There was at first some splashing of the oars, for many of Hassan's men had had no prior experience except with sampans and large canoes.
The river swarmed with sampans and barges and launches.
Along the Chinese Bund the sampans huddled even more closely together, and rocked and creaked and complained.
The sampans made her think of ants, darting, scuttling, wheeling.
There are other sampans as well, in which other Japanese women are also watching our departure.
The sampans and junks, which for the last three days had been lying under shelter, had now put out to sea, and the bay was covered with their white sails, which looked like a flight of enormous seabirds.
Gray remained motionless for a few moments, and then, convinced that this meant ill to him, he began to wade cautiously along towards where the sampans lay in the stream, some thirty yards away.
Consequently the supplies within had to suffice, and middy and ensign thought gloomily of the past, when sampans brought daily an abundance of delicious fruit, when flowers were abundant, and fish in plenty was supplied.
Full families of them on their shallow sampans cooperating with one another against odds which would sicken the stoutest-hearted white folk.
Fully twenty Chinamen on the two sampans floating on the leeward side of the proa made the leap to her deck, and of these eleven fell back, so deadly was the fire.
The inhospitable reception depressed Peter Gross, but he resolutely stepped into one of the sampans that had put off from shore at the proa's arrival and was paddled to the beach.
We couldn't go out to them in sampans if we had them; they'd sink us.
Toiling workers swarmed over and about the half-constructed forts, to which strings of sampans were lightering blocks of stone from junks that lay in the offing.
A high-arched wooden bridge carried us over a canal, or tide-water stream, whose waters swarmed with the sampans of fishermen and roofed produce boats from up country.
One of the remaining sampans has got under way," he explained, "and the warship is firing at her.
With a favorable wind they need not set sail until dusk, and their fleet sampans would easily cover the intervening forty miles in five hours.
The boat for Haiphong was to leave at nine o'clock on the morning of the 29th, and the evening before two sampans took me and my kit, together with the interpreter and the cook, out to where she lay at her moorings.
Sampans and even cargo boats are moving down the river like London lightermen in the ordinary exercise of their calling; people are coming down to the bank to watch the shot and shell fly over their heads.
All day long the sampans were proceeding from ship to ship, and selling fruit and vegetables to the sailors who were bombarding their city.
Out on the sea the sampans ride And the mountains brim with mist and sun.
And down the mountain And into the tide, Some are blown where the sampans glide, And some are strewn by the temple's side, And some by the torii.
In Yaumati and Kowloon many Chinese boat‐building yards have sprung up, where numbers of large junks and sampans are turned out every year.
These sampans are freely used to convey passengers to and from ships or across the harbour.
The harbour of Hong Kong is remarkable for the large “floating population” of Chinese, who live in sampans and seldom go ashore except to purchase provisions.
There are sampans where whole families live their lives away, sampans on the river and great cities on their banks.
The usual boat population occupy a swarm of sampans anchored before the city, while hundreds of others are moving hither and thither.
Big freight sampans float past, propelled by oars if going down-stream, and by the combined efforts of tow-line and poles if against the current.
Bountiful meals, clean, springy beds, and elegantly fitted cabins, form an impressive contrast to my life aboard the sampans on the Kan-kiang.
Passing sampansare greeted by the crew of our boat with the intelligence that a Fankwae is aboard; the news being invariably conveyed with a droll "ha-ha!
Across the ferry are several official sampans with a number of boys gayly dressed in red and carrying old battle-axes; also a small squad of soldiers with bows and arrows.
A thousand little boats and sampans clustered round us, and we were annoyed and a little frightened by the gesticulations of the Chinese who manned them, until it dawned on us that they wished to serve as pilots.
The sampans had nearly all disappeared and only an occasional launch skimmed across the harbour.
The Bay was full of craft--liners, tramps, and yachts swinging slowly with the tide, and hurrying to and fro sampans and electric launches jostled indiscriminately.
A fleet of sampans (the Japanese fishing-vessel) surrounded the ships, which commemorated so signally a great and successful war.
The last of the women and children belonging to those cut-throats were taken off by the sampans which brought you and the yacht-party out.
There are three empty sampansalongside the ladder," said Belarab in a just audible voice.
The contraband is quickly lowered in gunny bags to the sampans and carried off in triumph to its destination.
He was interested in the ever-changing shipping, the crowds of strange craft lying by the wharves or moored to buoys in the great impetuous Irrawaddy, and the swarms of sampans darting in all directions.
There were the great men-of-war and merchant ships of the West side by side with the sampans on which thousands of Chinese made their homes, lived and moved and had their being.
To the roofs of the sampans the babies were tied by long cords so that they might play on deck without falling into the water.
At sunset the swarming abruptly ceased; even the sampans appeared to draw closer together, with the quiet of water-fowl.
Sampans with fish and fruit and vegetables swarmed about, while overhead gulls wheeled and swooped and circled.
One of the sampans was hailed, and a rope-ladder was lowered.
He was already out of sight of the huts, but the yells and execrations behind showed only too clearly that the pirates were launching their sampans in pursuit.
Errington had reason to bless his circumspection when, on rounding the last curve, he caught sight of six or eight sampans drawn up on the shoaling ground.
Three or four old and rickety sampans were drawn up at the brink.
At the splash the old woman looked up from her cooking, in the direction of the waterway through which the sampans had come.
We've passed one or two sampans already, and the farther we go the more traffic we shall meet; some one would obligingly inform the honourable ruffians of our whereabouts.
The same few broken sampans were drawn up on the shore.
The watchers dropped down behind one of the stranded sampans and peered anxiously over the edge.
Once more the idea of running into a creek occurred to them, only to be abandoned, for the sampans in this part of the river were more numerous, and some one would certainly think it worth while to betray their presence.
Sampans and the boats of the cormorant fishers were edging into the wide circle of light about the steamer.
Trackers sculled ashore insampans and made the great hawsers fast to stakes.
Frightened members of the crew were sculling the sampans back and forth, until at length the whole party, every man except the laopan armed, fully assembled, set off inland.
Brawny Korean boatmen were propelling heavy-laden sampans from the transports to the quay; children in blue padded garments were running about, watching everything with wide curious eyes, and getting in everybody's way.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "sampans" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
