"Punt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Once more they unlocked the doors, and carried down everything required. She then bade a lad notify the boatwomen go to the dock and punt out two boats. But while all this bustle was going on, they discovered that dowager lady Chia had already arrived at the head of a whole company of people. Li Wan promptly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... hours together. We thought only of those hours. Things lent themselves to us. We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel and there moored to a stake at the edge of the water was a little leaky punt, the one vessel on the Engstlen See. We would take food with us as we decided and row out there to where the vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out of earshot or interference and talk for all the time we had. And I remember now how Mary stood and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... rapidly approaching from the opposite bank. An athletic aboriginal native, in an attitude that seemed studiedly graceful, was bending to the stout rope, which, attached to either side of the river, served to propel the punt. He had been spearing fish; for his wife, or gin, or queen—for she was born such, and contradicted in her person the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... highly praised, and it was decided that a brilliant fortune awaited me in Rome. After supper there was no talk of play, but giving way to my evil genius I loudly asked for my revenge. I was told that if I would take the bank everyone would punt. I took the bank, lost every sequin I had, and retired, begging the monk to pay what I owed to the landlord, which he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... confident, showing themselves everywhere. The partridge coveys had whirred up noisily in full view of the passing woodsman, and craned their necks to watch him from the near-by branches. On every shallow mere and tranquil river-reach the flocks of wild ducks had fed boldly, suffering canoe or punt to come within easy gunshot. In the heavy grass of the wild meadows, or among the long, washing sedges of the lakeside, the red deer had pastured openly in the broad daylight, with tramplings and splashings, and had lifted large bright eyes of unterrified curiosity if a boat or canoe happened ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... booming politicians and honours-list chaps, these Bagshaw chaps—you know Bagshaw?—they go like a cannon ball. They go like hell and smash through and stick when they get there. My sort's like the footballs you see down at the school punt-about. Wherever there's a punt I feel it and respond to it. My sort's out to be kicked—" He laughed again. "But I couldn't ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... had unexpectedly fallen to him, by way of legacy, an estate of some hundreds a year, which enables him to punt till ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr Inspector than if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening by some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain minutes, and a few directions to the rest to 'ease her a little for'ard,' and 'now ease her a trifle aft,' and the like, he said composedly, 'All clear!' and the line and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... definite image, because he had purposely held his mind in suspense. He had exerted himself not to lapse into any one of the special ideas that he felt the word boat was ready to call up, such as a skiff, wherry, barge, launch, punt, or dingy. Much more did he refuse to think of any one of these with any particular freight or from any particular point of view. A habit of suppressing mental imagery must therefore characterise men who deal much with abstract ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... London, a model of dramatic construction, but he looked upon the House Boat built on the stage as quite a model of construction; the end of the piece was a bit hazy, and he didn't yet know why everybody allowed him to go off with the punt, which they wouldn't get back, unless his friend, Mr. SHELTON, who was splendidly made up as a riverside boatman, brought it back, and, begging the Committee's pardon if they'd excuse his glove, he couldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... There was to be no firing unless fired upon. At the appointed hour (or perhaps later) on the morning of the 19th, this unpromising business was put in hand, and there moved off from the Olga two boats with some fifty blue-jackets between them, and a praam or punt containing ninety,—the boats and the whole expedition under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Jaeckel, the praam under Lieutenant Spengler. The men had each forty rounds, one day's provisions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... junketings. Replanted with timber for the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, it revealed clearly the kind of imagination which is characteristic of the opera-house in a bridge flung over the miniature lake, with its broken punt half filled with mouldy leaves, and in its pavilion all of rockery-work, garlanded by ivy. It had witnessed gay scenes, this pavilion, in the singer's time; now it looked on sad ones, for the infirmary ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... wooden stairs pitched downward from the edge of the grassy bank to a wharf at the water's edge—the mere skeleton of a wharf now, outlined only by decaying stringpieces. But here the patched-up punt was moored; and above it, nailed to a dead tree, the sign with its ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... story here about Kinsey, the late and unlamented. Last spring a steamer heading north on Government business sighted a fishing punt being rowed rapidly towards it, the occupant waving a flag. The captain ordered, "Stop her," thinking that some acute emergency had arisen on the land during the long winter. A burly old chap cased in dirt clambered ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... with myself, I concluded that I had a right to make the most of it, and enjoy it in my own way. Under this impression, Kennedy and I started at seven that morning, towards Perch-hole, where Lary Miller was to meet us with a punt and casting-net, and we were to fish our way down the river, towards Datchet. While awaiting him at the water's edge, among other inventions to amuse ourselves, Kennedy thoughtlessly snatching off my hat, set it floating on the water; so taking him by the collar, ere I ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... little bank account I had started, but I suppose it was worth it. I met a lot of pretty girls; but I was not after a pretty girl; I was after her. The river was a lot in my favour, I believe. It so happened that Belvoir's young brother, a Charterhouse boy, whom I knew slightly, nearly ran our punt down one Saturday with his launch. It made a big impression on Gladys, my knowing young Belvoir. You see she had been at school with Belvoir's cousin, so it all worked in. In a way I suppose I was happy ... yes, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... close to the captain's hut, intending to blow it up, but were dissuaded from doing this by one of their number. After wandering about the island for some time they went up one of the lagoons on a punt they had made, and were never ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... was very still, and she could hear the clank of the chain as Sidney unmoored the old punt, rarely used except by the gardener to clean the moat when the weeds died down in autumn. The quiet was rendered more remarkable by the suddenness of its advent. All night it had been blowing a wild gale, which dropped at dawn, and from the soft land ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... struck a submerged sandbank and beached on it. Chips' little body bent on the pole, but except to swivel the punt on its axis it had no ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... went down to the landing to see him off, Skipper Zeb, Mrs. Twig and Violet. He sat in the stern of the punt, as he did on the day Toby took him ashore, while Toby rowed him alongside and helped him on deck with his baggage, and then the boys grasped each other's hands ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... construction of the schooner, and that it needed no very elaborate working or shaping. It consisted essentially of two oblong tanks or boxes, each thirty feet long by two feet wide by two feet six inches deep. These boxes were not unlike a Thames fishing punt in shape, although they were, proportionately, much narrower and deeper. The bottom of each was perfectly flat transversely, and also longitudinally, except at the ends, where it curved up gradually in a semi-parabola ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... time. Within half an hour every one of our packages was off that ship, for Stephen Somers kept a count of them. Our personal baggage went into the Maria's boat, and the goods together with the four donkeys which were lowered on to the top of them, were rumbled pell-mell into the barge-like punt belonging to Hassan. Here also I was accommodated, with about half of our people, the rest taking their seats in the smaller boat under the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... enterprise (but when liberty is the stake, what enterprise is too hazardous for its attainment!) was undertaken in this month by five convicts at Rose Hill, who, in the night, seized a small punt there, and proceeded in her to the South Head, whence they seized and carried off a boat, appropriated to the use of the lookout house, and put to sea in her, doubtless with a view of reaching any port they could arrive at, and asserting their freedom. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... looked like fragments of a wreck, broken and irregular. The right-hand scull was heavy, as if made of ironwood, the blade broad and spoon-shaped, so as to have a most powerful grip of the water. The left-hand scull was light and slender, with a narrow blade like a marrow scoop; so when you had the punt, you had to pull very hard with your left hand and gently with the right to get the forces equal. The punt had a list of its own, and no matter how you roved, it would still make leeway. Those who did not know its character were perpetually trying to get this ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... architect." The largest and most beautifully executed obelisk; still standing at Karnak, bears her name. On the walls of her unique and beautiful temple at Dayr el Baharee, we see a naval expedition sent to explore the unknown land of Punt, the Somali country on the East coast of Africa near Cape Guardafui 600 years before the fleets of Solomon, and returning laden with foreign woods, rare trees, gums, perfumes and strange beasts. Here we have 1. ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... lady," said he, accordingly, "we have had the pond dragged. No Mr. Sly. And the fisherman who keeps the punt assures us that he has not been ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... a legend of gold from the days of Punt and Ophir to those of Ghana, the Gold Coast, and the Rand. This thought had sent the world's greed scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of Africa to the Good Hope of gain, until for the first time a real world-commerce was born, albeit it ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... generally propelled by paddles, but when the river was shallow, poles were used to punt us along, as on English rivers; the black padrone, whose superior position was indicated by the use of decent clothing, standing at the helm, gesticulating wildly, and swearing Spanish oaths with a vehemence that would have put Corporal Trim's comrades in Flanders to the blush. ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... Mary's Mill. It is a very picturesque old mill, and Mother has made beautiful sketches of it. She caught the last cold she got before going abroad with sketching it—the day we had a most delightful picnic there, and went about in the punt. And from that afternoon Arthur made up his mind that his next mill ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... formed with tressels and planks, by the industrious Savoyards. The ill consequences of this inundation are already felt, I assure you; being engaged to dinner yesterday in the Rue St. Florentin, I was obliged to step into a punt in order to reach the bottom of the stair-case; and what was infinitely more mortifying to the master of the house, was that, the cellar being rendered inaccessible,—he was deprived of the satisfaction of regaling his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... during the day except the capture of the ferry, which daring enterprise was carried out by volunteers from the South African Light Horse. Six swimmers, protected by a covering party of twenty men, swam the flooded Tugela and began to haul the punt back, whereat the Boers concealed in the kopjes opened a brisk fire at long range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... chaperone—a dependent who had eyes but did not see, ears which, as she herself declared, "would think scorn to listen." Amiable dame, she was in bed by nine o'clock, while Alban and Anna were lying in a punt at the water's edge, listening to the music of a distant guitar and watching the twinkling lights far away below the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... replied, stoutly, "we have things just as we want them wherever we go. If we wanted to bring the punt up here and put it on the dining-table filled with flowers, Jimmie would let us," to which she ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... their truant companions, and had taken the first clumsy wherry that presented itself, rowed by an even clumsier Norwegian boatman, whom they had been compelled to engage also, as he would not let his ugly punt out of his sight, for fear some harm might chance to befall it. Thus attended, they were on their way back to the yacht. With a few long, elegant strokes, Errington and Lorimer soon brought their boat alongside, and their friends gladly jumped into it, delighted ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the courage to ask if the girl in the punt were also Gwendolen Matcher—they passed on to photographs of his rooms at Oxford, of a cousin's studio in London—one of Lord Askern's grandsons was "artistic"—of the rose-hung cottage in Wales to which, on the old Earl's death, his ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... his pace until Miss Drewitt's fears for his leg became almost contagious. At the old stone bridge, spanning the river at the bottom of the High Street, he paused, and, resting his arms on the parapet, became intent on a derelict punt. On the subject of sitting in a craft of that description in mid-stream catching fish he discoursed at such length that the girl ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... lake or piece of marshy ground of considerable extent, and bordered by reeds or flags, which form good cover. Possibly the lake may narrow at some part, and if so our host's dispositions are easy; he places his guns on either shore at the "neck," and if there is room he fastens a punt in the water, midway between the guns on land. A second line of guns might, of course, ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World, thou and thy yellow man.' The old soldier ambled up the village street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony. 'Last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in the air. I smell it. See! I have brought ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... wise men of Gotham were not much worse off when they went to sea in a bowl than was Dick Lee in that rickety little old flat-bottomed punt. ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... from the land of Punt the galleys come, HATSHEPSU'S, sent by Amen-Ra and her To bring from God's own land the gold and myrrh, The ivory, the incense and the gum; The greyhound, anxious-eyed, with ear of silk, The little ape, with whiskers white as milk, And the enamelled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... "sportsmen" from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bored us with his dull philosophy. The buffetings of inland waves were not only insulting, but dangerous, to our leaky punt. At any moment, Iglesias and I might find ourselves floundering together in thin fresh water. Joyfully, therefore, at last, did we discern clearings, culture, and habitations at the lake-head. There was no tavernous village of Rangeley; that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... waggons, heavily loaded, followed at a good distance. These were built expressly for the expedition, and one of them is so constructed, that at a very short notice it can be taken off the wheels, and put to all the uses of a river punt, carrying an immense load high and dry on the water. If it be necessary to swim the camels, air bags are provided to be lashed under their jowls, so as to keep their heads clear when crossing deep streams. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... we could pull about in a little punt on the ocean as we did on the river at home," Eddie said, rather scornfully. "He has no idea what the ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... as we had breakfasted this morning, we prepared to cross, to assist us in which undertaking we contrived to construct a sort of punt by taking the wheels and axletrees off one of the carts. We then placed the body of the cart on a large tarpaulin, the shafts passing through holes cut for them, the tarpaulin tightly nailed round them. The tarpaulin was then turned up all round, and nailed inside the cart; by this means it ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... look at this wretched paper any more," said Heathcote, crumpling up the offending Observer into a ball, and giving it a punt across the path. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... ball after it has been placed on the ground; the Punt, made by kicking the ball as it falls from the hands and before it reaches ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Paul sisters was always in the way, and then he comprehended the artful maneuver of the woman and resented it. One afternoon, when he had taken the party up the river, he announced bluntly after tea that he and Adelle were going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... 21st, I took a holiday on the river, starting down with my punt from Taplow Court, and bringing her down to Dockett Eddy, of which I now took possession, the little house being ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... reached up to the saddle-flaps. On that day we came to a sluggish stream, bearing the name of "Aptikpangmakthlaingwainkyapaimpangkya" (The Place Where the Pots Were Struck When They Were About to Feast). There a punt was moored, into which we placed our saddles, etc., and paddled across, while the horses swam the almost stagnant water. Saddling up on the other side, we had a journey of thirty miles to make before arriving at a waterhole, where we camped for the second night. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... seriously knocked about while he lay in the Nervion, off the Luchana bridge, during a skirmish between the Carlists and the troops. They both fought vigorously, but they gave him most of the blows. One of his crew, in a punt behind, was killed, and twenty-five bullets were embedded in a single mast. He had the tricolour flying all the time. A fellow-countryman of his, Monsieur Jarmet, of the ship Pierre-Alcide, of Nantes, sent in a claim for an indemnity ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... thou lov'st retired ground. Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the slow punt swings round: And leaning backwards in a pensive dream, And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, And thine eyes resting on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the beaker on the smooth table, which was wet with a few drops which she had spilt, "I dreamed of the Neha-tree, down there in the great tub, which your father brought me from Punt, when I was a little child, and which since then has grown quite a tall tree. There is no tree in the garden I love so much, for it always reminds me of your father, who was so kind to me, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and barn-yards! what a difference with a distinction between a GOLDEN EAGLE and a GREEN GOOSE! There, all neck and bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of a serpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmed punt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imagining that King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cackles angrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary's lake ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a Hammamat rock says that Sankara, the last Pharaoh of the eleventh dynasty, sent a nobleman to Punt: "I was sent on a ship to Punt, to bring back some aromatic gum, gathered by the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... he was out fishing with a companion, in a tiny punt they had borrowed for the purpose, when he leaned overboard too far and fell ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... that sword hung bared above them. For their ferry-boat was a native barge, persuaded rather than propelled in any given direction by oars as long as punt poles; and set with one unwieldy sail that could neither be tacked nor furled; but which provided them, for a time, with a patch of burning shadow, by no means to be despised. In it they smoked and picnicked, and made merry with cards and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... something aloud, and presently two men appeared rowing a large, flat-bottomed punt from a dock where it was hidden. Into this boat the horses and pack-beast were driven, much against their will. Hugh and Dick having followed them, the three Italians began to punt them along the canal, which was bordered with tall ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... lighter, and we stepped out beside a broad sheet of water dotted with lilies and patches of rush and reed, while about fifty yards farther along the bank of the broad pool there was a roughly-thatched boat-house, with a mossy old punt moored to one of the posts ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Daintree and Simcox. They were unnecessary. Mrs. Daintree would have got his story out of him if she thought he was really in need of sympathy, whether he sat in a chair all day or was able to row races in the lake in the gardener's punt. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... follow them perfectly, nothing would be hidden from us. But is not our knowledge of them still incomplete? Are there not many stars still beyond our horizon—lights that are known only to the dwellers in the far south-land, among the spice-trees of Punt and ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... Dr. Ryerson was considered one of the best shots at Long Point. When over seventy years of age, he killed from seventy to eighty duck in one day in his punt and with his own gun. In the spring of 1880, when in his seventy-eighth year, he was overtaken by darkness, and, not being able to reach his cottage, was compelled to remain all night in the marsh. Rolling himself up in his blankets, in his boat, he quietly ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... devil! Here we've got Chevalier Menars and his good-luck amongst us, and yet we can win nothing, since he has declared neither for the banker nor for the punters. But we can't have it so any longer; he shall at once punt for me.' ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... pilots then," said the old man, puffing comfortably at his pipe—"there were no pilots then, and we had to feel our way along with the cast 'o the lead. We got ashore at Williamstown, on sailors' backs, and walked to Melbourne. Crossed the Yarra on a punt, not far from where Prince's ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... marchigiane. Novelline e Fiabe popolari marchigiane raccolte e annotate da Antonio Gianandrea. Jesi, 1878. 12^o. Punt. I. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... passed half an hour on the terrace, an amused witness of the perils of a voyage across the Seine in a punt. The adventurers were a bourgeois, his wife, sister, and child. Honest Pierre, the waterman, had conditioned to take the whole party to the island opposite and to return them safe to the main for the modicum ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... impenetrable character of our mission and in the air of low rascality it unfailingly wore. For many days before our departure from Twist Tickle by the outside boat, my uncle would quit the Green Bull grounds, where he fished with hook and line, would moor his punt fore and aft, and take to the bleak hills of Twin Islands, there (it seemed) to nurse some questionable design: whence at dusk he would emerge, exhausted in leg and spirit, but yet with strength to mutter obscure imprecations as he ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... 'm along nice when you comes buttin' in an' rings down the curtain on me, see. I's workin' fer Brady then. An' when I says the Honorable Milt has white wings folded acrost his back I says it sincere, believe me. Him 'n' me went fishin' together in the same punt last week!" ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... one day, as we came in unexpectedly from a voyage in the punt, something was discovered burning among the logs on the kitchen hearth; and, though a desperate rescue was attempted, nothing was left but the barrel of our precious gun and some crooked iron representing the remains of the lock. There are things that ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all the barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried across to the towing-path—young men naked of knee, armed with rattles, post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour. Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along the towing-path, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the old cap'n didn't know but it was the Flyin' Dutchman; but she hadn't a rag o' sail on her, and as she got nearer they could see there wan't a man on board. The cap'n didn't like the looks of her, but he knew she wan't no phantom, and he and one of his boys down with the punt and went alongside. 'Twan't more 'n a quarter of a mile to her. They hailed and couldn't git no answer. They knew she was a furriner by her build, and she must 'a' been a long time at sea by her havin' barnacles on her nigh as big's a mack'rel kit. Finally, they pulled up to her fore—chains and ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... business was to get out the boats. The Espriella possessed three—a gig, shaped somewhat like a whaleboat; a useful, twelve-foot dinghy; and a small cockboat, or "punt" (to use our West Country name), capable, at a pinch, of accommodating two persons. This last we carried on deck; but the larger pair at the foot of the rigging on either side, whence we unlashed and lowered them by their falls. The punt we moored by a short painter ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... vus sai dire. L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie. Quant veit li quens que ne la fraindrat mie Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. "E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! En l'oret punt asez i ad reliques. La dent saint Pierre e del sanc seint Basilie E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. Il nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. De chrestiens devez estre servie. Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie! ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... knew him—ages ago," said Ridley. "He was the hero of the punt accident, you remember? A queer card. Married a young woman out of a tobacconist's, and lived in the Fens—never ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... how often have I swore, When Winnall tallied, I would punt no more? I know the bite, yet to my ruin run; And see the folly, which I cannot ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... gets rubbed off pretty quick when you come to a bankrupt Marquis writing three ill-spelled sheets to assure me of the disinterested affection inspired by my photograph, or a divorced Duke offering to read Tennyson to me if I'll hire a punt!" ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... steered the "Coal-Coffin" triumphantly into the port of London, with a hole in her side big enough, if Tom Grattan's report is to be believed, "to admit of a punt bein' row'd d'rect from the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tiller of his little punt, The Rover, was very happy—happy because the world was so beautiful, happy because he lived, and especially happy because of the great good fortune that had come to him this day when Douglas Campbell granted his request to let him hunt the Big Hill trail, with its two hundred ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... We draw no parallel; we make no comparisons, especially as no elders enter immediately into this story; we merely state historic facts. Moreover, it was not Susanna who was taking the bath this time, it was the King, and Susanna seems merely to have been hovering about in a punt. Here was the monarch's opportunity. He persuaded Susanna to take him across the river. Thus he escaped from his enemies. Now there is no hint of an assignation, no suggestion that Susanna was an accessory ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... did not want peace; at least, not that kind of peace just at that moment. Sitting in a punt was not what she wanted. She was thrilled by the love of her less fortunate fellow-creatures, and the sense of power to help them, and the longing to go and do it. What she really wanted of Peter was that he should take her to Germany and help her through ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... cross in a ferry scow, of which, however, I only found the bones. The guide and the people at the ferryman's house talked long without result, but eventually, by many signs, I contrived to get them to take me over in a crazy punt, half full of water, and the horses swam across. Before we reached the top of the ravine, the last redness of twilight had died from off the melancholy ocean, the black forms of mountains looked huge in the darkness, and the wind sighed so ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... tame joy, had replaced Dan's gloomy expression, and one could see that, in a way, he was happy. Getting out his fishing-rod from its enveloping blanket he presently emerged, recrossed the stream, and soon could be seen pushing out into the midst of it, poling an old punt up stream. Anchoring presently in a small cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... The punt sidled away obliquely for mid-stream. I stood at one end of it. The figure of Charon could be seen at the other, of long acquaintance with this passage, using his sweep with the indifference of habitude. Perhaps it was not Charon. Yet there ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... then he would have told me so, surely. I don't remember to have seen his face in chapel or hall; but then there is such a lot of new faces, and he may not sit near me. However I mean to find him out before long, whoever he may be." With which resolve Tom crossed in the punt into Christ's Church meadow, and strolled college-wards, feeling that he had had a good hard afternoon's exercise, and was much the better for it. He might have satisfied his curiosity at once by simply asking the manager who it was that had arrived ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the West Wind out; and both on 'em's sure to be tooken," stammered the mate. "We uns don't bleeve in't, and so we runned away, and left Captain Sullendine to paddle his own punt. They get off at three in ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... The punt was moored at the lower end of Glover's Island on the Middlesex side, and rose and fell ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... If there was a boat the path would take him to it. Through a break in the trees he caught the green sweep of marsh rice and his heart beat excitedly with hope. Where there was rice there were wild-fowl, and surely where there were wild-fowl, there would be a punt or a canoe! In his eagerness he ran, and where the path ended, the flags and rice beaten into the mud and water, he stopped with an exultant cry. At his feet was a canoe. It was wet, as though just drawn out of the water, and a freshly used ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... someone on the imperiled side kicks it half the length of the field, and the scrimmages are renewed. But it is rarely kicked at all except at such junctures. Foot-ball! I say to myself that it is a gladiatorial combat with an occasional punt thrown in by way of identification. But every one around me is declaring that the play of both sides is magnificent, that the team work is perfection, and the head qualities displayed unique in the annals of the ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... drearily for Christopher, had cast their shadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was a terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on, and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too, felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... time at least) checked Mr. Verdant Green's aspirations to distinguish himself on the river; and he therefore renounced the sweets of the Isis, and contented himself by practising with a punt on the Cherwell. There, after repeatedly overbalancing himself in the most suicidal manner, he at length peacefully settled down into the lounging blissfulness of a "Cherwell water-lily;" ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... till daybreak, yet the midday sun was warm enough, especially after a walk, to make one long for leaves and shade and the like. It would be difficult, therefore, to convey the sensations with which we reclined at our ease in a flat-bottomed punt while an attendant poled us up toward the "Fall of Smoke," where the Nerbada leaps out eagerly toward the low lands he is to fertilize, like a young poet anxious to begin his work of grace in the world. On each side of us rose walls of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the water, the boat finally touched the shore, and the two detectives debarked and pulled the punt up ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... for that honour. By dint of hard work my right gun was finished by 11 a.m., and I inspanned and went off two hours afterwards. A very steep hill was the only thing to conquer going down, and we successfully crossed the Tugela in a Boer punt—guns, oxen, and my horse. We got the guns up to our new position by 6 p.m., and found ourselves about 4,200 yards from the enemy's trenches, with James's guns on our right. We had a cordial meeting with the ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... while the crew, soaked to the skin, held on for dear life. Tonet grew pale, and clenched his teeth. He didn't mind bad weather in the right boat; but it was fool business leaving shelter in that God-forsaken punt. But the Rector, pot-bellied numskull that he was, would not listen to reason! The driveling idiot seemed to grow fat on getting people into trouble! And in fact, Pascualo's moon-face was glowing in the excitement of this battle with the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... them. They were loaded with the products of Egypt which were without number, and they were in very large numbers, like tens of thousands. These were despatched to the Great Sea of the water of Qett (i.e. the Red Sea), they arrived at the lands of Punt, no disaster followed them, and they were in an effective state and were awe-inspiring. Both the large boats and the little boats were laden with the products of the Land of the God, and with all kinds of wonderful and mysterious things which are produced in those lands, and with vast quantities ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... so too, sir; there is no room for the oars, and we shall either have to punt the boats, or to drag them by ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... male sycophants! You would prevent us from competing with you; you would separate yourselves on your island of knowledge, and sink the punt which would bear us over to your privileged shore. Of all the twaddle—forgive me, male sycophants!—that the world has ever heard, I think the greatest is that which you have talked about female education. And the best of it is, you are so anxious about our welfare; ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... was no lack of entertainment, however. One of the columns had sent out 300 men and a pompom in pursuit of Hertzog's fugitives, and the force had just returned with quite a haul of prisoners. They had come across the rearmost of them as they were in the act of crossing the river in a rickety punt, which vessel had been scientifically rendered unseaworthy by a well-directed belt of pompom-shells. Examination of the bushes on the near bank of the river showed that dozens of Boers had literally gone to earth. The river approach was full of rain-fissures and water-cracks, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... or ever disturbed. Nevertheless, they are tolerably wary, which, of course, increases the sport of shooting them. I have often thought what a paradise these lakes would have made for the veteran Colonel Hawker with his punt gun. He might have paddled about and blazed away to his ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... work him into one of his famous passions. But they dared not so much as nudge him; he is too earnest, too vigorous. He lashed them off with his tongue. And when a dinghy capsized through trying to sail off the wind in a squall, it was the old man who was quickest at the water's edge with a punt, and first on the spot, although a four-oared boat raced out ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... during the summer the Young Guardsman is a conspicuous object. Robed in spotless flannels, with the Brigade Colours round his straw hat and his neck, he may be seen propelling a punt with much perseverance and some accuracy to Boulter's Lock and back. Afterwards he will dine with the comfortable conviction that he has had very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... had dribbled back and forth until, by a punt, it reached Colby Hall's 20-yard line. It landed close to Jack, and like a flash he gathered it to his breast and ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... "haunting" Mona, and shortly was able to tell the other three that Fort had called, taking the surgeon out in a machine large enough to hold them both. They proceeded to a near-by park, where a game of aerial punt-ball was already in progress. [Footnote: The game is described more or less completely in various ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... purpose, to get to the main. But before they could effect this, we found means to prevail upon the armourer and one of the carpenter's crew, two very useful men to us, who had imprudently joined them, to come over again to their duty. The rest, (one or two excepted) having built a punt, and converted the hull of one of the ship's masts into a canoe, went away up one of the lagoons, and never were heard ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt), And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios Who pursue a mild flirtation in a misdirected punt!" ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... such choice oratory has not hit, When it is, e'en, unanswer'd by a grunt, 'Twould justify tame Job to curse a bit, And set an Angler swearing, in his punt. ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... rowboat, canoe, gondola, punt, yacht, yawl, scull, cock, dugout, smack, pirogue, trawler, sloop, praam, coracle, pontoon, bateau, wherry, pinnace, scow, banca, transport, dory, galley, cruiser, ship, barge, bark, brig, bucentaur, skiff, caique, drogher, schooner, cockleshell, vessel, tug, towboat, tow, cog, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... return with the crowd, nor to listen to the dragoman, who knows nothing about the incense-trees of Punt which were planted upon the terrace to perfume the air under the light of the full moon, in the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... over a celestial sea. The earth itself was sometimes emblematized in the same way. Then, too, there was the sepulchral barge in which the Egyptian corpses were borne over the Acherusian lake to be entombed. Also the "dark blue punt" in which Charon ferried souls across the river of death. In these surely there was no reference to Noah's ark. It seems altogether likely that what Bryant and his coadjutors have constructed into the Arkite system of interpretation was really but an emblematic showing forth of a natural ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... not good at rowing but fortunately all he had to do was to guide the old punt while the tide carried it down. And so he brought the old boat to the island and pulled it well up on the shore, and tied it with a rope. Then panting, dripping, he groped his way to the tent and looked within. They were all still ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 1350, The prow was held by stay-poles.—The ship was afloat, having been just dragged off the shore, bow forwards. The men were raising the anchor, and holding the prow steady by long punt-poles. The ladder seems to have been a rope-ladder; but the Greek is difficult, and I do not know of any mention of a rope- ladder elsewhere in ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... in his queer craft, and the girls could now see that it was made for just such work as this. It was a small punt, capable of being rowed or paddled. And to enable it to slide over the ice two strips of iron, for runners, extended along the bottom from stem to stern, just under the lower and outer edges of the boat's sides. In other words it was a combined sled and ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... Five such beggars could not have met; four lean crows feeding on a dead horse. Poor Parsons held the bank. The punters were Lord Carmarthen, Lord Essex, and one of the Fauquiers; and Denbigh sat at the table, with what hopes I know not, for he did not punt. Essex's supply is from his son, which is more than he deserves, but Malden, I suppose, gives him a little of his milk, like the Roman ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... overpowered she had succumbed philosophically. It was the fortune of war, and if she had thought of it she might just as well have been kneeling on Joan's chest, as Joan was kneeling, somewhat oppressively, on hers. Given her choice of walking the plank from the punt on the lake or being marooned on the rhododendron island, she had accepted the latter alternative, stipulating for an adequate supply of food; and a truce having been called, while pirate and victim made their toilets and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... on, the second squad bringing the pigskin back twelve yards on the kick-off and then hammering through for fifteen more before the third forced them to punt. Carmine caught on his thirty-five yards, made a short gain and was downed. Twice the third got through for a yard or two and then Carmine again fell back to kick. This time the pass was a good one and Carmine got off an excellent punt that went over the head of the ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "The gentlemen" leaped at the offer more eagerly than ever trout leaped at an artificial fly; for they were profoundly ignorant of the gentle art, except as it is practised on the Thames, seated on a chair in a punt, and with bait ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... had not dragged them out, as it were, by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine fangs were closing upon them for ever! And here have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, "punt en punt, gat en gat," and commenced in this little work, a history to serve as a foundation on which other historians may hereafter raise a noble superstructure, swelling in process of time, until Knickerbocker's ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan's wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsay's punt went down with my wagon; she's in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her, and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. She'll be fetching the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times, and I'll get seven years for leaving ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... were no railways, no bridges, and no system of irrigation. In rainy seasons, which at that time were far more regular and certain, the river used to overflow its high banks and flood the surrounding valleys to such an extent, that no punt could carry the wagons across. Thereby the transport service used to be hung up, and numbers of wagons would congregate for weeks on both sides of the river until the floods subsided. At such times the price of fresh milk used to mount up to 1s. per pint. There being next to no competition, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... mind," said Weeks with a smile, "Go, then! Some one must go. Get the boat tackle ready, forward. Here, Willie, put your life-belt on. You, too, Duncan, though God knows life-belts won't be of no manner of use; but they'll save your insurance. Steady with the punt there! If it slips inboard off the rail there will be a broken back! And, Willie, don't get under the cutter's counter. She'll come atop of you and smash you like an egg. I'll drop you as close as I can to windward, and pick you up as close as ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... empty handed, one turned toward the watch tower but the other went for still a third tray. This, which he carried with an air of deference, was covered by a white cloth. He came to the boats across from us and got into a punt, balancing his tray across the bow while he paddled, standing, toward the little island. Now I became more than ever tense, and perhaps I moved, for Smilax pressed my ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... springs, many ran the ducts. Fredi's pretty little bathshed or bower had a space of marble on the three-feet shallow it overhung with a shade of carved woodwork; it had a diving-board for an eight-feet plunge; a punt and small row-boat of elegant build hard by. Green ran the banks about, and a beechwood fringed with birches curtained the Northward length: morning sun and evening had a fair face of water to paint. Saw man ever the like for pleasing a poetical damsel? So was Miss Fredi, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up to Tokatoka on the Wairoa, and there we purchased enough sawn timber for our purpose, for about twelve or fifteen pounds. We hired a big punt, and fetched this stuff down to our place, a distance of some forty miles or so by water. Then we set to ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... silent kind on a Thames back-water—the punt drawn up under the shady bank with the twain lying side by side, their arms about each other all the afternoon. When evening comes, and it is time to return home, her fellow gets out the sculls, and they part saying: "Well, dear, next Sunday, at the same ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... undermanned. Imagine her length—42 ft.—with only two men to paddle. A third man was stationed on her bow to punt when possible and be on the look-out for rocks; while Alcides, whom I had promoted to the rank of quartermaster, was in charge of the steering. I had taken the precaution to make a number of extra paddles. We carried a large quantity of fishing-lines with hooks of all ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... weather it may be seen sixty Dutch miles off at sea.' His illustration of the 'Piek-Bergh op het Eilant Teneriffe' shows an almost perpendicular tower of natural masonry rising from a low sow-back whose end is the 'Punt Tenago' (Anaga Point). The 'considerable merchants and persons of credit,' whose ascent furnished material for the Royal Society, set out from Orotava. 'In the ascent of one mile some of our Company grew very faint ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... linesmen, battered from the pounding they had received, dug their cleats into the turf and held for three downs with Pomeroy being able to gain but two yards. Dizzy Fox then dropped back to his five yard line to punt. ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... upon the whole, most satisfactory kind, namely, a broad, graceful slope running from the terrace beneath the walls to the margin of a placid lake lying below, upon the surface of which a dozen swans and a green punt floated at leisure. An irregular wooded island stood in the midst of the lake; beyond this and the further margin of the water were plantations and greensward of varied outlines, the trees heightening, by ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... heaped up very high; but land was near about, while on the boat there was but little way, because of the raging current against them. Then they sailed on to a hidden rock, but were not wrecked. Thorstein bade them let down the sail as quickly as possible, and take punt poles to push off the ship. This shift was tried to no avail, because on either board the sea was so deep that the poles struck no bottom; so they were obliged to wait for the incoming tide, and now the water ebbs away under the ship. Throughout the day they saw a seal in the current larger ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... were while they went to search for the drift. Shortly after they returned and said they had found it, and we must come, which we did, eventually arriving at the junction of two rivers (Vaal and Klip), where we found the Vaal impassable, but a small punt, capable of holding only two passengers at most, by which they said we must cross. I pointed out that it was impossible to get my carriage or horses over by it, and that it was not the punt the General ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... energies to the fullest test. The only craft available were bark canoes, and these would be too fragile for the heavy cargoes that must be borne. Stouter boats must be built. Macdonell devised a sort of punt or flat-bottomed boat, such as he had formerly seen in the colony of New York. Four of these clumsy craft were constructed, but only with great difficulty, and after much trouble with the workmen. Inefficiency, as well as misconduct, on the part of the colonists was a sore trial ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... still, some seventy or eighty yards above a furious rapid. At this spot I had built my raft. I now launched it, made my swag fast to the middle, and got on to it myself, keeping in my hand one of the longest blossom stalks, so that I might punt myself across as long as the water was shallow enough to let me do so. I got on pretty well for twenty or thirty yards from the shore, but even in this short space I nearly upset my raft by shifting too rapidly from one side to the other. The water then became much deeper, and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... captain, because it was his adventure. We had hop-poles from the hop-garden beyond the orchard to punt with. We made the girls stand together in the middle and hold on to each other to keep steady. Then we christened our gallant vessel. We called it the Richard, after Dicky, and also after the splendid admiral who used to eat wine-glasses and died after the Battle of the Revenge ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... denoted a small province on the Northern Sea-board, is, I would suggest, A'far-Kahi (Afar-land), the Afar being now the Dankali race, the country of Osiris whom my learned friend, the late Mariette Pasha, derived from the Egyptian "Punt" identified by him with the Somali country. This would make "Africa," as it ought to be, an Egyptian ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... you never got down the field after a football punt any quicker than you hurdled that orchestra leader, and made a flying tackle of that singer!" exclaimed Tom, admiringly. "My hat off ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... what," said Wally, "it wouldn't be a bad joke to have a punt- about with their football right under ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... boards enough to make a fishing-punt, and if you and Mr Henry will help me, I think we shall have one made in two or three days. The lake is full of fish, and it's a pity not to have some while the weather ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... these boats approaches that of a salmon-fisher's punt used on certain British rivers. Being floored gives them the appearance of being absolutely flat-bottomed; but, though they tilt readily, they are very safe, being heavily built and fitted together with singular precision with wooden bolts and a few copper cleets. They are SCULLED, not what ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the water, and the fountains, and the swimming ducks and the birds on the banks. There is the right touch of artificiality about them; the right note of London. The birds are Londoners themselves. The stately brown geese stalk over the lawns careless of poulterers or punt-guns. The cormorant, who most certainly knows he is being watched, dives to show off before admiring children. Even the blackbirds have forgotten their country habits, and will sing when country blackbirds ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... addition to those who had gone away in the yacht. As the jib and foresail were taken off her, she shot up to the buoy. Murray hastened down to the landing-place, in time to meet Adair and the stranger, whom Archie pulled on shore in the punt. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... 1865 some daring longshore pirate made off with Fletcher senior's "punt," or longshore lugger, without saying as much as "by your leave." The piracy (as was proper to such a deed of darkness) was effected by night, and on the following morning the coastguard were warned of the act. These worthy fellows (and ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... resumed. "A water rat rose within a foot of me and a kingfisher was busy on a twig almost at my elbow. Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a punt-pole. I thought the river seemed to become suddenly deserted; it grew quite abnormally quiet—and abnormally dark. But I was so deep in reflection that it never occurred to ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the river to ourselves, except that, far in the distance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on which three fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, and passed the wooded ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... willows and come to a great marsh. In a punt on some open water an old man is angling. We come to fields again, and then to a deep wood. France smiles about ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... curves of Kempenfeldt Bay, whose waves lapped lightly on the beach. Here they found the two younger Macleod children, who had come to see the party off. Just as the latter arrived, the youth, Herbert, who had been amusing himself rocking a punt in a creek by the shore, managed to upset the craft and precipitate himself into deep water. The mishap had no more serious result—for the lad was a good swimmer—than to frighten Rose, and deprive her of the anticipated pleasure of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... won't,' said Katie, taking his big hand in both her little ones, 'indeed we won't. It was very wrong of me to bother you; and you with—with—with so much to think of. Dear Harry, I don't want to go at all, indeed I don't,' and she turned away from the little path which led to the place where the punt was moored. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... for your stupidity in that matter. Take the maid an' be done with it. God be thanked I isn't a widower-man. If I was, I'd bring your chance into peril soon enough," said his father. "'Tis t' be a fair day for fishin' the Skiff-an'-Punt grounds the morrow. Go t' bed. I'll pray that wisdom may overcome your caution afore ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... some ten miles farther. The boat expedition, consisting of three cutters from the Bellevite and one from the Bronx, moved towards the head of the bay. Christy, in the second cutter of the Bellevite, was at least two miles from any other boat, when a punt containing a negro put out from the shore ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... boyhood, of course I had my rowing punt and my rod, and thus gained my first taste for a solitary life, as it frequently happened that I would be away from sunrise to sunset on some little expedition to one or other of the neighbouring Broads. By and bye came the time when I arrived at that rare age for enjoyment, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... above a few silver clouds—the belles of the air—were following its course, as if to watch themselves in the watery winding mirror. And near the reedy island, at the shadowy point always haunted by three swans, whom I suspect of having been there ever since the days of Odin-faith, was the usual punt, with its elderly gentlemanly gudgeon-fishers. But far below me, along the dark line of the hedge, was a sight which completed the English character of the scene—a real Gipsy camp. Caravans, tents, waggons, asses, smouldering fires; ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... poking about among the reeds, and now pointed in triumph under the branches of a big willow to a smooth little pool, where there actually floated a punt, anchored by a long chain to the trunk of ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... about it, and no man at any club ever knew more than Captain Gunner. Soon after Christmas he met his friend the Major on the steps of the new military club, The Active Service, which was declared by many men in the army to have left all the other military clubs "absolutely nowhere." "Halloa, Punt!" he said, "you seem to have made a mess of it at ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope |
