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More "Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was a reef at the north end of the island, and we ran south down the coast some miles to where it fell away to the southwest, and dropped anchor at night in a bay with a white beach and a long row of huts back from it under the trees. A bunch of natives ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... table-land, called by the inhabitants thereabouts the Mesa. High, precipitous, perpendicular, level, and dotted with farm-houses, this singular bit of land stretches several miles out southward to sea, bordered with a rocky beach, and tapered off into the wide ocean with Duxbury Reef—a dangerous rocky reef, curving down to the southward and almost always white with foam, save when the sea is calm, and then the great lazy green waves eddy noiselessly over the half-hidden rocks, or slip like oil over the dreadful ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the cog rasped along the edge of the reef, and a long white curling sheet of wood was planed off from her side from waist to poop by a jutting horn of the rock. At the same instant she lay suddenly over, the sail drew full, and she plunged seawards amid the shoutings of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil; I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship — the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... important conditions only under which they will thrive: namely, a certain depth of water and a certain temperature. Thus it is seen that the warmth of the sea determines the distribution of the corals; the geography of these animals is defined by degrees of temperature. Only in equatorial seas may reef-building corals be found; and if we select the "Equator as a natural centre of the globe, and measure off a band of 1800 miles in breadth on each side of that line," we will find that it will include the chief coral regions of ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... of 1817, concerning the naval forces on the Great Lakes, was considered in force and observed by the two Governments for a year or more before it was submitted to the Senate at all. Horse Shoe Reef, in Lake Erie, was transferred to the Government by a mere exchange of notes between Lord Palmerston and Mr. Lawrence, our Minister to Great Britain; and I might refer to a long list of arbitrations, some of very great importance, agreed to by unratified protocols. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... is almost a new ship, and has been used principally as a cargo steamer, though she is provided also with a saloon and staterooms for a few passengers. She was on her way from St. John, New Brunswick, to Halifax, when during a thick fog she struck on Cowl Ledge, a reef between Bryer and Long Islands, on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, about half a mile from the shore. The cause of the disaster was probably one of the strong tide eddies which exist in the Bay of Fundy, and which had set her in toward the shore. It was calm at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... but he was told to keep it to himself, no one on board wanted it. He hoped, however, to succeed by perseverance; and perhaps when they found that he was becoming a smart and active sailor, and could lay out on the yards and reef and steer as well as any of them, they would be more ready to listen. He did his utmost, therefore, to learn his duty as a seaman. Old Jim began to treat him with less harshness than at first, and in his rough way gave him instruction in the ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... store, and his farm, he was a blacksmith and a silversmith. In spite of all that has been alleged about Indian stupidity and barbarity, his countrymen were proud of him. He was in danger of shipwrecking on that fatal sunken reef to American character, popularity. Hospitality is the ornament, and has been the ruin, of the aborigine. His home, his store, or his shop, became the resort of his countrymen; there they smoked and talked, and learned to drink together. Among the Cherokees those who have are expected ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... along; and, in the second place, should good fortune suddenly smile upon you, preoccupied as you are with other matters you have not the substitute at hand. If we provide ourselves with the necessary head of game in advance, the huntress is not there. We avoid one reef to founder on another. Moreover, these unlooked for observations, made sometimes on the public highway, the worst of laboratories, are only half-satisfactory. In the case of swiftly-enacted scenes, which it is not in our power to renew again and again until perfect conviction is ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from the shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... dancing-master with two toes. We have got her head to the southward and westward again; another reef in the topsails," (which word Mr. Truck pronounced tawsails, with great unction,) "England well under our lee, and the Atlantic ocean right before us. Six hours on this course, and we make ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the Gold Reef City There are mothers and children too! And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!' So what can ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... do. in the morning we were near a point of the coast off which a large reef extended about a mile in length, we ran in between the land and this reef, which we estimated to be in 23 deg. Lat., and thus sailed along the coast, along which there was another reef, inside which the water seemed to be very smooth and still; we did our best to get inside this second reef, but ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... we must have been at least forty miles. Between us and the shore, a land-floe, of some thirty miles in width, followed the sinuosities of the coast-line. Bergs here and there strewed its surface; but the major part of them formed what is called a "reef," in the neighbourhood of Devil's Thumb, denoting either a bank or shoal ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... their freedom. And on every face came a set expression of determination that, even though the countenances wearing it were youthful, boded no good to the treacherous enemies of freedom whose trail they were that very moment following. Then they flashed past Robbin's Reef light and snuggled into their slip ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... holding above it now, to port and landward. The white, hard sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted Marie. It little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the quiet reef shortly. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... upon one or more of the above authorities, for differences between them were frequent and sometimes considerable, and in one instance alone a reduction of 12' in the chart was obtained. It is said in Hawkesworth (III, 202), "As soon as we got within side the reef (through Providential Channel) we anchored in nineteen fathom;" and afterwards (p. 204), that the channel, "bore E. N. E. distant ten or twelve miles." In the first chart the distance is 141/2 miles, and nearly the same in that which accompanies the narrative; but in the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... speed, soon losing sight of Jacob and his luminary. 'You better reef down, Mr. Smooth. Should anything give way, and you tumble out and break your neck, the democracy would go into mourning,' said Littlejohn, who had kept very ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... "understanded of the people" among all truly nautical races. It dominates over their own languages, so that the Fin and Mowree, (Maori,) the Lascar and the Armorican, meeting on the same deck, find a common tongue whereby to carry on the ship's work,—the language in which to "hand, reef, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... of the first boat, because its pilot was sailing less skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in the twilight, I felt a shock, then another, and still another. The water poured in rapidly. I had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk was able barely to pass because it had a foot less draught than mine. Soon my ship was quite full, listed over, and all of us—twenty-eight men—had to sit on the uptilted edge of the boat. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the spar, as well as the clinging lad, went sweeping over the side of the vessel, and carried safely above the reef, started in toward the beach on a roller ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... we made but little progress, the boat was steered for a little reef of rocks on the northern shore, and landing, we dismissed the boatman, determining to walk back to Ajaccio along the water's edge. Meanwhile we sat down on the rocks while my companion sketched. Presently I strolled up to a little chapel, standing by the side ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Flounderin' in the flooded waist, scramblin' for a hold, Hangin' on by teeth and toes, dippin' when she rolled; Ginger Dan the donkeyman, Joe the 'doctor's' mate, Lumpers off the water-front, greasers from the Plate, That's the sort o' crowd we had to reef and steer and haul, Bringin' home the Rio Grande—ship and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... inquiring the quarter of the wind, and how she headed, what sail she was carrying, and the probable distance from the cape, he gave orders to call all hands to take in the topgallant-sails, double reef the fore, and single reef the maintop-sails, and stow the flying-jib—dressed himself, and came on deck. Just as he put his head above the slide of the companion, and stopped for a minute with his hands resting upon the sides, a vivid flash of lightning hung its ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... little ship passes on and after adventures and tempests in many seas at last reaches the far Pacific. There the torch-bearers pass from island to island and the light flames like a beacon fire across many a blue lagoon and coral reef. ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... they are contiguous to the Moros, those irreconcilable enemies, while the sea of those districts on which they have to travel from one village to another, is extremely boisterous, rough, and at times impassable, and on its reef in the dangers already mentioned, several religious have lost their lives, as will be patent further on in this history. But, notwithstanding that the two religious assigned to those villages can scarcely attend fully to the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... flat, and are only covered at high water, ending in craggy vertical walls of coral in very deep water. When there is a little wind, it is dangerous to come near these rocks; but luckily it was quite smooth, so we moored to their edge, while the men crawled over the reef to the land, to make; a fire and cook our dinner-the boat having no accommodation for more than heating water for my morning and evening coffee. We then rowed along the edge of the reef to the end of the island, and were glad to get a nice westerly breeze, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sea, but is not able to save him. He is met by Hadding and, after a fierce fight, slain. Swipdag's wife cursed the conqueror, and he was obliged to institute an annual sacrifice to Frey (her brother) at Upsale, who annuls the curse. Loke, in seal's guise, tried to steal the necklace of Freya at the Reef of Treasures, where Swipdag was slain, but Haimdal, also in sealskin, fought him, and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... not very likely to be so with the wind rising out of the northeast; and ere long the Petrel's topmast was sent down, and a double reef put in her mainsail. Until midnight it blew hard with a fast rising sea, and a mist as thick as a hedge. After this, it was ugly weather all the way home, and as they passed Ailsa Craig the wind changed to full north, and fetched the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... about a mile to the left of the town of D——, which was surrounded by numerous small ones. This place was called the wrecker's reef, and was covered at high water, but when the tide was low, Isabel and the others often went there to get shells. They had to be careful to watch the rise of the tide, as, long before the rock was covered the retreat was cut off by the water surrounding the largest rock, like an island, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... was again variable; but early next morning it settled at E., and blew so fresh as to oblige us to double-reef the top-sails. At seven, in hauling round the W. point of Morotoi, we opened a small bay, at the distance of about two leagues, with a fine sandy beach; but seeing no appearance of fresh water, we stood on to the N., in order ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... stack of letters and memos on the desk waiting for him. On top of the mail stack was a letter labeled PRIVATE in a beamed spacegram envelope. He did not recognize the name at the head of it but the return address was General Delivery, Reef Three, The ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... of his sport. All day he brooded as he strode Betwixt the reef-encircled port And the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... boulder, stream-hammered reef and pine, flitted by, closing in on one another along the half-seen shore. The river frothed white about us in steep boiling ridges as it raced down the incline, and nearer and nearer ahead tossed the ghostly ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... run on any hidden reef," said the master of the vessel. "If we do we may go down or be laid up for a long while for repairs. These waters are fairly well charted, but there is still a great deal to be learned about them. From time to time they have had earthquakes down here, and volcano eruptions, ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... across the main, But the harbor mouth is hard to gain, For the treacherous reef lies close beside, And the rocks are bare at the ebbing tide, And the blinding fog comes down at night, Shrouding and hiding the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... semi-tropical countries these plants thrive, and grow to enormous size. For example, the Cereus that bears those great flowers, and blooms at night, exhaling powerful perfume, as we see them in hothouses in our cold climate, are even in the semi-tropical region of Key West, on the Florida Reef, seen to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... the good ship Nancy Bell That we sailed to the Indian Sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which has often ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... for a sea-captain to try to take the clapper out of the bell that floats and tolls above a shoal on which his ship will be wrecked if it strikes? Would it be wise to put out the lighthouse lamps, and then think that you had abolished the reef? Does the signalman with his red flag make the danger of which he warns, and is it not like a baby to hate and to neglect the message that comes to you and says, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... should be and do before the close of life comes on. The end of the foolish five is unveiled in order that we may be wise unto salvation in the beginning of our days. The lighthouse reared on a sunken reef flings its lurid glare far through a stormy air and over a stormy sea, not to teach the mariner how to act with vigour when he is among the breakers, but to warn him back, so that he may never fall among the breakers at all. Even ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... themselves as for a shock. When they crashed, involuntarily the five men started as if a bomb had struck. Beyond the wave-line, under a cover of foam, the jaded sea lay feebly palpitant like an old man asleep. Not far off, sucked close to a ragged reef, stretched the black bulk that had once been the Brian Boru. Continually it leaped out of the water, threw itself like a live creature, breast-forward on the rock, clawed furiously at it, retreated a little ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... murmur of the skipper's and Bainbridge's voices: but they were speaking in ordinary conversational tones, and the multitudinous sounds of the ship—the faint rustle of canvas aloft, the patter of reef-points, the creaking of the yards and timbers, the wash of water alongside, and the subdued hum of many voices on deck—prevented us from catching a word of what was being said. However, we gathered that Captain Roberts had been protesting against turning so many people adrift in the longboat ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... this, I had not got my "sea legs on,'' was dreadfully sea-sick, with hardly strength enough to hold on to anything, and it was "pitch dark.'' This was my condition when I was ordered aloft, for the first time, to reef topsails. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs, With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs. From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle, She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... before the Investigator was joined by the Lady Nelson, from Port-Jackson; and when the former ship was condemned, the people embarked with their commander on board the Porpoise, which was wrecked on a coral reef, and nine of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... perseverance, walked out when the camp was formed; and, at a little distance from it, ascended a ridge of pure sand, crowned with cypresses. From this, he descended to the westward, and, at length, struck upon the river, where a reef of rocks creased its channel, and formed a dry passage from one side to the other; but the bend, which the river must have taken, appeared to him so singular, that he doubted whether it was the same beside which ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... little girl. He's a bad man, sent with sorrow and shame wherever he goes, and I know it just as I know the long dead roll of the waves and the white creeping mist—like a dirty thief—which makes me cry out at sea 'All hands to reef! Quick! All ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Worship's Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a poor Fellow as ever went between Stem and Stern of a Ship, and can hand, reef, steer, and clap two Ends of a Rope together, as well as e'er a He that ever cross'd salt Water; but I was taken by one George Bradley' (the Name of him that sat as Judge,) 'a notorious Pyrate, a sad Rogue as ever was unhang'd, and he forc'd ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... you like. If all the mills all at once, with the thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... irregular—curiously breached and fissured. Vast masses of it have toppled into the sea; and the black ruins project from the deep in a hundred shapes of menace. Sometimes our boat glides between a double line of these; or takes a zigzag course through labyrinths of reef-channels. So swiftly and deftly is the little craft impelled to right and left, that one could almost believe it sees its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose sides, just below the water-line, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... to be most ignorant. He watched the setting of the sails and asked many questions concerning them, until he could understand why at any time a certain rope was hauled or loosened, and why when the wind blew strong a reef was taken in. Always he took great interest in the working of the oars. There were in his own ship four score of rowing men—two at each oar—and as he watched them he marvelled how they could endure the hard labour without breaking their backs ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... says of it: "Laiacio has a haven, and a shoal in front of it that we might rather call a reef, and to this shoal the hawsers of vessels are moored whilst the anchors are laid out towards the land." (II. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... emptying of an inland sea than vegetation of the land. Once the dog's tracks led aside to a scummy puddle, saucered by alkali, dotted with the spoor of desert animals that drank the bitter water in extremity. Then it ran straight to a wide reef of lava. Sandy set down the collie. Grit ran fast across the pitted surface, ahead of the horses, waiting for them to cross the lava. They had hard work to get him to come to hand again, but he gave in at last to the knowledge that they would ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the sail loose," said Tom. "There's a nice breeze coming on. Shall I shake out a reef or two ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... little time, for another picture in the same geography now reproduced itself in my inflamed mind—the picture of a South Sea island, a sandy beach with a few indolent natives lolling, negligent of tasks, in the shade of cocoanut palms. Here, on the outer reef, I wrecked an excellent steamship. Over the rail sprang a stalwart lad, not out of his teens, with a lovely golden-haired girl in his arms. With strong, swift strokes, he struck out for the beach, notwithstanding his burden. The other passengers, a hazy and quite uninteresting ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... and poured down into the narrow valley with its fringe of deceptive green; but though the trees became bigger and bushier in their tops the water did not come to the surface. It was underneath the sand, flowing along the bed-rock, and all that was needed was a solid reef of country-rock to bring it up to the surface. It would flow over the dyke in a beautiful water-fall, leaping and gurgling and going to waste; and after he had drunk he would lie down and wallow and give his whole body a drink. ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... to work that ship, and after all these years I marvel at our temerity. Time and again the cry "All hands" would come down the hatch and summon the three of us from below to make sail, or reef, or furl, or man the braces. Weary and almost blind with sleep, we would stagger on deck and pull and haul, or would swarm aloft and strive to cope with the sails. The cook, and even Roger, served tricks at the wheel, turn and turn about with the rest of us; and ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Five Elms money was gone; and the money Mark and Mamma had paid back to him. He had taken it all out of his own business, and put it into the Sheba Mines and Joe's Reef, and the Golconda Company where he thought ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... all-unknowing, in an evil hour Declared his message, that the gift was thine. Whereat the hero, while the shooting spasm Had fastened on the lungs, seized him by the foot Where the ankle turns i' the socket, and, with a thought, Hurl'd on a surf-vex'd reef that showed i' the sea: And rained the grey pulp from the hair, the brain Being scattered with the blood. Then the great throng Saddened their festival with piteous wail For one in death and one in agony. And none had courage to approach my sire,— Convulsed upon ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... a rock, while the other was strewn with danger. In the latter channel, after a hundred strokes of the oars, the ships in single file, led by the Pretoria, would have been dragged by a submarine current toward a reef of rocks which was visible in the distance, and over which the sea, calm everywhere else, broke tumultuously. The commanders of the several galleys could perceive their peril only one by one; each would be made aware of it only by the rapid drifting of the galley ahead of him. Then it would ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... ragged, rugged headland, crowned belike with a single wind-twisted tree, grotesquely suggesting a frizzly chicken; and away below, straight and sheer, are the rocks rising out of the water like the jaws of a mangle. Down there in that ginlike reef Neptune is forever washing out his shirt in a smother of foamy lather. And he has spilled his bluing pot, too—else how could all the sea be so blue? On the outermost rocks the sea-lions have stretched themselves, looking like so many overgrown slugs; ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the Viorne, for the darkness seemed to be growing denser. The young people groped their way along the slope of the Garrigues, till they came to a rock on which they sat down. Around them lay an abyss of darkness. They were stranded, as it were, on some reef above a dense void. And athwart that void, when the dull tramp of the little army had died away, they only heard two bells, the one clear toned and ringing doubtless at their feet, in some village across the road; and the other far-off and faint, responding, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... approaching to bite his enemy, but this designation, together with his "missionary" name "Ebenezer," did not survive the test of usage. Miss Gordon Cumming gives an interesting list of Fijian names translated into English. For women they were such as Spray of the Coral Reef, Queen of Parrot's Land, Queen of Strangers, Smooth Water, Wife of the Morning Star, Mother of Her Grandchildren, Ten Whale's Teeth, Mother of Cockroaches, Lady Nettle, Drinker of Blood, Waited For, Rose ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... a hundred and twenty feet high, stuck on a coral reef at the mouth of the harbor. 'Bout like our Fowey Rocks, off the Florida coast. She's backing in." His eyes were still on the Tampico, the floes of North River ice hemming her in on all sides. "Passengers'll be off in an hour. Wonder how they like ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... boat so popular or so generally useful as the American catboat. The cat can sail into the very eye of the wind, while before the wind she is a flier, and yet she is not the best sail boat for a beginner. Let me tell you why: First, the sail is heavy and so it is hard to hoist and reef. Second, in going before the wind there is constant danger of jibing with serious results. Third, the catboat has a very bad habit of rolling when sailing before the wind, and each time the boat rolls from side to side she is liable to dip the end of her heavy boom ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... condition, and a number of young women were surf-riding, and Kahalaopuna longed to be with them. Forgetting the warning, as soon as her mother fell asleep she slipped out with one of her maids and swam out on a surf-board. This was Kauhi's opportunity, and as soon as she was fairly outside the reef he bit her in two and held the upper half of the body up out of the water, so that all the surf-bathers would see and know that he had at last obtained ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... of a boat he had; she cleared the waves like a sea-bird, without so much as a drop coming in, and he therefore judged that he did not need to take in a reef, which in an ordinary ten-oared boat he would be obliged ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... rechristened the Sylph, the Actif becoming the Hawke. Lieutenant Farrance was promoted to the rank of captain, and given the command of the latter vessel, and some of the survivors of a ship that had a fortnight before been lost on a dangerous reef were told off to her. He was, according to rule, permitted to take a boat's crew and a midshipman with him from his old ship, and he selected Will Gilmore, and, among the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... happen), and are fast asleep in a minute. But we have not been an hour in the Land of Nod, ere three heavy blows from a handspike are struck on the forecastle hatch, which is then slid back, and a hoarse voice bawls: 'All ha-ands a-ho-oy! tumble up to reef tops'ls!' Out we bundle, and grope for our clothes (the forecastle being as dark as a dog's mouth), get them on somehow, and hurry-scurry on deck. We find the weather and sea altered much for the worse, and the Old Man (captain) himself on the quarter-deck, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... They speak of his gambling propensities, of ten-thousand-acre farms that changed hands at the turn of a card, and there are stories that are less printable. When M'Lupi, a little Mashona chief, found gold in '92, and refused to locate the reef, it was John Minute who staked him out and lit a grass fire on his ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... with those of the LEANDER and the MUTINE brig, which came to his assistance, get him off in time to bear a part in the action. His ship, however, served as a beacon to the ALEXANDER and SWIFTSURE, which would else, from the course which they were holding, have gone considerably further on the reef, and must inevitably have been lost. These ships entered the bay, and took their stations in the darkness, in a manner still spoken of with admiration by all who remember it. Captain Hallowell, in the SWIFTSURE, as he was bearing down, fell in with what seemed to be a strange sail. Nelson had ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its shrill and desolate wail, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... location in the North Pacific Ocean; Johnston Island and Sand Island are natural islands, which have been expanded by coral dredging; North Island (Akau) and East Island (Hikina) are manmade islands formed from coral dredging; the egg-shaped reef is 34 km in circumference; closed to the public; a former US nuclear weapons test site; site of Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... stood the pilot. He is the man who tells just where to make the steamer go in the harbor. He knows where everything is. He knows where the rocks are on the right and he didn't let the steamer bump them. He knows where the sand reef is on the left and he didn't let the steamer get on to that. He knows just where the deep water is and he kept the steamer in it all ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... on deck. "Breakers starboard! breakers larboard! breakers all around!" was the ominous cry a moment afterward, and all was confusion. The words were scarcely uttered, when, and before the helm was up, the ill-fated ship struck, and, after a few tremendous shocks against the sunken reef, she parted about midship. Ropes and stays were cut away—all rushed forward, as if instinctively, and had barely reached the forecastle, when the stern and quarter-deck broke asunder with a violent crash, and sunk to rise no more. Two of the seamen miserably perished—the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... shipwrecked on the fatal Irish reef; He has always been a loyal and a sympathetic chief; And he has also written ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... the eight rocks, near the surface, which captain Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is known by its brownish-yellow ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... I was coming up into a reg'lar twister, and thought it would be safer to reef a mite and make for ca'm waters. My head begun to whirl, and I cal'lated I'd best weigh anchor while my soundings ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... grip on it somehow, and staying there in company with other people's babies whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death, until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by the Fireplace Shoals, or were rescued from the Soda Reef by some gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view to taking salvage out of ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Samoa, Baker Island*, Guam, Howland Island*, Jarvis Island*, Johnston Atoll*, Kingman Reef*, Midway Islands*, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll*, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island (* consolidated in United States Pacific ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mathematics, demonstrate the harmony of the physical creation. In the microscopic animalculae; in the gigantic remains, whether vegetable or animal, of other ages and conditions of life; in the coral reef and the mountain range; in the hill-side rivulet that makes "the meadows green;" in the ocean current that bathes and vivifies a continent; in the setting of the leaf upon its stem, and the moving of Uranus in its orbit, they trace a law whose ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... serious one. The Endeavour, raised by a wave over the ridge of a reef, had fallen again into a hollow in the rock, and by the moonlight, portions of the false keel and the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... waiting for his ship to locate and map a dangerous reef, Huxley went ashore, and as he playfully expressed it, "ran ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to hand with the elements, the last form of external force that is brought against him. And here once more the artistic effect and the moral lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one. Gilliat, alone upon the reef at his herculean task, offers a type of human industry in the midst of the vague "diffusion of forces into the illimitable," and the visionary development of "wasted labour" in the sea, and the winds, and ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the following knots: square or reef, sheet-bend, bowline, fisherman's, sheepshank, halter, clove hitch, timber ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... she was forced in; the violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous wave which again bore her up, and carried her clean over the reef, will never ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the eastern roots of the mountains start in toothed reef and low, premonitory sweep from the level of the plains. Broken chains and spurs edged up toward it. Far beyond, in a faint aerial distance, the soaring solidity of vast ranges hung on the horizon, cloudy ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... off a gale northwest about 4 A.M., and made yet another sea. As soon as possible we set a double-reefed foresail, and then I turned in. When I turned out at noon we had made Newfoundland and set a whole foresail, jib and one reef out of the mainsail. We were becalmed, but found excellent fishing, so did not care. The sea had gone down and we began to enjoy the Norway-like rugged coast of Newfoundland. The mountains come right down to the water, and are about 1,400 feet high, by our measurement, using angular altitude by ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... kind of a business man Mr. Chipperton was, but when Rectus told him that he had written a letter to his father which would make the thing all right, he was perfectly satisfied; and the next day we all went out in a sail-boat to the coral-reef, and had a splendid time, and the "Tigress" went off without any Chippertons. I think Mr. Chipperton put the whole thing down as the result of his lecture to Rectus up ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Psalm: "He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder." And the morning dawned clear, the ice was moving and their prison widening. On July 3, Haabet cleared the last ice-reef, and the shore lay ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the Zephyrs in an excursion up the lake, and another lighthouse was erected in the vicinity of a dangerous reef. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... to-day. Climbed the headland this morning. Found volcano taking a day off. Looking for sign of Laughing Lass, noticed something heliographing to me from the waves beyond the reef. Seemed to be metal. I guessed a tin can. Caught in the swirl, it rounded the cape, and I came down to the shore to meet it. Halfway down the cliff I had a better view. I saw it was not a tin can. There was a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... June, Mount Kingston. Started at 8 o'clock a.m. to examine the quartz on the east side of Mount Kingston. Crossed the creek, and at three miles struck a quartz reef. The Freeling Springs still continue, but seem inclined to run more to the eastward. Changed my course to a peak in a low range which has a white appearance. At eight miles reached the peak; the quartz ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... that's yerselves that I see!" continued the voice. "Arrah, 'old on there. I'm so tired wadin', I want a short spell to rest myself. Wait now, and I'll come to yez, as soon as I can take a reef out of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... icebergs of frozen Labrador, Floating spectral in the moonshine along the low, black shore. Where in the mist the rock is hiding, and the sharp reef lurks below; And the white squall smites in summer, and the ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... from out the far-off grey, Self-heralded draws on the storm. Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down, And seamen hasten to reef in the sail Before its ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... families were large. No death occurred among them until 1837, when Mrs. R. Davis was called to her rest. Dangers abounded on every hand, yet accidents were rare. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Davis were lost at sea; Marsden was wrecked on the Brampton reef, but escaped unhurt with all his party. Henry Williams passed through a terrible experience when returning from Tauranga in 1832. For two days his little vessel had been enveloped in driving rain and had been ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... of the fellows only spurred Judd to shake forth another reef, so that without knowing it he was rapidly tiring ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... north-east, close-hauled, into a stiff breeze from eastwards. No land was in sight—only a few trawler sails and a squat, ugly tramp steamer flinging a pennant of black smoke to westwards. As the day wore on the wind rose steadily, and in the afternoon the watch turned out to reef sails. Matheson was an excellent sailor, and this tussle with the elements exhilarated him. Olive, too, was quite at home on board a yacht, and the two marched the decks together in keen enjoyment of the bite of the wind and the whip ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... for? Why, just to find out what was the matter with his trial balance, that's all. When one of Labe's trial balances starts out for snug harbor and ends up on a reef with six foot of water in her hold, naturally Labe wants to get her afloat and pumped dry as quick as possible. He ain't used to it, for one thing, and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... cooperation in hundreds of workaday tasks: of currencies kept in effective relation, of development loans meshed together, of standardized weapons, and concerted diplomatic positions. The Atlantic Community grows, not like a volcanic mountain, by one mighty explosion, but like a coral reef, from the accumulating activity ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... gale. They were all good ships; but like those other excellent ships, the "Arctic" and "Pacific," they could not defy the powers of pure accident. In the same gale the "Empire City" was dismantled, having all of her upper works swept off, while the "Illinois" was injured by being on the Colorado Reef. They have both been undergoing most costly repairs for several weeks. While writing this, the "Philadelphia" is also in the shop. She recently broke her shaft and her cross-tail, and had to put into Charleston. All of these repairs cost an immense sum of money, and are calculated, with the severe ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... old Dutch charts give a very considerable extent to this reef; Van Keulen makes it cover a space of sea, forty-seven miles long, and twenty-five broad. We only saw the islands at the south end, with three detached reefs between them and the shore; one of which (the southernmost) may probably be the TURTLE DOVE. The islands lie West 4 degrees North true, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... you please, Has two or three (or more) degrees Of variation; And many a soul has gone to grief On this or that or t'other reef Through faith unreckoning or brief Miscalculation. Misguidance is of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the Holmes right a head of her. The wind had at four P.M. shifted to the N.N.W.; the land on her lee beam, nine leagues, was that part of Jutland a few miles to the southward of Bovenbergen. At eight o'clock the Horn Reef, bearing S.S.W. distance forty miles; at this time a tremendous heavy sea was setting on the shore in the direction of E.S.E. At six lost sight of the Bellete; the last sight we had of the Defence she was standing ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... 5 sq km land area: 5 sq km comparative area: about eight times the size of The Mall in Washington, DC note: includes Ashmore Reef (West, Middle, and East Islets) and ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... through, and, once outside Deer Island, nothing lay between me and Nahant. The well-known beach and the sandy headland called "Grover" stood out at the edge of Lynn Bay, and the rise and fall of the white surf, too distant to be heard, marked the long reef stretching seaward. After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the land, boys, See all clear to reef each course; Let the fore-sheet go, don't mind, boys, Though the weather ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... swept the mighty chief, Like some great ocean wave across the bar Of intercepting rock, whose jagged reef But frets the victor whom it cannot mar. Into the senate his triumphal car Rushed like a conqueror's through the broken gates Of some fallen city, whose defenders are Powerful no longer to resist the fates, But yield at last to him whom wondering ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is known by its brownish-yellow colour, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... matter of the poem, the wild voyage of the mad monkish lover with the dead Bride of Heaven, it strikes, of course, on the common reef of the Romantic—the ridiculous. But the recurring contrasts of a pure, clear peace in sea and sky, are of rare and atoning ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... ashore there and was totally wrecked, nearly all her crew perishing. Her captain, a singularly capable seaman named Hallowell, was out of her upon a courtmartial, and it was thought she would not have been lost had he been on board. Another, the Gibraltar, struck so heavily on a reef that she had to be sent to England. Upon being docked, a large piece of rock was found to have penetrated the bottom and stuck fast in the hole. Had it worked out, the ship would have foundered. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... it seemed as if the other sails were about to share the same fate. The ship flew from billow to billow, after recovering from the first rude shock, as if she were but a dark cloud on the sea, and the spray flew high over her masts, drenching the men on the topsail-yards while they laboured to reef the sails. ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... with glare for shade, Tartarean heat for coolness, cannon thunder and shouting for quietness, grey enemies for nursing women, and for home a battlefield in a hostile land. Heavy ordnance wagons, far from the guns they were meant to feed, traces cut and horses gone, rested reef-like for the tides to break against. Travelling forges kept them company, and wagons bearing officers' luggage. Beneath several the mules were pinned; dreadful sight could any there have looked or pitied! Looming through there were the great supply wagons, with others of lighter stores, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... his sport. All day he brooded as he strode Betwixt the reef-encircled port And the oak-grove of ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... o'clock this day we left the entrance of the harbor and bore away for Kennebeck river. In the latter part of the night, there came on a thick fog and our fleet was separated. At break of day we found ourselves in a most dangerous situation, very near a reef of rocks. The rocks indeed appeared on all sides of us, so that we feared we should have been dashed to pieces on some of them. We were brought into this deplorable situation by means of liquor being dealt out too ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... to my stormy shriek! Toilers upon the sea, the Whistling-buoy would speak! List to my sobbing shout! list, for my word is brief: Death is beneath me here! death on the sunken reef Where the jagged ledge is hid and the slimy seaweeds grow, And the long kelp streamers wave in the dark green depths below, Where, under the shell-clad hulk, the gaunt shark makes his lair,— Toilers upon the sea, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by their tails! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When glassy calm did come, To see them squatting tailor-wise Around a keg of rum! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When in she sailed to land, To see them ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... solemn boom of cannon to-day announced that the convention have passed the ordinance of secession. We must take a reef in our patriotism and narrow it down to State limits. Mine still sticks out all around the borders of the State. It will be bad if New Orleans should secede from Louisiana and set up for herself. Then indeed I would ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the Indians; but on his return to the Reconcave, he was wrecked on the reef off Itaporica, where the natives murdered him, but spared Caramuru, who ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... again, and reached the Molucca Islands November 4th. In his passage thence to the island of Celebes, he incurred the most imminent danger of the whole voyage. The ship struck, as they were sailing before a fair wind, on a reef of rocks, so precipitous that it was impossible to lay out an anchor to heave her off. They stuck fast in this most hazardous situation for eight hours. At the end of that time the wind shifted, and the ship, lightened of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... accepted in thus reducing our submarine strength in southern waters. At the same time some Grand Fleet submarines were organized into a watching patrol in the area off the Shetland Islands, through which enemy submarines were expected to pass. The watch off the Horn Reef and in the Heligoland Bight, which had previously been in force, was ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... was now gradually drawing toward land. Suddenly, she swerved and headed straight for a huge reef that could be seen protruding above the surface of the water. A cry of dismay went up from those ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... that her eyes rested upon the edge of the wilderness. It seemed to him that she must be thinking of that; and he noted with pain, as often before, the contrast between her and her surroundings. From every direction the forest appeared to be rushing in upon that perilous little reef of a clearing—that unsheltered island of human life, newly displaying itself amid the ancient, blood-flecked, horror-haunted sea of woods. And shipwrecked on this island, tossed to it by one of the long ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... merchantmen by a vessel from Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia, forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats, when she was entirely helpless either to fight or sail. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... grating of the keel as she was forced in; the violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous waves which again bore her up and carried her clean over the reef, will never be ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... were in the act of eating a lobster for the first time in our lives, when the captain and the sailors began to swear violently at the pilot, whom I could see at the helm, rigid with fear, striving to avoid a reef—barely visible above the water—towards which our ship was being driven. Great was our terror at this violent tumult, for we naturally thought ourselves in the most extreme danger. The vessel did actually receive ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... There was a glamour of romance about him when he was at sea, and "JACK ashore" was for ages held up as the presentment of all that was happy, and contented, and free from care. His hardest duty was supposed to be shinning up the ratlin to "reef," or "brail up," or "splice the mainbrace," or do some other of those mysterious things that caused him to look so mythical to the minds of land-lubbers and the simple-hearted kind of women that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... more of the above authorities, for differences between them were frequent and sometimes considerable, and in one instance alone a reduction of 12' in the chart was obtained. It is said in Hawkesworth (III, 202), "As soon as we got within side the reef (through Providential Channel) we anchored in nineteen fathom;" and afterwards (p. 204), that the channel, "bore E. N. E. distant ten or twelve miles." In the first chart the distance is 141/2 miles, and nearly the same in that which ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... to Him I cried In that terrible moment of need,— A craggy reef in the gulf's dark side; I seized it in haste, and from death was then freed. And there, on sharp corals, was hanging the cup,— The fathomless pit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... fathoms. It consists of a central plateau descending to the water in three terraces, each with its "tread" and "rise." The shore terrace descends by a steep cliff to the sea, forming the "rise" of a submarine "tread" in the form of fringing reef which surrounds the island and is never uncovered, even at low water, except in Flying Fish Cove, where the only landing-place exists. The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents "rounded, flat-topped ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... blowing hot from Arabia, to Port Sudan, where we put in at 11 A.M. on the 30th September. The temperature was 105 deg. F. in the shade. Here half of C Company, under Captain T.W. Savatard (afterwards killed on Gallipoli) were left to garrison and construct defences for the place. Once a desolate coral reef, it is now a great harbour with the promise of a greater future. This first night of Africa we rowed happily across its starlit lagoon in the full glamour of the ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did 'ee set ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... advanced. The dam of brush and uncemented smooth brown stones, stretching across the Pinas, was gradually rising. The hillside section of ditch through the fields was finished and only the miners continued at the granite reef, the ring of their hammers on drills going steadily and the roar of the shots now and again booming out at nightfall. Excavation went forward in the spaces between the drops on the ridge leading forth upon the mesa. The carpenters had ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... of rigging the gaff to the spar. Figure 7 shows the method of crotching the main boom and Fig. 8 a reef point knot, which may come in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef—but that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the universe. The damned thing—as he had expressed it—had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... ship up before dark, to escape the risk of running on one of them during the night. Voules feared that if it was done the canvas would not stand, and that she would then be drifted helplessly on any reef or island in her way. No sun was to be seen; the whole sky wore one uniformly leaden hue, while the dark seas of the same tint rose and fell, their tops covered with masses of foam which, blown off by the wind, filled the atmosphere. "Should there come ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... expect that future exploration will develop Midian as it has done India. The quartzose outcrop called the "Wynaad reef" (Madras Presidency) produced only a few poor penny-weights per ton, two and seven being the extremes, while much of it was practically unproductive. Presently, in February, 1878, the district was visited by Sir Andrew Clarke, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... flight, Who lies and listens, as the clear notes fall Through tingling silence of the frosty night— Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep; So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, With heart that kindled to the call of song, The voice of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English possession, as Columbus's ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... the wind. He could only cling to his place and see the vessel driven ashore, without being able to lift a hand to save her. Suddenly he was conscious of a grating, grinding sensation beneath his feet, and knew that the vessel had struck a coral reef. She swung round broadside to the wind; the boats on the weather side were wrenched from their davits and hurled away in splinters; and in the midst of such fury and turmoil there was no possibility of launching the remaining two boats ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... I speak of bed-fellows; pocket- fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master's righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master - or as I more justly call ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne, who knows every ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... vessels to, and soon afterwards the San Antonio joined and passed under our stern, when Mr. Hemmans informed me that the guns he had fired were intended as signals to his boat, and that they were not meant for us. He had been aground, he said, on a reef near the Palm Islands, but had received no damage: light, however, as he pretended to make of this accident, it was a sufficient lesson for him, and we soon found he had profited by it, for instead of preceding us, he quietly fell into our wake, a station which he never afterwards left, until ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... passengers to keep quiet, and the ladies and children to dress and sit at the doors of their state-rooms, there to await the advice and action of the officers of the ship, who were perfectly cool and self-possessed. Meantime the ship was working over a reef-for a time I feared she would break in two; but, as the water gradually rose inside to a level with the sea outside, the ship swung broadside to the swell, and all her keel seemed to rest on the rock or sand. At no time did the sea break over the deck—but the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... stern, While the Greek galleys, with no lack of skill, Hemmed them and battered in their sides, and soon The hulls rolled over, and the sea was hid, Crowded with wrecks and butchery of men. No beach nor reef but was with corpses strewn, And every keel of our barbarian host Hurried to flee, in utter disarray. Thereon the foe closed in upon the wrecks And hacked and hewed, with oars and splintered planks, As fishermen hack tunnies or a cast Of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... are employed in gathering the buaze, in preparing the fibre, and in making it into long nets. The knot of the net is different from ours, for they invariably use what sailors call the reef knot, but they net with a needle like that we use. From the amount of native cotton cloth worn in many of the southern villages, it is evident that a great number of hands and heads must be employed in the cultivation of cotton, and in the various slow processes ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... blew. During the day, those sails proved almost as much of a nuisance as a help. The fiendish, sullen williwaws that blow furiously and without warning about the Strait required watching, and more than once it was necessary to reef everything and depend on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... some never go out. They satisfy themselves with the channel trade." He pointed. "We're getting out to the open sea now, past the reef." ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... boat; Main Beach Cove, a little to the north-east; and Deadman's Cove, farther away. Of these, only Main Beach was available between one hour on either side of low water. The fact that the boat was making for it, and had already successfully skirted the submerged reef lying off it, proved that ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,—these were the features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Nancy Bell That we sailed to the Indian Sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which has often occurred ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... sorts of sea-weed, a gay garden on a white ground, shimmering through crystal! And down below the crabs crawled about, and the fishes shot hither and thither; and over the surface of the water, from reef to reef and island to island, the tern and sea-gulls skimmed and ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to a peer, I can hand, reef and steer, Or ship a selvagee; I'm never known to quail At the fury of a gale,— And I'm never, never sick ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... maybe, from the fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the shore. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few substitutes for them, are not ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... white-crested. A gust of wind struck the boat; the water began to beat heavily against it, so that it was tossed about like a piece of cork. Since Simon had not put up the sail there was now no need to reef it. Flakes of foam flew over the spars, the beams groaned. The clouds rushed on, driving the heaving, thundering waves before them. Soon the little boat was overtaken by darkness, which was only relieved by flashes of lightning. Long ago Simon had let go the rudder, and exclaimed, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the best has not been ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Afterward they might be, politically speaking, whatever they chose to be, but for the time being they were just Americans. Into this unique condition Jason Mallard projected himself, an upstanding reef of opposition to break the fine continuity of a mighty ground swell of national unity and ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mounts eighty heavy guns; but since the Civil War, additional batteries, some of them armed with Rodman guns, have been erected. A little above Fort Hamilton, and a few hundred yards from the shore, is Fort Lafayette, built on a shoal known as Hendricks' Reef. It was begun during the war of 1812, cost $350,000, and was armed with seventy-three guns. It was used during the Civil War as a jail for political prisoners. In December, 1868, it was destroyed by fire, and the Government is now rebuilding ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... down in one piece. Somehow, I know it. Don't you let them do it to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection onwards. Don't do it. This isn't just nosing into the Slot, over the reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and beginning to sweat. This is much more, Harry. This is bloody frightening. Are the three minutes up yet? My stomach is crawling at the thought ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... like too many people today who expect to get things without workin' for them. But this troop is not run on sich lines. Some day ye'll come bang up aginst another troop, and how'll ye feel if ye git licked. Why, when I asked some of you boys to tie a clove-hitch ye handed me out a reef-knot, which is nothin' more than a 'granny' knot, which any one could tie. I want yez to do more than other people kin, or what's the use of havin' a troop? So git away home now, fer we'll have no more fun until yez git through with ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... with myrtles and oleanders, expended itself upon the shingly beach in the centre of the bay. This sheltered cove, about 300 yards across the chord of the arc, formed rather more than a semicircle by the natural formation of the coast, and was further improved by a long reef of hard sandstone, which extended from either ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... reason another strange phenomenon of Lundy, about which the imagination of an earlier people must have lingered, passes barely remarked. There is a great promontory on the coast, opposite the reef called the Hen and Chickens, which is pierced by a sort of tunnel about eight hundred feet in length and sixty feet in height, through which a boat can sail on calm days at high-water; and in the centre of the tunnel, bubbling up through the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... own, crinkles and cracks; the skirting, having absorbed moisture and now drying again, opens its joints; the rough-cast coquettes with the frost and opens chinks and crannies for the humbler creation. I fail to see the necessity of (and, accordingly, I resent bitterly) all these coral-reef methods. Better walls than this, and better and less life-wasting ways of making them, are surely possible. In the wall in question, concrete would have been cheaper and better than bricks if only "the men" had understood it. But I can dream ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?" Ingram called out to Sheila when they had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... a good second," chimed in Teddy. "Wow!" he cried, as a giant breaker thundered down on the reef, "that must have been the daddy of them all, I guess. Let's go up to the lookout room as soon as we're through and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... litter and with the help of the Asika and Jeekie, dug a little in this gravel, not without reward, for in it they found several nuggets. Above, too, where they went afterwards, was a huge quartz reef denuded by water, which evidently had been worked in past ages and was still so rich that in it they saw plenty of visible gold. Looking at it Alan bethought him of his City days and of the hundreds of thousands of pounds capital with which this unique proposition ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... that Hartog, fearing it might lead to further disputes, determined to get it over as soon as possible, and for this purpose he altered the ship's course to an island he sighted on the horizon which we made during the same afternoon, when we came to anchor in a natural harbour formed by a coral reef and opposite to a hard sandy beach well suited to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... reef of rocks which lies to the south of the harbour at Colombo, the beautiful little painted crabs[1], distinguished by dark red markings on a yellow ground, may be seen all day long running nimbly in the spray, and ascending and descending in security the almost perpendicular sides of the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... said. "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then try it ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... having all the Subordinates stand on one Foot and tremble whenever he showed up. In fact, he was a very hefty Proposition all through the Business District. But when he struck the Street leading to his House he began to reef his Sails and lower all ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... current; might compare the products of volcanos poured out upon the land with those ejected beneath the waters; and might mark, on the one hand, the growth of the forest, and, on the other, that of the coral reef. Yet, even with these advantages, he would be liable to fall into the greatest errors, when endeavouring to reason on rocks of subterranean origin. He would seek in vain, within the sphere of his observation, for any direct analogy to the process of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... but no symptoms of its being inhabited—that there was no anchorage that he could discover, as the shore rose perpendicularly, like a wall, from the ocean. We therefore ran to leeward, and discovered that a reef of coral rocks extended nearly two miles from that side of the island. The boats were again lowered, and after surveying, the mate reported that there was a passage, with plenty of water, for the ship, through the very centre of the reef, which would bring her into ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... change the mulberry-leaf To shining silk; the lapidary's skill Makes the rough diamond sparkle at his will, And cuts a gem from quartz or coral-reef. Better a skillful cobbler at his last Than unlearned poet twangling on the lyre; Who sails on land and gallops on the blast, And mounts the welkin on a braying ass, Clattering a shattered cymbal bright with brass, And slips his girth and tumbles ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... four miles of it, from the rocks of Borth Head, where the waves could be watched breaking on the seaweed-covered reef, and sending up columns of white spray against the black face of the cliffs, away to the yellow sand dunes near the Dovey's mouth, and the reaches of wet sands where we noted on summer days "the landscape winking through ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... some while over the down-hill profile of our eastern road when I chanced to glance northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea lying outspread. It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all along the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard it—and saw the white sweep of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... all. We hadn't a nice trip. Don't know how Finlay kept her going and I thought I'd lost her on Tortillas reef; but we can ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... conveying important truths to the listening congregation within, "was took from the wreck of the Tamalpais. Brother Horley bought it at auction at Horse Shoe Bay and presented it. You know the Tamalpais ran ashore on Skinner's Reef, jest ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and pedantic mode of saying that the best pipe of all is the last one smoked at night. It is the penultimate moment that is always the happiest. The sweetest pipe ever enjoyed by the skipper of the Hesperus was the one he whiffed just before he was tirpitzed by the poet on that angry reef. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... with the exception of six. In fact, the Chub was made into a cullender, and completely disabled, before he struck her colours. The same fate attended the Confiance, the Linnet, and the Finch, the latter of which grounded on a reef of rocks about the middle of the engagement. The gun-boats appear absolutely to have run away. Thus was the British fleet captured by an inferior fleet of the Americans. Commodore Downie was killed by a ball from the American gun-boats very early in the contest, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... next morning, and then very leisurely, that the Ebba began to make preparations for her departure. From the extremity of New-Berne quay the crew might have been seen holystoning the deck, after which they loosened the reef lines, under the direction of Effrondat, the boatswain, hoisted in the boats ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... a shred, sir," said Philip; "the scissors shall only be used to cut the threads, with which the ladies take in a reef here and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... as a pilot, only as an able seaman, if you know how to hand, reef, and steer, and how to ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... statements of seamen of all classes, that the bell-buoy, fixed to one of the outer Manacles, is utterly inadequate to warn vessels of their nearness to danger. And when the sounds of that bell came in the landward breeze to where I stood looking across the reef, they seemed, not a message of warning to those who cross the deep, but as the death-knell of the hundreds of men, women, and children who have breathed their last in ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... wrecked at this spot. One split on the reef. Another was caught in the backwater. Others sank in the whirlpool below the rapids. Others went under at the first leap into the cataract. Two of the canoes had foolishly been lashed abreast. They sidled, shipped a billow, and sank. All the men clung to the gunnels; but ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... signal to form the line as most convenient. The fleet then formed in the following order:—Goliath, Zealous, Vanguard, Minotaur, Theseus, Bellerophon, Defence, Orion, Audacious, Majestic, and Leander. The Culloden was then astern the Swiftsure, and the Alexander to leeward, tacking to clear the reef. The Admiral hove to, to pick up a boat, and also the four next ships astern of the Vanguard, which gave the Orion an opportunity, by standing on and passing them, to get up with the Zealous ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... while the other was strewn with danger. In the latter channel, after a hundred strokes of the oars, the ships in single file, led by the Pretoria, would have been dragged by a submarine current toward a reef of rocks which was visible in the distance, and over which the sea, calm everywhere else, broke tumultuously. The commanders of the several galleys could perceive their peril only one by one; each would be made aware of it only by the rapid drifting of the galley ahead of him. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... had been signalled and managed to approach, the supposed corpse was slung down to it, and a fisherman accidentally touching the wound, the man revived. The Wolf light is about seven miles out, erected with immense labour and cost on a most perilous reef of rocks. Both lighthouses are often quite isolated by stress ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... knows something, who has brains enough to prophesy the destiny of the American Republic, no matter what his opinions may be upon any religious subject. Suppose we are in a storm out at sea, and the billows are washing over our ship, and it is necessary that some one should reef the topsail, and a man presents himself. Would you stop him at the foot of the mast to find out his opinion on the five points of Calvinism? What has that to do with it? Congress has nothing to do with baptism ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of these words, "Because I am God, and not man, therefore the children of men are not consumed"—just as it is because the ship rides by a cable, and not a cobweb, that, when sails are rent, and yards are gone, and breakers are foaming on the reef, she mounts the billows and survives the storm. That we are not suffering the pains of hell, that we have hopes of heaven and ever shall be there, we owe not to our good works, but to God's good will; to that only. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... seen but the boundless ocean with not a speck of a sail or a bit of land within sight. It was a little kingdom all of its own. A quarter of a mile from shore the low rollers broke ceaselessly on a coral reef, while overhead, the gulls swept around and around, their plaintive whistle being ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... once bought a mine from that man. His name was Algernon Maddox Cholmondely then, and he was homeward bound to assume the ancestral acres in Flint. He escorted me down the hole and displayed visible gold sparkling all along the reef. A week after he had gone I found that he had put it there with a shot-gun—an old "salter's" trick, but new to me at the time. You are not likely to be seeing Patrick Algernon Terence Maddox O'Ryan-Cholmondely again, but, if you should, remember me to him, please—with the business end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... engaged he heard a hurried trampling of feet on deck, mingled with sharp orders from the captain. At first he thought the sounds might have reference to taking in a reef to prepare for a squall, but as the noise rather increased, his curiosity was roused, and he was about to return on deck when Peter the Great suddenly leaped into the cabin and took hurriedly from the opposite locker a brace of highly ornamented ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... which made a clean breach over her, and the men became exhausted with the wet and the inclemency of the season. On the third day of the gale, and seventh since they had parted company with the fleet, a squall brought the mainmast by the board; the foresail was lowered to close-reef, when a heavy sea struck the vessel, and pouring a torrent over her decks, swept overboard the three men who were forward reefing the sail. Mr Bullock, the master's mate, was at the helm—Willy, as usual, down below, attending ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you that it is some dangerous reef!" exclaimed Kit; "some hole or cavern which the water ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... an "able seaman" to get his passage to America. When out at sea it was discovered he didn't know one rope from another. During a storm he and the mate had a terrible fight. "The sea was sweeping the deck and we were ordered to reef a shroud. I didn't know how, and the mate called me a name that no Welshman will stand for. I thought we were all going to be drowned anyhow, and I might as well die with my teeth in his neck. So I flew into him and we fought like wildcats. I couldn't ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... days later when Mr. Tredgold, after considering audibly which island he should visit first, gave him the position of Bowers's Island and began to discuss coral reefs and volcanic action. They were now well in among the islands. Two they passed at a distance, and went so close to a third—a mere reef with a few palms upon it—that Mr. Chalk, after a lengthy inspection through his binoculars, was able to declare ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... their course lay is now dotted with mining-fields and townships, and fertile spaces of tilled tropical plantations. The coast-line rich in harbours is the busy haunt of steamers, and the narrow waterway between the mainland and the great barrier reef the home of many lightships. But when Kennedy and his party made their pioneer journey, the great desolation of the wilderness beset them on every side from the land, whilst the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... boats entered a little sound, and by nine o'clock in the evening we arrived at the Gulf of Mexico, in a region of shoal water, much cut up by oyster reefs. The tide being very low, the boats were anchored inside of an oyster reef, which afforded protection from the inflowing swell of the sea. We shaped our course next day for St. Marks, along a low, marshy coast, where oyster reefs, in shoal water, frequently barred our progress. From South Cape to St. Marks the coast, broken by the mouths of several ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... it now, to port and landward. The white, hard sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted Marie. It little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the quiet reef shortly. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... said the Doctor's voice behind them. "God help the ship that should touch that reef this day, though a nautilus might float in safety! See, how the groundswell is tearing away at those rocks; you can just distinguish the long heave of the water, before it breaks. There is the most dangerous groundswell in the world off this coast. Should this country ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... gave chase in all haste and coming up with her before long, threw grapnels on board and made fast to her. Then they made all sail for their own island and were but a little distant from it, when the wind veered and rent their sails and cast them on to a reef on our coast. Thereupon we sallied forth on them, and looking on them as booty driven to us by fate, slew the men and made prize of the ships, in which we found the treasures and rarities in question and forty damsels, amongst whom was Sufiyeh. We carried the damsels to my father, not ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... assisted by a few able sea-men, form the crew of the ship. They stand watch, make, reef, and take in sail; do all the dirty work, tarring down, painting, scraping, and slushing. They stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and are only covered at high water, ending in craggy vertical walls of coral in very deep water. When there is a little wind, it is dangerous to come near these rocks; but luckily it was quite smooth, so we moored to their edge, while the men crawled over the reef to the land, to make; a fire and cook our dinner-the boat having no accommodation for more than heating water for my morning and evening coffee. We then rowed along the edge of the reef to the end of the island, and were glad to get a nice westerly breeze, which carried ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... seventeen hundred troops, besides the crews. It will be remembered that the capital of Ontario had been moved from Niagara (Newark) to York (Toronto) on the north side of Lake Ontario, then a thriving village of one thousand souls on the inner shore of Humber Bay. On the sand reef known as the Island, in front of the harbor, had been constructed a battery with cannon. The main village lay east of the present city hall. Westward less than a mile was Government House, on the site of the present residence. Between Government House and the village was not a house of any sort, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... perishing. Her captain, a singularly capable seaman named Hallowell, was out of her upon a courtmartial, and it was thought she would not have been lost had he been on board. Another, the Gibraltar, struck so heavily on a reef that she had to be sent to England. Upon being docked, a large piece of rock was found to have penetrated the bottom and stuck fast in the hole. Had it worked out, the ship would have foundered. The third vessel, the Zealous, was less badly ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... there, the U.S. frigate Philadelphia, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, had gone upon a reef just outside the harbor of Tripoli and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats. The Tripolitans got her off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their forts. They also strengthened her batteries, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Captain Jeb, as they neared a white line of breakers, and he stood up firm and strong at the helm. "Steady, all of you younkers; for we're crossing the bar. Many a good ship has left her bones on this same reef. Easy, 'Sary Ann'! It's no place for fooling ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... long is desolate; I know the winds have stripped the garden green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile; There let us land, there dream for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... heaven of love. The problem of eternal beatitude is one of those whose solution is known only to God. Here, below, the sublimest poets have simply harassed their readers when attempting to picture paradise. Dante's reef was that of Vandenesse; ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... church-town—a single street of cottages winding round a knoll of elms which hide the Vicarage and all but the spire of St. Julian's Church—stands high and a mile back from the coast, and looks straight upon the Menawhidden reef, a fringe of toothed rocks lying parallel with the shore and half a mile distant from it. This reef forms a breakwater for a small inlet where the coombe which runs below Lansulyan meets the sea. Follow the road downhill ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Speedy was again off, running out of the south channel, past the grim walls of old Fort Taylor, and a few miles farther on passing Sand Key light, which rises from a bit of coral reef barely lifted above the wash of a tranquil sea. At that time this was the most southerly point of United States territory. In the deep water just beyond Sand Key lay a great battle-ship, tugging sullenly ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... the sea of thought thus backward roll? Memory's the breeze that through the cordage raves, And ever drives us on some homeward shoal, As if she loved the melancholy waves That, murmuring shoreward, break o'er a reef of graves." ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... sailor who had been on the lakes in the roughest weather, "no boat would live now to reach the reef. Better ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... of that," replied Jack, "and I have a plan that will offset it. You see that projecting reef there?" and Jack pointed to the north. The others signified that they did. "Well," Jack continued, "back of that is as cosy a little harbor as you would care to see. I noticed it as we came by. We'll take the Essex there, and she will be ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... breech 'em - tight or loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by their tails! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When glassy calm did come, To see them squatting tailor-wise Around a keg of rum! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When in she sailed to land, To see them all a-scampering skip ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... the sun in his breast. Weariness fell from him, and he leaped overside, not feeling the chill of the shallows. With a grunt, he heaved the boat up on the narrow strand and knotted the painter to a fang-like jut of reef. ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... captain and the first mate walked the quarter-deck together, I heard the former say to the latter, "I think we had as well take in a reef in the topsails. All hereabouts the fishing-ground is good, we don't ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... who had also been a sea-captain, and who, in rescuing a wrecked crew from an Australian reef, was himself capsized, and after a long swim finally eaten by a shark,—said shark being captured next day, and found to contain his head entire, two gold rings still in his ears, which he wore for near-sightedness, after ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... do, Bewilder'd still by wrong from you: For what man ever yet had grace Ne'er to abuse his power and place? No magic of her voice or smile Suddenly raised a fairy isle, But fondness for her underwent An unregarded increment, Like that which lifts, through centuries, The coral-reef within the seas, Till, lo! the land where was the wave. Alas! 'tis ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... ear, and I had a sort of vague consciousness that I had been hearing it before. The next instant I was broad awake and on my feet. Eight ahead, and so near that my heart stood still, was a long line of breakers, heaving and frothing. It was the coral reef girdling the island. Behind it, and almost casting their shadows upon the deck, were the sleeping mountains, about whose hazy peaks the gray dawn was just breaking. The breeze had freshened, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Nangganangga—"the bitter hater of bachelors"—who watches for their souls, and so untiring is his watch, as Williams was informed (206), that no unwedded spirit has ever reached the Elysium of Fiji. Sly bachelors sometimes try to dodge him by stealing around the edge of a certain reef at low tide; but he is up to their tricks, seizes them and dashes them to pieces on the large black stone, just as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to shake a reef out, followed by "Haul in the topsail bow-lines—clap on the topsail halyards, and hoist away!" and in the darkness might be heard occasionally "halimen-oh!-oh hoi!" as the sailors worked at the tough and heavy sail, with the cordage all stiff and swollen with ice and slippery with the rain, the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... upon that island, a very fair bay to look upon; but, by the native saying, it was death to bathe there. "There is nothing in that," said the missionary; and he came to the bay, and went swimming. Presently an eddy took him and bore him towards the reef. "Oho!" thought the missionary, "it seems there is something in it after all." And he swam the harder, but the eddy carried him away. "I do not care about this eddy," said the missionary; and even as he said it, he was aware of a house raised on piles above the sea; it was built ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unconsciously; for each man, limited to his own little sphere, and limited to his own interests, and guided by his own prejudices and passions, has been as ignorant of more general tendencies as the coral insect of the reef which it has helped to build. To become distinctly conscious of what it is that we have all been doing all this time, is one step in advance. We have obeyed in ignorance; and as obedience becomes conscious, we may hope, within certain ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... experienced commanders have a subtle insight into the weather, especially in familiar latitudes, he remarked to the first lieutenant that it looked rather unsettled; and, as a matter of prudence, ordered a reef in the topsails, and the royal yards to be sent down: ship to be steered W. by S. This done, he turned in, but told them to call him if there was ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... greatest naval battle of history was about to be fought, is an arm of the North Sea between Norway and Denmark. The scene of the battle was laid off Jutland and Horn Reef, on the ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... unmoved by their fuming rage, turned them up into the black sky, where they went screaming northward, high over the heads of the white houses huddled in the calm below; and the seas they brought—gigantic, breaking seas—went to waste on Raven Rock and the Reef of the Thirty Black Devils, ere, their strength spent, they growled over the jagged rocks at the base of the great cliffs of Good Promise and came softly swelling through the broad south tickle to the basin. The west wind came out of the wilderness, fragrant of the far-off forest, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... the wave dropped the ship, and with a mighty crash that threw Barbara Harding to her feet the vessel struck full amidships upon a sunken reef. Like a thing of glass she broke in two with the terrific impact, and in another instant the waters about her were ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a stem which is gradually dropped, and their successive phases of development recall the adult forms of the lower orders. Take as another illustration the class of Polyps. First in time we find a kind of Polyp Coral, one among the early Reef-Builders, who built their myriad lives into the solid crust of our globe then as their successors do now. These old Corals have their representatives among the present Polyps, and from their structure they are placed lowest in their class, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Glory by his side. He was outwardly calm, but with a proud flush under his pallor; she was visibly excited, and could not stand on the same spot for many seconds together. By this time the noise made by the bookmakers in the inclosure below was like that of ten thousand sea fowl on a reef of rock, and Glory was trying to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... vegetable life was wholly absent. The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by dusty foam, as upon a reef which it endeavours to cover up. In Egypt, whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death. There is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant vegetation, there not a blade of grass, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... San Antonio joined and passed under our stern, when Mr. Hemmans informed me that the guns he had fired were intended as signals to his boat, and that they were not meant for us. He had been aground, he said, on a reef near the Palm Islands, but had received no damage: light, however, as he pretended to make of this accident, it was a sufficient lesson for him, and we soon found he had profited by it, for instead of preceding us, he quietly fell into ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... intricate manipulation has been mastered. My husband's directions for the arrangement of a hunting-tie are as follows:—"The centre of the stock is placed on the front of the neck, the ends are passed in opposite directions round the back of the neck, brought in front, tied in a reef knot, crossed in front of this knot, and finally secured, as a rule, by means of a pin or brooch of the safety or horse-shoe or fox pattern. A gold safety pin is often used. A brooch pin is naturally safer than an ordinary pin. Nowadays, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Trunnell had the reef tackles rigged from the main yard, and the life-boat was slung clear of the lee rail. Then, watching a chance, she was let go with Hans and Johnson in her to keep her clear and dropped back to the mizzen channels, where the volunteers were ready to ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... be lodged hard and fast on a reef or sandspit. I am told the tide is rising. If that is so, our only hope is in the raft which our three allies are now constructing. With a falling tide we might have a breathing-space at low water. As it ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... or fronds of the cocoa-nut tree, and enable them to see the fish, which they take with hand-nets. It is by these lights that the fish are attracted, but not so in the opinion of the natives, who say, "they come to the reef at night to eat, then sleep, and leave again in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... open country, and started fairly on our long ride. On our left was the ocean with "league-long rollers thundering on the reef:" on our right, a few miles away, was a line of mountains, divided into numerous spurs and peaks by deep valleys richly clothed in tropical verdure. The country about us was uncultivated and generally open, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... peevishness was the vice of narrow minds? So here's where we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who come into the world alone, and go out of it alone, are always hungering for companionship which we can't quite find. Our souls are islands, with a coral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I was patching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked an arrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.'s. This morning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked constraint in his manner. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... and then, before he came to himself, we dragged him to a small tree, sat him up, and bound him to it, not by the waist but by the neck—some twenty turns of small line round his throat and the trunk, finished off with a reef-knot under his ear. Next thing we did was to attend to the honourable Antonio, who was making a great smell frizzling his face on the red coals. We pushed and rolled him into the creek, and left ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... hand aboard, ye see, with a word or two t' le'ward of what ye might call a speakin' acquaintance with the skipper. I 'lowed he'd strike the Rattler; but he cleared the Rattler, by good luck, an' fetched up at dawn on the Devil's Teeth, a mean, low reef o' them parts, where the poor Will-o'-the-Wisp broke her back an' went on in splinters with the sea an' wind. 'Twas over soon, Dannie; 'twas all over soon, by kindness o' Providence: the ol' craft went t' pieces an' was swep' on t' le'ward by ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the t'gal'n's'l and shake a reef out of the mains'l at eight bells," she continued. "Just a few moments of the time, now. You know, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... reefs cover many thousand square miles in the Pacific and in the Indian Oceans. There is one reef, or rather great series of reefs, called the Barrier Reef, which stretches, almost continuously, for more than 1,100 miles off the east coast of Australia. Multitudes of the island in the Pacific are either reefs themselves, or are surrounded by reefs. The ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... first mad shock not a sail was clewed up, not a jib lowered, not a reef taken in, so much is flight a delirium. The mast creaked and bent ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and, in the second place, should good fortune suddenly smile upon you, preoccupied as you are with other matters you have not the substitute at hand. If we provide ourselves with the necessary head of game in advance, the huntress is not there. We avoid one reef to founder on another. Moreover, these unlooked for observations, made sometimes on the public highway, the worst of laboratories, are only half-satisfactory. In the case of swiftly-enacted scenes, which it is not in our power to renew again and again until perfect ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... began all at once to blow hard. He heard the call of the captain, and the loud trampling of the men over his head, as they hauled at the main sheet to get the boom on board that they might take in a reef in the mainsail. Diamond felt about until he had found what seemed the most comfortable place, and there he snuggled down ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... Italians, having lived in England and America, can speak English and know something of us and our ways, accounts for much. For a foreign language is the Great Barrier Reef against the voyages of ordinary people towards international understanding. And the country counts for something, too. Its natural obstacles compel admiration for an Army which has achieved so much in spite of them. ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... annexation of land, gained gradually from the sea in a southerly direction. This growth is still in full activity, and assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one foot in a century, the reefs being built up from a depth of 75 feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the coast, Professor Agassiz calculates that it has taken 135,000 years to form the southern half of this peninsula. Yet the whole is of Post-Tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... incessantly builds upon a coral reef. They become lithified as it were and constitute the strata of the psychozoic stage'—I told you the butter's at the spring. Will you leave me alone? That's the third page I've spoiled over psycho-what-you-call-it. Go on back and herd your goats, and for gracious sake, can that ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... various trivial thoughts bearing on the present—what a lucky matter it was that he should have returned in time; only just in time it was; from the angry look of the outer world the island would now, for many a day be besieged by seas impassable to such small craft as alone could reach the reef. Had he tarried but to the next tide (and how sorely he had been tempted to remain an hour more in the gatekeeper's lodge within sight and hearing of buxom Moggie, Margery's grand-daughter), had he missed the tide, for days, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... seemed to be growing denser. The young people groped their way along the slope of the Garrigues, till they came to a rock on which they sat down. Around them lay an abyss of darkness. They were stranded, as it were, on some reef above a dense void. And athwart that void, when the dull tramp of the little army had died away, they only heard two bells, the one clear toned and ringing doubtless at their feet, in some village across ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... repeated two or three times, and each with less violence, after which, to the surprise and joy of all, the little vessel rose and fell easily as the sea undulated, the officers knowing at once that they had struck upon a reef, which they had but just touched, and then had been carried over it into the calm water of a lagoon, where they rocked peacefully and safely, while only a short distance away the waves were thundering upon the coral rock, and fretting and raging ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... idle hours by the sea, little excursions in a sail-boat to Penmark, and at last to Point du Raz. It was a beautiful day, with a gentle breeze, and the point was glorified. The boat ran in lightly between the steep dark shore and the comb of reef that looked like a host of stealthy pumas crumbling the water. They anchored in the Bay des Trepasses. An hour on shore exploring the caves, and lunching, and then they went back to the boat, accompanied by a Breton sailor, who had acted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inch of canvas," expostulated English as the mate shook out a reef in the mainsail, but Coppin and Clarke were now in command, since only they professed to know the coast, and the warning was unheeded, especially as the wind had for a moment lulled or rather drawn back for a more formidable spring, swooping down as the last reef point was loosed with a ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... started again to find his way across the Pacific to the Cape of Good Hope. After much intricate and dangerous navigation among the Spice Islands-in the course of which Drake made a treaty with the Sultan of Ternate, and the Pelican was all but lost on a reef-she rounded the Cape in January, sailing into Plymouth Sound on September 26th, 1580, a little less than three years from the day when she began her voyage. Drake was the first commander who conducted ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... lookout for subs, as far out as the Reef," Ikey said solemnly. "I don't believe they've got this coast half patrolled. We don't often see one of those chasers in the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... are and how formed. One account treats them as growing corals, another as masses of something resembling oolite, piled together, barrier-wise. You see that this lies at the root of the progress of the reef, so important to navigation, of the use to be made of it in placing our signals, of the use as a foundation for light-houses, and of many other questions practically important and of high scientific interest. I would place a vessel at your ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Maister Welsh a wee. Lads will be lads, ye ken. But Maister Ralph's soond on the fundamentals—I learned him the Shorter Questions mysel', sae I should ken—forbye the hunner an' nineteenth Psalm that he learned on my knee, and how to mak' a Fifer's knot, an' the double reef, an' a heap o' usefu' knowledge forbye; an' noo to tak' it into your heid that yer ain son's no soond in the faith, a' because he has fa'en oot wi' a donnert ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... I'll show you whether my appetite has a reef in it or not. I can eat more than the living skeleton can, and for a thin man he's got anything stopped for appetite that I ever saw," answered Teddy Tucker, scrambling to his feet and starting ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... position clear. Of course, with his family and the Keltridges and even the despised Dolph Dennison, it was different, although even the irresponsible Dolph had floundered and struck bottom on a conversational reef or two, and it had taken all Reed's grip to haul him off and steer him into ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... die as soon as they are removed from the vitalizing influence of the pure sea-water. These walls have a variety of outlines: they may be straight, circular, semicircular, oblong, according to the form of the coast along which the little Reef-Builders establish themselves; and their height is, of course, determined by the depth of the bottom on which they rest. If they settle about an island on all sides of which the conditions for their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... stateroom and the first mate was in charge. It was three o'clock, the wind still blowing and the darkness pitchy, when the forward lookout shrieked a warning, "Breakers under the lee!" Almost the next instant the ship was on a coral reef, full of water, and the seas breaking over her from ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... grannies. They would jam so that you'd never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... time expired and I had served my Trading Company on half the mudbanks of the Pacific, I returned to Australia and went up inside the Great Barrier Reef to Somerset—the pearling station that had just come into existence on Cape York. They were good days there then, before all the new-fangled laws that now regulate the pearling trade had come into force; days when a man could do almost as he liked among the islands in those seas. I don't know ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... give you a real right down genuine New England breakfast, and if that don't happify your heart, then my name's not Sam Slick. It will make you feel about among the stiffest, I tell you. It will blow your jacket out like a pig at sea. You'll have to shake a reef or two out of your waistban's and make good stowage, I guess, to carry it all under hatches. There's nothin' like a good pastur' to cover the ribs, and make ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... clambered into our boat, saved from death, as we thought—little knowing the fell purpose for which he had been stationed to hold out the flaring torch as a welcoming beacon to be seen afar by any vessel in distress. I glanced at the dangerous ring of coral reef round the island on which the ship had once struck, and then looked at the repulsive islander, who sat gazing at us with a savage leer. Although somewhat resembling a Papuan, as Hassan had said, we were soon destined to know what he really was, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... comment on the beauty of sky and cliff. As they halted once more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden mound, sprayed with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... interference of Inez—all these and more surged through the brain of the captain, while he slowly paced back and forth, with eyes and ears wide open. Inez still slumbered, and all was silent, excepting the boom of the ocean against the coral-reef; while, as the night wore on, the captain maintained his ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... fairly round the Horn; but one forenoon the glass began to fall, and I saw there was heavy weather coming. After a bit it came on to blow a regular gale. The sea got up in no time, and I had to order all hands up to reef topsails. We were rather short-handed, for I could hardly get men when I started, for love or money. Well, would you believe it?—half a dozen of the fellows were below so ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... board, he gave a vigorous turn to the tiller, laid hold of the sheet, let out a reef here, took in another there; the pinnace was soon completely at his command, and behaved admirably; true, she pitched furiously, and the gunwale was under water at every plunge. He headed along the coast till the point beyond which Fritz had ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... I listened, in fancy could hear The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear, The patter of reef-points on topsails a-shiver, The song of the jibs when they tauten and quiver, The cry of the frigate-bird following after, The bow-wave that broke with a gurgle like laughter. And I looked on my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... finish the survey, to return to England, in order to lay his journals and charts before the Admiralty: he accordingly embarked on board the Porpoise store ship, which, in company with the Cato and Bridgwater, bound to Batavia, sailed in August, 1803. The Porpoise and Cato were wrecked on a reef of rocks nearly 800 miles from Botany Bay: most of the charts, logs, and astronomical observations were saved; but the rare plants, as well as the dried specimens, were lost or destroyed. On the 26th of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... on his way, than the mother's heart enters upon a period of increasing perturbation. Suppose something should happen to the steamer—that it should break down, or catch fire, or run on a reef—or that there should be a railroad accident—or that George should lose his ticket, or be robbed of his money and find himself in some far-away spot, not knowing what to do with no one to go to? Then that long ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... down within a mile of a small island lying near the northeast point of Winter Island. On the 31st the tide took us through between these, the breadth of the passage being three quarters of a mile, in no less than sixteen fathoms water. We then passed within a dangerous reef of rocks, lying a full mile from the shore, and having numerous heavy masses of grounded ice upon it. After clearing this in a good depth of water, we were, by the evening, carried along shore within a mile ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... eager and retentive mind, but those habits of observation which were to be of the greatest service to him in after-years. On his return home in another vessel—the Porpoise—Franklin and his companions were wrecked upon a coral reef, where ninety-four persons remained for seven weeks on a narrow sand-bank less than a quarter of a mile in length, and only four feet above the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Dick's journey to the coast to meet her when the time came. So great was the excitement that a newcomer thought some great reef had been struck, and followed several of us about for days trying to discover its location and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... night. In the faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy squat headland, and it was pitch dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay full of shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... to the new mate, "keep all hands on deck now they're here. Get in the topsails and jibs and make a good job of it. We're in for a sou'-easter. Better reef the jib and mainsail too, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... from which we could fire at the kopje with a sight of 550 paces. To the right of this rise, at a distance of 80 paces, was a small kloof overgrown with bushes, and on the other side of the kloof ran a reef of rocks in the direction of the white kopje. Here some of the burghers had before our arrival forced eleven khakies to surrender, but they had not succeeded in occupying the position, as some khakies had remained in ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird which flies ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt. All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef. At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more ragged than those near our ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... chorused some of the braver spirits. "It may hold. We don't want to drown on the reef. Let's ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... throttled me as I dragged it after me through the water; whilst the loose folds of my shirt, being washed out to seawards by the tide, kept getting entangled with my arm. I grew weak and faint but still swam my best, and at last I providentially reached a reef of rocks which projected from the opposite shore, and to which I clung until I had somewhat ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... purpose of wrenching him from the cliff; but he stood firm, and looked out again, to discern clearly what he thought he had seen. It was the mast of a vessel, seen plainly against the light silvery distance of sea on the reef west of the Shag. It was in a slanting direction, and did not move; he could not doubt that the ship had struck on the dangerous rocks at the entrance of the bay; and as his eyes became more accustomed to the unusual light, and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... off Cape L'Agulhus. It was blowing a heavy gale of wind, with a tremendous sea running, such a sea as one rarely meets with anywhere but off the Cape, when just at nightfall, as we were taking another reef in the topsails, a fine young seaman, a mizen-topman, James Miles by name, fell from the mizen-topsail-yard, and away he went overboard. In his descent he came across the chain-span of the weather-quarter davits, and with such force that he actually ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hardy, we'll make her all snug for the night. Furl the fore and mizen-topsail, and close-reef the main—that, with the foresail, fore-staysail, and trysail, will be enough ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the name San Salvador somehow became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... very much battered and at the mercy of the storm; she moved quickly forward a little way, and stood still and staggered for a time before moving on again, like a drunken man. She was going in the direction of the southern reef. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... rust? No: all generous hearts would condemn that. He would keep every inch of the deck scoured, every piece of metal polished like a mirror, the sails set full and clean, and, with shining muzzles out, ropes hauled taut in their blocks, and every man at his post, he would sweep towards the reef, and go down into the sea firing a farewell salute of honor to the sun, his flag flying above him ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... swim out was out of the question. On the other hand, the strongest flow of water, the channel such as it was, set directly for the obstruction, and it might be possible to drop down on it from above—if one provided some means for getting back again. Stonor marked the position of every rock, every reef above, and little by little ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... hole they had dug. "Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable. We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn't know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally there wasn't much she wanted. You never know who is going to be rich and who poor, with a goldmine. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... his way he came to a reef, which was covered with weed, and therefore so slippery that none could pass that way. And as he could not pass, his helping spirit lay down beside him, and by placing his foot upon the spirit, he was able ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... a few able sea-men, form the crew of the ship. They stand watch, make, reef, and take in sail; do all the dirty work, tarring down, painting, scraping, and slushing. They stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... time there came on a squall with rain, which almost blinded us; the sail was taken in very neatly, the clew-lines, chock-a-block, bunt-lines and leech-lines well up, reef-tackles overhauled, rolling-tackles taut, and all as it should be. The men lied out on the yard, the squall wore worse and worse, but they were handing in the leech of the sail, when snap went one bunt-line, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as a bear. Shouldn't think I'd eaten anything in ten years. Say, Ma, what do you s'pose? Dave Corbett was out in the Nancy three hours and never got a bite. What do you think of that? The wind died down, his engine got stalled, and he and Hosey Talbot had to row home from the Bell Reef Shoals. Haw, haw! Maybe I didn't roar when I saw them come pulling in against the tide, mad as two man-eating sharks. Fit to harpoon the first person they met, they were. I sung out and asked them ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... moved slowly downwards. Before them surged the foaming waters, the waves white-crested. A gust of wind struck the boat; the water began to beat heavily against it, so that it was tossed about like a piece of cork. Since Simon had not put up the sail there was now no need to reef it. Flakes of foam flew over the spars, the beams groaned. The clouds rushed on, driving the heaving, thundering waves before them. Soon the little boat was overtaken by darkness, which was only relieved by flashes of lightning. Long ago Simon had let go the rudder, and exclaimed, "Jehovah!" ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... heap of those limy incrustations wherewith certain springs in the neighborhood cover the dead clump of rushes. It is light, full of holes and gives a faint suggestion of a coral reef. Moreover, it is covered with a short, green, velvety moss, a downy sward of infinitesimal pond weed. I count on this modest vegetation to keep the water in a reasonably wholesome state, without driving me to frequent renewals which would disturb the work of my colonies. Sanitation and quiet ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Launcher of worlds upon bewildered space," Rose in me, "All? or did thy hand grow dull Building this world that bears a piteous race? O was it launched too soon or launched too late? Or can it be a derelict that drifts Beyond thy ken toward some reef of Fate On which ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... if I was coming up into a reg'lar twister, and thought it would be safer to reef a mite and make for ca'm waters. My head begun to whirl, and I cal'lated I'd best weigh anchor ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... upon the rapids, and half a minute more would see us plunged into the seething, foaming slide of angry waters. To right and left, where the jagged reef touched the forest, stood three or four painted redskins, with muskets to their shoulders. And some distance below the falls, where the water broadened and shallowed, I made out the feather-decked heads of more Indians. This was a dread and significant ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... thus thrown out into the middle of the bay, where they receive the full force of the tidal impulse, retarded by the Narrows only long enough to disengage and drop their finer silt on the flats between Robin's Reef and the Jersey shore. The depurating process of the New World's grandest community lies ready for use in this natural drainage-system. If there be a standing pool, a festering ditch, a choked gutter, a malarious sink within the scope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the Straits, the serenity of the sky was suddenly changed, and gave us all the presages of an impending storm; and immediately the wind shifted to the southward, and blew in such violent squalls that we were obliged to hand our topsails and reef our mainsail. The tide, too, which had hitherto favoured us, now turned against us and drove us to the eastward with prodigious rapidity, so that we were in great anxiety for the Wager and the Anna pink, the two sternmost vessels, fearing they would be dashed to pieces ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from the shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of an idea of our actual position. If we then found that we were near the shore, we would, weather permitting, endeavor to land, either in the boat or upon a raft. If, on the other hand, no land were in sight, and the Chancellor were ascertained to be stranded on some isolated reef, all we could do would be to get her afloat, and put her into condition for reaching the nearest coast. Curtis told us that it was long since he had been able to take any observation of latitude, but there ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... out of the sea like a volcanic peak, and was evidently encircled with a barrier reef, as we could trace a line of snowy surf breaking on its outer verge, and parting the sapphire blue of the deep water without from the emerald green shoals within. The coast, sweeping in beautiful bays, dotted with overgrown ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... the North Pacific Ocean; Johnston Island and Sand Island are natural islands, which have been expanded by coral dredging; North Island (Akau) and East Island (Hikina) are manmade islands formed from coral dredging; the egg-shaped reef is 34 km in circumference; closed to the public; a former US nuclear weapons test site; site of now-closed Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS); most facilities dismantled and cleanup complete in 2004; some ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... expressing full purpose to work with God in whatever calling he should labor, and cheerful hopes of the future. Then came a long, long silence, and then tidings that the Eastern Star had been wrecked on a reef in the Indian ocean! The mother had given back her treasure into the same beloved hands whence she first received him. "I gave him to God, and God took him," she said. "I shall have him again in God's ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... garboard strakes, my lads, And reef the starboard screw— For it sticks like tar, that sandy bar, To ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... so as to bring her broadside to the beach. When the sea returned, in the form of a wall of water 25 or 30 feet high, it carried us over the warehouses into the first street of the town. This wave in receding took her back toward the beach, and left her nearly perpendicular on the edge of a coral reef, where she has now keeled over to ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... rasped along the edge of the reef, and a long white curling sheet of wood was planed off from her side from waist to poop by a jutting horn of the rock. At the same instant she lay suddenly over, the sail drew full, and she plunged seawards amid the shoutings of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no other danger in entering the harbour than the reefs of Punta Brava, opposite which a battery of eight guns has been erected. Towards the west and south-west we see the fort, which is a regular pentagon with five bastions, the battery of the reef, and the fortifications that surround the ancient town, founded on an island of a trapezoidal form. A bridge and the fortified gate of the Staccado join the old to the new town; the latter is already larger than the former, though considered only as its suburb. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... careless about keeping watch against her enemies. But now she was vigilant even when she seemed asleep, and anything the least bit out of the ordinary was enough to make her take alarm. As she lay sluggishly rocking, the great blackish round of her head and back now all awash, now rising like a reef above the waves, she suddenly caught sight of a white furry head with a black tip to its nose, swiftly cleaving the water. She knew it was only a white bear swimming, and she knew also that it was not big enough to dare attack her calf. But with her foolish mother fears ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Christian-born, like myself, just for the matter of a little tan, from cruising in warm latitudes; though, for the matter of that, this damned norwester is enough to whiten the skin of a blackamore. Let the reef out of your blanket, man, or your red hide will hardly weather the night with out ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... LOADED with the treasures of oral tradition. The principal result of our inquiries has been a complete and perfect copy of "Maitland with his Auld Berd Graie," referred to by [Gawain] Douglas in his Palice of Honour (1503), along with John the Reef and other popular characters, and celebrated in the poems from the Maitland MS." (circ. 1575). You may guess the surprise of Leyden and myself when this was presented to us, copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd, by a country farmer . . . Many of the ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... bosom, the gallant ship.' Though it is to The Pilot, pre-eminently, and The Waterwitch, in nearly an equal degree, that these remarks apply, there is many a passage in Cooper's later novels—for example, The Two Admirals, Homeward Bound, Mark's Reef, Ashore and Afloat, and The Sea-Lions—in which we recognise the same 'cunning' right hand which pencilled the Ariel, and its crew, the moody, mysterious pilot, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... the north shore, then turns about again to the westward, making the south side of the bay. About three leagues and a half from the bottom of the bay on this side there is a small island about a musket-shot from the shore; and a reef of rocks that runs from it to the eastward about a mile. On the west side of the island is a channel of three fathom at low-water, of which depth it is also within, where ships may haul in and careen. West from this island the land rounds ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... finish his sentence, for the stress of the flying seconds choked down his words. Two possibilities they held, and each big with doom. Either the schooner must dash upon the Raney—a reef, barely covered at high water, barring entrance to the cove—or avoiding this, must be shattered on the black wall of rock under their very feet. The end of the little vessel was written—all but one word: and that must be added within a ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... what sort of a boat he had; she cleared the waves like a sea-bird, without so much as a drop coming in, and he therefore judged that he did not need to take in a reef, which in an ordinary ten-oared boat he would be obliged to do ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... voice flow'd on, like timorous brook 300 That, lingering along a pebbled coast, Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met, And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath: The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, Came booming thus, while still upon his arm He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt. "Or shall we listen to the over-wise, Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods? 310 Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all That rebel ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that by Gauffridi, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... hundred and sixty miles from Sydney to New Caledonia, a long, narrow island lying just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and completely surrounded by belts of coral reef crenellated here and there, and forming channels or passes where ships may enter. Navigation through these channels is, however, exceedingly hazardous in any but calm weather; and it was formerly thought that the island was on this account practically ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... produced in very many instances by dikes which cross the stream. So, too, though rarely, only one striking instance being known, an ancient coral reef which has become buried in strata may afford rock of such hardness that when the river comes to cross it it forms a cascade, as at the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville, Ky. It is a characteristic of all other falls, except those first mentioned, that ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Glos, a low, sullen line of rocks. A group of cormorants, either gorged with mackerel fry or hopeless of an evening meal, perched together at one end of the reef, and stared at the setting sun. A few terns swept round and round overhead, soaring or sliding downwards with easy motion. A large seal lay basking on a bare rock just above the water's edge. I pointed it out to Peter, and he said it was a ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for the midland markets. He preserves, however, the habit and appearance of old days: that is to say, his chin is folded away under his lip like a reef in a mainsail; his cheek-bones hide his ears, so tusky and prominent are the former, and tipped with a varnish of red, like corns on old folks' feet; he has a nose which is so long and bony that it seems to have been constructed in sections, like a tubular bridge, and to communicate with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and you didn't need watch her long to make you reckon you'd seen the last of her. Then Mr. Robinson, talking like a man half in a rage, half in a fright, orders me to pack sail on the schooner; but it was already blowing a single-reef breeze, and I had no idea of losing our spars, and so I told him very firmly that the yacht had all she needed, and that more would only stop her by burying her: and I had my way. But we were foaming through it, too; we ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... William—"like enough. Easy there!" He seized the stern of the Andrew Halloran and sprang on board. They worked in swift silence, hoisting the anchor, letting out the sail,—a single reef,—making it fast. "All she'll stan'," said Uncle William. He turned ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... followed the brown sailors as they came over the side and slowly began to cast the moorings that held the Morning Star. Few are the ships that sail many seasons among the Dangerous Islands. They lay their bones on rock or reef or sink in the deep, and the lovers, sons and husbands of the women who weep on the beach return no more to the huts in the cocoanut groves. So, at each sailing on the "long course" the anguish ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... morning there was an unwonted grandeur: the whole vault of the sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning to purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet, with a few late planets caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel-fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief, For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom-hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... entering upon an unknown coast in the dark, we stood off all night, which was well for us, as we found ourselves at day-break next morning, 7th May, within a ship's length of a great reef of rocks, which extended from one island to the other, and thinking to have gone between the islands, we had nearly run upon this dangerous ledge. Having a small breeze from shore we were fortunately able to stand off, and went to the westermost island, because we saw ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... under water. It consists of large blocks of a volcanic conglomerate, some of which measure nineteen feet by six or eight, and ten feet in thickness; whilst a little farther north another wall extends E.N.E. to a natural reef of rocks." (Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... But this troop is not run on sich lines. Some day ye'll come bang up aginst another troop, and how'll ye feel if ye git licked. Why, when I asked some of you boys to tie a clove-hitch ye handed me out a reef-knot, which is nothin' more than a 'granny' knot, which any one could tie. I want yez to do more than other people kin, or what's the use of havin' a troop? So git away home now, fer we'll have no more fun until yez git ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... us, about four miles off. We had therefore to hold up and leave it on the starboard. It is a large rock having its head just above the water. It rises up straight, but is very much hacked, which makes it look like a reef. Whenever the sea is rough it is under water. It is dangerous enough, and lies far out in the channel, farther than it is marked down on my chart. We certainly had reason here again to observe the care ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... rapids, and half a minute more would see us plunged into the seething, foaming slide of angry waters. To right and left, where the jagged reef touched the forest, stood three or four painted redskins, with muskets to their shoulders. And some distance below the falls, where the water broadened and shallowed, I made out the feather-decked heads of more Indians. This was a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... tell of reef-fishing in the West Indies; of surf-riding on planks at Muizenberg in South Africa; of the extreme inconvenience to which the inhabitants of Southern China are subjected owing to the inconsiderate habits of their local devils; of sapphire seas where coco-nut palms ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... young in some of them have a stem which is gradually dropped, and their successive phases of development recall the adult forms of the lower orders. Take as another illustration the class of Polyps. First in time we find a kind of Polyp Coral, one among the early Reef-Builders, who built their myriad lives into the solid crust of our globe then as their successors do now. These old Corals have their representatives among the present Polyps, and from their structure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... smoothly, for Mrs. Morrison was an excellent housekeeper, and could make a dollar go a great ways without appearing to be niggardly; but unexpected misfortune overtook them, and the company in which most of the carpenter's savings had been invested struck a reef, so that not only did the little income cease from this source but there was danger that the principal might also ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... capabilities." In the map of his route, published by Arrowsmith, Port Grey is laid down as a spacious, well-sheltered harbour, with a convenient point of land extending a couple of miles out to sea from its northern extremity, and having a useful reef of rocks projecting, most happily, to the same distance, affording altogether a secure shelter for shipping in ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... if one man's death is ascribed to another's desire of revenge, this desire may have been entertained for years before the assassination occurred: similarly, if a shipwreck is ascribed to a sunken reef, the rock was waiting for ages before the ship sailed that way. But, of course, neither the desire of revenge nor the sunken rock was 'the sum of the conditions' on which the one or the other event depended: as soon as this ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... attritive power of ocean in wearing down the land. When pausing for a little abreast of the fishing village, partially sheltered by an old boat, to mark the fierce turmoil, it suddenly occurred to me,—as the tempest weltered around reef and skerry, and roared wildly, mile after mile, along the beach,—that the day and night were now just equal, and that it was the customary equinoctial storm that had broken out to accompany me on my journey. And so, calculating ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Coastline: 926 km Maritime claims: NA International disputes: all of the Spratly Islands are claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam; parts of them are claimed by Malaysia and the Philippines; in 1984, Brunei established an exclusive economic zone, which encompasses Louisa Reef, but has not publicly claimed the island Climate: tropical Terrain: flat Natural resources: fish, guano, undetermined oil and natural gas potential Land use: arable land: 0% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 0% other: 100% Irrigated ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and circumvented it. In many places, by the way, this surrounding road was built entirely out of blocks of stone, apparently with the object of supporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Along this path we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what were the three towering objects which we could discern from the hither side of the great gulf. As we drew near we perceived that they were Colossi of some sort or another, and rightly conjectured that before us sat the three "Silent Ones" ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... choose to make all sorts of nasty insinuations about us wanting to knock you out! Shows where your mind is. Another fellow wouldn't ever let such a fool notion get a grip on him. And you'd better put a reef in that tongue of yours, my boy, unless you want to have it get ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of emotion that ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... But they tell the tale, That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief: For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... stagger with her into the creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... daybreak on the following morning, we sailed for Zamboanga, only to find orders awaiting us there to proceed at once on a wrecking expedition to Bongao, on Bongao Island of the Tawi Tawi group, a small launch, the Maud, being foundered there on a coral reef. Thus were we hoist by our own petard, for over the cable just laid came the order postponing our return to Manila; but as it meant yet another chapter in a delightful experience, few of us were ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Seizing Rope. Loops. Cuckolds' Necks. Clinches. Overhand and Figure-eight Knots. Square and Reef Knots. Granny Knots. Open-hand and Fishermen's Knots. Ordinary Knots and Weavers' Knots. Garrick ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... lured them on to those waters, of the sufferings they endured throughout the voyage, the thirst, the sea-sickness, the briny drenchings; and how at last their luckless craft went to pieces upon some hidden reef or at the foot of some steep crag, leaving them to swim for it, and to land naked and utterly destitute. All this they tell us: but I have ever suspected them of having convenient lapses of memory, and omitting the worst part for very shame. For myself, I shall have no such scruple. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... parts of New Brunswick; on the shores of the Great Lakes; everywhere in the woodlands of the North and Middle Atlantic states; on the limestone soils of Kentucky, Tennessee and the Virginias; and they thrive in the sandy woods, sea plains and reef-keys of the South Atlantic and Gulf states. While not so common west of the Mississippi, yet some kind of wild grape is found from North Dakota to Texas; grapes grow on the mountains and in the canons of all the Rocky Mountain states; and ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... And lets it trickle through his fevered palms, And begins counting half a hundred times And loses count each time for sheer delight And wonder in it; meantime, if he knew, Passing the cave-mouth, far away, beyond The still lagoon, the coral reef, the foam And the white fluttering chatter of the birds, A sail that might have saved him comes and goes Unseen across the blue Pacific sea. So Drake, too, played with fancies; but that sail Passed not unseen, for suddenly there came A firm and heavy footstep to the door, Then a loud knocking: and, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... through my mind as we cut through the water and the sky grew paler by degrees and the stars faded out. We were opposite the buoy now, dark amongst the dark waves, and we turned at right angles and made for the shore. The tide was high and we glided over the inner reef easily. Soon we could see the eaves of the cottage dimly, a cock crowed sleepily, the white pole pointed out some rough steps ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... there was a vacuum where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its shrill and desolate wail, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... be observed that in payable saddle formations a slide intersects the reef above the saddle coming from the west, and turning east with a wall of the east leg, where the leg of reef is observed to go down deeper, and to carry a greater amount of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... unblushingly about his adventures. Even Peggy had listened open-eyed and open-mouthed when he had told a tale of shipwreck in the South Seas: how the schooner had been caught in some beastly wind and the masts had been torn out and the rudder carried away, and how it had struck a reef, and how something had hit him on the head, and he knew no more till he woke up on a beach and found that the unspeakable Chipmunk had swum with him for a week—or whatever the time was—until they got to land. If hulking, brainless dolts like Oliver, thought Doggie, like to fool around ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... no symptoms of its being inhabited—that there was no anchorage that he could discover, as the shore rose perpendicularly, like a wall, from the ocean. We therefore ran to leeward, and discovered that a reef of coral rocks extended nearly two miles from that side of the island. The boats were again lowered, and after surveying, the mate reported that there was a passage, with plenty of water, for the ship, through the very centre of the reef, which would bring her into a small bay, where ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dizzy pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground on those crags, were wrecked and burst, their contents streaming from them and hiding the aerial reef on which they had struck. The land vanished, till only Bougie and its quay and the Celestine remained, with one last detached fragment of mountain high over us. That, too, dissolved. There was only our steamer and the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... instances. Many flat fish, as, for example, the flounder and the skate, are exactly the colour of the gravel or sand on which they habitually rest. Among the marine flower gardens of an Eastern coral reef the fishes present every variety of gorgeous colour, while the river fish even of the tropics rarely if ever have gay or conspicuous markings. A very curious case of this kind of adaptation occurs in the sea-horse (Hippocampus) of Australia, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... again after sunrise, and being unable to reef the sail single handed he managed partially to brail it up. All day the craft flew along with the wind on the quarter, making six or seven miles an hour; and he felt that by morning he would be well beyond pursuit. On the run he passed several craft engaged in fishing, but these gave him no uneasiness. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... said the Chairman of the Henley Tribunal to an employer who was said to have an indoor staff of thirteen servants. As a beginning he proposes to take a reef in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... victuals. On the same evening the fleet came to anchor off Melinda, which is eighteen leagues from Mombaza, and is in lat. 3 deg. S. This place has no good harbour, being only an almost open roadstead, having a kind of natural pier or reef of rocks on which the sea beats with much violence, owing to which the ships have to ride at a considerable distance from the shore. The city stands in a broad open plain, along the shore, surrounded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... bachelors"—who watches for their souls, and so untiring is his watch, as Williams was informed (206), that no unwedded spirit has ever reached the Elysium of Fiji. Sly bachelors sometimes try to dodge him by stealing around the edge of a certain reef at low tide; but he is up to their tricks, seizes them and dashes them to pieces on the large black stone, just as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hostile to him, and Varus was beaten in a naval battle near Carteia by Didius: indeed, had he not escaped to the land and sunk anchors side by side at the mouth of the harbor, upon which the foremost pursuers struck as on a reef, the whole fleet would have perished. All the country at that point except the city Ulia was an ally of Pompey's: this town, which had refused to submit to ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Peru. The first slight signs of a gale, seen only by the careful skipper. The hasty preparations for it: all hands to shorten sail; then the moaning of the wind high up in the sky. All hands to reef sail now—the whirl and whoo of the gale as it came down on them. The ship careening as it caught her, the speaking-trumpet—the captain howling his orders ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... understand that in the perfect feast To please the palate only is not art, But we should minister to the eye and the ear With colour and with music. Introduce The embattled oysters with a melody Of waves that wash a reef—whence do ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... when the time came for him to leave Norfolk Island for his annual cruise, his energy revived. He spent seven weeks at Mota, leaving it towards the end of August to sail for the Santa Cruz group. On September 20, as he came in sight of the coral reef of Nukapu, he was speaking to his scholars of the death of St. Stephen. Next morning he had the boat lowered and put off for shore accompanied by Mr. Atkin and three natives. He knew that feeling had lately become embittered in this district over ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and slack each reef an' tack, Gae her sail, boys, while it may sit; She has roar'd through a heavier sea afore, An' she'll roar through a heavier yet. When landsmen sleep, or wake an' creep, In the tempest's angry moan, We dash through the drift, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Recour John Red James Redfield Edward Redick Benjamin Redman Andre Read Barnard Reed Christian Reed Curtis Reed Eliphaz Reed George Reed Jeremiah Reed Job Reed John Reed (2) Jonathan Reed Joseph Reed Levi Reed Thomas Reed (2) William Reed (2) John Reef Nicholas Reen Thomas Reeves Jacques Refitter Julian Regan Hugh Reid Jacob Reiton Jean Remong Jean Nosta Renan Louis Renand John Renean Pierre Renear Thomas Renee Thomas Rennick Frederick Reno Jean Renovil Michael Renow ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... East merges into the West upon the coast of the two Americas. His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough, on the Admiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australia and China a Whalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous coral formation the celebrated clipper had hung stranded for three days, her captain and crew throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and with the other, as it were, keeping off her a flotilla of savage war-canoes. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the north-east corner of the island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw. The actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his ships on a lee shore. Finding himself off the north end of the island at sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an anchorage. The first few miles ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the sea like a volcanic peak, and was evidently encircled with a barrier reef, as we could trace a line of snowy surf breaking on its outer verge, and parting the sapphire blue of the deep water without from the emerald green shoals within. The coast, sweeping in beautiful bays, dotted with overgrown islets, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... boat and in a few minutes found himself on board the Rover, which, by the time he reached it, was under weigh and making for the opening in the reef. ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... daily home; innumerable sails Dawn on the far horizon and draw near; Innumerable loves, uncounted hopes To our wild coasts, not darkling now, approach: Not now obscure, since thou and thine are there, And bright on the lone isle, the foundered reef, The ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of my overcoat (second reef), shifted my face to the eastward, and, notwithstanding the blister on my heel, turned my steps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Padre Island the coast of Texas deepens at the rate of about a fathom to the mile, until at twenty fathoms there is a coral reef, and on the easterly side of this reef the water deepens, as by the side of a perpendicular wall, to a very great depth. This reef marks the boundary of the Gulf stream, and also the boundary of the terrible tornado. The tornado of the Gulf of Mexico never passes this barrier, never ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Buchanan, whose river, the St. John's, owns a bar infamous as that of Lagos for surf and sharks. The southernmost, Lower Buchanan, is defended by a long and broken wall of black reef, but the village is far from smooth water. All these 'towns' occupy holes in a curtain of the densest and tallest greenery. They are composed of groups and scatters of whitewashed houses, half of them looking like chapels and the other like toys. Each has its adjunct of brown huts, the native ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... a rock-bound reef of Unbelief There sat the wild Negation; Then they sank once more and were washed ashore At the Point ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... ut. Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I've said, how'd you reef the foresail, Harve? ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... from the wharf and beckoned so frantically that the big man swarmed up the rigging to the dock as though he were going aloft to reef a topsail ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... sister spirit, when you smile My soul is like a lonely coral isle, An islet shadowed by a single palm, Ringed round with reef ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes. And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens your bones, And your flesh dints in like putty, and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes it leads to a coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea, And you sit and stare at the empty glare where the gulls wait greedily. And sometimes it leads to an Arctic trail, and the snows where your torn feet freeze, And you ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... in love with me, and I'm utterly alone." Alone as a wreck upon a desert ocean, terrible in its calm as in its tempest. Broken was the helm and sailless was the mast, and he must drift till borne upon some ship-wrecking reef! Had fate designed him to float over every rock? must he wait till the years let through the waters of disease, and he foundered obscurely in the immense loneliness he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... it was, set directly for the obstruction, and it might be possible to drop down on it from above—if one provided some means for getting back again. Stonor marked the position of every rock, every reef above, and little by little ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Jerseyman did not meet with good fortune. In chasing a Tripolitan vessel which was discovered near the harbor, the "Philadelphia" ran upon a reef, and there stuck fast. Everything was done that could be done to get her off; even the cannon were thrown overboard to lighten her, but it was of no use. She was hard and fast; and when the people of Tripoli found out what had happened, their ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... what was left: still there was a wonderful spirit and grace, and a wild, weird beauty which attracted us exceedingly; but the captain could only tell us that it had belonged to the wreck of a Danish brig which had been driven on the reef where the lighthouse stands now, and his father had found this on the long sands a day or two afterward. "That was a dreadful storm," said the captain. "I've heard the old folks tell about it; it was when I was only a year or two old. There were three merchantmen wrecked within ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... last most of the piles were removed by the Athenians. But the most awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some of the piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon them, just as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers went down and sawed off even these for reward; although the Syracusans drove in others. Indeed there was no end to the contrivances to which they resorted against each other, as might ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... we are lying under a long hill, and the narrow bay is scarcely rippled by the blast that rushes over us, thick with flying-scud. Captain resolves to await better weather; some of the boys go on shore, and wander out to a kind of reef at the mouth of the bay, where in a short time they succeed in gathering a fine mess of mussels; the rest of us, the stay-on-boards, rig up a net and catch fifteen large fat crabs; with these we cook a delicious dinner, which we devour ravenously, like half-starved men; begin to realize ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... his eyes on his ship. The yards were on the caps, the bellying canvas was fluttering far to leeward, and twenty or thirty human forms on each spar, showed that the nimble-fingered top-men were gathering in and knotting the sails down to a close reef. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... the harass'd seaman prays, When Equinoctial tempests raise The Cape's surrounding wave; When hanging o'er the reef, he hears The cracking mast, and sees or fears, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... the vessels to, and soon afterwards the San Antonio joined and passed under our stern, when Mr. Hemmans informed me that the guns he had fired were intended as signals to his boat, and that they were not meant for us. He had been aground, he said, on a reef near the Palm Islands, but had received no damage: light, however, as he pretended to make of this accident, it was a sufficient lesson for him, and we soon found he had profited by it, for instead of preceding us, he quietly ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... history as the battle of the Skager Rack, was fought in the eastern waters of the North Sea, off the coast of Denmark. It lasted for many hours, fighting being continued through the night of May 31-June 1. In general, the battle area extended from the Skager Rack southward to Horn Reef off the Danish coast, the center of the fighting being about 100 miles north of Helgoland, the main German naval base in ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... aleak, the sailor works at the pumps, till, faint and weary, is heard from below, six feet of water in the hold, the boats are got ready, but before they are into them, the vessel dashed against a reef of rocks, some in despair throw themselves into the sea, others get on the rocks without any clothes or provisions, and linger a few days, perhaps weeks or months, living on shell fish or perhaps taken up by some ship. Others get on ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... was a shabby, barelegged girl of thirteen, standing in the cockpit of his sloop, holding the little vessel on its course while he and old Caleb took a reef in the mainsail. The wilderness of gold that was her uncared-for hair blew behind her like a sunny burgee; her sea-blue eyes were fixed on the mainsail, out of which she adroitly spilled the wind at the proper moment, in order that Donald and her father might haul ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... when the camp was formed; and, at a little distance from it, ascended a ridge of pure sand, crowned with cypresses. From this, he descended to the westward, and, at length, struck upon the river, where a reef of rocks creased its channel, and formed a dry passage from one side to the other; but the bend, which the river must have taken, appeared to him so singular, that he doubted whether it was the same beside which we had been travelling during the day. Curiosity led him to cross it, when he ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... de Corduan is situated on an extensive reef about three miles from land, at the mouth of the river Garonne, and from its position serves as an important guide to the shipping of Bordeaux, the Languedoc Canal, and all that part of the Bay of Biscay. It was founded in the year 1584, but was not completed until 1610, in the time of Henry ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... corpses which had been cast up by the sea. The flower of the Spanish nobility, who had been sent on the new crusade under Alonzo da Leyva, after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third time to sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... one, a hardy sailor who had been on the lakes in the roughest weather, "no boat would live now to reach the reef. Better ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... sail; but the same evening it came on to blow exceedingly hard, with an immense fall of snow and very thick weather, so that they could not see the length of the ship, and being within half a mile of a dangerous reef of rocks, the captain was obliged to carry a press of sail to clear them, which he did but just accomplish, for after that the gale increased to such a degree, the wind being right on shore, that he could not carry ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... in all were wrecked at this spot. One split on the reef. Another was caught in the backwater. Others sank in the whirlpool below the rapids. Others went under at the first leap into the cataract. Two of the canoes had foolishly been lashed abreast. They sidled, shipped a billow, and sank. All the men clung to the gunnels; but one ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... turn him out of the vessel, and send him home. Unfortunately, he would not follow this advice, but sent him to sea again, with despatches. It was known that all hands were drunk on quitting the port; and the vessel ran upon a reef of rocks called the Sisters, where she sank, and every soul perished. Her mast-heads were seen just above ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... southerly direction. This growth is still in full activity, and assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one foot in a century, the reefs being built up from a depth of 75 feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the coast, Professor Agassiz calculates that it has taken 135,000 years to form the southern half of this peninsula. Yet the whole is of Post-Tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells being all of the same species as those now inhabiting the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... every soul and the good money! we've struck a reef, Adam, and 'tis the end and O the good money!' Hereupon I climbed 'bove deck, the vessel on her beam ends and in desperate plight and nought to be seen i' the dark save the white spume as the seas broke over us. None the less I set the crew to cutting away her masts ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the cries of the wounded and the curses of revenge ring in the air; even here, in this land where man creeps on his belly to wound his fellow in the dark, and where an acre of gold is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dirt is worth half a people, and the vultures are heavy with man's flesh—even here that day shall come. I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot where now we stand shall be raised a temple. Man shall not gather in it ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... lies the land, boys, See all clear to reef each course; Let the fore-sheet go, don't mind, boys, Though ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... strong steading, wrapt in murky smoke, both rushed out together, breathing forth flaming fire. And sore afraid were the heroes at the sight. But Jason, setting wide his feet, withstood their onset, as in the sea a rocky reef withstands the waves tossed by the countless blasts. Then in front of him he held his shield; and both the bulls with loud bellowing attacked him with their mighty horns; nor did they stir him a jot by their onset. And as when through the holes ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... principally as a cargo steamer, though she is provided also with a saloon and staterooms for a few passengers. She was on her way from St. John, New Brunswick, to Halifax, when during a thick fog she struck on Cowl Ledge, a reef between Bryer and Long Islands, on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, about half a mile from the shore. The cause of the disaster was probably one of the strong tide eddies which exist in the Bay of Fundy, and which had set her in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... and children to dress and sit at the doors of their state-rooms, there to await the advice and action of the officers of the ship, who were perfectly cool and self-possessed. Meantime the ship was working over a reef-for a time I feared she would break in two; but, as the water gradually rose inside to a level with the sea outside, the ship swung broadside to the swell, and all her keel seemed to rest on the rock or sand. At no time did the sea ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Started at 8 o'clock a.m. to examine the quartz on the east side of Mount Kingston. Crossed the creek, and at three miles struck a quartz reef. The Freeling Springs still continue, but seem inclined to run more to the eastward. Changed my course to a peak in a low range which has a white appearance. At eight miles reached the peak; the quartz ceases altogether, and the country is stony from here. I can see the line of the Neale ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... hurled the Dazzler over till the sea rushed inboard. 'Frisco Kid luffed quickly, at the same time slacking off the main-sheet. Then, single-handed,—for French Pete remained below,—and with Joe looking idly on, he proceeded to reef down. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... enemy's movements, comes under the duties of the commander of a cruiser. I make bold to say that the man who can carry these objects out with success has deserved better of the country than the officer of a battleship, tacking from Ushant to the Black Rocks and back again until she builds up a reef with ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... long and dismally. "Piled her up," he muttered, "that's what her old man has done. Hit a half-ebb reef, and fairly taken root there. He's not shoved on his engines astern either, and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." A ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... of 1873 struck us we at once began to reef sail in every quarter. Very reluctantly did we decide that the construction of the new steel works must cease for a time. Several prominent persons, who had invested in them, became unable to meet their payments ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... closed, I gently sways the sail up, a few inches at a time, and keeps grad'lly away, until we was all spinnin' away dead to the south'ard, they paddlin' like fury, and I just keepin' far enough ahead to be out of range of their harrers. We'd run, I s'pose, a matter of four knots, when I sees that the reef sinks lower and lower below the water; and by the time that we had gone another couple of miles, there was unbroken water all over it. So I edges easily away to the west'ard, they following, till we'd got an offing of about four miles from the shore, and ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... to be with them. Forgetting the warning, as soon as her mother fell asleep she slipped out with one of her maids and swam out on a surf-board. This was Kauhi's opportunity, and as soon as she was fairly outside the reef he bit her in two and held the upper half of the body up out of the water, so that all the surf-bathers would see and know that he had at ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... clear notes fall Through tingling silence of the frosty night— Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep; So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... all on the raging canal!" said Terrill to his captain, as the team started. "If it comes on to blow, we can take a reef in the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... attempted there, clustered upon a promontory of the shores of Hell, at the foot of the cliffs of death; and gothic art seemed to me a more living thing now that, detaching it from the towns in which, until then, I had always imagined it, I could see how, in a particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see reproductions of the most famous of the statues at Balbec,—shaggy, blunt-faced Apostles, the Virgin from the porch,—and I could scarcely ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the long narrow Alaska Peninsula near by, the Eskimo choose their village location for an accumulation of driftwood, for proximity to their food supply, and a landing-place for their kayaks and bidarkas. Hence they prefer a point of land or gravel spit extending out into the sea, or a sand reef separating a salt-water lagoon from the open sea. The Aleutian Islanders regard only accessibility to the shell-fish on the beach and their pelagic hunting and fishing; and this consideration has influenced the Eskimo ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... laughed old Jonas, and it did not seem like a laugh, but as if he were calling his son bad names. "You can manage a boat all of you, can't you, and row and reef and steer? Get out. Books is in your way, and writin', and sums, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... nets are made by men in a simple open form of netting, worked on the common principle of the reef knot, and having diamond-shaped holes, with a knot at each corner of each hole. I shall refer to this form of netting as "ordinary network." The nets are made of thick, strong material, except as regards the hand fishing nets, which are made of the fine material used for making ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... court-martial was held on the officers and crew of the late Raven brig, which passed a slight censure on the captain for not having approached the shore with greater caution. In the evening, the fleet beat out of Palma, and steered between Vache and the reef off Antioch. On the 12th, in the Gulph of Lyons, they were joined by the Active, Seahorse, and Juno; who had, the day before, seen the French fleet perfectly ready for sea. The Renown also joined that evening; on board of which, invalids, &c. were ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... uncontradicted statements of seamen of all classes, that the bell-buoy, fixed to one of the outer Manacles, is utterly inadequate to warn vessels of their nearness to danger. And when the sounds of that bell came in the landward breeze to where I stood looking across the reef, they seemed, not a message of warning to those who cross the deep, but as the death-knell of the hundreds of men, women, and children who have breathed their last in the sea ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... one alone: from each projecting cape, And perilous reef, along the ocean's verge, Starts into life a dim gigantic shape, Holding its lantern ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... finish, making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights, fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labour—you'd have thought Australia was one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... red-tiled stone building, with a spacious veranda in front, covered by plaited matting and canvas curtains triced up all around. The back and one side of the building rested against a craggy eminence which overlooked the sea on both sides of the island, and commanded a wide sweep of reef and blue water beyond. A few clumps of cocoa-nut-trees and dwarf palms, with bare gaunt stems and tufted tops, stood out here and there along the rocky slopes, while lesser vegetation of cactus and mangrove bushes were ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... like the sun in his breast. Weariness fell from him, and he leaped overside, not feeling the chill of the shallows. With a grunt, he heaved the boat up on the narrow strand and knotted the painter to a fang-like jut of reef. ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... barkcloth sail with which to equip the canoe, for he despaired of being able to teach the apes to wield the paddles, though he did manage to get several of them to embark in the frail craft which he and Mugambi paddled about inside the reef where ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Antilles and neighbouring islands. He named this island Hispaniola. Having decided to land, Columbus put in towards shore, when the largest of his ships struck a concealed rock and was wrecked. Fortunately the reef stood high in the water, which saved the crew from drowning; the other two boats quickly approached, and all the sailors were taken ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a poor Fellow as ever went between Stem and Stern of a Ship, and can hand, reef, steer, and clap two Ends of a Rope together, as well as e'er a He that ever cross'd salt Water; but I was taken by one George Bradley' (the Name of him that sat as Judge,) 'a notorious Pyrate, a sad Rogue as ever was unhang'd, and he forc'd ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Archibald, "that Mrs. William had rather have you come safe than unexpected. Be modest, Skipper Bill, and reef the Venture ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... of dangers to shun,— Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him that gaze from the shore! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of San Juan de Ulloa lies half a mile east and to seaward of the city of Vera Cruz, which it commands, and from which it is separated by water averaging from fifteen to twenty feet deep. It is built on the inner extremity of a reef that extends from it a little over a mile to the eastward, in the general prolongation of the line connecting the castle and the town. This shoal being covered by a foot or two of water, the builders of the fort counted upon it for protection in that direction ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... dragged it after me through the water; whilst the loose folds of my shirt, being washed out to seawards by the tide, kept getting entangled with my arm. I grew weak and faint but still swam my best, and at last I providentially reached a reef of rocks which projected from the opposite shore, and to which I clung until I had somewhat regained ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... from which vegetable life was wholly absent. The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by dusty foam, as upon a reef which it endeavours to cover up. In Egypt, whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death. There is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant vegetation, there not a blade of grass, not a bit ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... our foresheet, and were soon clear of the harbour; but we found that there was a devil of a sea running, and more wind than we bargained for; the brig came out of the harbour with a flowing sheet, and we lowered down the foresail to reef it—father and brother busy about that, while I stood at the helm, when the agent said to me, 'When do you mean to make a voyage?' 'Sooner than father thinks for,' said I, 'for I want to see the world.' It was sooner than I thought for too, as you shall hear. As soon as the brig was well out, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and the Thursday following he had asked the Goodwards to motor over to Lighthouse Reef with him. He did not know quite what he meant to bring about on this occasion; he had so much the feeling of its being an occasion, the invitation had been so pointedly given and accepted, it was with ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... it with a heap of those limy incrustations wherewith certain springs in the neighborhood cover the dead clump of rushes. It is light, full of holes and gives a faint suggestion of a coral reef. Moreover, it is covered with a short, green, velvety moss, a downy sward of infinitesimal pond weed. I count on this modest vegetation to keep the water in a reasonably wholesome state, without driving me to frequent renewals which would disturb the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the extended log of a cutter which sailed from the Clyde to the Amazon in search of a gold reef. It relates how they discovered the buccaneer's treasure in the Spanish Main, fought the Indians, turned aside the river Jamary by blasting, and so laid bare the gold ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... direction. I found even this small change an advantage in more ways than one, as the boat moved steadier, and I was able to spread a larger amount of canvas. Lashing the tiller, I crept forward and shook out an additional reef, hauling the ropes taut. By this time the wind had steadied into a brisk breeze, and the rain had ceased. Crawling back across the thwarts, I took the jumping tiller again into my hands, and held her nose to it, seeking every advantage. I had brought back with me a tin of biscuit from ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... sky and cliff. As they halted once more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... contribution to the British effort in World Wars I and II. Long-term concerns include pollution, particularly depletion of the ozone layer, and management and conservation of coastal areas, especially the Great Barrier Reef. A referendum to change Australia's status, from a commonwealth headed by the British monarch to an independent republic, was ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... of canvas," expostulated English as the mate shook out a reef in the mainsail, but Coppin and Clarke were now in command, since only they professed to know the coast, and the warning was unheeded, especially as the wind had for a moment lulled or rather drawn back for a more formidable spring, swooping down as the last reef point was loosed with ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... must feed our sea for a thousand years, For that is our doom and pride, As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind, Or the wreck that struck last tide— Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef Where the ghastly blue lights flare. If blood be the price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Connery gave us a ride on his new bob down that splendid hill,—the whole board, men and women,—that I judged him for what he really was—that resolute leg out behind that kept us on our course as straight as a die, rounding every log and reef with the skill of a river pilot, never flinching once. It was the leg that did it; but it was, as I thought, an index to the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver's dhow!" ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... islands of the Pacific Ocean, are of the species Numenius cyanopus. They leave New Zealand in autumn, with the exception of a few individuals which remain in favoured localities. The 'aigrettes blanches et noires' were perhaps reef herons; the black bird of the form of an oyster-catcher, and possessing a red bill and red feet, was doubtless the Sooty Oyster-catcher (Haematopus unicolor), which in Tasmania is known as the ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... brig, which came to his assistance, get him off in time to bear a part in the action. His ship, however, served as a beacon to the ALEXANDER and SWIFTSURE, which would else, from the course which they were holding, have gone considerably further on the reef, and must inevitably have been lost. These ships entered the bay, and took their stations in the darkness, in a manner still spoken of with admiration by all who remember it. Captain Hallowell, in the SWIFTSURE, as he was bearing down, fell in ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous wave which again bore her up, and carried her clean over the reef, will never be effaced from ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of letters and memos on the desk waiting for him. On top of the mail stack was a letter labeled PRIVATE in a beamed spacegram envelope. He did not recognize the name at the head of it but the return address was General Delivery, Reef Three, The ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... "and if it be set down in the log-book of fate that we must grapple, why then 'ware timbers. But as I know how the land lies, d'ye see, and the current of my inclination sets me off, I shall haul up close to the wind, and mayhap we shall clear Cape Margery. But howsomever, we shall leave that reef in the fore top-sail.—I was bound upon another voyage, d'ye see—to look and to see, and to know if so be as how I could pick up any intelligence along shore concerning my friend Sir Launcelot, who slipped his cable last night, and has lost company, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the floods and thunder, To her pale dry healing blue— To the lift of the great Cape combers, And the smell of the baked Karroo. To the growl of the sluicing stamp-head— To the reef and the water-gold, To the last and the largest Empire, To the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of water, always endeavoring to break away the rocky bonds which have harnessed it, rushes roaring as a huge, tongue-shaped, tumbling mass between its confines of rock and reef. Breaking into swift back-wash and swirls in the bay below, it lashes back in a white fury at its obstacles. Fortunately for the junk traffic, it improves rapidly with the advent of the early spring freshets, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... anchors was let go and, upon its dragging, another was let go, which dragged also, until we were close to the lee shore, when it held, fortunately, till after daylight of the morning of Wednesday the 4th instant when, the cable parting, the brig went ashore broadside onto the reef which extends for about half a mile from the base of the bold rocky island. The waves breaking over the ship, the masts were cut away and fell over the side. The smallest boat was then launched and immediately broke in pieces. While the wreck ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... mildewed, it served only as a landmark to the fishermen, for they had found by experience that by keeping the laird's chimney and the white tower of Cloomber in a line they could steer their way through the ugly reef which raises its jagged back, like that of some sleeping monster, above the troubled waters of the ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fourteen tons. Large nets are used, which, during the months between March and October, are dragged, dredge-like, over the rocks. A large crew will haul in a season from 600 to 900 pounds. To prevent the destruction of the industry, the reef is divided into ten parts, only one being worked a year, and by the time the tenth is reached the first is overgrown again with a new growth. In 1873 the Algerian fisheries alone, employing 3,150 men, realized half a million of dollars. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... really playing the game, and is to have the lion's share of the winnings; but it is only as a disinterested bystander, who looks over the cards of one of the parties, and guides his confederate by hints so adroitly managed as not to alarm the pigeon. The Convention avoided the reef where the wreck of the Chicago lies bleaching; but we are not so sure that they did not ground themselves fast upon the equally dangerous mud-bank that lies on the opposite side of the honest channel. At Chicago they were so precisely frank as to arouse indignation; at Philadelphia ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... as rough as ever, and the symptoms became alarming. The barometer fell several millimeters. The wind came in violent gusts, and then for a moment or so failed altogether. Under such circumstances a sailing vessel would have had to reef in her topsails and her foresail. Everything showed that the wind was rising in the northwest. The storm-glass became much troubled and its movements were ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... sir," said Philip; "the scissors shall only be used to cut the threads, with which the ladies take in a reef here and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... her brain. As for Philip, all seemed a mere negation; there was a vacuum where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its shrill and desolate wail, then dying ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... departed from the island, rowing along a reef of rocks that ran between us and the land to which it was almost parallel, all the sea between it and the land being full of shoals and banks; but to seawards there were neither shoals nor banks nor any other impediment. At nine o'clock we came to anchor at a small island encompassed by many ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Thou wilt never be such a dogbolt as to refuse a hint to a friend? Come, you get too wise and statesman-like for your office.—The ligatures of thy most peasantly jacket there are like to burst with thy secret. Come, undo a button, man; it is for the health of thy constitution—Let out a reef; and let thy chosen friend know what is meditating. Thou knowest I am as true as thyself to little Anthony, if ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a pilot, only as an able seaman, if you know how to hand, reef, and steer, and how to make knots ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... or a poodle's coat. Leonard Harper and I returned in this boat, Tahitian steering, Samoan, Futuman, and Anaiteans making one motley crew. The brisk trade soon carried us to the beach in front of Mr. Inglis's house, and arrived at the reef I rode out pick-a-back on the Samoan, Leonard following on a half-naked Anaitean. We soon found ourselves in the midst of a number of men, women and children, standing round Mr. Inglis at the entrance of his garden. I explained to him the reason of the Bishop's ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fishing nets are made by men in a simple open form of netting, worked on the common principle of the reef knot, and having diamond-shaped holes, with a knot at each corner of each hole. I shall refer to this form of netting as "ordinary network." The nets are made of thick, strong material, except as regards the hand fishing nets, which are made of the fine material ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... whistle to himself for a moment; and the next I heard him yell out sharply to the boys forward to tumble on the mainsail, strip her covers off, double-reef and hoist her. He took command from that moment. While a score of them flew to tackle this job, he beat his way forward and called on another lot to get out the staysail. Back he ran again, cursing and calling ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... place, the Astrolabe French discovery ship lay when, some time before, she fired on the natives. The circumstances respecting this affair, as communicated to me, if correct, do not reflect much credit on the commander of the vessel. They are as follow: During a gale the Astrolabe drove on the reef, but was afterwards got off by the exertion of the natives; some of the men deserting from the ship, the chiefs were accused of enticing them away, and on the men not being given up the ship fired on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... in very many instances by dikes which cross the stream. So, too, though rarely, only one striking instance being known, an ancient coral reef which has become buried in strata may afford rock of such hardness that when the river comes to cross it it forms a cascade, as at the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville, Ky. It is a characteristic of all other falls, except those ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... little beings that compose them die as soon as they are removed from the vitalizing influence of the pure sea-water. These walls have a variety of outlines: they may be straight, circular, semicircular, oblong, according to the form of the coast along which the little Reef-Builders establish themselves; and their height is, of course, determined by the depth of the bottom on which they rest. If they settle about an island on all sides of which the conditions for their growth are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... 8. Tie the Reef, Bowline, Clove-hitch and Sheep-shank knots according to instructions given in Handbook, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... on looking out afterwards we found it right before us, about four miles off. We had therefore to hold up and leave it on the starboard. It is a large rock having its head just above the water. It rises up straight, but is very much hacked, which makes it look like a reef. Whenever the sea is rough it is under water. It is dangerous enough, and lies far out in the channel, farther than it is marked down on my chart. We certainly had reason here again to observe the care of the Lord, and His protection through His good ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... driving ahead full speed, to get ashore out of the fog. I heard your machine, and was afraid I'd get run into. My launch ran into a reef with terrific force. I was thrown against it bulkhead, arm sprained or broken, nearly stunned, and then ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... proposition. I need not enter into the particulars nor, to tell the truth, have I any desire to do so, for the subject is still painful to me, further than to say that this Jew and some friends of his panned out visible gold before my eyes and then revealed to me the magnificent quartz reef from which, as they demonstrated, it had been washed in the bygone ages of the world. The news of our discovery spread like wildfire, and as, whatever else I might be, everyone knew that I was honest, in the end a small company was formed with Allan Quatermain, Esq., as the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... a dangerous reef which is never above water, though some small round black rocks are seen at low tide awash. They look like the kettles in which cooks get up a boiled dinner; and for this reason the Arabs call the reef Abu Kizan, which means the 'father of pots.' As ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... with which to equip the canoe, for he despaired of being able to teach the apes to wield the paddles, though he did manage to get several of them to embark in the frail craft which he and Mugambi paddled about inside the reef where ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the spot over which we were sailing, which gradually sank till the ocean flowed over all the highest portions. The coral insects finding it a convenient situation on which to build, the temperature of the water suiting their constitution, commenced operations, and formed an encircling reef round the shore. These creatures can only live at a certain depth beneath the surface; thus, as the land continued to sink, the first builders died, while others continued to work above their habitations. Still the land sank, and the coral insects worked on, building higher ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... It ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make the mate know you know it. That's reputation. The good word, said at the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that evil thinks, as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Pierrelatte, that enormous block of stone which overhangs the place where they dwell, a reef which rises from the surface of the ancient sea of alluvium, compared with these blocks of uprooted granite which ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... opened it, and stood studying the gale that beat upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold silk in the shine of the wreck-wood fire. Meanwhile, by the same firelight, I examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... published by Arrowsmith, Port Grey is laid down as a spacious, well-sheltered harbour, with a convenient point of land extending a couple of miles out to sea from its northern extremity, and having a useful reef of rocks projecting, most happily, to the same distance, affording altogether a secure shelter for ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... usual, was Courtlandt Classon; the ornamental Miriam, Mrs. O'Hara; and the children of the preferred stock started North with cymbals and with dances, making a joyful noise, and camping en route at Ormond—vastly more beautiful than the fashion-infested coral reef from which they started—at Saint Augustine, on corporate compulsion, at the great inns of Hampton, Hot Springs, and Old Point, for fashion's sake—taking their falling temperature by degrees—as though any tropic could compare with the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... stream-hammered reef and pine, flitted by, closing in on one another along the half-seen shore. The river frothed white about us in steep boiling ridges as it raced down the incline, and nearer and nearer ahead tossed the ghostly spray cloud that veiled the mouth of the chasm. As ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... fall of 1803, the frigate Philadelphia, one of the best ships of our little navy, while chasing a piratical craft, ran upon a sunken reef near the harbor of Tripoli. The good ship was helpless either to fight or ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... point, at the end of the reef, is a huge rock called the Morte Stone, very dangerous on that exposed coast. The Normans are supposed to have given its sinister name, and many since their time have found it a true rock of death. No fewer than five vessels have been lost there in one winter. Rather more than a mile to the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... run out at noon, we left there and arrived about two o'clock at the Wale Bocht. This is a bay tolerably wide where the water rises and falls much, and at low water is very shallow and much of it dry. Inside of the easterly point there was a ship aground, which had struck on the reef of rocks which put out from Corlaer's Hook towards this bay, and had floated over here and sunk. She was a French privateer, which had taken some rich Dutch prizes in the bay of Campeachy and was going through here to New England, in order to dispose of the goods which would not bring money ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... overlooked by a sea-wood of matted elders and the quaint old mansion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or the quiescence of the deep - the Carr Rock beacon rising close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the Inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the star of the May Island on the other, and farther off yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of St. Abb's. And but a little way round the corner of the land, imminent itself above the sea, stands ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... easily from up above, but it is a harder matter for a vessel to make its way between the treacherous rocks and reefs. Though they are so many, the aggregate area amounts to less than four square miles. Almost all are formed of coral, and most of them are atolls. Reef—building corals are small animals which extract lime from the water. They multiply by budding, and every group forms a common clan where living and dead members rest side by side. Coral animalculae demand for their existence a firm, hard sea bottom, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... time a passage nearly a quarter of a mile in width was discovered through the reef, and they were carried by a strong current into the peaceful waters ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... government at Nonuti, which is a blackbird village right under Hakatuea. No matter which way you approach, you can't miss it. Hakatuea's a dead volcano, with ashes on top and just enough fire inside to cast a glow against the sky at night. There's a fair anchorage inside the reef, but it takes a good man to land through the surf at high tide in a whaleboat. I used to do it regular. Aranuka was a nice place, with plenty of fresh water, and some of the Island schooners, and once in a while a British gunboat ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... lumber and live-stock, cracked panes of glass replaced, battening-down boards looked out, new ropes rove, and all preparations made for real hard sea work. How I wish we were going down the east coast of Australia, inside the barrier-reef, instead of down the stormy west coast! I dread this voyage somehow, and begin even to dislike sailing. Perhaps my depression is partly caused by that stupid boy Buzzo having allowed my favourite lark, which I ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... at magazine writing, and Graham's Magazine would publish other contributions from him over the next few years, notably a series of biographic sketches of American naval officers, and the novel "Jack Tier; or The Florida Reef" (1846-1848). Though hardly one of Cooper's greatest works, "Autobiography" remains significant because of: (1) its unusual narrator—an embroidered pocket-handkerchief—that is surely the first of its kind; (2) its critique of economic exploitation ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... the position of Bowers's Island and began to discuss coral reefs and volcanic action. They were now well in among the islands. Two they passed at a distance, and went so close to a third—a mere reef with a few palms upon it—that Mr. Chalk, after a lengthy inspection through his binoculars, was able to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... since I left Australia. We'd fair weather and a good run till we were fairly round the Horn; but one forenoon the glass began to fall, and I saw there was heavy weather coming. After a bit it came on to blow a regular gale. The sea got up in no time, and I had to order all hands up to reef topsails. We were rather short-handed, for I could hardly get men when I started, for love or money. Well, would you believe it?—half a dozen of the fellows were below so drunk that ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... slipping away from us like—No, no: you're right, lad, she's—Pull, my lads, pull; let's get aboard. That Malay scoundrel has run her on the reef." ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... disputes: all of the Spratly Islands are claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam; parts of them are claimed by Malaysia and the Philippines; in 1984, Brunei established an exclusive economic zone, which encompasses Louisa Reef, but has ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... death, as we thought—little knowing the fell purpose for which he had been stationed to hold out the flaring torch as a welcoming beacon to be seen afar by any vessel in distress. I glanced at the dangerous ring of coral reef round the island on which the ship had once struck, and then looked at the repulsive islander, who sat gazing at us with a savage leer. Although somewhat resembling a Papuan, as Hassan had said, we were soon destined ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The red ensign was already fluttering from a staff at the stern, and the house flag of David Verity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke's fighting mettle. The Andromeda would probably crack like an eggshell the instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; he determined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not put out of action by a bullet before he ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... bore away for Kennebeck river. In the latter part of the night, there came on a thick fog and our fleet was separated. At break of day we found ourselves in a most dangerous situation, very near a reef of rocks. The rocks indeed appeared on all sides of us, so that we feared we should have been dashed to pieces on some of them. We were brought into this deplorable situation by means of liquor being dealt out too freely to our pilots.—Their intemperance much endangered their ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... crimson maple-boughs, I know by heart each burning leaf, Yet would that like a barren reef Stripped to the breeze those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... fern, Gum and mulga and sand, Reef and palm — but my fancies turn Ever away from land; Strange wild cities in ancient state, Range and river and tree, Snow and ice. But my star of fate ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Captain Edwards, was despatched to apprehend the mutineers, and bring them back to England for trial and punishment. The Pandora reached Tahiti March 23, 1791, set sail, with fourteen prisoners, May 8, and was wrecked on the "Great Barrier Reef" north-east of Queensland, August 29, 1791. Four of the prisoners, including George Stewart, who had been manacled, and were confined in "Pandora's box," perished in the wreck, and the remaining ten were brought back to England, and tried by court-martial. (See The Eventful History ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... E.N.E. And having run about nine leagues by estimation, with the wind and current, we found the land to turn away N. and N. by W.[267] giving me hopes of a good road. At this point of land there cometh put a great river,[268] by the stream of which there has been raised a reef or shoal, extending half a mile into the sea from the point, and occasioning a smoother road. Bringing that sand to bear S.S.W. there is good and safe anchorage in six and a half fathoms, two miles from the land. Two leagues north from this point, which, for distinction, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... day I received orders to draw nearer and to remain in the vicinity of the first boat, because its pilot was sailing less skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in the twilight, I felt a shock, then another, and still another. The water poured in rapidly. I had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk was able barely to pass because it had a foot less draught than mine. Soon my ship was quite full, listed over, and all of us—twenty-eight men—had to sit on the uptilted edge of the boat. The little island lies at Jesirat Marka, 200 miles north ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... each man, limited to his own little sphere, and limited to his own interests, and guided by his own prejudices and passions, has been as ignorant of more general tendencies as the coral insect of the reef which it has helped to build. To become distinctly conscious of what it is that we have all been doing all this time, is one step in advance. We have obeyed in ignorance; and as obedience becomes conscious, we may hope, within certain narrow limits, to command, or, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... glimpse of Tresham bending down, coaxing and flattering our little girl. He's a bad man, sent with sorrow and shame wherever he goes, and I know it just as I know the long dead roll of the waves and the white creeping mist—like a dirty thief—which makes me cry out at sea 'All hands to reef! Quick! ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hollered our capting. "Reef your arft hoss, splice your main jib-boom, and hail your chamber-maid! What's up in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Sailor's foe; Both live by Heaven's free gale, that plays aloud In the stretch'd canvass and the piping shroud; The rush of winds, the flapping sails above, And rattling planks within, are sounds we love; Calms are our dread; when tempests plough the deep, We take a reef, and to the rocking sleep." "Ha!" quoth the Miller, moved at speech so rash, "Art thou like me? then where thy notes and cash? Away to Wapping, and a wife command, With all thy wealth, a guinea in thine hand; There with thy messmates quaff ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... the captain's bridge stood the pilot. He is the man who tells just where to make the steamer go in the harbor. He knows where everything is. He knows where the rocks are on the right and he didn't let the steamer bump them. He knows where the sand reef is on the left and he didn't let the steamer get on to that. He knows just where the deep water is and he kept the steamer ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... us as if we had been on the point of death, and now that we were mercifully set free we sang a Te Deum and went forward very cautiously, hardly daring to set sails lest we should chance upon some reef ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... on the needle, as used to be done, as if the surgeon was surprised at his own success, but the needle should be passed just far enough to expose the end of the ligature, which must be seized by forceps and cautiously drawn through. It must then be tied very firmly and secured with a reef knot. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Jersey, Isle of Man, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands 14 US - American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... outwardly calm, but with a proud flush under his pallor; she was visibly excited, and could not stand on the same spot for many seconds together. By this time the noise made by the bookmakers in the inclosure below was like that of ten thousand sea fowl on a reef of rock, and Glory was trying to speak above ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was built for utility and possessed a simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The schooners were at first very small because it was believed that large fore-and-aft sails could not be handled with safety. They were difficult to reef or lower in a blow until it was discovered that three masts instead of two made the task much easier. For many years the three-masted schooner was the most popular kind of American merchant vessel. They clustered in every Atlantic ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... day after leaving Ulietea, at eleven o'clock a.m., we saw land bearing N.W., which, upon a nearer approach, we found to be a low reef island about four leagues in compass, and of a circular form. It is composed of several small patches connected together by breakers, the largest lying on the N.E. part. This is Howe Island, discovered by Captain Wallis, who, I think, sent his boat to examine it; ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... we should like it amazingly. We are sure not to get tired, if papa will take us. We will work our passage; will pull and haul, and learn to reef and steer, and do everything ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... flow of water, the channel such as it was, set directly for the obstruction, and it might be possible to drop down on it from above—if one provided some means for getting back again. Stonor marked the position of every rock, every reef above, and little ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Ancre from the Schwaben the hill of the right bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt. All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef. At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more ragged than ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... be made in various places upon one or more of the above authorities, for differences between them were frequent and sometimes considerable, and in one instance alone a reduction of 12' in the chart was obtained. It is said in Hawkesworth (III, 202), "As soon as we got within side the reef (through Providential Channel) we anchored in nineteen fathom;" and afterwards (p. 204), that the channel, "bore E. N. E. distant ten or twelve miles." In the first chart the distance is 141/2 miles, and nearly the same in that which accompanies the narrative; but in the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... shaped my course for the old rock. The breeze soon freshened into a gale; we ran slap before it, but soon found it necessary to take in the top-gallant sails. This we at last accomplished, one at a time. We then thought a reef or two in the topsails would be acceptable; but that was impossible. We tried a Spanish reef, that is, let the yards come down on the cap: and she flew before the gale, which had now increased to a very serious ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dangerous by the thousands of coral islands and coral reefs that stud the ocean. Following the shoreline of Queensland, at a distance of from ten to one hundred and fifty miles, and stretching for twelve hundred and fifty miles, is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, one of the wonders of the world. The shelving floor of the ocean rises nearly to the surface along this line, and vast colonies of coral building creatures have formed their reefs up to the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... much where the tide took me after that, till presently the tossing of my boat warned me that I must be on the reef off Kilgorman cliffs. In the darkness I could see nothing, but my memory was strong enough to serve for moon and compass both. On this tide and with this wind ten minutes would bring me ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... loss of sleep, had gone to his stateroom and the first mate was in charge. It was three o'clock, the wind still blowing and the darkness pitchy, when the forward lookout shrieked a warning, "Breakers under the lee!" Almost the next instant the ship was on a coral reef, full of water, and the seas breaking over her ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... God pointed out,—for to Him I cried In that terrible moment of need,— A craggy reef in the gulf's dark side; I seized it in haste, and from death was then freed. And there, on sharp corals, was hanging the cup,— The fathomless pit had else swallowed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... portion of the house had fallen, melted away. Where it stood, just below the line of shingle, it was now like a structure wasting on a tormented submerged reef. The whole line was given over ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of all below. As it rises as slowly as growth of a coral reef it increases the courage of those below in proportion as ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... triumphs are so closely interwoven with the appliances of common life that we are prone to lose sight of them. From the aniline dye that beautifies a picture or a dress, to the explosive that lifts a reef or mines the Alps for a highway, the gradations are infinite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... 1780) lateen, i.e., triangular, like the sail of a galley. The Saracens, or Moors, were the great galley sailors of the Mediterranean, and mizen comes from Arab., miezen, balance. The mizen is, even now, a sail that 'balances,' and the reef in a mizen is still ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... suggested improvement in lighthouse apparatus. The outdoor and seafaring parts of an engineer's life were in fact wholly to his taste. But he looked instinctively at the powers and phenomena of waves and tide, of storm and current, reef, cliff, and rock, with the eye of the poet and artist, and not those of the practician and calculator. For desk work and office routine he had an unconquerable aversion; and his physical powers, had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quantity. The war was over. Had not the highest officials said that it was over. The recruiting-sergeant went out into the highways and hedges to collect the fuel for Lord Kitchener's final operation. It mattered not the quality—it was only quantity. The war was over. The gates of the Gold Reef City would again be open. Then the mass of degraded manhood which had fled from Johannesburg at the first muttering of thunder in the war-cloud flocked from their hiding-places on the Cape Colony seaboard and fell upon the recruiting-sergeant's neck. Mean whites ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... the Sun himself Leapt laughing through the rain And struck his harper hand along The ringing coast; and that wind-song Whose joy is mixed with pain Forgot the undertone of grief And joined the jocund strain, And over every hidden reef Whereon the waves broke merrily Rose jets and sprays of melody And leapt ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... mother-in-law had always lived with him, and she was "difficult." Who knows how keenly the sick woman's mind ran on the possibilities of reef and quicksand for the alien two left alone without her guiding hand? So she set the warning of her love and fear to be no more forgotten while she herself ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... was gone; and the money Mark and Mamma had paid back to him. He had taken it all out of his own business, and put it into the Sheba Mines and Joe's Reef, and the Golconda Company where he ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... set sail in a strong breeze from the south-west. The Ariel, aided by the ebb tide, had already lost sight of land when a violent storm arose. The imprudent young fellows were still intoxicated. No one was at the helm, not a reef was in the sail. The masts were carried away by the furious gusts, and the wreck was driven before the wind. Then came a great ship which passed over the Ariel as the Ariel would have ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... old man, Spaniard or Portuguese, who was said to know where the ship lay, and "by the policy of his address" wormed from him some further information about the treasure-ship. The old man told him that it had been wrecked on a reef of shoals a few leagues from Hispaniola, and just north of Port de la Plata, which place got its name from the landing there of a boat-load of sailors with plate saved from the sinking vessel. Phips proceeded thither and searched narrowly, but without avail. The sea held its treasures ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was discovered that the ship was thrown on a reef of rocks, and had bilged; and although the water entered her through the holes which the rocks had made, and filled her up to the lower beams, yet that it soon smothered, and, the bilge pieces keeping her upright, she lay comparatively quiet. But being fearful that she might beat over the ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... his men were of no great use to him, "But, then," he would say, "there is little to do on a gunboat trim I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too— And it IS such a treat to sail with a gentle ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... tropical night, with the soft, cool touch of the ever-blowing trade wind, the shadowy grace of the giant coconut-palms swaying and whispering on the nearby beach in the moonlight, while the surf, lapping upon the coral reef on the outer side of the isle, lulled them with its ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... commands that sent sailors shinning up masts, for all the world like so many monkeys. The St. Pierre, our ship was called, in honour of Pierre Radisson; for admiral and captain and trader, all in one, was Sieur Radisson, himself. Indeed, he could reef a sail as handily as any old tar. I have seen him take the wheel and hurl Allemand head-foremost from the pilot-house when that sponge-soaked rascal had imbibed more gin than was safe for ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... said Josh. "See yon island, sir?" he continued, pointing to a long black reef standing up out of the sea about half a mile from shore. "Why, I've known that covered by the waves. They'll wash right over it, and send their tops clean over them ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... the broken bulwark, and the boat rose again on the waves as they swept one after another down upon her stern. The channel was well marked now, for the sands on either side were covered with breaking water. Joe Chambers shouted to the sailors to close reef the mizzen and hoist it, so that he might have the boat better under control. The wind was not directly astern but somewhat on the quarter; and small as was the amount of sail shown, the boat lay over till her ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... like. If all the mills all at once, with the thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... while fishing off Hammond Island, was caught by the rising tide and drowned, Hammond Rock springing up immediately after to mark the spot. His wives, who were watching him at the time, resolved to drown themselves, and were changed into some dry rocks upon an adjacent reef named after them Ipile, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... it will snugly lie, 'Tis as thin as a red rose-leaf, Yet it holds the seagull's sorrowing cry, And the roar of the tide-lashed reef. ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... toes. We have got her head to the southward and westward again; another reef in the topsails," (which word Mr. Truck pronounced tawsails, with great unction,) "England well under our lee, and the Atlantic ocean right before us. Six hours on this course, and we make ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... tight little island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... seat with a contented grin, while his colleague manipulated the unwieldy whip. The tract ran parallel to the Rand for some distance, and we got a splendid view of Johannesburg and the row of chimney-shafts that so clearly define the reef. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... breakers occasionally reached to the foot of the bank and in some places actually undermined it. At a distance of about half a mile to seaward a long line of white water betrayed the position of a reef. ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the billows come rolling, maybe, from the fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the shore. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few substitutes for them, are not far wrong in speaking ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... companion with a look half of pity, half of sympathy, and shrugged up his shoulders as he replied"Wait, young manwait till your bark has been battered by the storm of sixty years of mortal vicissitude: you will learn by that time, to reef your sails, that she may obey the helm;or, in the language of this world, you will find distresses enough, endured and to endure, to keep your feelings and sympathies in full exercise, without concerning yourself more in the fate of others than ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... fish, or of mending the nets, or of watching the cranes which stalked about the sands. Sometimes, in order to be yet more secure from disturbance, the brother and sister would put off again, when they had landed Paul with his prize, and get upon the coral reef, half a mile off—in calm weather collecting the shell-fish which were strewed there in multitudes, and watching the while the freaks and sports of the dolphins in the clear depths around; and in windy weather sitting in the midst of the spray, which was dashed ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... had parted from the Sage, and the days began to shorten and the nights to lengthen apace; when on the forenoon of a day, after they had ridden a very rugged mountain-neck, they came down and down into a much wider valley into which a great reef of rocks thrust out from the high mountain, so that the northern half of the said vale was nigh cleft atwain by it; well grassed was the vale, and a fair river ran through it, and there were on either side the water great groves of tall and great sweet-chestnuts ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... a reef completely submerged at full tide and only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on it meant placing a foundation under water, a ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... the U.S. frigate Philadelphia, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, had gone upon a reef just outside the harbor of Tripoli and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats. The Tripolitans got her off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... devised from the cover of a grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the Eclaire being rechristened the Sylph, the Actif becoming the Hawke. Lieutenant Farrance was promoted to the rank of captain, and given the command of the latter vessel, and some of the survivors of a ship that had a fortnight before been lost on a dangerous reef were told off to her. He was, according to rule, permitted to take a boat's crew and a midshipman with him from his old ship, and he selected Will Gilmore, and, among the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... kind Father took pity upon his little Bluebird. And what do you think? He made a baby earthquake which heaved a rocky point of land up through the waves, just big enough for a little bird's perch. It was a tiny reef, and a crack in the rock held but a few drops of the rain which began to fall; but it meant at least a moment's safety and draught of life for the weary bird, and glad enough ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... was begun in so deductive a spirit as this, for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of South America, before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of South America of the ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... whose natural powers are developed to the highest pitch? Is a native of the Andaman Islands the superior of Socrates? If you admit that Socrates is superior to the savage, where do you draw the line between the natural and the artificial? If a coral reef is natural and beautiful because it is the work of insects, and a town artificial and ugly because made by man, we must reject as unnatural all the best products of the human race. If you distinguish ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... it us, then. It may do good. At all events, we owe it, for what's been done to us. So take a reef out o' your tongue, lad, an' ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... he went up on Brimstone with Percy and the others to take a look at the Barona. The steel hull lay on its side on the foaming reef, a battered, crumpled shape, sadly different from the trim yacht that had left New York so short a time before. A miscellaneous lot of wreckage was swashing in the surf at the base of the point, and Jim and some of the crew were salvaging what they ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
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