bullies in the midshipmen's berth, and had ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate." ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... bedfellow, bedmate; chamber fellow. associate, colleague, compeer. schoolmate, schoolfellow^; classfellow^, classman^, classmate; roommate; fellow-man, stable companion. best man, maid of honor, matron of honor. compatriot; fellow countryman, countryman. shopmate, fellow-worker, shipmate, messmate^; fellow companion, boon companion, pot companion; copartner, partner, senior partner, junior partner. Arcades ambo Pylades and Orestes Castor and Pollux^, Nisus and Euryalus [Lat.], Damon and Pythias, par nobile fratrum [Lat.]. host, Amphitryon^, Boniface; guest, visitor, protege. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... still less satisfied to find one who might make some claim of acquaintance with him, however slender, since the circumstances in which he stood compelled him to be as reserved as possible. He therefore turned his back upon his destined messmate, and pretended to amuse himself by looking out of the window, determined to avoid all intercourse until it should be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... dollars in bank," added Glover. "All by blowin' 'n' tradin'. Goin' hum in the next steamer. Anythin' I can do for ye, old messmate? Say how much." ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... nature he had been designed for a family man; and children gave him their confidence without knowing why. But in his early manhood a girl had jilted him, which turned him against women: later, in the Navy, the death of a friend and messmate, to whom he had transferred all the loyalty of his heart, set him questioning many things in a silent way. He had never been able to dissipate affection or friendship: and his feelings when hurt, being sensitive as the horns of a snail, withdrew themselves as swiftly into a shell and hid ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... which had hardly moved before the explosion, raised their heads crested with foam more turbulently at every instant. "It is in vain," said the second man; "Heaven and Earth are against us: one or both must perish: Messmate, shall we go ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... not take up my readers' time with a minute account of all that occurred before I took my final leave of my dear parents. Suffice it to say that my father placed me under the charge of an old messmate of his own, a merchant captain, who was on the point of sailing to the South Seas in his own ship, the Arrow. My mother gave me her blessing and a small Bible; and her last request was that I would never forget to read a chapter every day, and say my prayers; which I promised, with ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... gathered on the wharf to wish each other 'good-bye,' as it was not likely they would ever meet again. I often think of Collins, who belonged to the same section of the starboard watch as I. He was a very witty fellow. He was asked one day where his messmate Jack Frost was? In reply he answered, "He is on the fore-yard shooting sparrows for the sick." This was amusing, considering at the time we were in a heavy gale far out at sea. On another occasion a civilian at Halifax asked him, "What do you sailors get to eat at sea?" "We ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... there was now nothing left to seaward by which the Hecla could be held out in that direction while heaving the Fury down, so that our preparations in this way were no longer available. After a night of most anxious consideration and consultation with Captain Hoppner, who was now my messmate in the Hecla, it appeared but too plain, that, should the ice again come in, neither ship could any longer be secured from driving on shore. It was therefore determined instantly to prepare the Hecla for sea, making her thoroughly effective in every respect; so that we might at least push her ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... honestly desires to convince his equals. Mr. Calhoun's harangues in the supposed Demosthenean style gave him, however, great reputation out of doors, while his diligence, his dignified and courteous manners, gained him warm admirers on the floor. He was a messmate of Mr. Clay at this time. Besides agreeing in politics, they were on terms of cordial personal intimacy. Henry Clay, Speaker of the House, was but five years older than Calhoun, and in everything but years much younger. Honest patriots pointed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... TOMMY ATKINS, BULL is sweet on "loyal toasts," And he spends his millions freely on his squadrons and his hosts, But there isn't much on't, messmate, not so fur as I can see, Whether 'tis rant or rhino, that gets spent on you and me. Still the Times has took our case up,—werry handsome o' the Times!— I have heard it charged with prejudice, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... He's a new shipment from New York. Grand-nephew of a messmate of mine, Cap'n Perez Ryder. Perez, he's a bachelor, but his sister's daughter married a feller named Bartlett. Maybe you knew him; he used to run a ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "'Dear messmate. Years ago, when you first signed papers to voyage through life, when you weren't rated as an A. B., you used to have me spill sea-yarns for you. And you always said you were going to be a sailor, shiver my timbers, or something like that,— real ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... ready for a messmate; but 'tain't often one boards me 'cept Cap'n Joab now and then. His woman likes to git him out from under foot. You see, when a woman's been useter seein' her husband only 'twixt v'y'ges for forty ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below after the frigate's second broadside; but the excitement of a boy, who had seldom smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole night, and it never once ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... on his breast, he informed me, were a tribute to the memory of a dead messmate from whom he had parted years ago—and surely a more touching tribute was never engraved on a tombstone. This caused me to think of my parting with old Aunt Chloe, and I told him I should take it as a great favor indeed if he would paint a pink hand and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... kind-hearted forbearance." It was indeed characteristic of the man that, while by no means insensible to the natural temptations of youth, he was ever more attracted to and influenced by the good than by the evil around him. During the following year, on his cruise to the Mediterranean, he was messmate with a midshipman named William Taylor, a young man of singularly fine character, which seems to have been the chief cause of the influence he exerted upon Farragut. "He took me under his charge, counseled me kindly, and inspired me with sentiments of true manliness, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written by a messmate of yours?—oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said 'a member of your mess'! oh!—oh!—oh!—you wrote it, yourself! And you wrote it to-day! That explains—" She drew an awesome breath, rose to her toes and knit her ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... of the midshipmen's mess were called, were summoned on the quarterdeck, and briefly addressed by Mr Monckton, the first lieutenant. Pearce Ripley was then sent for, and the boatswain's son had no cause to complain of his reception by those whose messmate he was about to become. They, with one exception, came forward and cordially shook him by the hand, and when he entered the berth they all seemed to vie who should pay him the most unobtrusive attention as forthwith to place him at his ease. So surely ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dan. "Here, I'll have first go, messmate. I'll fill the basket, you'll carry out." Buck nodded, and directly after the two men were hard at work, while whenever the sailor's spade, which he dubbed shovel, came in contact with a big loose stone, one or other of the keepers pounced upon it and bore it to the heap of earth ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... Betty asked wonderingly where he was going, 'I'm off down South for a bit of a visit. I bean't tired of Oakfield, nor I don't look for no home but here among my folks, but it's come over me as I must have a blow o' the sea and a sight of a ship again, and Timothy Blake, that was an old messmate o' mine, I give him my word I'd see him one o' these days, and I've a many friends beside him on the Devon coast. And then you see, young ladies, I might be getting ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... an honest enmity toward the traitors whose bloody hands were stretched out to pull down the Old Flag under which his ancestors had fought and died, but when Frank looked upon the pale face of his messmate, and listened to his oft-repeated sentiments of loyalty, and heard him, in his quiet way, expressing his firm belief in the final triumph of the Government and the total overthrow of the rebellion, and when he witnessed his quiet submission to his cruel fate, ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... survivors at the guns. A shot entering one of the portholes cut down two-thirds of a gun's crew. The captain of the next gun, dropping his lock string, which he had just pulled, turned over the heap of bodies to see who they were; when, perceiving an old messmate, who had sailed with him in many cruises, he burst into tears, and, taking the corpse up in his arms and going with it to the side, he held it over the water a moment, gazed on the silent ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... enter more closely into the master's-mate's present distress than he might otherwise have done. Instead of shoving the bottle to him, however, as if conscious how much disappointed hope had already driven the other to its indiscreet use, he pushed it gently aside, and taking his old messmate's hand with a momentary forgetfulness of the difference in rank, he said in a tone of kindness and confidence that had long ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... where Doctor Johnson, "Goldy" and Boswell so often sat and waked the echoes with their laughter. We had chops and tomato-sauce in recollection of Jingle and Trotter. The chops were of that delicious kind unknown outside of England. I supplied the legend this time, for my messmate had never heard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... burnt alive in the market-place of Mexico; a story no less hideous than true, the details whereof whoso list may read in Hakluyt's third volume, as told by Philip Miles, one of that hapless crew; as well as the adventures of Job Hortop, a messmate of his, who, after being sent to Spain, and seeing two more of his companions burnt alive at Seville, was sentenced to row in the galleys ten years, and after that to go to the "everlasting prison remediless;" from which doom, after twenty-three ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... compelled the San Ysidro to hoist English colours; and, I thought, the large ship, Salvador del Mundo, had also struck: but Captain Collingwood, disdaining the parade of taking possession of a vanquished enemy, most gallantly pushed up, with every sail set, to save his old friend and messmate; who was, to appearance, in a critical state. The Blenheim being ahead, the Culloden crippled and astern, the Excellent ranged up within two feet of the San Nicolas, giving a most tremendous fire. The San Nicolas luffing up, the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... captain of the ship responded through his trumpet: 'Tis I, my messmate bold and brave, with ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... used to say in the Navy?" he answered. "We used to say, 'A friend before a messmate, a messmate before a shipmate, a shipmate before a dog, and ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the Pleiades even, will stamp an incredible proceeding as a matter of business, so ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done. The flight of Mr. Beauchamp's letter placed it in the common order of occurrences for the youthful author of it. Jack Wilmore, a messmate, offered to second him, though he should be dismissed the service for it. Another second would easily be found somewhere; for, as Nevil observed, you have only to set these affairs going, and British blood rises: we are not the people you see on the surface. Wilmore's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up? in trouble again?" asked a good-natured sailor of his messmate, one snowy day on ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the caulkers were sitting on their boxes, ready to renew their noisy labours as soon as the dinner-hour had expired. The middies, meanwhile, on the starboard side of the quarter-deck, were taking my altitude, and speculating as to whether I was to be a messmate of theirs, and what sort of a chap I might chance to be—both these points were solved ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... won't, messmate! If it's him or us for it, let a bullet do it, and let it do it quick, you bloody Spaniard! You can't do the other without ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... the worst voyage I ever made. We were almost wrecked more than once, and almost starved for the last month, owing to the time the leaky old hulk took in the voyage. When we landed in Plymouth we had a spree, as you may suppose, and soon spent most of our money. I and a messmate were to travel together as far as Swansea, so we just saved money enough to pay our way, and enjoyed ourselves with the rest; but, as ill luck would have it, we fell in with a poor Welsh woman, who ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... her—coming quietly down the hill, carrying an elderly naval officer. I was ready to receive the unconscious couple, and soon made my claim good. Of course, the officer was not to blame. He had bought it of a sailor, who in his turn had purchased the animal of a messmate, who of course had obtained it from another, and so on; but eventually it returned to its old quarters, where it only remained about a fortnight. I grew tired of looking for Angelina, and had given her up, when one day she turned up, in capital condition, in the possession of a French ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... where he was, yet he could not bear the thoughts of letting Tommy perish if he could help him; so, leaving his own piece of the wreck, he struck out towards his messmate. He fortunately had not many yards to go before he ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... good-natured Bozen, "the poor lubber's all gone in amidships—see how flat his breadbasket is. I say, messmate," continued Bozen, with a roar, and a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, "come and splice ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... lieutenant of anything in which he sailed. A respectable seaman, a well-read and intelligent man, a capital deck officer, or watch officer, he was too indolent to desire to be anything more, and was as happy as the day was long, in the easy berth he filled. The first lieutenant had been his messmate as a midshipman, and ranked him but two on the list in his present commission; but he did not envy him in the least. On the contrary, one of his greatest pleasures was to get. "Working Willy," as he called his senior, over a glass of wine, or a tumbler of "hot ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... find out each other, and for the first time in our lives we messed and slept by candle-light. In a few days we received on board four additional lieutenants, six mids, a captain of marines, a chaplain, schoolmaster, and two hundred more men, besides forty marines. As my former messmate, the gunner of the frigate, did not join this ship, I had to find another mess. One of the master's mates asked me if I would join him and six other midshipmen, which I did. Our berth, or the place where we messed, was on the orlop deck, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... ourang-outang, and added: "You are neither Christian, Jew, Turk nor Infidel, but a metempsychosist! You have been heard to say that you expect when you die to transmigrate to a Siberian fox-hound, and to be messmate to Spado." Upon this Lee, in a rage, called at the office with the intention of assaulting the editor. Brackenridge's son cleverly relates what followed. General Lee "knocked at the door, while Mr. Brackenridge, looking out of the upper-story window, inquired what ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... his crew. Because their messmate had forgotten to touch his cap, it seemed hard to their poor untutored minds he should ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... "With the current on that side, and the sunken rocks on this, we can't find our way out of the scrape by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the wreck. Let's try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!" he called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. "Come and see what the old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us astern." He sauntered on, with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and rose up grumbling, whereupon Davis pitched upon Jackson, who had been asleep under the long-boat and was the last to show a leg, not hearing the second mate's call until a messmate awoke him. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... detaining him, sir, for his messmate, who went off on the dromedary, will sail a hundred feet to his one, and if an alarm is really to be given to their party, it will not come from this chap. He will be unarmed, and by taking away his pouch we shall get some ammunition for this gun ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... messmate. I'm under the influence of my new batman, one 'Enery 'Enson. After a lifetime in the Marines he's now spending his declining days in the Army, and he's terribly infectious. I found myself saying, 'Ay, ay, Sir,' when the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... brother would relate the story, which he did not at all enjoy doing, for a cutlass had been swung over his head, and his life threatened by the pirate's boatswain, demanding more money, after all had been taken. A Genoese messmate, Iachimo, shortened to plain "Jack" by the "Mexican's" crew, came to see my brother one day, and at the dinner table he went through the whole adventure in pantomime, which we children watched with wide-eyed terror and amusement. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... soothsayer of the great weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my messmate and guest. Eat and drink also with me to-day, and forgive it that a cheerful old man sitteth with thee at table!"—"A cheerful old man?" answered the soothsayer, shaking his head, "but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O Zarathustra, thou hast been here aloft ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... after the above entry in his journal his heart was gladdened by an order for removal, with his fellow-prisoner and messmate, Lieutenant Richardson, to Roper Hospital; a place much more tolerable as to its situation and appointments, though still within shell-range of the bombarding force. Prior to the transfer, a parole was obtained from each, by which ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens |
