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Skiff   /skɪf/   Listen
Skiff

noun
1.
Any of various small boats propelled by oars or by sails or by a motor.



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"Skiff" Quotes from Famous Books



... usually a shallow stream, was at that place 108 yards wide, and too deep for wading. Brigham Young and some others crossed over the next morning in a sole-leather skiff which formed a part of their equipment, and were kindly welcomed by the commandant. There they learned that it would be impracticable—or at least very difficult—to continue along the north bank of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... of illustration every production that had yet appeared in America, gained for the author universal commendation. In January 1810, his second volume appeared, and in a month after he proceeded to Pittsburg, and from thence, in a small skiff, made a solitary voyage down the Ohio, a distance of nearly six hundred miles. During this lonely and venturous journey he experienced relaxation in the composition of a poem, which afterwards appeared under ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... say he used to have a garden, and raised everything he wanted to eat. In the summer time he used to work a good deal for two or three farmers that lived over at Cedar Hill, at the further end of the pond. He had a little skiff, and rowed back and forth in that. He never used to spend any money, and people say he must have had all of a thousand dollars, that he had earned, when he died; but nobody knew what became of it. They suppose ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell

... Japan appeared upon the horizon. It was a voyage of storms and calms combined, sometimes the ocean for days being like a small inland lake, and then again in its rage tossing our ship about as though she were a mere fishing skiff,—the waves often making a clean breach over the hull, thoroughly drenching everything and everybody who happened to be ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... among the trees of the Palace gardens. Thousands of lights glittered through the foliage. The air was burdened with perfume. High above the sombre umbrage rose slender snowy spires, around which the moonbeams lingered lovingly. He left the little skiff and trod the terraced ascent. A meandering brooklet, tributary of the larger stream, was spanned by fairy-like bridges. He hesitated among the intersecting ways, mazy, enchanting, and flower-bordered. The living air was full of subdued ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... treading the innumerable ripples with an incessant weltering splash; and until I got my eye above the window-sill I could not comprehend why the watchmen had taken no alarm. One glance, however, was sufficient; and it was only one glance that I durst take from that unsteady skiff. It showed me Hands and his companion locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... And then his skiff ground on the river rocks. Whistling he came into the shadow made By that dead tree. He kissed her dark brown locks; And round her form his eager arms were laid. Passive she stood, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... and in the course of a few months Josephine and I were married, and our home was made on my own old place. Still, night by night, in storm, calm, or freshet, Paul pulled himself in a skiff across that mighty river, and we could see the lights shining to a late hour in the little bower. He had changed a great deal, for he loved with the whole force of his fiery and impetuous nature. Pauline loved too, though still she feared ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... boat, bum boat, fly boat, cock boat, ferry boat, canal boat; swamp boat, ark, bully, battery, bateau [Can.], broadhorn^, dory, droger^, drogher; dugout, durham boat, flatboat, galiot^; shallop^, gig, funny, skiff, dingy, scow, cockleshell, wherry, coble^, punt, cog, kedge, lerret^; eight oar, four oar, pair oar; randan^; outrigger; float, raft, pontoon; prame^; iceboat, ice canoe, ice yacht. catamaran, hydroplane, hovercraft, coracle, gondola, carvel^, caravel; felucca, caique^, canoe, birch bark canoe, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... January 1625 give much more information. Jamestown had a church, a court-of-guard (guardhouse), 3 stores (probably storehouses), a merchant's store, and 33 houses. Ten of the Colony's 40 boats were here, including a skiff, a "shallop" of 4 tons, and a "barque" of 40 tons. There were stores of fish, 24,880 pounds to be exact, corn, peas, and meal. There were four pieces of ordnance, supplies of powder, shot and lead, and, for individual use, "fixt peeces," snaphances, pistols, seventy swords, ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... from the lusts of his life's love, and are not felt to be evils but enjoyments, to which one does not give thought. Who gives thought to the enjoyments of his love? His thought floats along in them like a skiff carried along by the current of a stream; and he perceives a fragrant air which he inhales with a deep breath. Only in one's external thought does one have a sense of the enjoyments, but even in it he pays no attention to them unless he knows well ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... already being constructed in Whitehall as he spoke, but D'Artagnan had the London executioner fast bound under lock and key in a cellar, and Athos had a light skiff waiting at Greenwich. Not only this, but at midnight these four wonderful men, thanks to Athos, who spoke excellent English, were also at work at the scaffold—having bribed the carpenter in charge to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... years before his death that a striking instance of this occurred. The first vessel that was built in Russia was a small skiff, which was planned and built almost entirely by Peter's own hands. This skiff was built at Moscow, where it remained for twenty or thirty years, an object all this time, in Peter's mind, of special affection and regard. At length, when the naval power of the empire was firmly ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and into which they retreat when disturbed. Hundreds of perch, bream and young bass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... and firearms, Radisson left the Mohawk Valley with three hunters. By the middle of August, the rind of the birch is in perfect condition for peeling. The first thing the hunters did was to slit off the bark of a thick-girthed birch and with cedar linings make themselves a skiff. Then they prepared to lay up a store of meat for the winter's war-raids. Before ice forms a skim across the still pools, nibbled chips betray where a beaver colony is at work; so the hunters began setting beaver traps. