United States or Turkey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All your haste, moreover, does but waken a more brilliantly-sounding ripple. No watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. What little outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer smoothly towed. Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your head high and watch the birds, or listen to them. They fly in such lofty air that they seem to turn blue in the blue sky.
Certain Bostonians had essayed it, vague Northmen, preceding our Columbus voyage. Enter now upon the scene a new and important character, Cancut the canoe-man. Mr. Cancut, owner and steerer of a birch, who now became our "guide, philosopher, and friend," is as American as a birch, as the Penobscot, or as Katahdin's self.
"My dear boy," said his aunt with tears of sympathy in her eyes, "do you think for a moment that I would allow you to go home, when this is the very first time you have paid me a visit? No; come with me and bring Pixy with you. We will go down to the first floor to see Mr. Steerer, the owner of this house, and ask him if he will let you keep your dog during your visit."
I don't want to be a prince take it from me, it's a much overrated profession but if I've got to be one, I'll specialize. I won't combine it with being a bunco steerer on the side. As long as I am on the throne, this high-toned crap-shooting will continue a back number." "What say?" said the walrus.
Now it was afternoon, and the day hot and hazy, and we stood on the very lip of the land wearied with hope and fear, and striving to keep good countenance to each other; and there came a boat unto the shore gaily painted and gilded, and bedight with silken cloths and cushions; and the steerer thereof was a woman, not young, by seeming of fifty winters; red-haired she was, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed, flat-breasted and strait-hipped; an ungoodly woman, though her skin was white and smooth as for her age.
He got up presently, passed out of his compartment, and moved forward up the central gangway, seeing, as he went, through the glass doors to right and left his fellow-passengers, some still asleep, some staring out at the view, some reading. He put his eye to the glass square in the door, and for a minute or two watched, fascinated, the steady figure of the steerer at his post.
They contained five men each and a steerer, and one had the harpoon-gun fired, with the loose line coiled round and round the head and upper part of the stroke line-manager; and in the others hundreds of fathoms of coiled rope, with toggle-irons, whale-lances, hand-harpoons, and dropped heads, and grins, and lazy abandon, and eyes that stared, and eyes that dozed, and eyes that winked.
With the united will of oarsmen and steerer the effort was successful; and ten seconds later the pinnace was safe inside the breakers, moving along under the impulse of two pairs of oars, that rose and fell as gently as if they were pulling her over the surface of some placid lake.
When I returned they were playing "The Olga," and Flora was whirling round on Guy Livingstone's arm. Among her many perilous fascinations, have I ever mentioned her wonderful waltzing? She was as untiring as an Almè; and when once fairly launched with a steerer who could do her justice, had a sway with her to use an Americanism like that of a clipper three points off the wind.
I took to it first as a hand before the mast, and have regularly passed through all the grades boat- steerer, third, second, and chief mate, master, and at last owner of my own ship, always with the same object ahead.
Word Of The Day