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He had been accustomed to sleep wet through with icy water, and crouch for hours with numbed hands clenched on the steering-paddle while the long sea canoe scudded furiously over the big combers before bitter gale or driving snow. Wyllard, who rolled over, pulled a wet sleeping-bag across him, and after that there was silence in the little rocking tent.
Why was the left side of a ship called the port side? That term was in use before the Admiralty adopted it. It has been suggested that, as the steering-paddle was on the right side of a ship, it was good seamanship to have the harbour or port on the left hand when piloting inwards. But it is doubtful if that reason was devised by a sailor.
Their helmsman pushed over the steering-paddle, and flung himself upon the deck. The sea-mouse went up into the wind. The grappling-irons rattled over the bulwark. Glaucon heard the Phœnicians whining, “Mercy! mercy!” as they embraced the boarders’ feet, then the prōreus, in hearty Attic, calling, “Secure the prisoners and rummage the prize!” Glaucon had suffered many things of late.
Aft, by the great steering-paddle, perched a man, motionless, yet seeming to watch. Heywood turned, however, and pointed downstream to where, at the bend of the river, a little spit of mud ran out from the marsh. On the spit, from among tussocks, a man in a round hat sprang up like a thin black toadstool. He waved an arm, and gave a shrill cry, summoning help from further inland.
Glaucon had stood perfectly passive during all this grim by-play. Once Phormio saw his fellow-captive’s face twist into a smile, but in the excitement of the moment the fishmonger as well as the Carthaginians almost forgot the Isthmionices, and Hib relaxed his grip and guard. Lars’s finger was streaming red, when Hasdrubal threw away the steering-paddle in a rage. “Silence her forever!
He thought it was a sea-phrase for splicing a rope, just as he supposed "main-sheet" was the largest sail of a ship. We begin to understand what a long voyage our ship has come when we are told that "starboard" is steer-board, the side to which the steering-paddle was made fast before the modern rudder was invented in the fourteenth century.
"Hello, Ishikola, you blooming old blighter," was Van Horn's greeting to the old chief, as the dandy, with a pry of his steering-paddle against the side of the canoe and part under its bottom, brought the dug-out broadside-on to the Arangi so that the sides of both crafts touched. Ishikola smiled upward in the lantern light.
"An' Dumplin', is he ready?" said the seaman. The hero of the day was held up in the arms of his proud father. "Now then, lads, shove off!" In a few minutes the canoe, with its precious freight and Thursday at the steering-paddle, was thrust through the wild surf, and went skimming over the smooth sea beyond.
But just then a fiery fin-back whale, having broken into the paddock of the lagoon, threw up a high fountain of foam, almost under Tribonnora's nose; who, quickly turning about his canoe, cur-like slunk off; his steering-paddle between his legs. Comments over; "Babbalanja, you were going to quote," said Media. "Proceed." "Thank you, my lord.
The unheeded sentinel in the marsh fled, losing his great hat, as the boat drifted round the point into midstream. The lowdah would have set his dirty sails without delay, for the fair wind was already drooping; but at the first motion he found himself deposed, and a usurper in command, at the big steering-paddle.
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