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It signifies a skulk, a sherk, one who is always trying to get clear of work, and is out of the way, or hanging back, when duty is to be done. "Marine" is the term applied more particularly to a man who is ignorant and clumsy about seaman's work a green-horn a land-lubber.
I've always found the best fellows were wildish once. I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn; besides, he's got an excuse for it then. You can't expect to have a man, if he doesn't take a man's food. You'll have a milksop. And, depend upon it, when he does break out he'll go to the devil, and nobody pities him.
"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he. "What a splendid actress and manager! She had almost got a second supply out of me the other day with her coaxing ways. She beats all the women I have ever seen in the course of all my well-spent life! They are babies compared to her. I am a green-horn myself and a fool in her hands an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies."
The Ames orchard consisted of the finest fruits which commanded a high price. Yes, the property was fast making its owners rich. Rupert Ames was a "rising young man," lacking the finished polish of a higher education, no doubt, but still, he was no "green-horn." Even Miss Wilton had to acknowledge that, when she became acquainted so that she could speak freely with him.
"Pooty well done to begin with, I call it." "Do you, though?" "For a green-horn, you know." "Oh, yes, I know." Jack began where Bertie left off, and he worked so skilfully that in a few minutes legs and arms were free, and the warm jacket was turned and pulled over the animal's head. "He isn't quite so much of a beauty, come to peel him," said Jack. "He is frightful!" declared Amy.
"What a green-horn you must be, Francois, not to know what a dan is!" replied another, who was inclined to be quizzical. "Why, it's a sort of sea-carriage that the Esquimaux tie to the tail of a walrus or sea-horse when they feel inclined for a drive. When they can't get a sea-horse they catch a white whale asleep, and wake him up after fastening the dan to his tail.
Uttering imprecations, Jack approached the Englishman, and dancing about the deck, cleared the ring for the coming combat. "Come on, you green-horn, and take your gruel. Here's the best man on the river for you. You'll find him real grit." The stranger sat still, said he was not a fighting man, and did not want to quarrel with anybody.
"CHECHAQUO!" Kink Mitchell grunted, and it was the grunt of the old "sour dough" for the green-horn, for the man who outfitted with "self-risin'" flour and used baking-powder in his biscuits.
"With a man and his wife to run it," they could raise squabs by the thousands. But Ernestine, who had all the business she could attend to with her laundry, was apathetic. She averred that any man and his wife who could make money in the poultry business would be exploiting it for themselves, not for "two green-horn women."
My face might have told tales upon me; for more than once I was taken to task by my ruffian companions, who jeered me for my scruples, calling me "green-horn", "land-lubber", "son of a gun", "son of a sea-cook," and other like contemptuous appellations, of which, among sailors, there is an extensive vocabulary.
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