"Bo'sun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... running with fresh tins, or carrying away again a meal that had been totally condemned. And the more the captain became sunk in drunkenness, the more delicate his palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he had a bo'sun's chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers, and went overboard with a pot of paint. "I don't like the way this schooner's painted," said he, "and I've taken a down upon her name." But he tired of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cruel little eye A-swivellin' stem to starn; 'Now, Wells,' I ses, 'you must do or die,' So I crammed my cap a-top o' the slit And lashed it fast in place with a bit, Wot I'd pinched, of the bo'sun's yarn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... lamps, which he carried to the fore-end of the ship and stood symmetrically on the knight-heads. This, I must explain, means that he took them away as far as possible from the place where they belonged. These were the deeds of darkness. In the morning the bo'sun came along dragging after him a hose to wash the foc'sle head, and, beholding the shiny cabin lamps, resplendent in the morning light, one on each side of the bowsprit, he was paralysed with awe. He dropped the nozzle from his nerveless ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... service. They had up the new Madeira—awful undisciplined stuff which gives you a cordite mouth next morning. They told the mess-men to navigate towards the extreme an' remote 'orizon, an' they abrogated the sentry about fifteen paces out of earshot. Then they had in the Gunner, the Bo'sun, an' the Carpenter, an' stood them large round drinks. It all come out later— wardroom joints bein' lower-deck hash, as the sayin' is—that our Number One stuck to it that 'e couldn't trust the ship ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... father's still living? I can see him still so plainly—he had a love-affair with Madam Olsen for some time, but then bo'sun Olsen came home unexpectedly; they thought ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Frenchmen? The next morning there is the Eclaireur lying a mile or so out, and there is a boat with the bo'sun—maitre d'equipage—pulling towards the surf. I wade out to the brink. ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... go off and plant your men in the wood behind the fall. I shall lead the sailors right round you to the other side of the pool; place them; and then there must be perfect silence till the enemy has lit up his torches and got well to work. Then I shall give a shrill whistle on the French bo'sun's pipe I have in my pocket, you will advance your men and fall to, and we shall come upon them ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... I am a cook and a captain bold, And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... been in the United States and had not yet imbibed any great contempt for coloured people. They were on the whole infinitely more interesting than the Irish. I knew nothing of the world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he believed to ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... at last cried the bo'sun at dawn; The guns were cast loose and the tompions drawn; The gunner was bustling the shot racks to fill, And "All hands to quarters!" ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... over!" announced William Henry Phippin, who had served as bo'sun's mate under Lord Howe. "I always was in two minds about belongin' to that branch o' the Service: for, put it how you will, 'tis a come-down for a fellow that has once known the satisfaction to march ahead of 'em. There was a sayin' we had aboard the old ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it sailing out to sea; and when it landed on the farther shore he found a still bigger leaf, and sent it forth on a voyage in another direction, with a cargo of daisy petals, and a hairy caterpillar for a bo'sun's mate. But, just as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of amazing brilliance floated past insolently under his very nose. Leaving the beetle and the caterpillar to navigate the currents as best they could, he at once gave chase. Cap in hand, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood |
