"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... reef. Our aquatic wives. Premonitions. A picnic on the mountain. Hearts and flowers. Whinney delivers a geological dissertation. Babai finds a fatu-liva nest. The strange flower in ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... 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
... 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 it makes ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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
... executed so delicate a piece of workmanship, but he had never seen its equal. Every curve of the exquisite-hued waves was studied from the swell that sometimes swept grandly in from the lake on the long reef of rocks a few miles above St. Ignace. The form of the goddess was modelled from his remembrance of the Greek antique. It was a gem worthy of an emperor. What should he ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • 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 a severe shock, which, to my vivid ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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
... 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) ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... 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 |
