"Rower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apart suddenly, warned by the sound of dipping oars, the creak of thole-pins; and in a few seconds the rower hove into view, pulling up-stream as if for dear life. It was Cai Tamblyn. Catching sight of them, with a sharp exclamation he ceased rowing, held water, and bringing the boat's nose round, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the conquest of the foe. But this was an isolated instance, as it was almost impossible at any time and in any circumstances to procure free men ready to undertake a life of such intolerable suffering as that of a rower on board a galley; in consequence these men were almost invariably slaves, or else in later times condemned felons whose judges had sent them to work out their sentences upon the rowers' bench. The great characteristic of the galley was her mobility, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... overcome. But nature was not to be denied. Again and again did his head fall forward, again and again did he look up with a startled expression to perceive that Graddy was regarding him with a cold sardonic smile. Gradually Billy's eyes refused to convey a correct impression of what they rested on. The rower's head suddenly became twice as large as his body, a sight which so alarmed the boy that he started up and could scarce restrain a cry, but the head had shrunk into its ordinary proportions, and the sardonic smile was there ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... hung with young white cocoa-leaves. This toy, which they call Hanmai, they place between two palongs, each rowed by a crew of stout young men, with a piece of rattan, as a towing-rope, fixed to it. Every rower carries five spears, besides his oar. They now wait with great eagerness for the pater's further orders. He has meanwhile begun his work, which he finds either hard or easy of performance, according as the patients are rich or poor. He is stark naked, and painted all over ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... rower in silence for a few minutes, while Mrs. Racer played on, too interested in the game to miss her sons. A little later Bob's boat grounded on the shelving beach. He leaped out, pulled it up farther on the sands, and then, seeing the two Racer boys ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... wise, sometimes, as lobsters do, To gain their ends back foremost go. It is the rower's art; and those Commanders who mislead their foes, Do often seem to aim their sight Just where they don't intend to smite. My theme, so low, may yet apply To one whose fame is very high, Who finds it not the hardest matter A hundred-headed league to scatter. What he will ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... soothing effect upon anyone suffering from despondent spirits; more especially when the movement is being made in the right direction. A boat stationary in the water, or drifting the wrong way against the stroke of the rower,—a railway carriage at a stand, or gliding back to the platform, contrary to the direction in which the traveller intends to go,—such experiences always produce a feeling of irksome uneasiness. When either begins to progress ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look ahead every now and then, and watching her course, which seemed to be straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and regular as the pulse of the healthiest rower among them all. And if the sight of the other boat and its crew was beautiful, how lovely was the look of this! Eight young girls,—young ladies, for those who prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,—all in the flush of youth, all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rode, each gave Her charge to some brave mariner on board, And all was safely stow'd. Meantime were spread Linen and arras on the deck astern, For his secure repose. And now the Chief Himself embarking, silent lay'd him down. Then, ev'ry rower to his bench repair'd; 90 They drew the loosen'd cable from its hold In the drill'd rock, and, resupine, at once With lusty strokes upturn'd the flashing waves. His eye-lids, soon, sleep, falling as a dew, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... The big man in the stern of the boat took off his hat in reply, and waved his hand, too. The rower pulled with the vivacity that comes to men near the end of a task, and the boat shot into the Pool of the Saint, where Ruffo was at that moment enjoying his ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... man-of-war's man, bluejacket, galiongee^, galionji^, marine, jolly, midshipman, middy; skipper; shipman^, boatman, ferryman, waterman^, lighterman^, bargeman, longshoreman; bargee^, gondolier; oar, oarsman; rower; boatswain, cockswain^; coxswain; steersman, pilot; crew. aerial navigator, aeronaut, balloonist, Icarus; aeroplanist^, airman, aviator, birdman, man-bird, wizard of the air, aviatrix, flier, pilot, test pilot, glider pilot, bush pilot, navigator, flight attendant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... forth from under the fortified bridge, which is one of the chief features of our town, sometimes with sails perfectly well managed, sometimes impelled by oars, but with no one visible in them—no one conducting them. To see one of these boats impelled up the stream, with no rower visible, was a wonderful sight. M. de Clairon, who was by my side, murmured something about a magnetic current; but when I asked him sternly by what set in motion, his voice died away in his moustache. M. le Cure said very little: ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... up the last point of the King's letter, that he, the King, holds joy not impossible to one with artist-gifts, who leaves behind living works. Looking over the sea, as he writes, he says, "Yon rower with the moulded muscles there, lowering the sail, is nearer it that I." He presents with clearness, and with rigid logic, the DILEMMA of the growing soul; shows the vanity of living in works left behind, and in the memory of posterity, while he, the feeling, thinking, acting ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... they all got up on the waiting ship. It always seemed to Ariston as though a wave had thrown him there. Or had Poseidon carried him? At any rate, the great oars of the galley were flying. He could hear every rower groan as he pulled at his oar. The sails, too, were spread. The master himself stood at the helm. His face was one great frown. The boat was flung up and down like a ball. Then fell darkness blacker ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... out of the boat. The rowers followed her. They carried the packages Mary had brought with her. They began to walk through the jungle. It was four miles to Ekenge where Chief Edem lived. As they came near to the little village of mud huts, the chief rower whispered to Mary, ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... small caste found in the Nimar District and in Central India. The name means a rower and is derived from nao, a boat. The caste are closely connected with the Mallahs or Kewats, but have a slightly distinctive position, as they are employed to row pilgrims over the Nerbudda at the great fair held at Siva's temple on the island of Mandhata. They ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... gave to Alroy a velvet bag, which he requested him to carry, and then they descended the steps and entered the covered boat; and, without any directions to the rower, they were soon skimming over the water. By the sound of passing vessels, and the occasional shouts of the boatmen, Alroy, although he could observe nothing, was conscious that for some time their course lay through a principal thoroughfare of the city; but ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... rapidly, and without giving me time to utter a single word; I had nothing more to ask her. We went off, and took a gondola to our garden. The wind was very high, it blew almost a hurricane, and the gondola having only one rower the danger was great. C—— C——, who had no idea of it, was playing with me to make up for the restraint under which she had been all day; but her movements exposed the gondolier to danger; if ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... superb fight, trying everything it knew to unseat this demon clamped to its back. It possessed in combination all the worst vices, was a weaver, a sunfisher and a fence-rower, and never had it tried so desperately to maintain its record of never having been ridden. But the outlaw in the saddle was too much for the outlaw underneath. He was master, just as he was first among the ruffians whom he led, because there was in ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... upon the shore were waiting. Stoutly pulling back the ends, they Raised the net out of the water, In great hopes of lots of booty. But within itself entangled It came slowly to the surface Empty: some unskilful rower Had prevented it from sinking, And the dwellers of the lake laughed To have just escaped such danger. Now the landlord cast sharp glances Over all the meshes. Nothing Met his anxious gaze but water; Not the smallest fish was ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... "The brown-backed rower drenched with spray, 5 The lemon-seller in the street, And the young girl who keeps her first Wild love-tryst at the ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... The rower in a college crew requires six weeks of training before his muscular power and endurance have reached their height. Every particle of superfluous fat must be removed, for fat is not strength, but weakness. There is a vast difference between the plumpness of good muscular development and the flabby, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... little wood on the Ile aux Anglais!" he called out, as he rowed off. The other skiff went slower, for the rower was looking at his companion so intently, that he thought of nothing else. His emotion paralyzed his strength, while the girl, who was sitting on the steerer's seat, gave herself up to the enjoyment of being on ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... seven. It therefore, became necessary to hide one[32]. We chose him who was the shortest, and the most slender. He nestled at the end of the boat, and we covered him with some old mats and sailors' jackets. These preparations being terminated, I was told to seat myself in the place of a rower, and to take an oar in my hand; and at night-fall we came into the road ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... as Walter said, that Amos had been a good rower at the university. Rowing was one of the few amusements in which he had indulged himself, but he had never joined a racing boat though often solicited ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... the boat had swung around, reversing bow and stern, Van Horn pivoting so as to face the Snider-armed dandy. At another signal from Van Horn the rowers backed water and forced the boat, stern in, up to the solid ground of the runway. And each rower, his oar in position in case of attack, privily felt under the canvas flap to make sure of the exact ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... anxiously for the sound of creaking blocks and the rattling of cordage, but no vibration broke the veiled stillness or disturbed the warm breath of the fleecy fog. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of their mysterious journey. A one-eyed rower, who sat in front of the Padre, catching the devout Father's eye, immediately grinned such a ghastly smile, and winked his remaining eye with such diabolical intensity of meaning, that the Padre was constrained to utter a pious ejaculation, which had the disastrous ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was a mystery she had never known to brood even over a white northern sea in a twilight hour of winter, was deeper than the mystery of the Venetian laguna morta, when the Angelus bell chimes at sunset, and each distant boat, each bending rower and patient fisherman, becomes a marvel, an eerie ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... needfully through the darkness, for his route lay under the guns of a British man-of-war, the "Somerset," on whose deck, doubtless were watchful eyes on the lookout for midnight prowlers. Fortunately, the dark shadows which lay upon the water hid the solitary rower from view, and he reached the opposite shore unobserved. Here a swift horse had been provided for him, and he was bidden to be keenly on the alert, as a force of mounted British officers were on the road which he might soon have ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for a beginner to avoid is "catching a crab." That is, dipping the oars so lightly in the water as not to give sufficient hold, which will cause them, when pulled forward, to fly up and send the rower sprawling on her back. In dipping too deeply there is danger of losing an oar by the suction of the water. Experience will teach the proper depth for ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... well built young fellow, Sir John," the officer remarked, "and should make a good rower in a galley. I will put him in the crew of the St. Elmo. Follow me," he said, in Turkish, to Gervaise, and then led the way up to the prison. On entering he crossed a courtyard to a door which was standing open. Within was a vaulted room, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... more strange as he gazed. The men's bodies swayed very little, and their arms all along the line looked misty, and seemed to stretch right away into infinity, so far away was the last rower from the prow. The water flashed with the moonlight on one side, and gleamed pallidly on the other as the blades stirred it; and then they grew more misty and more misty, but kept on plash—plash—plash, and the paddles of the line of canoes behind echoed the sound, or seemed to, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... sucked to doom the venturous bear, And from his ferry swept the rower— How wide, how terrible, how fair! Yet how inspiriting the air— How tempts the long salt grass the mower! How treacherous ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... said the rower, his voice still unsteady; 'you stunned him, an' I've heard as anyone stunned will ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the canoe, and came up on the opposite side, and giving Malchus his hand across it, there was no longer any fear of the log rolling over. The other rower did not reappear above the surface. Malchus shouted in vain to some of the passing boats to pick him up, but all were so absorbed in their efforts to advance and their eagerness to engage the enemy that none paid attention to Malchus or the others in like plight. Besides, ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... young when she lighted the lovers in the mud-bank adventure, was now a more experienced orb and shed a useful light. Carnaby intended to cross the river in a small tub which was propelled by a single oar worked at the stern, the rower standing. This craft was intended for pottering about the shore; to cross the river in it was the dangerous feat of a skilled waterman, but Carnaby had a knack of his own with every floating thing. As he balanced himself in the rocking tub, bare-headed, bare-necked, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... child's head above the water. As she floated there, as though sustained by some unseen force, she saw in the distance a small boat approaching over the storm-tossed waves. Straight toward her it came, and she had reached out her hand to grasp its side, when the rower looked back, and she saw that it was her sister. The recognition had been mutual. With a sharp movement of one oar the boat glided by, leaving her clutching at the empty air. She felt her strength begin to fail. Despairingly she signaled ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... The rower has stopped, and with eager, covetous eyes watches the wilful waste. Those coins would mean bread to him and his children, while she throws them to feed the deep! Another and yet another ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... four,—and Dandy Steve had become one of the most popular and best-known guides in the Adirondack country. His seeming effeminacy of attire had been long proved to mark no effeminacy of nature, no lack of strength. There was not a better shot, a stronger rower, on the list of summer guides; nor a better cook and provider. Every party which went out under his care returned with warm praise for Steve, with a friendly feeling also, which would in many instances have warmed into familiar acquaintance if Steve would have permitted it. But with all his cheerfulness ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... herself round, and throwing out her arms on the clothes). And isn't it a pitiful thing when there is nothing left of a man who was a great rower and fisher, but a bit of an old shirt and a ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... travellers, listening to that incomprehensible sound? Have they struck against a rower? Are they about to be precipitated on the roofs? Do you hear it? It is like the sound of ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... night. Down shot a feather from one of the birds. It struck one of the rowers on the left shoulder and he dropped his oar, for the pain was like a spear-thrust. Down sped another arrow feather, so pointed and sharp that another rower who was hit had to drop his oar. Thicker and faster came these arrow feathers upon the bare heads and naked shoulders of the ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... The negro rower tied their boat behind a passing vessel, which towed them out to the locks at the Delaware River, at a point opposite a willowy island, and where an embryo "city" had been started in the marshes, and there they waited for the packet from Philadelphia. Mr. Randel took his negro ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Roderick's bannered Pine. Nearer and nearer as they bear, Spears, pikes, and axes flash in air. Now might you see the tartars brave, And plaids and plumage dance and wave: Now see the bonnets sink and rise, As his tough oar the rower plies; See, flashing at each sturdy stroke, The wave ascending into smoke; See the proud pipers on the bow, And mark the gaudy streamers flow From their loud chanters down, and sweep The furrowed bosom of the deep, As, rushing through the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... he rolled a cigarette he examined the neck and back of the rower who was rapidly drawing nearer. The sound of the water when the oars struck it resounded in the still air, and the sand crunched under the watchman's bare feet as he stamped about ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... forward intently; and the next moment they saw a canoe, containing a single rower, low bending to his oar, shoot by the northern headland with the speed of an arrow, strike obliquely out of the white line of rolling waves into the bay, and make towards ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... was fine again, and the return home ideal; Gilbert steered and relieved each rower in turn, while they sang their Scotch melodies with voices strong and clear, and we all joined in the chorus. When we reached Port Sonachan we heard that our driver had only arrived towards mid-day, and that his horses not being strong enough ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... himself, turned the head, and began to row back, that is to say, he dipped the sculls lightly from time to time, so as to keep the boat straight, the stream being strong enough to carry them steadily down without an effort on the rower's part. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... bearer gave the signal; the swift, almost invisible bark, which was generally used for wild fowl shooting, shot by—Rameri seized one end of an oar that the rower held out to him, and drew the little boat up to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rough but strong framework on the forward compartment against which Milton could recline while seated on the deck, the broken leg supported within the rower's space. They padded this crude couch with blankets. This finished, they made a stretcher of the blanket on which Milton lay, by nailing the sides to two small cedar trunks which they routed out of the drift wood. When they had lifted him carefully and had placed him in the Ida, stretcher ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... syndicalism. Its savage vigor appeals to some artists, decadents, and declasses. Neurotic as a rule, they seem to hunger for the stimulus which comes by association with the merely physical power and vigor of the working class. The navvy, the coalheaver, or "yon rower ... the muscles all a-ripple on his back,"[12] awakens in them a worshipful admiration, even as it did in the effete Cleon. Such a theory as syndicalism, declares Sombart, "could only have grown up in a country possessing so high a culture as France; ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly. How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him, shewing upon his features a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... drearily through the trees. In the intervals, when the breeze was still, its absence seemed in some way, to stimulate the watchers' power of hearing, so that they could detect vague sounds which proceeded from the river. The creak of oars told of a late rower on the stream—a voice was wafted up to them, to be drowned in the sighing of the leaves set ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... the forward rower's place, steering, and now and again he turned his head to set the course. I suppose we had covered half the distance across, when I heard him draw in his ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... the impulse of excitement, she rose to her feet, and balancing herself with difficulty upon the rock, she called aloud three times. As the third call sounded forth, the rower paused, and glanced around to his right. At once the boat swerved to the left until its bow pointed straight for the ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... speaker became aware of an outrigger skiff rapidly approaching them. The rower of course had his back turned, and evidently not expecting anything ahead, was steering himself "over his toes," as the term is—that is by some landmark behind the boat. Who he was Parson could not make out, but he wore a light-blue ribbon on his straw, and that was enough. Light-blue ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... thinking that the author who is less earnestly and solemnly impressed with the gravity, and, I may almost say, the sanctity of his or her work, is unworthy of it, and of public confidence. I dare not, even if I could, dash off articles and books as the rower shakes water-drops from his oars; and I humbly acknowledge that what success I may have achieved is owing to hard, faithful work. I have received so many kind letters from children, that some time, if I live to be wise enough, I want ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... and took aim. When he fired the leading rower on the right hand side of the pursuing boat dropped back, and the boat was instantly in confusion. White laid down the musket and seized the ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the praise of God." The Pomeranians were taken completely by surprise. They did not know the Danes were there, and when they heard the archbishop's dreaded war-cry raised, they turned and fled in such terror and haste that eighteen of their ships were run down and sunk with all on board. On one, a rower hanged himself for fear of falling into the hands of the Danes. Absalon gave chase, and the rout became complete. Of the five hundred ships only thirty-five escaped; all the rest were either sunk or taken. Duke Bugislav soon ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... they sat they could get a glimpse of the main stream across the island that separated them; and just then a wager-boat flashed into view, the rower—a short, stout figure—splashing badly and rolling a good deal, but working his hardest. The Rat stood up and hailed him, but Toad—for it was he—shook his head and settled ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame |
