"Tiller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no grander, more noble, or higher calling for a healthy, sound-minded woman than to become the mother of children. She may be the colaborer of the business man, the overworked housewife of the tiller of the soil, the colleague of the professional man, or the wife of the leisure man of wealth; nevertheless, in every normal woman in every station of life there lurks the conscious or sub-conscious maternal instinct. Sooner or later the mother-soul yearns and cries out for the touch of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... much beyond the meridian. Burt, from his intimate knowledge of the channel, acted as pilot, and was jubilant over the fact that Amy consented to take an oar with him and receive a lesson in rowing. Mrs. Marvin held the tiller-ropes, and the doctor was to use a pair of oars when requested to do so. Webb and Leonard took charge of the larger boat, of which Johnnie, as hostess, was captain, and a jolly group of little boys and girls made the echoes ring, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... out after breakfast, and I gave him a leg up on to his very sorry horse, which he sat like a tailor or a sailor. He held the reins like tiller-lines, and indulged in a pleased smile at the effect of the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... no more; springing aft, he soon had the tiller in his own hands. The pilot was prepared for what was to follow; and, at a sign from his young commander, the rag of sail that had so long been set was taken in. At that moment, Jasper, watching ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... was intent upon grappling with his adversary. Quickly jerking the tiller to one side, he shoved the Richard into the wind and endeavored to run her—bows on—into the side of his opponent. The Serapis paid off, her stern swung to, and, before she could gather way, the Richard's jib-boom shot over her larboard quarter ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... French Coast before she could be hove to to take a pilot aboard. This having been done, orders were given to square away for the harbour. The sea was breaking a good distance off, and the prospects for entering looked very ugly. The captain was at the tiller and was unusually agitated. The pilot's excitement remained subdued until the sinister commotion of seas was within easy distance. He then became voluble in his orders. The little vessel rushed into the merciless liquid breakers at great speed. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... a rotten old leaky boat they were poor and could afford no other—they took, I say, a rotten old leaky boat whose tiller was loose and whose sails mouldy, and whose blocks were jammed and creaking, and whose rigging frayed, and they boldly set out together into ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Freddie, crawling back toward the tiller, which was the last thing Bert had let go of, as he ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... spirit, took the tiller, quite as a matter of course, while Dick was perfectly content to tend the jib and main sheets; and away they went down the Hamoaze, with the water buzzing and foaming from the boat's lee bow and swirling giddily in her wake as she sped swiftly along under ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... found Abe and Rosie snugly enclosed in the detachable tonneau of the Appalachian runabout, while Morris sat at the tiller with Minnie by his side and negotiated the easy grades of rural Long Island at the decent speed of ten ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... one a city clerk, and one a secretary. They had not long been out from Dover before these three were down with sea-sickness, and the captain had to do all the work, day and night, through the Channel. As soon as they found their sea-legs they had to take their turn at the tiller, with the result that the course was often very considerably changed from what the captain had set. At a Portuguese island they took in the Creole, who wanted to work his passage to the Cape. I think it was at this place that the Port Officials found the rolling and pitching ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... an answering hail, and they soon saw that a boat was being manned. It came rapidly inshore, propelled by four members of the crew, and, as it drew nearer, they could see that Rogers was seated at the tiller. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... fire, and staring back toward the house. A few moments we waited in silence, then the slender figure of the one who seemed the leading spirit, emerged from out the cane. He glanced at the motionless figures in the boat, spoke a few words to Herman, and then the two joined us, the latter taking the tiller, the former pushing off, and springing ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... hands on deck! We can get into New Bedford in two days if this wind holds. Nor' west!" shouted the skipper to the man at the tiller. "We'll sup with our old ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... unselfish constancy. Were woman the ever-selfish, Eve would have abandoned Adam to himself while she tripped to solitary pastures new. But the same quality that sustains the secluded farmer and his household in the hills supported the timid tiller of the first garden as the sword flamed behind him over the closing gate of Eden. If Adam plained that Eve had lost him Paradise, does not every son of Adam own that she has regained ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Lester Lee, who was handling the tiller. "And we're a long way off from home! It's up to us to turn about and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... being white, were tanned a dull red, that blended perfectly with the colour of the distant shore line. A bright-faced, resolute chap, somewhat younger than Cabot, but of equally sturdy build, held the tiller, and regarded with evident approval the behaviour ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... men answered my hail, and walked quickly aft. In a short space of time, we launched the cutter, into which Mr. Larkin and myself jumped, followed by the two men, who took the oars. I rigged the tiller, and the mate sat beside me in ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Jack Tier could take his trick at the helm, in any weather, even in running before the wind, the time when it is most difficult to guide a craft, and Rose might be made to understand the use of the tiller, and taught to govern the motions of a vessel so small and so simply rigged, when on a wind and in smooth water. On the score of managing the schooner, therefore, Mulford thought there would be little cause for apprehension. Should the weather continue settled, he had little doubt of safely landing ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... embrace a complete picture in writing, but as I read the picture it is an emblem, and would have been still more perfect had the painter treated it accordingly. The old man at the helm of the barge might well represent Strafford, because, though he holds the tiller, he is not engaged in steering right, his eyes are not directed to his port. Charles himself, rightly enough, has his back to the port, and is truly not engaged in manly affairs, nor attending to his duty; but the sentiment of frivolity here ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... down the beach; and the man who was ashore gave him an arm on board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself. Northmour took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars between the thole-pins sounded crisp and measured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stamped upon his nautical characters. The sailors of Smollett are as different in every respect as those of Eugene Sue and Marryat are inferior. He goes on board his ship with his own creations, disdaining all society and assistance but that with which he is thus surrounded. Long Tom Coffin, Tom Tiller, Trysail, Bob Yarn, the boisterous Nightingale, the mutinous Nighthead, the fierce but honest Boltrope, and others who crowd upon our memories, as familiar as if we had ourselves been afloat with them, attest the triumph of this self-reliance. And when, as if to rebuke the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... century had passed over them without disturbance; while the graves in the cloister cemetery, obliterated, and only to be detected when a broken coffin or a mouldering bone was turned up by the tiller of the ground, preserved their wonted appearance. The face of nature had received neither impress nor injury from the fantastic freaks and necromantic exhibitions of the witches. Every thing looked as it was left ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... upon the tiller in such a manner that the whole concern travelled backwards and forwards across the deck in the maddest kind of way. For the first quarter of an hour, in spite of the September chill, the sweat poured off me in streams. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... hoisting the small triangular sail. The boat heeled over, pitched without making headway, and then began to cleave the water with a gentle ripple against her sides. They sailed out of the channel, leaving the Vedra behind, coasting along the island. Jaime held the tiller, while the old man, clasping the fish-basket between his knees, began counting and fingering the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... minutes," said a man in oil-skins, who helped them over the low bulwarks. He spoke good English, and seemed to have learned some of the taciturnity of the seafaring portion of that nation with their language; for he went aft to the tiller without more words and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... should discover her. But she felt no fear of the man himself, and bracing her nerves, struck a light. It showed Gray Michael sitting up and evidently under the impression he was at sea. He grasped the bed-head as a tiller and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the enemy kept up a fire at us. Toby Bluff gave a sharp cry. A bullet had hit him, but he answered me when I spoke, and kept his seat. We had the muskets ready. I let go the tiller and seized one. Grey and Billy Wise and two other men did the same, and let fly among ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... part, Religion's cause reign'd mistress of her heart: She saw, and griev'd to see, the mean estate Of those who round the hallow'd altar wait; She shed her bounty, piously profuse, And thought it more her own in sacred use. Thus on his furrow see the tiller stand, And fill with genial seed his lavish hand; He trusts the kindness of the fruitful plain, And providently scatters all his grain. What strikes my sight? does proud Augusta rise New to behold, and awfully surprise! Her lofty brow more numerous turrets crown, And sacred domes on palaces ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... flung to them from the schooner; but they had some difficulty in getting it, for the waves were running high in the channel. Pending the effort, the tiller slipped from the hands of the officer who was steering; a heavy sea struck the boat on the quarter, and she capsized. Boats were lowered from the schooner, and sent to the rescue. It was a scene of intense and anxious ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of more importance to our well-being than is the fund which the sale of them would produce. The remarkable growth and prosperity of our new States and Territories attest the wisdom of the legislation which invites the tiller of the soil to secure a permanent home on terms within the reach of all. The pioneer who incurs the dangers and privations of a frontier life, and thus aids in laying the foundation of new commonwealths, renders a signal service to his country, and is entitled to its ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... engagement closed for the day. The gunboat which Flag-officer Foote was on, besides having been hit about sixty times, several of the shots passing through near the waterline, had a shot enter the pilot-house which killed the pilot, carried away the wheel and wounded the flag-officer himself. The tiller-ropes of another vessel were carried away and she, too, dropped helplessly back. Two others had their pilot-houses so injured that they scarcely formed a protection to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... saw Blue Peter sitting on the coamings of the hatch, his feet hanging down within. He was lost in the book he was reading. Curious to see, without disturbing him, what it was that so absorbed him, Malcolm dropped quietly on the tiller, and thence on the deck, and approaching softly peeped over his shoulder. He was reading the epistle of James the apostle. Malcolm fell a-thinking. From Peter's thumbed bible his eyes went wandering through the thicket of masts, in which moved ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... with a cumbrous tiller, with large horizontal pullies attached. At each pully-end stood a subordinate black, and between them, at the tiller-head, the responsible post, a Spanish seaman, whose countenance evinced his due share in the general hopefulness and confidence ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... vessel plainly; and I immediately discovered that it was not the brig, but a bark which I had got hold of in the fog, so that I did not know what to do; but I did as most boys of nine years old would have done who were frightened, I sat down and cried, still, however, keeping the tiller in my hand and steering as well as I could. At last, I could hold it no longer, I ran forward, let go the fore and jib haulyards and hauled down the sails; drag them into the boat I could not, and there I was, like a young bear adrift in a washing-tub. I looked all round me, and there ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Spring; Lo now the happy rustic wends his way O'er meadows decked with violets from thy wing, And laboring to the rhythm of song all day, Performs the task the harvest shall repay An hundredfold into the reaper's hand. What recks the tiller of his toil in May? What cares he if his cheeks are tinged and tanned By thy warm sunshine-kiss and by thy ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... climb up on deck again into the moonlight. A white, silent world of waters is about us as we join the crew going aft to the poop. The awning has been partly folded back, and we see the Skipper resting his book on the tiller-gear, while the Steward stands by with a lantern. I look curiously into the faces I know so well, seeking, in the presence of death, a little more knowledge of life. I look at the Skipper, with his white hair and fierce moustache gleaming ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... any wind and a lifeboat in any sea, but they both want good and experienced men at the tiller. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... manufacturer, the friend of progress, the benefactor of his workmen. There would be Gabriel—the good priest, as they say!—the apostle of the primitive gospel, the representative of the democracy of the church, of the poor country curate as opposed to the rich bishop, the tiller of the vine as opposed to him who sits in the shade of it; the propagator of all the ideas of fraternity, emancipation, progress—to use their own jargon—and that, not in the name of revolutionary and incendiary politics, but in the name of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller. "There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck. Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... character of Gen. WILLIAM H.F. LEE, late a Representative from the Eighth Congressional district of Virginia, yet I can not permit this occasion to pass and my hand and heart to fail to pay my humble tribute to his memory. Gen. LEE's life had been spent after manhood in arms or as a tiller of the soil. In early life he saw military service as lieutenant in the Sixth Regiment, United States Infantry, and was with Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston in the expedition ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... "And she again bare his brother Abel, And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... regarded her with curious eyes as they drew nearer. Even the three rowers turned their heads, and were called to order therefor by the mate at the tiller. A red ensign was seized jack downward in her main rigging, the highest note of the sailorman's agony of distress. On its wooden case, in her starboard fore-rigging, a dioptric lens sent out the faint green glow of a lamp's light into ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... I should judge to be the middle of the night, as I sat shaking with cold with my hand on the tiller, I suddenly became aware of the presence of huge rocks right in front of me. I lowered the sail instantly and got out the oars, pulling gently to the lee side of these rocks, and with some difficulty landed and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... deck sloping from the stern down to the bows, which were by far the lowest part. In the after-part was a poop-deck; under which there was a sort of cabin, while a small house of bamboo in front of it formed another cabin. She was steered by two rudders, one on either quarter, the tiller ropes coming in through ports in the sides, and being worked by men who sat on the deck under the poop. Her crew were brown-skinned men, in the usual dress of Malay seamen; that is to say, a pair of trousers fastened round the waist, a handkerchief encircling the head, and a thin cotton ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... impediments on the prosperity of the thrifty and industrious part of the nation. If he had seen ever so clearly that one of the most important sides of the Revolution in progress was the rescue of the tiller of the soil, Burke would still doubtless have viewed events with bitter suspicion. For the process could not be executed without disturbing the natural course of things, and without violating his principle ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Mrs. Selborne smoked a cigarette before we returned to the deck. The skipper was at the tiller, but she did not relieve him. She was in a lazy mood, and I arranged some cushions to make her comfortable. We were standing well ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... and thirty years of age, Cain slew Abel his brother. Truth it is, after many days Cain and Abel offered sacrifice and gifts unto God. It is to be believed that Adam taught his sons to offer to God their tithes and first fruits. Cain offered fruits, for he was a ploughman and tiller of earth, and Abel offered milk and the first of the lambs, Moses saith, of the fattest of the flock. And God beheld the gifts of Abel, for he and his sacrifices were acceptable to our Lord; and as to Cain his sacrifices, God beheld them not, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... on the sound, the little knockabout was heeling far over in the playful breath of the summer breeze. Tom Blake, bare- headed, bare-armed, was at the tiller. Jack Schuyler, also bare-headed and bare-armed, sat on the after overhang, tending the sheet, and bracing muscular legs against the swirling seas that, leaping over the low freeboard, tried to swirl him ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... of these, a clumsy fishing-boat rose and fell on each passing wave. Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the rope and tiller, and in the bow, with their backs turned forever toward Opeki, stood two young boys, their faces lit by the glow of the setting sun and stirred by the sight of the great engines of war plunging past them on their errand ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... 23rd Nov.—Good weather with a south-easterly wind and a steady breeze; in the morning, we found our rudder broken at top in the tiller hole; we therefore hauled to windward under reduced sail and fitted a cross beam to either side. By estimation the west side of Nova Guinea must ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... as the oars were got out, and headed directly away from the ship. The crew seemed to me to be mostly stewards or cooks in white jackets, two to an oar, with a stoker at the tiller. There was a certain amount of shouting from one end of the boat to the other, and discussion as to which way we should go, but finally it was decided to elect the stoker, who was steering, as captain, and for all to ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... farming; georgics, geoponics^; tillage, agronomy, gardening, spade husbandry, vintage; horticulture, arboriculture^, floriculture; landscape gardening; viticulture. husbandman, horticulturist, gardener, florist; agricultor^, agriculturist; yeoman, farmer, cultivator, tiller of the soil, woodcutter, backwoodsman; granger, habitat, vigneron^, viticulturist; Triptolemus. field, meadow, garden; botanic garden^, winter garden, ornamental garden, flower garden, kitchen garden, market garden, hop garden; nursery; green house, hot house; conservatory, bed, border, seed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Stump took the oars, Mont grasped the tiller, and Dr. Woddle stood in the bows with a ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, his hand clasping hers—the tiller, that is—hour by hour, and the small waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away from the saucy north wind. In time the low land, and then the lighthouse, sank and vanished behind them; on the left the sun went down in the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... right of seniority, led the way in the Rosan as commodore of the fleet. He stood to his tiller like a graven image, looking neither to right nor left, but gripping his pipe with all the strength of his ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... long afterwards, and how Mrs. Britt sat there smiling upon him, and urging him to have "just one more piece of pie, and another cruller." Never before had he felt so important. He was the guest being treated with such respect. When holding the tiller that morning he had longed for Sammie Dunker and the rest of the boys to see him. So now, sitting near the bluff old captain and his wife, he desired the same thing. He felt quite sure that no other ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... this," said Mr. Fison, who was trembling violently. He went to the tiller, while the boatman and one of the workmen seated themselves and began rowing. The other workman stood up in the fore part of the boat, with the boat-hook, ready to strike any more tentacles that might appear. Nothing else seems to have been said. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to that subordinate position to which woman is always consigned where civilization and religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden, busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets, moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her own children, and at all times a servant to the commands and passions ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... days there must, after all, have been something in me worthy to command that man's half-bitter fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo's speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! "You hombres finos!" Very ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... unfinished, of course, that came the next afternoon: a boat, rolling heavily in gray water; and seen through mist, the great brown sail, looming, shadowy; one sailor, in a red jersey, at the tiller. In the corner Robert had scrawled his careless signature and the words,—"Valfjeldet, Norway, 1897." Sir Peter gently laid the picture upon the glowing coals ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... including me who held the tiller (and the lives of all the party) in my right hand. Lady Saffren Waldon disguised fear under an acid temper ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the tiller ropes and steer out towards some small schooners grouped to the left of the town near the entrance ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... opinion has no weight, whose suggestions have no effectiveness. Are they to be blamed? Or has one humbly and faithfully to take it as an indication that they are just not fit, from some secret weakness, some fibre of feebleness, to take the tiller? ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... companion to take up the oars, and then shoved off, leaping lightly on the stern-sheets where he could handle the tiller. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close to its edge. So we pulled on softly round the tongue of land, being maybe about fifty paces from the mound across the water. And when we saw the other side of Sigurd's resting place, the oars stayed suddenly, and the jarl, who held the tiller, swung the boat away from the shore, and I think I knew ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... to the hurried lowering of her boat, with the cloudiness of the sky darkening the misty sea, united to conceal the bold manoeuvre of the cutter. She had almost gained full headway ere an oblique shot, directed by mere chance, struck her stern, tearing the upcurved head of the tiller in the hands of the cabin-boy, and killing him with the splinters. Running to the stump, the captain huzzaed, and steered the reeling ship on. Forced now to hoist back the boat ere giving chase, the stranger ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller hard over to port—noticing, as I did so, that a large boat, pulling eight oars, was less than a hundred fathoms distant from us, and coming up to us hand over hand. Then, catching a turn of the main-sheet round a cleat, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... what calling they would choose to live. They at once said that they would make their living by felling trees in the jungle, and permission being accorded, have done so ever since. They had two sons, one of whom remained a Baiga, while the other became a Gond and a tiller of the soil. The sons married their own two sisters who were afterwards born, and while the elder couple are the ancestors of the Baigas, from the younger are descended the Gonds and all the remainder of the human race. In another version of the story the first Baiga cut down two thousand old ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Robbie took the oars and rowed out until we could hoist the little sail, and then we rounded the Ness and got out into Hoy Sound. The wind was westward, and the current in our favour, so that we had a grand sail across the sound to the Kame of Hoy—Robbie at the tiller, and I sitting near him on the windward gunwale. How our boat danced along and curtsied on the green curling waves! How her bows lifted and fell and sent a belt of foam alongside and away behind us in a bubbling track! ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... of self-preservation seized him, and he sprang up to lower the sail. Something caught the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... behind him at the tiller, he would regard the villain's neck with interest, his fat neck, just below ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the boat stationary, backing water. The steersman's left hand played with the tiller-rope, and the boat edged slowly to the shore. There was a grating thrown out over the water from the parapet of the river-wall, to the side of which was attached a boat-ladder, now slung up, for no boat's crew ever stopped here at this season. The boat was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... little time given them for thinking. The captain and a midshipman of about Don's age took their places in the stern sheets, Bosun Jones seized the tiller, the word was given, the oars splashed the water simultaneously, and the boat sped over the calm surface of the transparent sea, sending the shoals of fish ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... waves with vigorous strokes and shot her around at the last moment for a perfect landing. The mainsail and jib went up with rapid jerks while the rings rattled their protest. The strenuous physical exercise brought him temporary relief; but, when he had cast off, taken the tiller and after a few moments of idle jockeying back and forth in the light puffs, squared away for the run seaward before the rising wind, his gloomy thoughts returned, to settle like a flock of phantom harpies and feast ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the voyageurs' songs. Now we were light-manned, two half-breeds and two Canadians to handle the oars in time of peril, and Captain Xavier, who stood aft on the cabin roof, leaning against the heavy beam of the long, curved tiller, watching hawklike for snag and eddy and bar. Within the cabin was a great fireplace of stones, where our cooking was done, and bunks set round for the men in cold weather and rainy. But in these fair nights we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Saturday the 4th. This afternoon I sent two boats on shore for various refreshments, having nearly completed our water. In the morning of the 5th, the cutter swamped at her moorings aftern; the oars and tiller washed out of her, and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... young man stood, resting one hand on the tiller, his navigating a sinecure, for the wind was barely enough to give him steerageway. He was, one would say, about twenty-five or six, fairly tall, healthily tanned, with clear blue eyes having a touch of steely gray ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... delayed too long and Captain Blood had outmanoeuvred him. In attempting to fire now upon the Englishman, the Milagrosa and her consort would also be firing into each other. Too late he ordered his helmsman to put the tiller hard over and swing the ship to larboard, as a preliminary to manoeuvring for a less impossible position of attack. At that very moment the Arabella seemed to explode as she swept by. Eighteen guns from each of her flanks emptied themselves at that point-blank range ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... vessel, as compared with a house, or store, or engine. Why, there are no two ships alike, and two were never built just alike. There are lucky and unlucky ships, and ships that almost steer themselves, while others need a whole watch at the tiller in a dead calm. But I think that you are mistaken as to the 'Flying Dutchman' being the only other 'flyer,' as the sailors call them, for they are often seen in the Pacific, in ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... his duties are those of a farm laborer, yet this phrase would not be a fair translation. This word, which is rendered "tiller of the soil," has no ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... Trojan maidens in those days were not above pulling an oar, and did not mind blisters—while Sophia sat in the bows, her mushroom hat "a world too wide" for the little green parasol hoisted above it. The Admiral himself held the tiller ropes, and occasionally gave a word of command. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... Charley and Neil returned to the Reindeer and got under way, the junk towing astern. I went aft and took charge of the prize, steering by means of an antiquated tiller and a rudder with large, diamond-shaped holes, through which the water rushed back ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines—whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining rods—the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... man, proudly, "and who wass it that first put a gun into his hand? and who wass it skinned the ferry first seal that he shot in Loch Scridain? and who wass it told him the name of every spar and sheet of the Umpire, and showed him how to hold a tiller? And if there is any man knows more as me about the birds and the deer, that is right—let him go out; but it is the first day I hef not been out with Sir Keith since ever I wass at Castle Dare; and now it is time that ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... was bulkier than seemed necessary for a journey of so few days. Innstetten talked with the captain. Effi, in a raincoat and light gray traveling hat, stood on the after deck, near the tiller, and looked out upon the quay and the pretty row of houses that followed the line of the quay. Just opposite the landing stood the Hoppensack Hotel, a three-story building, from whose gable a yellow flag, with a cross and a crown on it, hung ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... sailors whether of river or sea: whether their way be dark or whether through storm: whether their peril be of beast or of rock: or from enemy lurking on land or pursuing on sea: wherever the tiller is cold or the helmsman stiff: wherever sailors sleep or helmsmen watch: guard, guide and return us to the old land, that has known us: to the far homes ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... limited in their supply, let him have a fixed measure, which shall be determined by the wardens of the country. This he shall receive each day, and on these terms have a share of his neighbours' water. If there be heavy rain, and one of those on the lower ground injures some tiller of the upper ground, or some one who has a common wall, by refusing to give them an outlet for water; or, again, if some one living on the higher ground recklessly lets off the water on his lower neighbour, and they cannot come to terms ...
— Laws • Plato
... disappeared behind the rail of the yawl, and I shoved the boat off, and for the next few minutes bent to those oars as I had certainly never bent to any previous labour, mental or physical, in my life. And Miss Raven, seeing my earnestness, said nothing, but quietly took the tiller and steered us in a straight line for the spot which the Chinaman had indicated. Neither of us—strange as it may seem—spoke one single word until, at the end of half an hour's steady pull, the boat's nose ran on to the shingly beach, beneath a fringe of dwarf oak that came right down to the edge ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... he shouted; and the boat quickly was lowered to the water, and a dozen jackies grasped the oars. Macdonough sprung into the stern-sheets, and grasped the tiller. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... abrupt end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and breaking into a loud ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the skipper, as soon as he began to feel the boat bearing on the tiller. "She minds her helm as soon as I touch ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... bidding us farewell in his tongue, clapt on all sail and stood out before the wind, leaving us there to shift for ourselves. Don Sanchez took one oar, and I t'other,—Dawson lying in the bottom and not able to move a hand to save his life,—and Moll held the tiller, and so we pulled with all our force, crying out now and then for fear we should not be seen, till by God's providence we came alongside the Talbot of London, and were presently hoisted aboard without mishap. Then the captain of the Talbot and his officers gathering about us were mighty curious ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... glassy channels between the mangroves we saw the pirate felucca approaching us rapidly. She had got out her sweeps and looked like some gigantic water-insect as she made her way towards us, churning the sleeping waters into foam. At her tiller stood a tall form, which I recognised with a shudder as that of the villainous mulatto Pedro, and her black flag drooped limply in the stagnant air. Our gallant captain at once ordered our carronades to be loaded with canister, and then addressed the crew. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... dining-table, a stove, and some chairs; beyond that a pantry with shelves, and a great chest for provisions. A door at the back opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden tiller curves over the stern of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof. Two canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long tow-ropes, as if reluctant to follow so clumsy a ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas that had no ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the surface of things. Rapacity on the part of the rich meant oppression of the poor; increase of power for the mighty meant decrease of opportunity for the humble tiller of the soil and ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... there, indeed, a few children huzzah and wave their hands to the express; but for the most part, it is an interruption too brief and isolated to attract much notice; the sheep do not cease from browsing; a girl sits balanced on the projecting tiller of a canal boat, so precariously that it seems as if a fly or the splash of a leaping fish would be enough to overthrow the dainty equilibrium, and yet all these hundreds of tons of coal and wood and iron have been precipitated roaring past her very ear, and there is not a start, not a tremor, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sees this, away there by the tiller, and it displeases him. "You would do better," he growls in a voice like the rasping of a file, "instead of plucking the saint's flowers for that child, to burn a holy willow-wand at the lamp, for if the Lord drives us on to these stone monsters, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... sail lazily over the blue sea from Zanzibar. If one could dream, one could picture the corsairs' red flag and the picturesque Arab figure standing high in the stern beside the tiller, and fancy would portray the freight of spices and cloves that they should bring from the plantations of Pemba and Zanzibar. But there are no dusky beauties now aboard these ships; and their freight is rations and other hum-drum prosaic things for our troops. The red pirate's flag has ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Hardy," said he. "I hope not," cried Hardy. "Yes," he replied; "my backbone is shot through." Yet even now, not for a moment losing his presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down the ladder, that the tiller ropes, which had been shot away, were not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove immediately: then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars. Had he but concealed these badges of honor from the enemy, England ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the tiller in silence. After a little while Gaff drew his son's ear near to his mouth, and said in ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... thing which gave us confidence was Hall's coolness, now that the danger was unmistakable. He neither allowed himself to get flurried nor alarmed, but sat with closed lips watching the sail—one hand on the tiller and the other grasping the sheet, ready to let it go ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... air. The bow of the boat naturally turns toward the wind, thus relieving the sail of all pressure and keeping it shaking. But if by keeping the main sheet in your hand you hold the sail in a fixed position, and, at the same time, draw the tiller away from the sail, it will gradually fill with air beginning at the hoist or mast end of the sail and impel the boat in the direction in which you are steering. Given a certain direction in which you want to travel, the problem is, by letting out or hauling ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... and they floated through waves as rosy as the rosy sky. A fresh wind filled the sail, and ruffled Gulliver's white breast as he sat on the mast-head crooning a cheery song to himself. Dan held the tiller, and Davy lay at his feet, with Nep bolt upright beside him; but the happiest face of all was Moppet's. Kneeling at the bow, she leaned forward, with her lips apart, her fuzzy hair blown back, and her eyes fixed on the island which was to be her home. Like a little ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... forward, before we accepted the necessity. Half asleep, he got up, courteously declined my effort to help him by me as he crossed the boat, stepped round on the gunwale behind me as I sat, and then, either in a lurch or in some misstep, caught his foot in the tiller as his father held it firm, and pitched down directly behind Battista himself, and, as I thought, into the sea. I sprang to leeward to throw something after him, and found him in the sea indeed, but hanging by both hands to the gunwale, safe enough, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the roof. All my watch there was nothing stirring; and by the banging of the helm, I knew they had even no one at the tiller. Indeed (as I learned afterwards) there were so many of them hurt or dead, and the rest in so ill a temper, that Mr. Riach and the captain had to take turn and turn like Alan and me, or the brig might have gone ashore and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... principle runs on. We question, however, whether there be any illustration among them more striking than that indirect consequence of the Reform Bill on the tenantry of England to which we refer. The provision which conferred a vote on the tenant-at-will, abrogated leases, and made the tiller of the soil a vassal. The farmer who precariously holds his farm from year to year cannot, of course, be expected to sink so much capital in the soil, in the hope of a distant and uncertain return, as the lessee certain of a possession for a specified number ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... even over her lanterns, and the crew could only guess that they were near the land by the sound of the surf. The captain was not on board, and the mate was in command, though his leg had been broken while holding the tiller. They could not hear each other's voices, and could scarcely cling to the deck. There seemed every chance that the ship would go to pieces before daylight. At last one of the crew, named William Martin, a Scotchman, thinking, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... she reached out an arm—a bare arm with two jewelled bracelets—and took the tiller. "I can steer you to the quay," she said, and leaning forward in the light of Sergeant Archelaus' lantern, she lifted her eyes to ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... observed, having finished his work. "I cannot say much for the appearance of our sail, but we may be thankful if it enables us to reach a port in safety." He went and sat down again in the sternsheets, resting his hand on the tiller, so that not a moment might be lost after the breeze should ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... that came on board apprised Spike fully of the state in which he was now placed, and by a desperate effort, he clutched the tiller, and got the yawl again before the wind. This could not last, however. Little by little, his hold relaxed, until his hand relinquished its grasp altogether, and the wounded man sunk into the bottom of the stern-sheets, unable to raise even his head. Again the boat broached-to. Every ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... I met Frankie at Rye Port when my Uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge on to Frankie's ship. Frankie had put in from Chatham with his rudder splutted, and a man's arm—Moon's that 'ud be—broken at the tiller. "Take this boy aboard an' drown him," says my Uncle, "and I'll mend ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... now gaining rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about; and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was as prompt as the commander, and seizing the tiller, he soon had the great ship sailing along under perfect control. She went into the narrow channel, with the great rocks high on both sides. The waves beat up angrily and the breakers threw their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... pursued by a saucy little 15-ton craft that had been in her track since she left the Otley river before noon, dipping and straining, with every inch of sail set; as mad a stern chase as ever was witnessed: and who could the man at the tiller, clad cap-A-pie in tarpaulin, be? She led him dancing away, to prove his resoluteness and laugh at him. She had the powerful wings, and a glory in them coming of this pursuit: her triumph was delicious, until the occasional sparkle of the tarpaulin was lost, the small boat appeared a motionless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
