"Choppy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was rather old for his work, but he was so extraordinarily peaceful that you could not help liking him, and I had a vague feeling that he was my grandfather. The change from Mr. Edwardes to him was like going to bed in a choppy sea and waking up in a punt on the Cherwell. I can't explain the feeling I had for him, but he seemed to be surrounded by a homely atmosphere, and he reminded me of hot-water bottles and well-aired beds without making me feel stuffy. You worked for him ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... little past six away we steered for home, but with a head wind and rather choppy sea, so there was no help for it but to tack, which made a long trip of it; but to make it short to the reader we reached home about nine p.m., tired, wet, and hungry, for it began to drizzle at sundown. Still, I never enjoyed ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... boat, so as to reach Queenstown for an early breakfast at the club, and then a long drive to the meet. Sitting in an open boat at 4 A.M. on a dark winter's morning, with perhaps a head wind and four miles of a choppy sea to battle against, required a considerable amount of endurance and keenness, but we did it all right. It used to strike me as an odd circumstance in those days that the Tommies who manned the boat were so pleasant over the job. They were not going to hunt. They were not ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... whole, this bing-bing-bing style of writing cannot be commended. Its value in rapid narrative, where excitement prevails and the reader's emotions are greatly aroused, is evident. But the style, indulged in too freely, produces a fitful, choppy effect that is not good. The sentences should be longer and more varied in construction. Examination of the preceding illustration shows that it has only three words or phrases used for subconnection, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... into the British Channel, for the simple and sufficient reason that there was no such channel at the time. Where now exists that famous passage which makes islands of Great Britain, where, tossed upon the choppy waves, the travelers of the world are seasick, where Drake and Howard chased the Great Armada to the Northern seas and where, to-day, the ships of the nations are steered toward a social and commercial center, was then good, solid earth ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... that a needle, when rubbed with a lodestone, has the mysterious power of pointing to the north. The Arabs may have introduced this rude form of the compass among Mediterranean sailors. The instrument, improved by being balanced on a pivot so that it would not be affected by choppy seas, seems to have been generally used by Europeans as early as the thirteenth century. It greatly aided sailors by enabling them to find their bearings in murky weather and on starless nights. The compass, though useful, was not indispensable; without its help the Northmen had made their ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... a north-east wind suddenly arose which stirred the blue waters of the Mediterranean until the short choppy waves gave to the vessel a new and peculiar roll, differing from any previously experienced by those on board. As a result, many of the passengers, not being able to adjust themselves to this unfamiliar change of motion, became suddenly pale, and prudently retired to the privacy of their staterooms. ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... shook a shower from the madly rippling ivy leaves. The sky was high and pale, and crossed by hurrying and scattered clouds; a clean, roaring gale tore over the hills, and ruffled the rain pools in the road, and bowed the trees like whips. The bay was iron colour; choppy waves chased each other against the piers. Now and then a pale flicker of sunlight brightened the whole scene with blues and greens and shadows spectacularly clear; then the clouds met again, and the wind sang like ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... time," he said. "Never halloo for the prairie until you are clear of the forest. If the wind remains in its present quarter, we are fortunate. Should it happen to veer round to the eastward, and you see the rocks of Tierra del Fuego lashed by the choppy sea that can run even through a land-locked channel, you will be ready to open two bottles as a thanks-offering. Is this your first trip round by ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... three days of the voyage the rather choppy sea and consequent motion of the boat caused some sickness. This prevented close supervision and the adoption of strict routine at the outset and laid much extra work and worry on those who had good sea legs. However, ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... trying, weary night, and when the sun arose the sea was one panorama of short, choppy waves. The seamen were tired with rowing, and it was evident that no great effort was being made to ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... awoke in the morning at his beautiful home on Whitehall Street, the sun was gayly glinting the choppy waves of Buttermilk Channel, and by his watch, which had run down, he saw that it was one o'clock, but whether it was one o'clock A.M. or P.M. he did not know, nor whether it was next Saturday or Tuesday before last. Oh, how he must ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... left as a present for "Johnnie," and that was about all. The A.S.C. set fire to everything they could not take away, and a fine bonfire it made. The morning we left the wind rose, the sea became choppy, the Turks attacked in great style, bombarding the beaches very heavily, smashing the piers and nearly wiping ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... had not come to find a Western Sea. With the quick choppy stroke of the Indian paddler they were conveying him down that eastern shore of Lake Huron now known as Georgian Bay, from French River to Parry Sound and Midland and Penetang. Where these little towns to-day stand on the hillsides was a howling ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... days. The effect of this bombardment was to obliterate all signs of life on that part of the earth, with the exception of a few horrible, naked, and shattered trees. Nothing green was visible anywhere. In fact the land looked as though it had been a very choppy earth-brown sea suddenly frozen to stillness. Everywhere was shell-holes, shell-holes, shell-holes—large and small. Only by careful searching could one ascertain where enemy trenches had been. ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... to make for the shore, but got in where the surface of the ice was rough and choppy. Ned Allen and Toby reached out to grasp Hen as they neared him. Young Dutcher made a switching-away movement, and the next instant he had fallen flat on his face. He let out ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... a bit choppy. We had the fiddles on most of the time," Hesketh replied. "Most of the time. Now, how do you find the bicycle trade over here? Languishing, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the saloon, and wished for the day. We slept through troubled dreams, and woke to a gathering calm on the sea. As our eager eyes swept the view by daylight, we found that we were in a semicircular and unsheltered bay, whose choppy water harboured two warships that were desultorily firing. Near us a ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... boat seemed changed. By the motion the men were rowing across a choppy current, probably toward shore. Joe found this to be so, a little later, for the boat's side grated against what was probably a ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... this type rich in the predominance des sensations visuelles. Disconnected by his constant abuse of the dash—he must have studied Poe not too wisely—infinitesimal strokes of colour supplying the place of a large-moulded syntax, this prose has not unity, precision, speed, euphony. Its rhythms are choppy, the dabs of paint, the shadings within shadings, the return upon itself of the theme, the reticent, inverted sentences, the absence of architectonic and the fatal lack of variety, surprise, or grandeur in the harmonic sense, these ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... in France in thirty days," said Jones, when his dispatches were placed in his hands, about midnight of October the thirty-first. And, running by the whirling eddies of "Pull-and-be-damned" Point, he soon had the Ranger clear of the low-lying Isle of Shoals: the sea cross and choppy, but the good ship bowling along before a fresh ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... and the big chunk of ice that served the refugees as a raft was moving quite rapidly over a choppy sea. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... splendid sea boat, but in the course of an hour the choppy waves kicked up by the storm set her to bobbing about like the proverbial cork. The gloom of the night had changed to a blackness that made it impossible to see an arm's length away. Standing on the starboard bridge, I could scarcely distinguish the faint white foam gathered ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... and saw the fellow under the lamp, just lifting the silver cap to his lips. A disagreeable smile moulded the long face, wrinkled the nostrils and slid away under the choppy blond mustache. The strong light from the overhead lamp brought out an ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person. One's grounds lose all individuality thus treated. A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn. Do not centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... was wholly out of sight of land. The wind was fresh and the sea lively with short, choppy waves, crested by white-caps. Yet, for boats as staunch as these submarines, sea was not a difficult one for ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... behind it with greater frequency. He strained his eyes to keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda. A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more than one good ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... was a bridge builder named Elton Reeves. Elton had a pleasant, sun-burnt face and a little choppy moustache beneath which his teeth glistened ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... body of service grey—the latest type of seaplane. It was one of those oily seas in which a watcher from the air may follow a submarine for miles, as an olive green shadow under the lighter green. The U-boat doubled twice; but it was half an hour before her sunken shadow was lost to sight under choppy blue waters, and long before that time she was evidently at ease in her mind and pursuing a steady course. For the moment her trail was then lost, and the hawk, having reported her course, dropped out of ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... and the girl burst into a choppy laugh. "Me, know who the Weasle is?" she repeated again. "That's a good 'un. Why don't you ask Bentley?" and before they realized her intention she stooped for the empty lunch box, and with her free hand threw it full force at Louise's ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... was calm and afforded a beautiful sail, but during the night a strong breeze came up and its intensity varied during the night. The next day, however, the sea became choppy, and over two-thirds of the natives were rolling around on the deck in the agonies ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... crushed it and finally made of it nothing but a little green, flabby lump which no longer moved or spoke. Then she wrapped it in a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her nightgown, barefoot; she crossed the dock, against which the choppy waves of the sea were beating, and she shook the cloth and let drop this little dead thing, which looked like so much grass. Then she returned, threw herself on her knees before the empty cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... She's going down!" yelled Al Torrance, clinging to a stay beside Whistler, as the cutter bobbed through the rather choppy seas. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... of the river's wide flow, swollen by recent heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter driftwood, while making slow but certain headway ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to us at the outside. We shall have pretty nearly a dead beat down the Solent. Fortunately the tide will be running strong with us, but there will be a nasty kick up there. You will see we shall feel the short choppy seas there more than we shall when we get outside. She is a grand boat in a really heavy sea, but in short waves she puts her nose into it with a will. Now, if you will take my advice, you will do as I am going to do; put on a pair of fisherman's boots and oilskin and sou'wester. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... general pot, he had succeeded to his own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet. Quick to take a cue, he circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected fragments with whomsoever he ran up against. The Miss Mortimer, who spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the Canadian voyageurs, and left her gasping and meditating over a proposition to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... and triumph rose and fell and swelled again. Bentley became the center of a struggling vortex of roaring humanity and found himself tossed hither and thither like a chip in a choppy sea. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... craft of any kind was in sight. The horizon formed a small, close circle round the ship. Clouds hung low, running before the wind, and bringing intermittently little dashes of rain that seemed still further to compress the walls of horizon. The sea was not what could be called rough, but merely choppy and fretful, with short waves that would not have troubled a larger craft. The steamer proved to be a small, undistinguished dingy-looking boat, more like a commercial tramp than a government vessel. An officer, apparently the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... with a stiff breeze blowing. The water was fairly choppy, but the boat sped along, occasionally dashing the spray into the two young faces. Madge wore a white cloth cap, with a visor, such as ship's officers wear, and looked as nautical as she felt. Both ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... last ounce, with tremendous courage and good heart; there was always a touch of fear that Gray Peter, plunging unabated over rough and smooth, might be running himself out. But Sally would not maintain one pace. She was apt to shorten her stride for choppy going, and she would lengthen it like a witch on the level. She kept changing the elevation of her head. She ran freely, looking about her and taking note of what she saw, so that she gave an indescribable effect of enjoying the gallop just as much as her rider, but in a different way. All ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... this is that the vast body of water which forms the North Sea, in forcing its way between the narrow straits of Dover, is driven into short cross-waves and currents, which make the sea always choppy and rough. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... see so much flesh on my bones; did you?" said Mercy, noting their surprise, and being just as sharp and choppy in her observations as ever. "But I'm getting wickedly and scandalously fat. And I don't often have to repeat Aunt Alviry's song of 'Oh, my back and oh, ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... things the British Channel was the most disappointing thing we encountered in our travels. All my reading on this subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The channel may have been suetty but it was not choppy. The steamer that ferried us over ran as steadily as a clock and everybody felt as ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... morning, with a grey, cold, choppy sea on, the spray from which dashed over the boat, wetting me thoroughly, and making me feel pinched, blear-eyed, and miserable. I even envied the seals I saw cosily asleep in dry, sandy caves, at the foot of the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... and Jonas took their places on board the ship, and sailed for Rome. It was now far in November, and the passage was a boisterous one; and the size of the waves astonished John, accustomed, as he was, only to the short choppy seas of the Lake of Galilee. Jonas made up his mind that they were lost and, indeed, for some days the vessel was in imminent danger. Instead of passing through the straits between Sicily and the mainland of Italy, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... answer. "Nearly all the hurricane signs are beginning to show. Look at the sea! If you'll notice, the surface is fairly glassy, showing that there is not much surface wind. Yet, in spite of that, there is a heavy, choppy, yet rolling swell coming up on ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... at that choppy eloquence, openly seized the friendly young hand and wrung it till Alice begged, laughing but bruised, for mercy. When he came up, later, to bid her good-night, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the thousand-mile journey down the St. Lawrence began. When they reached the ocean they joined a convoy of a dozen ships, screened in a cold mist and rocked by a choppy sea. Then began the ocean voyage of twelve days, through fog and rain and over a rough, gray sea. At night it was early to bed, because lights ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... from the point of other people's judgment of him—it would be of consequence to have a clergyman for a son-in-law. Slowly he raised himself in his chair, opened his unsteady eyes, which rolled and pitched like boats on a choppy sea, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... came: the wind was his whip: One choppy finger was on his lip: He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the boat was very small for such a sea. The women and a child had to disembark here, and were almost in tears, and the length of time that the boatmen took to make up their minds to come out from the harbour and face the choppy sea did not reassure them. Nero marched bravely up and down the deck, giving vent every now and then to a rather cracked crow, and we wondered how he escaped being blown overboard! Fortunately he carried very little sail, only two ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... and the conning-tower just on a level with the short, choppy waves, the Ithuriel ran round to the south of the line at ten knots, as they were anxious not to kick up any fuss in the water, lest a chance searchlight from the enemy might fall upon them, and lead to trouble. She got within a mile of the first ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... an amplifier that magnifies it and makes it discernible to our ears. When you listen in on a wireless telephone you will be uncontestably conscious of this. Also you must take into consideration that the waves sent out by a radio transmitter are not choppy, irregular ones such as you get when a stone