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... ready, the great multitude, drawn from all parts of Greece, set sail for Epidamnus. When they reached Actium, at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, they were met by a herald, sent out from Corcyra in a skiff, to forbid their approach. This was a mere manoeuvre, to throw the guilt of commencing hostilities on the Corinthians; and meanwhile the Corcyraeans manned their ships, to the number of eighty, and put out to meet the enemy's fleet. In the sea-fight ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... are presented to view on every hand in passing down New York Harbor and Bay are very magnificent and imposing. Ships, steamers, long ferry boats, tugs, sloops, sail boats, and every other species of water craft, from the little skiff that bobs up and down over the waves made by the steamboat swell to the man-of-war riding proudly at anchor in the stream, are seen on every hand. The shores, too, present enchanting pictures of rich and romantic beauty. There are villas and ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... bank of verdure to the other and do not think of coming to the surface to float and sail in the sunlight. The collectors of sticks and shells are more highly privileged. They can remain on the level of the water indefinitely, with no other support than their skiff, can rest in unsubmersible flotillas and can even shift their place by working ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... to-day. She wished that she could loose her clasp upon the sordid, material modern life that, perforce, she must hold to, she knew not why, and drift, drift off into the past, far away, through rose-coloured mists and diaphanous veils, or resign herself, reclining in a silver skiff drawn by swans, to the gentle current of some smooth-flowing river that ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... President of the Board of Aldermen. There were also present an official delegation representing the city. Addresses were made by Archbishop J. J. Glennon, of St. Louis; Right Reverend Bishop McNamara, of New York city; Walter B. Stevens, Secretary, and F. J. V. Skiff, Director of Exhibits of the Exposition; Howard J. Rogers, Chief of Department of Education and Social Economy, and others. Luncheon was served at noon at the Tyrolean Alps, and from three to five in the afternoon a reception was held ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... commanding signs he ordered the reckless young artist to turn his little skiff, and follow in the wake of the ferry-boat, which was by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was, perhaps, not a man inclined to analyze such things, but they had their influence over him; for, as he drifted slowly home in his skiff, he began to pity Geordie's four motherless babies, and to wonder if he had been as patient with him as he might have been. "An' yet," he murmured, "there's the loss on the goods, an' the loss o' time, and the boat to steek afresh forbye the danger to life! Na, na, I'm no called ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... in the presence of a curious and doubting crowd the first real steamboat was launched on the Savannah River. Some of the friends of those on board, feeling anxious for their safety if the "contraption" should explode, secured a skiff, and followed the steamboat at a safe distance, ready to pick up such of the passengers as might survive when the affair had blown to pieces. Longstreet headed the boat down the river, and went in that direction for several miles. Then he turned ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... as light-hearted as birds Who warbled spring carols on high, Each guided his skiff o'er the freshening wave, 'Neath a ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... which weigh fifteen pounds. There were a few wild ducks on both lakes. A brood of the goosander or red merganser, the young not yet able to fly, were the occasion of some spirited rowing. But with two pairs of oars in a trim light skiff, it was impossible to come up with them. Yet we could not resist the temptation to give them a chase every day when we first came on the lake. It needed a good long pull to sober us down so ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... handed his flask to him; and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure in life. But there is not much fun for us about this little affair. Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a skiff, called the Fortune, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France for he always had the faculty of taking the sea ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac

... negro were aboard, the boatman rowed out on the river, shipped his oars and let the skiff ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous

... very fairly, for he belonged to a boat club at school. It was not very much of a club; but then the club boat was not very much of a boat, being a small, flat-bottomed skiff, which leaked so badly that she could not be kept afloat unless one boy kept constantly at work bailing. However, Harry learned to row in her, and he now found this knowledge very useful. He was anxious to start on the cruise immediately, but his uncle insisted that the crew must first be ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... there. The cap'n'll pay well. That's square. We can't afford to try the other now, at any rate. Is the skiff here?" ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... The skiff passed the little point or platform of rock on which the fire was blazing, and running about two boats' length farther, stopped where the cavern (for it was already arched overhead) ascended from the water by five or six broad ledges of rocks, so easy and regular ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... small wood-hut upon the steeps, Where'er, below, amid the savage scene Peeps out a little speck of smiling green. A garden-plot the mountain air perfumes, Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms; A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff, Threading the painful crag, surmounts ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... this finale of jingling singing will jar upon the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle in its tail: and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may chance to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in this after-thought Appendix; yea, and I will keep that promise at all mortal hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing Fornarinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay court-cards. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... I had bought second-hand two years before, was jacked up in the middle of the floor. The engine, which I had taken apart to clean, was in pieces beside it. On the walls hung my two shot guns and my fishing rod. Outside, on the beach, was my flat-bottomed skiff, which I used for rowing about the bay, her oars under the thwarts. In the boathouse was a comfortable armchair and a small shelf of books, novels for the most part. A cheap clock and a broken-down couch, the latter a discard from the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... you'll dart the skiff?— Each sport has here its tackle and tool: Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff; Come, swing the sculls ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... those renowned cities, of which I have heard below,—Nineveh, the capital of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleone and that famous Troy, on account of which I remember ferrying across there such numbers that for ten whole years my skiff was never high and dry and never caught cold," (that being Charon's fun, according to Lucian's conception, in conveying that all that long time his boat was in the water (hence "catching cold") from being perpetually used: [Greek: ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... July, and I had been an Etonian nearly three months. During this time I had experienced a fair average of fighting, bullying, fagging, and flogging, and had also acquired some useful accomplishments. I could paddle my skiff up to Surly Hall and back, swim across the river at Upper Hope, and had even begun to get in debt, having some weeks ago "gone tick" with Joe Hyde for a couple of bottles of ginger-beer, with the proviso ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... were not likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together now and then, from ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... house, was naturally, of my horses and men. Will you be kind enough to fancy my feelings, when I heard that they were miles away, and—the reason why. Three days before the ferry-boat had been carried away and shattered by the floods; nothing but a skiff could cross till a cable was rigged from bank to bank; there was no chance of this being completed before the beginning of the following week. The neighborhood was too dangerous to linger in; there was a provost-marshal guard actually stationed in Sharpsburg: so my men, hearing of the disaster ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon, and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft,—the very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing the disappearance of many intermediate forms, less adapted to any one particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... saluted each other, and the musketeers discharged their small shot, and so (God be praised) our fear and danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment. Our danger being thus over, we espied two boats on fishing in the channel; so every one of our four ships manned out a skiff, and we bought of them great store of excellent fresh fish ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... and up under lee of the island; then, on rounding the point, we encountered the whole force of the sea and wind. There was a glimmering light on the wrecked yacht, and for that we rowed, or rather were borne along on the gale. No boat, save a Shetland skiff, could have been ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... breadth, was so covered with boats of all kinds that the water was invisible along the whole stretch of the city; all manner of craft, from the bark with raised poop and prow and richly painted and gilded cabin to the light papyrus skiff,—everything had been called into use. Even the boats used to ferry cattle and to carry freight, and the reed rafts kept up by skins, which generally carried loads of clay vessels, had not been disdained. The waters of the Nile, beaten, lashed, and cut by oars, sweeps, and rudders, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... planting on this shore; so the fish already prepared for market had been eaten by the hungry settlers because of the delayed arrival of the Warwick with food supplies. Perhaps this accounts for Godfrie's irritation and anxiety for a good catch. When the last boat had started, he stepped into a skiff, picked up the oars, and ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... Carlo caught the eye of this man, who appeared to be eagerly watching the frigate's gangway for a fare, and holding up a small piece of silver, in a moment the light boat was at the foot of the accommodation-ladder. Ghita now descended; and as soon as her uncle and she were seated, the skiff, for it was little more, whirled away from the ship's side, though two or three more, who had also been left by recreant boatmen for better fares, called out to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... it along a creek. About three miles out of town I should think, I lay down to rest among some bushes. Ten minutes after I'd got there a boat rowed by some persons came along. They beached it right alongside the brush. Then one of them, a boy, lifted a mail bag from the bottom of the skiff." ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... night, cried out land, and there in the early dawn of morning could be seen the welcome sight of land. Fortunately they lighted on the only secure entrance through the reefs. The vessel was run ashore and wedged between two rocks, and thereby was preserved from sinking, till by means of a boat and skiff the whole crew of one hundred and fifty, with provisions, tackle and stores, reached the land. At that time the hogs still abounded, and these, with the turtle, birds and fish which they caught, afforded excellent food for the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... truth in the descriptions which occur in his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of "the great vision of the guarded mount," with that preternatural weight of impression with which it would present itself suddenly to "the pilot of some small night-foundered skiff": and the lines in the Penseroso, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... whirled about only a few feet from the dory. From the shadowed crevices in the rocks, men leaped forward and hurled themselves to the beach. About the skiff bright jets of flame cut the fog. Came the sharp report of an automatic, ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... Post, with its low beams and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou would lie contentedly at his feet. In the frosty autumnal mornings, when the brant were flocking in the marshes at the head of the bay, they would go out hunting together in a skiff. And who could lie so still as Pichou when the game was approaching? Or who could spring so quickly and joyously to retrieve a wounded bird? But best of all were the long walks on Sunday afternoons, on the yellow beach that stretched ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... could reach, sombre pillars, covered with green, moist slime; they stood half out of the water, supporting the roof, and from the roof oozed moisture which fell in heavy drops, in heavy drops continually. At the entrance was a little skiff with a paddle ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... service, was as field officer of the day. This necessitated the visiting occasionally during the day and night, our videttes and picket posts which were stationed on the roads into the country, and at intersecting points in the fields; and also crossing in a skiff the Mississippi river, to visit the troops stationed to guard a telegraph station on the other side. This station was in the vicinity of a famous duelling ground,—a path not far from the river bank,—to which in former days the young bloods of the town and vicinity would resort to repair ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman

... Bolinao, which is about one-quarter legua from the village. The father prior flew thither, with the rapidity of one who is in search of consolation, for he was most afflicted. Scarcely was he descried on the beach, when the general sent a skiff for him. He was taken by the skiff to the flagship, where he was received with repeated salvos of artillery. All the men expressed mutual joy, which sprung from the bottom of the heart, and were not superficial and born from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... and stepping into the boat which had rowed him to the Kent, he was quickly conveyed to the grab. In a few minutes he left this in a skiff accompanied only by Fuzl Khan and a lascar. Not till then did he explain what he required of them. The Gujarati seemed overcome by the selection of himself for ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... stryelki (sharpshooters) were stationed near the lake, the central point for meetings and promenades during the lovely "white nights;" where boats of every sort, from a sail-boat or a Chinese sampan to an Astrakhan fishing-boat or a snowshoe skiff, are furnished gratis all summer, with a sailor of the Guard to row them, if desired. Round and round and round, unweariedly, paced the girls. They were bareheaded and in slippered feet, as usual, but had abandoned the favorite ulster, which too often accompanies extremities ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... his room." He watched it with longing eyes, he sought upon the shining disk and in the spots upon it mountains and forests, wonderful castles and enchanted flowers and fragrant trees. He believed that he saw lakes with shining swans which were drawing boats, a skiff which carried him and his beloved, while about them charming mermaids blew upon their twisted conchs and stretched their arms filled with water lilies over ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... who hadn't gone on the excursion,—as soon as he knew that the boat was signalling for help and that Miss Lawson was sending up rockets,—rushed for a row boat, grabbed an oar (two would have hampered him), and paddled madly out into the lake. He struck right out into the dark with the crazy skiff almost sinking beneath his feet. But they got him. They rescued him. They watched him, almost dead with exhaustion, make his way to the steamer, where he was hauled ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... and he was sure he knew the culprits. Taking the hoop, he returned to his boathouse with all possible speed, and leaping into his skiff, paddled up the river, his eyes scanning the marsh lines on either bank of the channel. Arriving at the bridge, he learned by inquiry from the tender stationed there that he had not seen the Lillian coming up stream within ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... silver webs across the ways Carved by the wind, a half-breathed sigh, That spoke in ripples. "O Heart's Delight," I cried, "The skiff comes for me now across the water." And, as I bent to kiss her, Love's fair daughter, She barely breathed, "Good-night," And some musician blended Chopin with her phrase: "Good-bye, Love's youth, Youth's ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... in his skiff, and looking in the direction in which Mrs. Abel pointed discovered, coming out of the horizon, a boat, rising and falling upon the swell. It carried no sail, and after careful scrutiny Abel's sharp eyes could discern no man at the oars. This, then, was the cause of Mrs. Abel's excitement. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... appeared, would not come in from the sea, but would presently be off to Wayfarer's Tickle, to the north, where she would harbour for the night. The lanterns were shining cheerily in the dark of the wharf; and my father was speeding the men who were to take the great skiff out for the spring freight—barrels of flour and pork and the like—and roundly berating them, every one, in a way which surprised them into unwonted activity. Perceiving that my father's temper and this mad bustle ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... early fall, Sheila had become a splendid oarswoman. In a skiff belonging to little John-Ed which was drawn up on the sands not far from the cabin she had paddled out through the narrow neck of the tiny cove's entrance and pulled bravely through the surf and out upon the sea beyond. She had learned more than a bit of sea lore, ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... us now Descend from this ethereal height; Then take thy way, adventurous Skiff, More daring far than Hippogriff, And be thy own ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... January 4th, 1808. His parentage was humble, and, in consequence, his facilities for obtaining an education very limited. When about thirteen years old, his father moved with his family to Troy, New York, where young Stillman was hired by Richard P. Hart to run a skiff ferry, the wages being ten dollars per month, which the lad thought a sum sufficient to secure his independence. Among the passengers frequently crossing the ferry was Mr. Canvass White, U. S. Engineer, at that ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... the sound from some passing skiff that crept along the waters, but Adeline thought she heard the voice of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... which to traverse the pond, with places to secure it on the opposite shores; and early passers along the State road, that overlooked the placid waters, often marked a solitary boatman pulling a little skiff towards ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... course had been a little awry while Mrs. James neglected her steering to wave her handkerchief to her husband and Mrs. Stephen; but now the light skiff went straight onward again, and they could soon see nothing more of the two figures it contained than Olive's light mantle and Stephen's white ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... wavelets speeds our skiff To the oar's measured beat; Cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills Appear our course ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... fabric of this power begun; His noble stream, inglorious, Mersey roll'd, Nor felt his waves by lab'ring art controll'd: Along his side a few small cots were spread, His finny brood their humble tenants fed; At op'ning dawn with fraudful nets supply'd The padding skiff would brave his specious tide, Ply round the shores, nor tempt the dangerous main, But seek ere night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... intricate torpedo was fired. It exploded under the vessel's overhang, and she soon sunk. At the moment of the explosion a cannonball crashed through the launch. Cushing plunged into the river and swam to shore through a shower of bullets. After crawling through the swamps next day, be found a skiff and paddled off to the fleet. Of the launch's crew of fourteen, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,' "Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, That signal ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... were not slow to obey, and when it touched the water they swarmed into it, so that, being overloaded, it upset and left its occupants struggling in the water. A number of the men who could swim, immediately jumped overboard and tried to right the skiff, but they failed, and, in the effort to do so, broke the rope that held it. Some clung to it. Others turned ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... rational pleasure of 999 people ought not to be checked because the last of the thousand acts as a blackguard. This point, too, bears upon the question of steam-launches. A launch can pass as softly and quietly as a skiff floating with the stream. And there is a good deal to be said on the other side, for the puntsmen stick themselves very often in the way of every one else; and if you analyse fishing for minnows from a punt you will ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... a rather light skiff, he told me. He used it to go up and down to look at the bridges he was now busily laying. When I asked for its use the next day, he said Yes, if I would send him some ducks; adding that I should need a pass. He would send it that evening by a sergeant, and an order ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... nor I had much experience in boating, and we had none in boat building. However, when we had discarded the idea of taking a canoe, we set to work with a hearty good will to build us a skiff. We made it out of light lumber, then easily obtained at Tumwater. We determined to have the skiff broad enough not to upset easily, and long enough to carry us and our light ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... consciousness with a mental pang as keen as acute physical anguish. He jumped up in torment. "God!" he cried chokingly. "I'd forgotten! He's out there on the bay, poor devil!—freezing to death if not drowned. Our boat went adrift somehow; Quain would insist on going after her in a leaky old skiff we found on the shore ... and didn't come back. I waited till it was hopeless, then concluded I'd make a try to cross to Shampton by way of the tidal bar. And ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... proceedings from her window, and when she saw her captive and the renegade return in the skiff of the vessel, she hastened below into the garden. She was bedecked with a fortune in pearls and precious stones. She asked the renegade to follow her into the house, and when they returned, they brought with them ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... followers on whom he could depend. Seizing their opportunity, Roldan and his people fell unexpectedly on the boats crew with their swords, and having killed some and wounded others, they made themselves masters of the boat, and returned with it to the land. Ojeda had now only a small skiff left, in which he ventured on shore to treat peaceably with Roldan. After apologizing for his offences, he offered to restore some men whom he had made prisoners, providing his boat and people were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... way,' says he. I was working then, you'll remember, far down on the line, across from Amsterdam. I told him I was no boatman. 'It's an affair of life and death,' says he. 'Take me on a few miles. Yonder skiff is not locked, but it may be a poor man's boat and I'd be loath to rob him!' (The words might differ some, vrouw, for it's all like a dream.) Well, I took him down—it might be six or eight miles—and then he said he could run ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... pursued by Douglas, with a party of horse, who followed him as far as Dunbar, where the English had still a friend in the governor, Patrick, Earl of Mans. The earl received Edward in his forlorn condition, and furnished him with a fishing skiff, or small ship, in which he escaped to England, having entirely lost his fine army, and a great ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme delicacy, especially where the rapids caused the water to be in wild commotion. I was told that it would go down stream like an arrow, and so it did. There was no need to row hard, for the current took the fragile skiff along with it so fast that the trees on the banks sped by as if they were running races, and every few minutes brought a change of landscape. It was very delightful; only one sensation of movement could have been ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... Steamboat Dan. "I've been aboard the yacht since eight o'clock until twenty minutes ago. I came ashore in that skiff. Sure, he ought to be in the drain; they've been sending down ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the great gulf! My skiff is thin as a nutshell, or even more fragile still. Let the leak but widen a little and all is over for the navigator. A mere nothing separates me from idiocy, from madness, from death. The slightest breach is enough to endanger all ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... herself, there would be no vengeance in that. Could she be alone, far out at sea, in some small skiff with that low-born tailor, and then pull out the plug, and let him know what he had done to her as they both went down together beneath the water, that would be such a cure of the evil as would now best suit her wishes. But there was no such sea, and no ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... that, and felt sure it was not a dream, which he did in about half a second, he began to yell, too, and to say: "How did you get there? Fire, fire, fire! What are you on? Fire! Are you in a tree, or what? Fire, fire! Are you in a flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If I had a skiff—fire!" ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells

... boatman, and generally confine my aquatic outings to the smaller lake, but that Saturday night there was not a breath of wind, and the water was placidity personified, so I drifted in my small skiff through the channel that connects the smaller with the larger body of water. On the sandy point jutting out at the mouth, upon an old stump, sat a solitary maiden, the ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... lent us a lovely little skiff, and I have had her repaired and painted, so Maurice is set up for shooting and boating. Darfour calls him the 'son of a crocodile' because he loves the water, and generally delights in him hugely, and all my men are enchanted ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... said Stafford, with a smile, as he signed to the man to bring up a skiff. "Now, let me make you as comfortable as I can. We ought to have had a gondola," he added, as he handed her to the seat ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... were in dread of a flood, which later came to pass. Water was everywhere. We were on the highest point in the city, and before we were aware of it we had sixteen inches of water in our house. On May 24th Dr. Grattin was called to our home and he came in a skiff and rowed to the door, pointing the bow into the parlor door and then stepping out into sixteen inches of water. Provided with rubber leggings, he waded to the stairs where mother awaited him with dry slippers and assisted him to my room. On May 25th my second ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... Skiff on the Ocean tost, Now high, now low, with each Billow born, With her Rudder broke, and her Anchor lost, Deserted and all forlorn. While thus I lie rolling and tossing all Night, That Polly lies sporting on Seas of Delight! ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... boatman; and the major told me he should feel it his duty to go with his daughter, if we all separated in different boats. I thought that would hardly do, sir," pursued Pedgift Junior, with a respectfully sly emphasis on the words. "And, besides, if we had put the old lady into a skiff, with her weight (sixteen stone if she's a pound), we might have had her upside down in the water half her time, which would have occasioned delay, and thrown what you call a damp on the proceedings. Here's the boat, Mr. Armadale. What do you think ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... rush of business around the Old Dominion steamship made a marked contrast. To the ample wharves every species of vehicle had been coming all day, while all kinds of craft, from a skiff to a large two-masted schooner, waiting their turn to discharge their freight of berry crates and garden produce, reached half across the Elizabeth river. The rumble of the trucks was almost like the roar of thunder, as scores of negroes ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... anchor out in the beautiful harbor, a half mile from the ancient gate of the clock. A few curious idlers along the shore watched it and commented on its perfect lines. And the numerous officials of the port lazily craned their necks at it, and yawningly awaited the arrival of the skiff that was immediately lowered and headed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scally rind ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... Philip, while Meadows began letting himself down the side of the wharf to the skiff which he knew rode there upon the black water, "'tis enough to make one believe in miracles, my running into you! What were ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of lumbermen, in a sharp-nosed bateau, picking up stray logs along the banks; a couple of boatloads of young people returning merrily from a holiday visit; a party of berry-pickers in a flat-bottomed skiff; all the life of the country-side was in evidence on the river. We felt quite as if we had been "in the swim" of society, when at length we reached the point where the Riviere des Aunes came tumbling down a hundred-foot ladder of broken black rocks. There we pitched our tents in a strip ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... rough with rocks and now slippery with rain. One of the canoes was lost here by being driven out into the strong current, where the force of the water was so great that it could not be held by the men; the frail skiff drifted down the rapids and disappeared. They now had two canoes and two periogues left, and the loads were divided among these craft. This increased the difficulties of navigation, and Captain Lewis crossed ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... riddled their homes with bullets, burned barns, waylaid the sympathizers and shot them to death without warning. Once a friend of the Buffums', Jack Smith, when the Buffum home was besieged, rushed in and carried out the aged mother of Lem. He bore her down to the river and leaping into a skiff rowed the old woman safely to the other side. On his return the Dillams shot him to ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... skiff in mid-river, a young man rowing toward the dead city rested on his oars and looked over his shoulder to the temple on the hilltop. There was something very boyish in the reverent eagerness with which his dark eyes rested upon the pile, tracing the splendid lines from its ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... A skiff shot out of the gloom. It was a woman who was rowing. The boat grounded stern on. The watcher saw the man step in and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... it might be in boats upon the water; and for safety of their persons there were pledges delivered on both sides. Which done, the governor of Galicia put himself with two others into our Vice-Admiral's skiff, the same having been sent to the shore for him, and in like sort our General went in his own skiff. Where by them it was agreed we should furnish ourselves with fresh water, to be taken by our own people quietly on the land, and have all other such necessaries, paying ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs

... Brown, who had been acting as scout. The two sprang into a skiff, and succeeded in descending the river. At Catletsburg, on the mouth of the Big Sandy, they found a little old-fashioned steamer belonging to a Confederate, and of this vessel they took possession. ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... the people. On her first arrival in Paris, she was crowned by angels, and received from the burghers the most magnificent and costly presents. At her death, she was so detested by the nation, that in order to convey her body privately to St. Denis, it was embarked in a little skiff at Port-Landri, with directions to the waterman to deliver it ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... stately procession, he first, with that kind of walk by which a surveyor of taxes could have at once assessed his income, and I, the humblest of the bookman tribe, following in the rear, trembling like a skiff in the wake of an ocean liner. "There," he said, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, "what do you think of that?" And that was without question a very large and ornate and costly mahogany bookcase with glass doors. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... most uneducated peasant. A favorite among the Bavarians, judging from the frequency with which it is met with in all parts of Bavaria, represents a peasant in a balcony waving her kerchief to her lover, departing in a little skiff, on an intensely blue sea. Beneath, in patois, is ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... towards the sea. When they stood on the shore, he said, "Below there is a kind of cove, and in it a gondola like those of Venice—a pleasure-skiff—built formerly by the minister Rovero for his family. At this hour to-morrow, we will meet in this wood and go to the boat-house. We will then put to sea, and with no witness but the sea and sky, we will settle our affair. Two men will steer the bark to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... trimming his boat. E'en that frail skiff from all danger might tear me, And to the dwellings of friends it might bear me. Scarcely his earnings can keep life afloat. Richly with treasures his lap I'd heap over,— Oh! what a draught should reward him to-day! Fortune held fast in his nets he'd discover, If ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... a sight of Bertha, even if he did not speak to her; and at the risk of being captured, he determined to stay in the neighborhood of Woodville till the next morning. Near the place where he sat there was a skiff moored to the bank. He hauled it in, and took up the oars. He did not mean to steal it, only to borrow it till the next morning. With this comfortable reflection he cast off the painter, and pulled over to the other side of ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... young Canadian, who for some time had acted as clerk in her father's store, and had shortly before opened a small establishment of his own on the opposite side of the river, in the thriving village of Niagara. Every Sunday young Morton crossed in his own light skiff to attend church with Mary; and on summer evenings many were the pleasant sails they had upon the shining reaches of the river, watching the sun go down in golden glory in the bosom of blue Ontario, and the silver moon ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... quiet waters with satisfaction. At the foot of Annandale’s main street was a dock where several small steam-craft and a number of catboats were being dismantled for the winter. As I passed, a man approached the dock in a skiff, landed and tied his boat. He started toward the village at a quick pace, but turned and ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... and the carved and gilt work with which the ship was adorned; for it was the custom, especially in the Spanish navy, in those days to ornament ships of war far more profusely than at present. At length Don Hernan came on deck. He observed the skiff alongside; and his eye falling on Lawrence, he very naturally at first took him to be some poor fisherman habited in the cast-off finery of a gentleman. Lawrence, however, guessed who he was from his uniform, and, shuffling along ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... captain had left them on the islands, to go southwardly and purchase provisions, he said, of the Spaniards of Monterey in California; but he had never returned: and they, believing that he had been wrecked, had embarked in a skiff which he had left them, and had reached the main land, from which they were not far distant; but their skiff was shattered to pieces in the surf, and they had saved themselves by swimming. Believing that they were not ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... took his gun on his shoulder, and Bobby the box of provisions which Mrs. Ray had put up, and they left the house. At the bridge they got into a little skiff, and Sam took the oars. After they had passed a bend in the creek which concealed them from the road, Bobby felt ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... fellow by his side until he was safely moored to the Pittsburgh shore; then as a reward for his services, presented Paul with a little flat boat about twelve feet long by five feet wide and ordered two of the crew to tow it with a skiff to the Alleghany side. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine. Be the black-brow'd Pluto told, And the Stygian boatman old, Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide, The dead conveying o'er the tide,— Let him be told, so rich a freight before His light skiff never bore; Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes The noblest of her sex ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... sinking heart that he stepped into the frail skiff, which seemed scarcely more than a nutshell upon the tempestuous deep. He was on the point of asking his servant, unacquainted though he was with seamanship, to be the third man in the boat; but the latter, anticipating his intention, had made haste to betake himself away. To venture out into ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... outriggers, Dalgard took his seat in the alien craft with misgivings. And oddly enough it also bothered him to occupy a post which earlier had served not a nonhuman such as Sssuri, whom he admired, but a humanoid whom he had been taught from childhood to avoid—if not fear. The skiff was rounded at bow and stern with very shallow sides and displayed a tendency to whirl about in the current, until Sssuri, with his instinctive knowledge of watercraft, used one of the queerly shaped paddles tucked away in the bottom to both steer and propel them. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... tossing safely. But the crown Of all my life was utmost quietude: More did I love to lie in cavern rude, Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice, And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice! There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear 360 The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep, Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep: And never was a day of summer shine, But I beheld its birth upon the brine: For I would watch ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... wild green mountains, From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie, From her blue rivers and her welling fountains, And clear cold sky— From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean Gnaws with his surges—from the fisher's skiff, With white sails swaying to the billow's motion Round rock and cliff— From the free fireside of her unbought farmer, From her free laborer at his loom and wheel. From the brown smithy where, beneath the hammer, Rings the red steel— From each and all, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... the reputation of the old burgs it joins together. Brownsville had the first bridge that spanned the Monongahela River. In fact Brownsville had a bridge long before Pittsburgh. While Bill Brown and his progenitors were ferrying Pittsburgh inhabitants across the river in a skiff, Brownsville folks were crossing on a "kivered" bridge. And were it not for further humiliating Bill Brown, the discoverer of Pittsburgh, still greater glories ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... sunset when they reached the beautiful island of Capri, a pink ethereal sunset that flooded headland and rock, orange orchard and vineyard, in a faint and luminous opal glow. Their vessel anchored outside the quay of the Marina Grande, and signaled for a boat to take them off. A little skiff put out from the beach, and into this they and their luggage were transferred. The transparent crystal water over which they rowed was clear as an aquarium, and alive with gorgeous medusae whose pink tentacles ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... until further notice, in consequence of the wharfage being required for military purposes. Jim and Terry thereupon got into conversation with the man in charge of the boat, and made arrangements with him to come off that same night in a small skiff and take them ashore. ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... over the embers of his fire, and descended the little path to the beach. The night was inky dark, and for a moment he paused irresolute. Then a dark form appeared against the faintly luminous foam, wading knee deep and dragging the bows of a small skiff towards the shore. The tinker gave a low ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie



Words linked to "Skiff" :   racing skiff, small boat, sampan



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