"Landsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He staggered backward, muttering incoherent words that might charitably be construed as apology, and passed on into the library, making an ineffectual effort to combine an air of dignified indifference with the uncertain gait of a landsman ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... should be given to him, and he, for one, would willingly be under his orders. To this proposal, the carpenter and mate immediately agreed, and at last two of the seamen. I was left alone, but I resisted, saying, that I was not going to be ordered about by a landsman, and that if I were to obey orders, it must be from a thorough-bred seaman. The other two sailors were of my way of thinking, I was sure, although they had given their consent, and I hoped that they would join me, which they appeared very much inclined to do. Your father spoke very coolly, modestly, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... acquaintances that were destined to have considerable influence on her future life. On the 5th August, the Godolphin, twenty-one days from Mocha, approached Bombay, but being unable to make the harbour before nightfall, anchored outside; a proceeding that would appear, even to a landsman, absolutely suicidal in the middle of the monsoon, but was probably due to fear ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... the highest less than twenty feet above the deck. Sir Hotham Ward was now in the worst plight he had been, in that day, his ship being unable to advance a foot, her drift excepted, until everything was cut away. To the landsman it may appear a small job to cut ropes with axes, and thus liberate a vessel from the encumbrance and danger of falling spars; but the seaman knows it is often a most delicate and laborious piece of duty. The ocean is never quiet; and a vessel that is not steadied by the pressure of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... It would have taken us a lifetime to accumulate as much money as we have earned in this year. Of course, it was hard for the men who had families, McLaughlin especially; the others were all working sailors, but he was a landsman and my partner in the enterprise; but I will make it up to him, and the mahogany hunt will turn out the best paying piece of work ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... forgotten the Colonel's coolness. A landsman, for whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers, falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... unlucky career. Not even in that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Thames are a world of themselves; peopled by a nation of aliens; endless in the variety of their life; abounding in weird and beautiful pictures which even the landsman can appreciate. Alban rarely tired of that panorama of swirling waters and drifting hulks and the majestic shapes of resting ships. And upon such a day as this which had made an idler of him, their interest increased tenfold; and to this there was added a wonder ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... indeed there be any need to remind you) that it is a flagrant landsman who is telling you this tale. Nothing know I of seamanship, save what one could not avoid picking up on the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be told that I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land or ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man once a day. They treated me with every respect, and I had not, so far as I can recollect, a single instance of serious trouble with any of them. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... made, lying on her side in the mud—and was surprised to find how much had been manufactured "out of nothing." Her seams, those which the sun had opened, were caulked neatly; her deck was clean and white; she was partially rigged, with new and old canvas and ropes; and to his landsman's eyes she looked almost fit for sea. But when he said as much to Seth, the ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... question, first determine whether the facts to be established are such that any ordinary person can speak concerning them with reasonable accuracy, or whether they can be understood only by persons who have received special training. A landsman could well testify that a naval battle had occurred, but only a man with nautical training could accurately describe the maneuvers of the ships and tell just how the engagement progressed. A coal heaver's description of a surgical operation would ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Vetch was on board the Sapphire, the smallest of the frigates, with orders to pick out the safe channel for the rest of the fleet; and although but a landsman, he did his best to act as a pilot. All went well until they reached the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence. There, instead of depending upon one of the smaller ships to lead the way, the Admiral imprudently sailed with his flag-ship in the van. By a singular want ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... together, and worked together, thro' a hard gale sometimes, and thro' hot sun another time; and never a squally word came between us till last night, and then it all came of that lubberly swipes-seller, I say again. I thought as how it was a real awful thing that a strange landsman, before ever he laid eyes on either of us, should come to have this here dream about us. After falling in with Harry, when the lubber and I parted company, my old mate saw I was cast down, and he told me as much in his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... day she had returned to live in the midst of these fishers, through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there, and live like a landsman in the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... with its heavy, clumsy derrick-booms. A winch was by his side. Oddments of deck machinery, inexplicable to a landsman, formed themselves vaguely in the mist. The fog was thicker, naturally, since the deck was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... hope, my dear Fields, you may find this legible, but I rather doubt it; for there is motion enough on the ship to render writing to a landsman, however accustomed to pen and ink, rather a difficult achievement. Besides which, I slide away gracefully from the paper, whenever I want to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, with whom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in type of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. The Greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate, unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative, open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[255] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... that, though several sentences were spoken, not thirty seconds had elapsed after he had struck the water before the order to heave the ship to was given. She was also going but slowly through the water, though, from the way she was tumbling about, a landsman might have supposed she was ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike—a group of somewhat dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the ship, with the help of the pilot. For more than two thousand years this division between the sailor and the fighting element in navies continued throughout the world. The fighting commander and the sailing-master were two different men, and the captain of a man-of-war was often a landsman. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... bristles with striking novelties; novelties which are in such sharp contrast with all this person's former experiences that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his imagination and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make him see it all and feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession—what then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become commonplace. The man would have nothing to tell that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... interesting part of the whole business, though, to us poor half-starved wretches, was the plentiful supply of fresh meat. Porpoise beef is, when decently cooked, fairly good eating to a landsman; judge, then, what it must have been to us. Of course the tit-bits, such as the liver, kidneys, brains, etc., could not possibly fall to our lot; but we did not complain, we were too thankful to get something eatable, and enough of it. Moreover, although few sailors in English ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... indispensable gentleman, the ship's cook, has lavished all his art on the production of a sailor's dinner. "Man is mortal," so we yield to the temptation, especially as we are awfully hungry—when is a sailor not so? Few meals present so much food for wonderment to the landsman as does a sailor's first dinner on board a newly-commissioned ship; all is hurry, bustle, and apparently hopeless confusion. Bags and hammocks lie about just where they ought not to lie; ditty boxes are piled anywhere, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain proportion of reasonably honest men. All of them (save here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all required consular assistance in one form ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... become so blended, that our organs cannot tell where the water ends, or where the void of the heavens commences. It is a consequence of this in distinctness, that any object seen beyond the apparent boundary of water, has the appearance of floating in the air. It is rare for the organs of a landsman to penetrate beyond the apparent limits of the sea, when the atmosphere exhibits this peculiarity, though the practised eye of a mariner often detects vessels, which are hid from others, merely because they are not sought in the proper place. The deception ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... deceptions, and we are dupers and dupes, as it happens. After continuing a couple of hours, the base of the range, which seemed always close upon us, still receded and was receding. On the plains of Africa bounded by mountain ranges, one is as much at a loss to measure distances as the landsman at sea, when measuring the distance from his ship to the rocks bounding the shore. My negro Cicerone advised to beat a retreat, assuring me I should not reach the chain by daylight. We looked round on the city and found it fast diminishing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... orders of the Admiralty, and in the way I think most proper. Whether modern law or ancient law makes my mode right, I cannot judge; and surely of the mode of disposing of a fleet, I must, if I am fit for my post, be a better judge than any landsman, however learned he may appear. It would be the act of a fool to tell Europe where I intend to place the ships, for the purpose of effectually obeying my orders; not a captain can know it, and their positions will vary, according to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... resolved to have his 2,000 pounds at all risks. He had one great advantage over a landsman who has committed a crime. He could always go to sea and find employment, first in one ship, and then in another. Terra firma was not one of the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to sea knows how, when his vessel has been hove to in a storm for many hours, perhaps during more than one day, within a few miles of the same spot, the sea there grows familiar to him as a landscape to a landsman, so that when the force of the gale is broken at last and the sea subsides to a long swell, and the ship is wore to the wind and can lay her course once more, he looks astern at the grey water he has learned ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... the seven hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... years later. That life of peril which casts the seaman much at the mercy of every rough gale and lee-shore, and in which his calculations regarding ultimate results must be always very doubtful, has a strong tendency to render him superstitious. He is more removed, too, than the landsman of his education and standing, from the influence of general opinion, and the mayhap over-sceptical teaching of the Press; and, as a consequence of their position and circumstances, I found, at this period, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... cargo was all on board, and the Fanny sailed for England. The voyage was accomplished without adventure. As soon as the vessel entered dock and the crew were discharged Ralph landed, and having purchased a suit of landsman clothes, presented his kit to a lad of about his own age, who had been his special chum on board the Fanny, and then made his way to the inn from which the coaches for Dover started. Having secured a place for next day, dined, ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... waterways of substantial breadth; the whole of stout construction and, for a humble lighter, of well-proportioned and even graceful design, with a marked forward sheer, and, as I had observed in the specimen on the stocks, easy lines at the stern. In short, it was apparent, even to an ignorant landsman like myself, that she was designed not merely for canal work but for rough water; and well she might be, for, though the few miles of sea she had to cross in order to reach the islands were both shallow and sheltered, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... during the voyage to Australia. "A whale, your grandmother, Jonathan!" repeated Davy Armstrong in a bantering tone, with all—as his companion thought he could detect—the conscious superiority of a sucking sailor over a raw landsman, in his voice. "Why, you'll be seeing the sea serpent soon if you look smart. Where is this wonderful thing you've discovered, Jonathan, my son? I'm blest if I can ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... to the door of the forecastle. It was open—and, what was better, it opened inward. Also, it was of steel with a stout brass ring on the lock, this ring taking the place of what on a landsman's door would have been ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Fox-hill, it shall be constructed and manned by blue-jackets. I have a large draft of them now at discretion. Every man in Springhaven will lend a hand, if paid for it. It would take at least a twelvemonth to get it done from Woolwich. A seaman does a thing before a landsman thinks about it." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... away the time before going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the evening the Chaussee des Etats-Unis was naturally gay with the landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafes were crowded both inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with sailors, and pretty young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly dressed in black, mingled with both. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... language of the forecastle, embellishing and emphasising it here and there, after the manner of the shellback, by the introduction of words and phrases comprehensible enough to me but confusing and quite unintelligible to a landsman. I shall therefore take the liberty of translating the narrative into plain, simple English for the benefit of my readers. Thus translated, it ran ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... of books. The idea of your making any profitable use of them is one that nobody who has the slightest acquaintance with you would entertain for a moment: does the bald man buy a comb, the blind a mirror, the deaf a flute-player? the eunuch a concubine, the landsman an oar, the pilot a plough? Are you merely seizing an opportunity of displaying your wealth? Is it just your way of showing the public that you can afford to spend money even on things that are of no use ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... landsman's safety depended on his understanding these directions, there would not be much ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... in the chains and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy; every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt for what he had seen fit to log as ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... got later, though, the gale increased; and shortly after "two bells in the first watch," nine o'clock that is in landsman's time, Captain Gillespie, who was on deck again, gave ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... business so profitable that I gave up farming altogether. But certain unfortunate speculations threw me on my back, and finally, having gone from bad to worse, I found myself in Boston, where, in sheer desperation, I went on board a coasting vessel as landsman. I remained on this vessel for nearly a year, but it did not suit me. I was often sick, and did not like the work. I left the vessel at one of the Southern ports, and it was not long after she sailed that, finding myself utterly without means, I enlisted as a soldier. I remained in the ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Amherst Isle, or the Isle of Tanti, owned by Lord Mountcashell, on which are now extensive and flourishing farms. At the east end of the Isle of Tanti are the Lower Gap and the Brothers, two rocky islets famous for black bass fishing and for a deep rolling sea, which makes a landsman very sick indeed in a gale of wind. After passing this Scylla, the bay, an arm rather of Lake Ontario, becomes very smooth and peaceable for several miles, until you leave the pleasant little village of Bath, where is one of the first churches erected ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of the storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? —O landsman, these are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! —Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave me nought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... fog lifts the little boat is sometimes quite close to the big one, but the men are dead—frozen. M. de G. tells us all sorts of terrible experiences that he has heard from his men, and yet they all like the life—wouldn't lead any other, and have the greatest contempt for a landsman. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... whiled away; and by night the men off duty would gather about the forecastle lantern to play with greasy, well-thumbed cards, or warble tender ditties to black-eyed Susans far across the Atlantic. Patriotic melodies formed no small part of Jack's musical repertoire. Of these, this one, written by a landsman, was for a long time popular among the tuneful souls of the forecastle, and was not altogether ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... deck—a nearly impossible feat for any landsman, even for one so strong and active as Ishmael was, to accomplish with safety to life and limb, for the ship was now fearfully pitched from side to side, and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... sailor has grown too stiff to climb the masts he mends sails on the decks. Everybody understands—even the commonest people and the minor poets understand—why it is that a sailor, when he is old and bent and obliged to be a landsman to die, does something that holds him close to the sea. If he has a garden, he hoes where he can see the sails. If he must tend flowers, he plants them in an old yawl, and when he selects a place for his grave, it is where surges shall be heard at night singing ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... three minutes the shapes of a squadron of battleships can be clearly seen; in five minutes Smith's practised eyes, now that he has descended, can distinguish the Imperturbable, flying the admiral's flag, among what to a landsman would appear to be a dozen exactly similar vessels. Glancing back, he sees that the Red Scout has changed her course, and is already only a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... mile. All hands mustered on deck, as a matter of course, no one wishing to sleep at a time like that. As for us officers, we collected on the forecastle, the spot where danger would first make itself apparent, did it come from the side of the land. It is not easy to make a landsman understand the embarrassments of our situation. We had had no observations for several days, and had been moving about by dead reckoning, in a part of the ocean where the tides run like a mill-tail, with the wind blowing ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... spectators. Like a mettlesome steed in curb young Cooper looked at the wager,—a basket of fruit,—then at his race-mate, and accepted the challenge, but not on even terms. It was not enough for a sailor simply to outrun a landsman; he could do more. A little girl stood near, her bright face eager with watching for the fray. Cooper turned quickly and caught her up in his arms, and with the pride and muscle of an athlete exclaimed, "I'll carry her with me and beat you!" Away they flew, Cooper ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... was a landsman, and had a proper respect for squalls and tempests, even on a fresh-water lake. He heard the announcement of Lawry Wilford with a feeling of dread and apprehension, and straightway began to conjure up visions of a terrible shipwreck, and of sole survivors, clinging ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... enough to ask after our health and spirits if we give them a look in, and my word is for lying-to here until night comes or the ship is sighted. It must be a matter of hours, anyway. The gale's abating; a landsman would know as ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... wetted, he again got below and went to bed. In this state of the weather the seamen had to move about the necessary or indispensable duties of the ship with the most cautious use both of hands and feet, while it required all the art of the landsman to keep within the precincts of his bed. The writer even found himself so much tossed about that it became necessary, in some measure, to shut himself in bed, in order to avoid being thrown upon the floor. Indeed, such was the motion of the ship that it seemed wholly ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happened—August of that year. Peter Carey was master of the SEA UNICORN, and I was spare harpooner. We were coming out of the ice-pack on our way home, with head winds and a week's southerly gale, when we picked up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man on her—a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder and had made for the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all drowned. Well, we took him on board, this man, and he and the skipper had some long talks in the cabin. All the baggage we took ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not hard to distinguish; he was standing on the forward deck facing the wind and peering through the mist at the grey, heavy heave of the water. Alongside of them the dim shadow of a sister ferry screamed its way through the fogbank. That he was a landsman was evidenced by his way of standing; he was uncertain; at every heave of the boat he would shift sidewise. An unusually heavy roll caught him slightly off-balance and jostled him against the detective. The latter held up his hand and caught ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... of about forty at the wheel. I said 'Good morning.' He answered pleasantly enough. His face was entirely strange to me. Then I sat down on the high seat back of the wheel and looked out at the river and began to ask a few questions, such as a landsman would ask. He began, in the old way, to fill me up with the old lies, and I enjoyed letting him do it. Then suddenly he turned round to me ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... trick to duck some ignorant fellow or landsman, frequently played on board ships in the warm latitudes. It is thus managed: A large tub is filled with water, and two stools placed on each side of it. Over the whole is thrown a tarpaulin, or old sail: this is kept tight by two persons, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... pitying look on the ignorant landsman. "I could tell you that, sir," he said, in a tone of ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... cannot use it by halves; we must use it as proceeding from Him who has also given us Revelation; and to be ever interrupting its processes, and diverting its attention by objections brought from a higher knowledge, is parallel to a landsman's dismay at the changes in the course of a vessel on which he has deliberately embarked, and argues surely some distrust either in the powers of Reason on the one hand, or the certainty of Revealed Truth on the other. The passenger should not have embarked at ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... good tidings communicated by the A——, toute rayonnante de joie. A fair wind and a bright blue sea, cool and refreshing breezes, the waves sparkling, and the ship going gallantly over the waters. So far, our voyage may have been tedious, but the most determined landsman must allow that the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... chopper. Looking along shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to shoot at anything in the water they cannot understand, Boyton sounded a lusty blast on the bugle to attract the chopper's attention from the shooting iron. The man returned to the water's edge, loosened a flat bottomed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... using the odious word arises from the fact that a particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall. It hangs from the ship's ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... or landsman, there is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! beware of it; prepare for it in time. Gray-beards! thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom, by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter not yourselves ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... away—for not more than five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view and the surf to hearing—when I was aware of land again, not only on the weather bow, but dead ahead. I played the part of the judicious landsman, holding my peace till the last moment; and presently my mariners perceived ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the bustle and confusion aboard the U.S.S. Plymouth, at that moment lying idle in a British port, that the landsman would commonly associate with sailing orders to a great destroyer. Blowers began to hum in the fire rooms. The torpedo gunner's mates slipped detonators in the warheads and looked to the rack load of depth charges. The steward made a last ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... necessity, So seemed it,—now I thankfully acknowledge, Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven,— To England I returned, [M] else (though assured 225 That I both was and must be of small weight, No better than a landsman on the deck Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm) Doubtless, I should have then made common cause With some who perished; haply perished too, [N] 230 A poor mistaken and bewildered offering,— Should to the breast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... ‘Victory’ every foot of the way from Asinara to this anchorage, [off La Madelena,] blowing hard from Longo Sardo, under double-reefed topsails.” The difficulties of the Bonifacio passage can hardly be understood by a landsman who has not visited the straits, but they are stated to have been so great, “and the ships to have passed in so extraordinary a manner, that their captains could only consider it as a providential interposition in favour of the great ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... you're a lubber of a landsman. The long and short of walking a plank is just this. We passed a wide plank over the gunnel, greasing it well at the outer end, led the Frenchmen up to it blindfolded, and wished them 'bon voyage,' in their own lingo, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... way. But the reason of it is that I came over the road for the first time; there were no sign-boards up, and my directions had not been explicit enough to prevent me losing my way. That is my only excuse for not being here earlier. I am not landsman enough to make my way through the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... true. She was running away from us easily. Now she was hull down. Now we could see only her topgallant-sails. Now she again had disappeared. But this time we had found, besides her general appearance and the cut of her sails, which no seaman could mistake, a mark by which any landsman must recognize her: on her fore-topsail there was ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... where the Ninety-Mile Beach ends in a wilderness of roaring breakers. It is the Isle of Blasted Hopes. Its enchanting landscape has allured many a landsman to his ruin, and its beacon, seen through the haze of a south-east gale, has guided many a watchful mariner to shipwreck ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... a shock, coming from the short, square figure of such an obvious landsman. The farmer took ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... said the captain, more exultant than ever, "you shall see an unveiling! It is not often given to a lad like you, a landsman, to behold such a dramatic act at sea, a scene so powerful and complete that it might have been devised by one of the great ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pretty plain to the Dagos and Swedes who fell to my lot. They couldn't understand much of what I said, but they could tell something of my meaning when I held up a rope's-end and belaying-pin before their eyes and made certain significant gestures in regard to their manipulation. This may strike the landsman as unnecessary and somewhat brutal; but, before he passes judgment, he should try to take care of a lot of men who are, for a part, a ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... various as the seas and skies he paints. One figures his mind as some sort of marvellous picture gallery. He veritably sees things, and he makes the reader see them. And all the strange and curious sea jargon, of which not one landsman in a thousand understands anything—combings and back-stays and dead-eyes, and the rest of it—takes a salt smack of romance in his lips. He can be as technical as he pleases, and the reader takes him on faith, and rollicks along with him, bewildered, possibly, but trusting ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... en to be a landsman an' 'prenticed to some good body in bizness. It's runnin' 'gainst dreams as I had 'fore the bwoy was born, an' the voice I heard speakin' by night arter I were churched by the Luke Gosp'lers. But you knaw Michael. What's dreams to ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... were well out at sea. It was the first time I had ever seen the blue water; and no sooner did a bit of a gale spring up, and the great steamer begin to climb up the waves and then seem to be falling down, down, down in the most horrible way possible, than I began to prove what a thorough landsman I was, and, like a great many more passengers, was ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and despatch with which sailors can construct a raft, would be almost incredible to a landsman who had never seen the thing done. It is not from mere concert or organisation among themselves—though there is something in that. Not much, however, for well-drilled soldiers are as clumsy at ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... landsman at home or the sailor at sea, With nausea, scurvy, or canker maybe, 'Tis never in language to overexalt The potent preservative virtue of salt— A crystal commodity wholesome and good, A cure for disease, and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... opened with a slow inward push which suggested that the machinery controlling it had grown sluggish with the years. Sssuri, perfectly at home, darted out as soon as the opening was large enough to afford him an exit. And his thought came back to reassure the more clumsy landsman. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... many most interesting fish—among them that constant delight of the landsman, the puffer, which, when disturbed, rapidly inflates itself, rising to the surface of the water until it becomes apparently so large a mouthful that its would-be devourer is fooled into believing the morsel too big to swallow. Then, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Africa, hunting for slavers; and returning after a while from this enterprising employment, he received a sort of amphibious appointment at Devonport. What his duties were here, the author, being in all points a landsman, is unable to describe. Those who were inclined to ridicule Captain Cuttwater declared that the most important of them consisted in seeing that the midshipmen in and about the dockyard washed their faces, and put on clean linen not less ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... so much activity, or so many ships in the harbor. As soon as each transport was loaded it pulled away from the pier and dropped anchor in the stream. When all our troops were on board the "Megantic" we cast loose, pulled up the stream off Cape Diamond, and "dropped our hook," as a landsman in the ranks was heard to remark. The hotels and boarding houses of the City were filled with friends of the men who had come on excursions to bid the soldiers good-bye. The City was full of life and activity and brilliantly lighted up and the scene at night was ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... establishment contained, at this time, many specimens of American naval architecture of choice description; amongst the rest, a frigate and several other ships of war lying in ordinary. Everything appeared to indicate good management and efficiency, as far as a landsman could judge. This was very discernible on board the vessels we were allowed to inspect, where the utmost order and cleanliness prevailed. The officers, I thought, seemed to exact great deference from the men, and their martinet bearing ill accorded with a republican service, being decidedly ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... from me. I could see no sign that my signals had been noticed, and began frantically to row toward her. After a quarter of an hour of violent exertion, I did not appear to be much nearer to her; but, observing her more closely, I could see, even with my landsman's eyes, that something was the matter with her. Portions of her mast and rigging were gone, and one large sail at her stern appeared to be fluttering in ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... seabeach^; ironbound coast; loom of the land; derelict; innings; alluvium, alluvion^; ancon. riverbank, river bank, levee. soil, glebe, clay, loam, marl, cledge^, chalk, gravel, mold, subsoil, clod, clot; rock, crag. acres; real estate &c (property) 780; landsman^. V. land, come to land, set foot on the soil, set foot on dry land; come ashore, go ashore, debark. Adj. earthy, continental, midland, coastal, littoral, riparian; alluvial; terrene &c (world) 318; landed, predial^, territorial; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... interminable and inexplicable changes constantly going on in the royal navy the friends were separated. There may be some reason for those constant changes in the navy; but they are not apparent to the sagest landsman living. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... all that is left faithful of the ship's company—with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colors on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and fearful gulf that separates the two worlds. The landsman can know little of the wildness, savageness, and mercilessness of nature till he has been upon the sea. It is as if he had taken a leap off into the interstellar spaces. In voyaging to Mars or Jupiter, he might cross such a desert,—might confront such awful purity ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... propitiate Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present, by the way). He hesitated over a child's caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret's voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range of occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance. The immortal Captain Davis, of the Sea Ranger, remarks to the incompetent landsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the Farralone, 'There ain't nothing to sailoring when you come to look it in the face,' and I am inclined to think that the observation is true of other things besides navigation. There is nothing in ordinary gardening, carpentering, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Hubert de Burgh, landsman as he was, resolved to oppose them to the utmost, and with much difficulty collected a fleet of forty ships of all sizes. Several of the knights, believing his attempt hopeless, declared that they ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in a breathless and exhausted condition. One more such hospitable reception would forever have incapacitated us for the service of the Russian American Telegraph Company! I had only time to cast a hurried glance back at the Major. He looked like a frightened landsman straddling the end of a studdingsail-boom run out to leeward on a fast clipper, and his face was screwed up into an expression of mingled pain, amusement, and astonishment, which evidently did not begin to do justice to his conflicting emotions. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Woodrow had said, I broke out into a sweat of apprehension, for I knew that I could not have been impressed as a mariner to serve aboard a privateer, as was often done; only tried mariners were seized with that intent, and certainly no one would wish to teach a raw landsman his duties on a vessel engaged in such a perilous and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... got under weigh and proceeded to the mouth of Chowan river, and returned to Edenton, where we arrived at 8 a.m. Captain J. A. J. Brooks and I went ashore, and called on Messrs. Samuel B——, Henry B——, and Mr. M——. In the afternoon, we interred Matthew Sheridan, landsman, who had died of typhus fever. At 5 p.m. we returned to ship and got under weigh and proceeded down the Albemarle Sound to Laurel Point, where we arrived at 9 p.m., and anchored. The weather ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... Chesnaye and Foret to uncover. The merchant strums on the table and glares at the marquis, and the marquis looks at the skylight, waiting for the merchant; and the end of it is M. Radisson must give Godefroy the wink, who knocks both their hats off at once, explaining that a landsman can ill keep his legs on the sea, and the sea is no respecter of persons. Once, at the end of his byplay between the two young fire-eaters, the sea lurched in earnest, a mighty pitch that threw tipstaff sprawling across the table. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the sense of beauty alone, exempt from the necessity of "creature comforts," a sea-voyage would be delightful. To the landsman there is sublimity in the wild and ever-varied forms of the ocean; they fill his mind with living images of a glory he had only dreamed of before. But we would have been willing to forego all this and get back the comforts of the shore. At New York we took passage in the second cabin of the Oxford, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Scott could not possibly have written The Pirate (which had just appeared), because the nautical skill displayed in the book was such as only a sailor could possess. Cooper maintained, on the contrary, that The Pirate was the work of a landsman; and to prove it he declared that he would write a sea story as it should be written; that is, with understanding as well as with imagination. The Pilot was the result.] but it gave pleasure to a multitude of readers, and it amazed critics by showing that the lonely sea could be a place ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... like you clearly to understand that so long as life—or at least consciousness and a particle of strength—remains to me, you may rely upon my doing my level best for you. And, being by profession a sailor, I may be able to do much that a landsman could not. Meanwhile, however, all that we can do at present is to wait patiently for daylight. One point is already declaring itself in our favour; I notice ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the air about a mile to leeward. An' afore it got through, it washed away the cap'n an' all the crew 'cept me an' two others. These was Tom Simmons, the second mate, an' Andy Boyle, a chap from the Adirondack Mount'ins, who'd never been to sea afore. As he was a landsman, he ought, by rights, to 'a' been swep' off by the wind an' water, consid'rin' that the cap'n an' sixteen good seamen had gone a'ready. But he had hands eleven inches long, an' that give him a grip which no typhoon could git the better of. Andy had let out that ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... painter of flowers; then is he an artist or a botanist? Is he a marinist; then, as a landsman has he made you feel like one, or has he painted for you water that can be walked on without faith? Has he shown you the dignity, the vastness, the tone, and above all the movement of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... youngsters were not easily frightened, and Jack Cockrell, the landsman, was confident that wind and tide would change to send the little raft shoreward. So tranquil was the sea that they rode secure and dry upon the cabin hatch which was buoyed by the two short spars. Joe Hawkridge ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... were waltzing and kicking round each other on every possible tack, crossing and re-crossing bows and sterns; sometimes close shaving, out and in, down-the-middle-and-up-again fashion, which, to a landsman, might have been suggestive of the 'bus, cab, and van throng in the neighbourhood of that heart of the ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... been chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs in the United States Senate, was extensively acquainted with the officers of the navy, and for a landsman had much knowledge of nautical affairs; therefore he was selected for Secretary ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... was captain and half-owner of the brigantine 'Pizarro', trading between the port of London, and the coast of Mexico. The second was his clerk, factotum, and confidant; half-sailor, half-landsman; able to take the helm in dangerous weather, if need were; and able to afford his employer counsel in the most intricate questions of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... take the temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... reckon there be compensations." Mr Tregaskis, shading his eyes (for the day was sunny), let his gaze travel up the spars and rigging of the Barquentine—up to the truck of her maintopmast, where a gull had perched itself and stood with tail pointing like a vane. "If the truth were known, maybe your landsman on an average don't do as he chooses any more ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... distinctions of rig did not bother Martin on this, his first, view of his new home. He was looking through his landsman eyes. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... fallen on us at first; and at last Bertric and I might sleep again, leaving Dalfin to keep watch. We might be in the track of vessels from Norway westward and southward, but we could not tell, and maybe we expected him to see nothing. But it may tell how wearied we were that we left so untried a landsman to watch for us, though, indeed, either of us would wake with the least uneasiness of the boat in a rising wind. So we slept a great sleep, and it was not until near sunset that ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... eating stolen apples, I won't say. But there's no sense in this grown-up business—sailorising, politics, the piety mill, and all the rest of it. Good clean drowning is good enough for me." It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. There was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that we shall be wrecked," said Grant gravely. "I do not see an opening in these tremendous breakers, and if we can't get through them, even a landsman could tell that we ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... who entered, a strongly-built man with a bushy black beard and a sunburnt countenance, the sinister expression of which was ill-calculated to win confidence, and whose semi-nautical costume made it doubtful whether he was a landsman or sailor. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... There are few things more comical than to see the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared with that which permeates and saturates the mind of the typical sailor. A gentleman with whom I was long and closely associated held definite opinions on symbolic ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... are much better than trousers. The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These should have the knee-band three quarters ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... bar that gives the sea that sound," said the captain. "This is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida. It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close with your vessel to make New York harbor—there; and all along it, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, runs the bar—so. Broken, but so much the worse. A ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Antarctic exploration, as well as whaling voyages, comprise much reading that is as interesting to the landsman as to the sailor. Most of its literature is within easy reach of the collector of modest means, though the earlier volumes are naturally increasing gradually in price. One of the hardest to obtain is William Scoresby's 'Account of the Arctic Regions,' which was published in two octavo volumes at ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... given for noon and midnight. One feature not found in any other almanac is the time at which the moon enters each of the signs of the zodiac. It may be supposed that this information is designed rather for the benefit of the Portuguese landsman than of the navigator. The right ascensions and declinations of the moon and the lunar distances are also given for intervals of twelve hours. Only the last page gives the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter. The Fixed ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... in Sendennis, in Sussex, and my earliest memories are full of the sound and colour and smell of the sea. It was above all things my parents' wish that I should live a landsman's life. But I was mad for the sea from the first days that I can ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... riding hygeen should never be accepted without a personal trial. What appears delightful to him may be torture to you, as a strong breeze and a rough sea may be charming to a sailor, but worse than death to a landsman. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... that this is the ejaculation of a tired landsman; one might say, of a tired scholar, who was glad that even the short voyage was at an end. Some of the pilots supposed that the distance which they had run was eight hundred leagues from Ferro; others thought it was seven hundred ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... "A landsman said, 'I twig the drop,—he's been upon the mill, And 'cause he gammons so the flats, ve calls him Veepin' Bill.' He said 'he'd done me very brown, and neatly stowed the swag,' -That's French, I fancy, for a hat,—or else ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... leaning back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately damning his soul and praying to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... rising morning the brigantine would not have appealed very strongly to a landsman, or even to a yachtsman. As Barry discovered later, at breakfast, Little was sadly disappointed at the lack of polished brass-work, the bareness of the paint, the all-round creakiness of the ancient fabric. But to a seaman's eye the absence of brass meant a pleasing lack of irritating work on ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a teenth of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... side of a huge black monster, swearing under his breath at the clumsiness of the landsman, though Arthur's natural agility rendered him less awkward than most people would have been in his place. Once safely on board, they crept cautiously between dark masses of rigging and machinery, and came at last to a hatchway, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... An ignorant landsman would have been struck with the order and symmetry with which the tall spars rose towards the heavens, from the black mass of the hull, and with the rigging that hung in the air, one dark line crossing another, until all design seemed confounded in the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Their mode of proceeding was to run alongside any merchantman they fell in with, which they thought would prove a prize worth having. Having taken possession of everything they wanted, they then made every landsman walk the plank, as they did likewise every seaman who would not join them. Those only who would take their oaths, and sign their articles, were allowed to live. Mr Teach used to dress himself out in a wild fashion, and as he wore a great black beard, he ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... more confusing to a landsman, sahib, than a crowded harbor at night. The many search-lights all quivering and shifting in the one direction only made confusion worse and we had not been moving two minutes when I no longer knew ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... interesting to a landsman than the manner in which a sailor handles huge, dripping hawsers or cables and with a few deft turns makes then fast to a pier-head or spile, in such a way that the ship's winches, warping the huge structure to or from the dock, do not cause the slightest give or slip to the rope and yet, ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... life-boat was being swung outward on the davits. The hurricane deck was a mass of confused figures. The two boats to starboard, a life-boat and the jolly-boat, had been carried across the deck in readiness to take the places of the port life-boats. A landsman might think that medley reigned supreme; but it was not so. Sailor-like work was proceeding with the utmost speed and system, when an accident happened. For some reason never ascertained, though it was believed that the men in the leading boat were too anxious to clear the falls ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... was expected of her, and her nimble fingers soon performed their task. Tying a knot in the ends of the line, she did as desired, and the small rope was soon dangling within reach of Wychecombe's arm. It is not easy to make a landsman understand the confidence which a sailor feels in a rope. Place but a frail and rotten piece of twisted hemp in his hand, and he will risk his person in situations from which he would otherwise recoil ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... began to fill and get water-logged, they grew alarmed. The squall was fiercer than usual, and must have been pretty bad to have frightened such seasoned hands. They awoke Jesus, and there is a touch of petulant rebuke in their appeal, and of a sailor's impatience at a landsman lying sound asleep while the sweat is running down their faces with their hard pulling. It is to Mark that we owe our knowledge of that accent of complaint in their words, for he alone gives ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe entrenched landsman. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the wheel looked silently forward, with that exasperating unconcern of any landsman's interest peculiar to marine officials. The passenger turned impatiently to ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Frobisher, "he was not exactly a buccaneer, for he was not a sailor, but a landsman; and he operated in a much larger way than either Morgan or Kidd. As a matter of fact he was a Tartar chief in his young days, many centuries ago, who gradually drilled and armed his own tribe, then other tribes, and still others, until he came, in course of time, to have an enormous army under ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... of the Channel that no land was visible, and the entire horizon presented that chill and wintry aspect that belongs to gloomy and driving clouds, to which streaks of dull light serve more to give an appearance of infinite space than any of the relief of brightness. It was a dreary night-fall to a landsman's eye; though they who better understood the signs of the heavens, as they are exhibited on the ocean, saw little more than the promise of obscurity, and the usual hazards of darkness ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hadn't butted in on the shipping end of the business the man Peasley would not have been given this opening to swat us. It's nuts for a sailor any time he can trip up a landsman, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... only from the water. We detained our prize long enough to attach a medal to his neck and send him away with our date, location, and name. If kept an hour or more on the deck of a ship these birds become seasick, and manifest their illness just as an able-bodied landsman, exhibits an attack of marine malady. Strange they should be so affected when they are all their lives riding ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... shipboard—the telling of yarns beneath the starlit skies, the spirit of mingled superstition and daring, the prompt and brave activities attending a storm, and, above all, the excitement and dangers of battle—has for the landsman a peculiar charm. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... ancient and mediaeval hull which is the admiration of the naval world to-day. The kind of vessel they used in the tenth century is the craft of most peculiar interest to Canadian history, though it has never been noticed there except by the merest landsman's reference. The special type to which this vessel belonged was already the result of long development. The Vikings had a way of burying a chief in his ship, over which they heaped a funeral mound. Very fortunately two of these vessels were buried in blue clay, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life, and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who, nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth voyage ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... to know the laws that govern the pulse of the big waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope; and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair wind justifies the length of a day's run, that the ship is sagging ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily (like a landsman in a sailing ship) before one can do any work with one's hand ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... tongue he's got," remarked Buzzby. "Before I'd go to sea with a first mate who jawed like that I'd be a landsman. Don't ever you git to talk too much, Master Fred, wotever ye do. My maxim is—and it has served me through life, uncommon,—'Keep your weather-eye open and your tongue housed 'xcept when you've got occasion to use it.' If that fellow'd use his eyes ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... are many advantageous results from a sea-voyage. One's geography improves apace, and numberless incidents occur pregnant with interest to a landsman; moreover, there are sure to be many on board who have travelled far and wide, and one gains a great deal of information about all sorts of races and places. One effect is, perhaps, pernicious, but this will ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... ocean, and flying between the Capes with amazing velocity, stood out to sea, directing our course towards the S.S.E., and proceeding at the rate of seven miles an hour under bare poles. The sea ran tremendously high, and the sky was dark and dreary; insomuch that by a landsman the gale might safely be accounted a storm. Under these circumstances, the ship rolling as if she would dip her topmasts in the water, and the waves breaking in at the back windows of the cabin, nothing remained ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... On the narrow night-wakes at the neck of the ship, When it crashed into cliffs; with cold often pinched Were my freezing feet, by frost bound tight 10 In its blighting clutch; cares then burned me, Hot around my heart. Hunger tore within My sea-weary soul. To conceive this is hard For the landsman who lives on the lonely shore— How, sorrowful and sad on a sea ice-cold, 15 I eked out my exile through the awful winter . . . . . . . . deprived of my kinsmen, Hung about by icicles; hail flew in showers. There I heard naught but the howl of the sea, The ice-cold surge with a swan-song ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... saloon; his knees had that limp sea-bend of the sailor and his out-turned toes seemed to grasp the uncertain rise and fall of the carpet beneath his feet; he was a mariner now, not a preacher, for no landsman could hold himself so easily in a vessel which pitched and rolled in the long swells of the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... at Swan River on the 31st, under circumstances which must forcibly illustrate to a landsman the precision with which a ship may be navigated. We had not seen land for fifty-two days, and were steering through a dense fog, which confined the circle of our vision to within a very short distance round the ship. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... instantly welcomed in England and translated in France. Then came, in swift succession, "The Pioneers," the first Leather-Stocking tale in order of composition, and "The Pilot," to show that Scott's "Pirate" was written by a landsman! "Lionel Lincoln" and "The Last of the Mohicans" followed. The next seven years were spent in Europe, mainly in France, where "The Prairie" and "The Red Rover" were written. Cooper now looked back upon his countrymen ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... last we set forth, some of us riding, and some on foot, with that old pirate captain to the front hunched to his saddle, for he never could sit a horse like a landsman, but clung to him as if he were a swaying mast, and worked his bridle like a wheel with the result of heavy lunges to right or left, I felt for the first time since I had come to Virginia like my ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... pure, here I stand, Neither on sea, nor yet on land; Angels watch me on either hand. If you be landsman, come down the strand; If you be sailor, come up the sand; If you be angel, come from the sky, Look in my glass, and pass me by; Look in my glass, and go from the shore; Leave me, but love ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... like all our men, a sailor first and a landsman after, with his crew of the mate and a boy, and the handicap of a passenger, put to sea one fine afternoon in late November, his vessel loaded with good things for his necessitous friends "up along." He was encouraged by a light breeze which, though ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... men hat go down for a livin' in ships to the sea,— We love it a different way from you poets that 'bide on the land. We are fond of it, sure! But, you take it as comin' from me, There's a fear and a hate in our love that a landsman can't understand. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... and the sea are like one another. Words shall not tell them, nor colour portray them. The kiss that burns, and the salt spray that stings—let the poet excel and the painter endeavour, yet the best they can do shall say nothing to the woman without a lover; and the landsman who knows not the sea. If you would live—love. You will live in an hour a lifetime; and you will wonder how you bore your life before. But as an artist all will be over with ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and waters of the North Sea dealt all too rudely with the fair freshness of her exterior; she grew worn and weather-stained, and it was apparent even to the casual eye of a landsman that she had left her girlhood behind her out on the Nor'-East Rough. Some of the younger trawlers would jeeringly refer to her behind her back as "Auntie," and affected to regard her as an antediluvian old dowager, which of course was mainly due to jealousy. But she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... skipper in making a fog-bound harbor will see a buoy through a slight shift in fog, while a landsman might ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... that he can identify particular animals and draw conclusions as to what they are doing with an accuracy that may seem to strangers to be wholly dependent on exceptional acuteness of vision. A sailor has the reputation of keen sight because he sees a distant coast when a landsman cannot make it out; the fact being that the landsman usually expects a different appearance to what he has really to look for, such as a very minute and sharp outline instead of a large, faint blur. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... taken collectively, have sailed over every square inch of salt water in that place, and none of them have seen it. So too, they have studded the ocean off Cape Horn so thickly with islands, that a landsman wonders how a ship of any size can manage to squeeze through into the Pacific. I have passed that cape three times, and have been working to windward off them some weeks, but although we always kept a bright look-out for ice islands and strange vessels, we never, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excitement of the otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fifteen or twenty-five little skin skiffs, with two or three men in each, paddle out under a chief elected by common consent. Whether fog or clear, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... pilot or pea-jacket of rough cloth or "witney," or blue serge or flannel coat with naval white duck trousers. The cap, blue or white cloth or duck. White flannels are also worn, but they are not so appropriate. In the evening, usual formal landsman's costume. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... come back from sea And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish But he ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various |