is tossed into the water; wireless waves go out in regular, well-formed relays that neither overlap nor obscure one another. Were this not so the signals made would be jumbled together and ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... There was a no'thwest wind coming up, and the waves were running pretty choppy on the bar. All I could think of was that gasoline. Was there enough in the pipes and the feed cup on that launch to carry her out to where I was? Or was there too much, and would she make the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... twenty-four hours out from port and ploughing along steadily through a choppy sea when Mr. Mott, the First Officer, reported to Captain Trigger that a stowaway ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... at the finish came the instant shout of names; out of the short choppy cries two names especially emerged, "Flack! Flack! Flack!" "Westby! Westby! Westby!" Those two were the favorites for the event. Irving saw the scratch men forge ahead, and mingle with the handicap runners; in the confusion of flying white figures he could not ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... swung lightly over the choppy water, and a strong affection for the ketch that had been his home, his occupation, his solace through the past dreary years expanded his heart. He knew the Gar's every capability and mood, and they were all good. She was an exceptional boat. His feeling ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... steadily along, always to the north and east. On the morning of the second day her passengers had caught glimpses, to the larboard, of the shores of Nova Scotia. Later they rounded Cape Breton, and then, against a howling wind and a choppy sea, headed north into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Maid of the North was a sturdy boat, and though she pitched and tossed in a way that disarranged the mechanism of her passengers, she did nothing to ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... she replied. "I can manage a sail; I know the argot, I could tell the shrouds from the bulwarks, and I've rowed a boat in a choppy sea." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... France with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches and dead history—only the khaki-clad figures reminded ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... clouds, as from a flying plane.... And now I see the sun—it is sinking behind a rugged line of snowy peaks and the light is dimming.... It is gone now, but it is not dark, for moonlight, pale and silvery, is shimmering on a choppy sea.... Now it is the darkest hour, but it is never black, only a dark, dark grey, for the roof of the world is pricked with a million points of light.... The grey of the east is shot with the rose of dawn.... The rose brightens to scarlet and the curve of the sun appears—red like ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... first was written long, in the style of sixty years ago; and the whole letter was as easily legible as print. Across the top was written: "To Agatha Redmond, daughter of my ward and dear friend, Agatha Shaw Redmond"; and below that, in the lawyer's choppy handwriting, was a date of nearly a year previous. As Agatha Redmond read the second letter, a smile, half of sadness, half of pleasure, overspread her countenance. It ran ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... "Choppy," muttered Doctor Ledyard as he sat across the hearth from his hostess and looked now at her fair, tranquil face and then at the cheerful fire of ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Records 1. 2733—Orders of Vice-Admiral Buckle to Capt. Yates, 29 April 1778.] In such work as this man-o'-war boats were of little use. Just as they could not negotiate Deal beach without danger of being reduced to matchwood, so they could not live in the choppy sea kicked up in the Downs by a westerly gale. Folkstone market boats and Deal cutters had to be requisitioned for pressing in those waters. Their seaworthiness and speed made the Downs the crux of inward-bound ships, whose only means of escaping their attentions was to incur ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Royan. It was no easy matter to find this spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loo joined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helped to make fast in a choppy sea. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... dancers clapped and the orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Surbiton, of whom he was extremely fond, finally persuaded him that if he stayed at Danieli's by himself he would be moped to death, and on the morning of the 15th they started, with a strong nor'-east wind blowing, and a rather choppy sea. The sport was excellent, and the free, open-air life brought the colour back to Lord Arthur's cheek, but about the 22nd he became anxious about Lady Clementina, and, in spite of Surbiton's remonstrances, came back to ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the girls appeared we had yanked up all the sails that was handy, and the Pyxie was slanted over, just scootin' through the choppy water gay and careless, like she was glad to ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... heavy-laden boats against the floe-ice, ultimately drove them ashore, and nearly cost the little party their lives. On that last day of the long struggle up the stream, a stiff north-easter was cutting the middle reach of the mighty river, two miles wide here, into a choppy ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... given, and the two competitors started off in grand style, plunging in and out among the beds like dolphins in a choppy sea. Jack led from the first; he dashed up to the row of chairs a long way in front of Hamond, and had wriggled the greater portion of his body through the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there is an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores. It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy finger upon her skinny ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... up, the clouds were flying fast across the sky, and the wind was working round to the east, knocking up a short choppy sea as it met the ebb, and covering the river with ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... blasted heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence; and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of thane of Glamis. The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures; but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sitting beside a young lady whom I had never seen or heard of before. She asked if she might look into my crystal, and while she did so I happened to look over her shoulder and saw a ship tossing on a very heavy choppy sea, although land was still visible in the dim distance. That vanished, and, as suddenly, a little house appeared with five or six (I forget now the exact number I then counted) steps leading up to the door. On the second step stood ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... rather choppy, in spite of the calmness of the day; consequently, the Catwhisker was unable to make a record run to the head of the St. Lawrence River. Ontario is not a placid lake, although it has not the heavy roughness that characterizes Lake Huron. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... therefore always kept his soul merry, he was happiest of all during the time of his noviceship. The very air around him breathed of God and heaven. His life there was really an unbroken prayer. He was like a swimmer who has been fighting his way through nasty, choppy, little waves, going ahead surely, but with great difficulty, and who comes at last into long, quiet, rolling swells, where his progress is delightful, where he can make long, easy strokes and feel pleasure in ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... America from a voyage to France, and was in line formation with the U.S.S. Susquehanna, the U.S.S. Antigone, and the U.S.S. Ryndam, the latter being on the left flank of the formation and about 800 yards from the President Lincoln. The weather was pleasant, the sun shining brightly, with a choppy sea. The ships were about 500 miles from the coast of France and had passed through what was considered to be the most dangerous part of the war zone. At about 9 a.m. a terrific explosion occurred on the port side of the ship about ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short, choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch about like corks in a boiling caldron. I was told by some of the correspondents who had cruised in these waters that often, for days at a time, it was almost impossible to ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... we would have ordinarily sent the vaa spinning through the water; but we were nearing the southernmost extremity of the Presqu'ile, and the wind and current from the northeast swept about the broken coast in a confusion of puffs and blasts, choppy waves and roaring breakers, and made our progress slow and hazardous. The breeze caught up the foam and formed sheets of vapor which whipped our faces and blinded us, while an occasional roller broke on our prow, and soon gave Tatini continuous ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... flung over. The two boats were now bobbing side by side, for they were well out in the bay, and the sea was quite choppy. The tide was running out, and help had come to the boys ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... from banks and bars began to lift in the wind. It smarted our faces like little whip lashes. Very often we could see no further than a hundred and fifty yards in any direction. Only by a constant, rapid dipping of the oars could the boat be held perpendicular to the choppy waves. One stroke missed meant hard work for both of us in ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... they had been memorizing "The First Snow-Fall," but were not as yet, letter-perfect in the verses. The teacher encouraged them. Twenty odd juvenile voices resumed the choppy, monotonous chant. John gripped his ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... a fine mist, but the breeze continued choppy and strong at times. Dave had gone over the course with Mr. King in The Aegis twice in the daytime, and had an accurate idea of the route. However, he had landmarks to follow. What guided Dave were the lights of ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... When a dozen choppy strokes had taken him out of sight of the shore his panic subsided a little and two thoughts came to him. The first was that he was treating Han rather scurvilly and the second was that he hadn't more ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... not the eloquence of Borrow, though the thought might have been his; it may not be in that grand style of which we hear so much and read so little, but—and this is the substance of the matter—it is interesting, it is moving, and worth pages of choppy dialogue. You read it, first of all, it may be in your youth, when your heart burnt within you as you wondered what was going to happen, but you can return to it in sober age and read it over again ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... last to a difficult, narrow, canon trail, where the pony hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she came upon the head. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps while the chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was his own name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken up into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trained reporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, but telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which his name recurred again ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... down the line in that mysterious fashion by which information passes down a line of waiting men. The line rose, advanced, and dropped again. Companies deployed to the left and behind—fighting their way through the chaparral as a swimmer buffets his way through choppy waves. Every man saw now that the brigade was trying to form in line of battle for a charge on that curving, smokeless flame of fire that ran to and fro around the top of the hill—blazing fiercely and steadily here ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... swells had changed into angry, choppy waves from the tops of which the spindrift streamed in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of the Volhynia and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the youthful sun was shining on the choppy water of the Irish Sea, just off the Little Orme, to the west of Llandudno Bay. Oscillating on the uneasy waves was Denry's lifeboat, manned by the nodding bearded head, three ordinary British longshoremen, a Norwegian who could speak English of two syllables, and two other Norwegians ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... long in Shanghai, but embraced the first opportunity to reach Foo Chow. It was a coast voyage of several days and was attended with much discomfort, as the choppy seas through which we sailed made all of us very ill—a remarkable experience, considering the fact that during the whole of our protracted voyage we had not suffered an uncomfortable moment. We reached Foo Chow, however, in due time, and Mr. Gouverneur at once assumed ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... light-house point and made for the breakwater, the wind increased, driving a choppy sea before it. Then it was that the Richard rose to the occasion and demonstrated her natural ability to cope with ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the white horses, racing over impenetrable depths. I painted for him in words the varying colours of waves in different seas, the black purple of tropical waters, the bottle-green turmoil of a Cornish sea on a choppy day, the brown channel waves near shore, the jewelled smoothness of the Mediterranean in early morning sunshine, its silver in moonrise, melting into white and black. I told him of the crowd of voices that cry in the sea, expressing all the emotions which ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... tongue fortunately; else the things she said must have brought swift retribution. And as if she did not care for consequences and wanted to make her words carry a definite sting, she stopped, grinned maliciously, and spoke the choppy ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... absolutely stormy, proved to be rather unpleasant. A choppy northeast wind blew up the bay, and the water was rough enough. The sky was overcast with clouds, and the May air was raw and chilly. At Blue Point the Millers were early astir, for if Everett wanted to sail over to the mainland in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into the jaws of death? No man that hath his senses would do that!" refused to take out his boat even for twice his proper fare, and when the soldiers rode down to seize their prey with dreadful shouts, Tell jumped into the boat, and, rowing with all his might, brought his friend safe across after a choppy passage. Which made Gessler the Governor still ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... from the north-east and east continued the entire day, and broke into occasional severe gusts that were most troublesome to us. Heavy rain-clouds hung over our heads. My men felt cold and shivery and quite miserable in the choppy waters, which made them extremely ill. Their faces were green and yellow, their eyes had a pitiful expression in them. They looked as if they were all being led to execution. The temperature of the atmosphere ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... but there was just a little breeze blowing, and the sea was a little "choppy" outside, and, as a consequence, the Argosy rolled ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... instruments at once, working up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale; and all the dancers began to dance with a last desperate fury. Bodies buffeted one from behind, and while one was yet looking round in apology or anger more bodies buffeted one from the flank. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there is no time to get the last wave out of your mouth before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... above messing with the stewards. As the mate and he were much together it was supposed that Dalston made use of the first officer's cabin. The ship had encountered dirty weather from the very outset; head winds and choppy seas all the way down Channel, so that she was still 'kicking about off the coast'—this is how the seamen phrased it—when she ought to have been crossing the Bay or stretching away out into the broad Atlantic. She fared ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... time in his life an extraordinary, choppy air, a rapid beat that rose and fell abruptly, sending a powerful thrill through his heart as he lay there in the bushes. The words were nothing, almost without meaning, but the tune itself was full of compelling power. It set the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "I am not doing anything against His will. Only human beings and angels have free will, and I am not either, so I have no free will. Therefore, whatever I do is the will of God." He paused again, then began speaking in queer, choppy sentences. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to follow her up the ladder. It was a clear, cold, beautiful night. The sea was calm except for the white water at our bows and the two long radiating swells running far off into the distance upon either hand astern, forming a great V which our propellers filled with choppy waves. Benson was in the tower, we were bound for San ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... towering above the town they had left a few brief moments before, and beyond that the Costejo Mountains, rugged and massive and covered in part on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke the monotony of ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... we went for a herd of fifty-odd walruses that were sleeping on the ice. The wind was blowing fairly hard, and it is never easy to shoot accurately from a whale-boat which is doing a cake-walk in the arms of a choppy sea. When we got twenty yards from the ice cake, we began to fire. I hit a couple of walruses, but did not kill them, and with fierce grunts the huge brutes wriggled into the sea. They were coming our way, and all hands stood by to show ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... to thank the man. He turned into the street. The buildings swam in a garish light, he felt his head rocking, and his feet seemed scarcely to touch the paving stones rising and dipping under him like a choppy sea. He drifted into a bar, and drank brandy, and went forth again with renewed ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... look at, but much to feel. The motion of the boat, which was due to the never-ending struggle between the male stones and the force of gravitation, resembled in an exaggerated fashion the violent tossing of a small craft on a choppy sea. The two passengers became unhappy. Haunte, from his seat in the stern, gazed at them sardonically with one eye. The darkness now came ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay |
