United States or Macao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Such maxims were committed to the keeping of the Bards, who were admitted to their office after a severe probation and trying initiatory rites, among which the chief was, that they should paddle alone, in a little coracle, to a shoal at some distance from the coast of Caernarvonshire a most perilous voyage, supposed to be emblematic both of the trials of Noah and of the troubles of life.
There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. I had not then seen a coracle, such as the ancient Britons made, but I have seen one since, and I can give you no fairer idea of Ben Gunn's boat than by saying it was like the first and the worst coracle ever made by man.
The coracle was made strong by a wooden frame fixed inside round the edge, and by two cross boards, which also served as seats. Then they turned the wicker frame upside down and stretched the hides of animals over the whole frame and bottom. With pitch, gum, or grease, they covered up the cracks or seams. Then they shaped paddles out of wood.
Remember, too, that you are never to speak to him unless he speaks to you. But you won't have much to do with him. Were you ever at sea, before?" "No, sir. Only about the Broads in a coracle." "You'll find it very interesting, then. If you're not seasick. Here we are at the boat. Now, jump in. Get into the bows." "Mr. Scott" was already snug under a boat-cloak in the sternsheets.
He caused a boat to be built of a fashion which one may still see in Welsh and Irish rivers, and known as a curragh or coracle; made of an osier frame covered with tanned and oiled skins. He took with him seventeen priests, among whom was St. Malo, then a mere boy, but afterwards celebrated.
At last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in the dark; I felt the hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tough effort, cut the last fibers through. The breeze had but little action on the coracle, and I was almost instantly swept against the bows of the Hispaniola. At the same time the schooner began to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current.
Gradually weariness grew upon me; a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst of my terrors, until sleep at last supervened and in my sea-tossed coracle I lay and dreamed of home and the old Admiral Benbow. The Cruise of the Coracle IT was broad day when I awoke and found myself tossing at the south-west end of Treasure Island.
We borrowed her and now ye remind me, I wouldn't be surprised if Tim Brady was missing her by this, for I had no leisure to ask his leave at the time, and, as a rule, we take our own coracle in the hooker " "What is a hooker?" I interrupted, for I was resolved to know. "What's a hooker? A hooker what a catechetical little chatterbox ye are! A man can't get a word in edgeways a hooker's a boat.
The paddler of this coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side, which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
But what about coracle?" "Well," said the humbled Bates, "I think it's a carriage, missy. A sort of Pheayton, as they call it." Sylvia, hardly satisfied, returned to the book. It was a little mean-looking volume a "Child's History of England" and after perusing it awhile with knitted brows, she burst into a childish laugh. "Why, my dear Mr.
Word Of The Day