Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly repeated, "Well, I'll be damned!"
When I was fourteen, my head filled with the tales of the old voyagers, my vision with tropic isles and far sea-rims, I was sailing a small centreboard
skiff around San Francisco Bay and on the Oakland Estuary.
A mile below the village the black boy dipped his paddle into the water and forced his
skiff toward the bank.
The remonstrance came too late; the canoe was already far from the
skiff, and the two hunters were too much engaged in the pursuit to listen to his voice.
Concealing the child beneath the other articles of clothing he pushed off from the bank, and, rowing close to the shore, hastened down the Thames toward the old dock where, the previous night, he had concealed his
skiff. He reached his destination unnoticed, and, running in beneath the dock, worked the boat far into the dark recess of the cave-like retreat.
He crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the
skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern.
I had covered some hundred yards from shore when it became evident that my pursuer must grasp the stern of the
skiff within the next half-dozen strokes.
Thus, then, did these three worthies embark in their cockleshell of a
skiff upon this nocturnal expedition, with a wisdom and valor equaled only by the three wise men of Gotham,[1] who adventured to sea in a bowl.
The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbor, but jumping into a small
skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the Pharaon, which he reached as she rounded into La Reserve basin.
A grinning small boy, in a small, bright-painted and half-decked
skiff, sailed close in to the wall and let go his sheet to spill the wind.
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 hand upon the other's throat.
So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a
skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.
skiff - any of various small boats propelled by oars or by sails or by a motor