"Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened. He suddenly dwindled in size until he was no larger than a manikin, going through the motion of drinking from a tiny bottle; while in contrast, his voice increased so tremendously in volume it broke upon my ears like a surf upon a beach. I couldn't grasp ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the foaming waters of unnamed and almost unknown mountain torrents. As one sails, at a distance of two or three miles, along this wild, beautiful coast, the picture presented by the fringe of feathery palms over the white line of surf, the steep slopes of the foot-hills, shaggy with dark-green tropical vegetation, and the higher peaks broken in places by cliffs or rocky escarpments and rising into the region of summer clouds, is one hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the tropics. The average height of this ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the dark woods, along the winding river, where the bullets sang, where the shells burst, where hundreds of brave men fell. Terrible the contest. It was like a thunder-storm among the mountains,—like the growling of the angry surf upon the shore of the ocean. How trying, after hours of hard fighting, to see the lines waver and behold the Rebels move victoriously over the field! with disaster setting in, and to know that all that is worth living for ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... now strong enough to bear any reasonable weight. My next care was what to load it with, and how to preserve what I laid upon it from the surf of the sea: but I was not long considering this. I first laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having considered well what I most wanted, I first got three of the seamen's chests, which I had broken open and emptied, and lowered them down upon my raft; ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the mariner, When at reluctant distance he hath passed Some tempting island, could but know the ills That must have fallen upon him had he brought His bark to land upon the wished-for shore, 490 Good cause would oft be his to thank the surf Whose white belt scared him thence, or wind that blew Inexorably adverse: for myself I grieve not; happy is the gowned youth, Who only misses what I missed, who falls 495 No lower than ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... surf in the moonbeam, The albatross lone on the spray, Alone know the tears wept in vain for the children Magic ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... portal, followed by her women and some few gentlemen. She held her way for two leagues on foot along the coast to the little port of Tourville, in order to reach a small vessel which she had prudently hired in case of need. On reaching the point of embarkation the sea was breaking so furiously in surf on shore, the tide being so strong and the wind so high, that Madame de Longueville's followers entreated her not to attempt to reach the vessel. But the Duchess, dreading less the angry waves than the chance of falling into the Regent's ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... this difficult operation. It was necessary to provide Sir John Hope with a number of small boats; these were accordingly brought on the backs of mules from various Spanish ports, it being impossible, on account of the surf at the entrance of the Adour, as well as the command which the French held of that river, for Lord Wellington to avail himself of water carriage. Soult had given orders for the forces under General Thevenot to dispute ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... in action, but not encouraging. He got off with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog—now darkening to twilight—with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on foot up the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... time the two other divisions, on the right and in the centre, commanded by the brigadiers Whitmore and Laurence, made a show of landing, in order to divide and distract the enemy. Notwithstanding an impetuous surf, by which many boats were overset, and a very severe fire of cannon and musketry from the enemy's batteries, which did considerable execution, brigadier Wolfe pursued his point with admirable courage and deliberation. The soldiers leaped into the water with the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... plub, the chain roared through the hawse-pipe and brought a vastly multiplied echoing roar from the invisible cliffs, and there was a sudden, myriad-voiced screeching from the startled birds. Succeeded an ominous, oppressive quiet, broken only by the dull thunder of the surf. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... discover a place to lay the boat in. This I agreed to; and the quarter-master immediately threw off his clothes. I made a lead-line fast to him under his arms, that we might pull him in if we found him exhausted. He went over the surf with great ease, until he came to the breakers on the beach, through which he could not force his way; for the moment he touched the ground with his foot, the recoil of the sea, and what is called by sailors the undertow, carried him back again, and left him ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the sounds of the organ are heard. Faint in the first, long-drawn, deeply pensive chords, they rapidly gain strength. And with a passionate sadness, their human melodies now wrestle with the dull and gloomy plaintiveness of the tireless surf. Like seagulls in a storm, the sounds soar amidst the high waves, unable to rise higher on their overburdened wings. The stern ocean holds them captive by its wild and eternal charms. But when they have risen, the lowered ocean roars more dully; now they rise still higher—and ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... his heels, and without loss of time they had reached the boat. In it were two pairs of oars. They pushed the boat down the shelving beach into the surf and jumped aboard. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their mark. But neither of these sounds held the menace of the sounds of which they reminded ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a bench under a great fir that overlooked a deserted playground, emerald green with new grass. They faced a sinking sun, a ball of molten fire on the far crest of Vancouver Island. Behind them the roar of traffic on downtown streets was like the faint murmur of distant surf. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... distance from the island and a boat sent out, which was carefully steered through the breakers. Forgetting the treasure which he had concealed in the cave, and the friendly treatment which he had so long received from the tribe who knew of its whereabouts, the sailor rushed into the surf, and throwing himself into the boat bade the men pull back to the ship. When he was standing on the deck of the latter he recognised fully his own position. Above him floated the Spanish flag, fierce glances of hatred from all the crew were turned upon ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mingling with the sound of the beating surf, came the merry voices of bathers,—boarders at the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... supposed distance from the Keys; but we were now in no situation to complain. A part of our stern and the yawl at the davits, had gone together. I ran forward to clear the anchors in order to prevent her from ranging ahead on another rock which I could perceive among the surf; but a greater part of the bows were gone, and with them the anchors.—The water was already groaning under the deck—she arose for the last time on the crest of another sea nearly to the top of the rock, quivering like a bird under its death-wound. Our Captain and crew ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her course had ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not so very amusing, you know, but it is very jolly," answered Ronald. "To begin with, I get up at unholy hours and go and bathe in the surf at the second beach. There are no end of a a lot of people there ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... had collected their chattels, and were gathering in a howling chattering mob by the surf-boats ready to go on board, when the first notion came to me of joining her. It was the Danish harbour-master who gave it. He came up, under his old white umbrella with the green lining, to the house where I was staying, and told me that the tramp was going to call in at San ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... them and the road, suggests at least a peculiar taste in the retired merchant, or hints the possibility that he may have sold his place to a poet or philosopher—or to some old East India sea-captain, perhaps, who cannot sleep without the sound of waves, and so plants pines to rustle, surf-like, against his ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... but slowest calm grace disturbed its repose. But with the hushing rustle of leaves with the summer murmur flowing in, seemed to come also the deep monotone of the waves, when this inanimate statue was striking out at his side through the rattle and rush of the surf, the wide eyes filled with fierce light, the whole face fixed and stern with the strain of heart muscle, toward the helpless shape shooting out on the undertow. He had not seen her after, and, coming to seek her that night with words of compliment and thanks, he was met ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... room for more, yet hourly they added to the mass. Teams splashed through the lapping surf or stuck in the deep sand between hillocks of goods. All was noise, profanity, congestion, and feverish hurry. This burning haste rang in the voice of the multitude, showed in its violence of gesture and redness of face, permeated the atmosphere ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... sketches—all running-brook studies—most of them made in that same pair of high-water boots. No one but the late Fritz Thaulow approaches him in giving the reality of this most difficult subject for an outdoor painter. The ocean surf repeats itself in its recurl and swash and by close watching a painter has often a chance to use his "second barrel," so to speak, but the upturned face of an unruly brook-is not only million-tinted and endless in ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and a painful experience for the invalid. But to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on the sea itself. But ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... All the Middle and Latter parts of this day it blow'd very strong from the South-South-West and South-West, attended with Snow, Hail and Rain, and brought such a Sea into the Bay, which rose the Surf to such a Height that no Boat could land. The same Stormy ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the opinion of the author it is the name of the board. A skilled Hawaiian says it is the name given the surf of a place at Napoopoo, in Kona, Hawaii. The action is not located there, but in Puna, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Opportunities came for runs, but no runs were scored for several innings. Hopes were raised to the highest pitch only to be dashed astonishingly away. The crowd in the grand stand swayed to every pitched ball; the bleachers tossed like surf ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... now, which was good for us, for the winding channels that lead up to Wareham were sheltered under their bare banks. We could hear the thunder of the surf along the rocky coast outside, when the wind ceased its howling for a moment; and at high water the haven had been well nigh too stormy for a small boat. Now we should do best to go by water, for wind was with us; though, ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... boat, pulling 17 paddles: we were seated on chairs, fixed to a platform in the forepart of the boat. The castle saluted the Lieut.-Governor on landing, and the shore was lined with natives to receive him. The surf not being very high, we were enabled to land without a wetting, which is rarely the case. On entering the castle, I was introduced to the officers of the garrison, and to Capt. Hutchison, a merchant of this place, who is well-known for his eminent services in ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... went down, the weather threatened still more; the wind blew strong, and the rocky beach was lashed by the waves and white with spray, while the surf roared as it poured in and broke upon the sand in the cove. The whole family had retired to bed except Ready, who said that he would watch the weather a little before he turned in. The old man walked towards the beach, and leaned against the gunnel of the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill - O the breath of the distant surf! - ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... perhaps a week or two later, when the islands were visited by a wonderful spell of sun and calm. It was what would have been called, farther south, Indian summer. All along the ledges, just above the mark of the diminished surf, the seals lay basking in the glow. The gulls and mews clamored rapturously, and squabbled with gay zest over the choicer prizes of their fishing. It appeared to be generally known that the bears, displeased at the warmth, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... new station was a beautiful one. It lay amidst rivers and hills, and its position was such that the roar of the surf on both eastern and western coasts of the island could be distinctly heard. Shortly after his permanent settlement, Mr. Puckey made a journey to the extreme north of the island and reached Cape Reinga. Standing on the black cliffs against ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... icy trail, yet a little later it was treading down the irises and jonquils and bending its head to snuff the rosemary. So on, beauty all the way, and infinitely variable, all the many days' journey to the coast, where the mountain drops suddenly to the surf and reflects the Mediterranean sky as a purple glamour on its snowy crest. Ah, such ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Cap, pricking up his ears like a dog that hears a distant baying; "it is the surf on the shores of your ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... have his clothing dry in an hour. So the one cloud on our pleasure proved to have a very bright lining, for Bobsey, since he was no longer afraid of the water, could roll in the sand and the gentle surf to his ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... party that may combine for resistance, and will not combine for inventive construction. We are living in an age in which the process of unsettlement is going blindly at work, as if impelled by a Nemesis as blind as itself. New ideas come beating into surf and surge against those which former reasoners had considered as fixed banks and breakwaters; and the new ideas are so mutable, so fickle, that those which were considered novel ten years ago are deemed obsolete to-day, and the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinctly hear, during the night, the murmurs of the surf on the beach, and the sound was most grateful to our ears, as the welcome harbinger of the point to which eighteen weeks of anxious pilgrimage had been directed. I accompanied the men who had been appointed to cut the road along the banks ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... two small islands. A short distance to the east of the horn of the bay there seems to be much white sand or salt for two or three miles from the beach towards the blue water (on this side of which there is a white line as if it were surf): this again appears at the shores of the island, and also at the horn of the bay. From the south shore to the island the distance is great; I should say about twenty-five miles, but it is very difficult to judge correctly. At three miles and a half camped ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... Another man has dropped out, I am third but still last in the race. Race fever got me to-day, didn't care for anything but winning, got off to a good start, then took chances, machine wobbled like a board in the surf. Am having some funny kind of chicken creole I guess it is for lunch, writing this in hotel ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Shipping disasters have been frequent not only at sea, but also while landing here, for Nome has no harbour, but merely an open, shallow roadstead, fully exposed to the billows of the ocean. There is therefore frequently a heavy surf along the beach, and here many a poor miner has been drowned within a few yards of the Eldorado he has risked ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... eye, the mind might feed without any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf. But the hindrance is found on every side. The sense of artistic fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous Chapel ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... made upon his sensorium at this early stage. Take your daughter, who has always, we will suppose, lived in the country, on an excursion with you to the sea-shore, and allow her to witness for an hour, as she sits in silence on the cliff, the surf rolling in incessantly upon the beach, and infinitely the smallest part of the effect is the day's gratification which you have given her. That is comparatively nothing. You have made a life-long change, if ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... looming darker, and the thudding of waves upon the sand sounded louder every instant upon my ears. I could already see the quick dancing gleam of the surf in front of me. Suddenly, as I peered through the deepening shadow, a long dark boat shot out from it, like a trout from under a stone, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... marge, See, from this window, how the turf Runs with a thousand flowers in charge To meet the silver feet of surf That fly ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... is the only difference. The coast grew bare and bleak; the wind freshened and we were glad to put on our wraps. And then at last, after a journey of nearly five thousand miles, we slowed up in a fog so dense it dripped from the scuppers of the ship; we heard the boom of the surf pounding upon the invisible shore, and the hoarse bark of a chorus of sea-lions, and were told we were at the threshold of the Golden Gate, and should enter it as soon as the fog lifted and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... swept by cool breezes, with a palmetto forest in the rear of it. On two sides of the point stretched the clear waters of the river, while half a mile to the east was Jupiter Inlet, on each side of which rolled and tumbled the surf of the Atlantic. About a mile away was Jupiter Light-house, the only human habitation within twenty miles. We built a palmetto hut for a kitchen; we set up the tents in a permanent way; we constructed a little pier ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... showed above water, but its extent and limits were very clearly defined by the ripples and agitation—gentle though this last was—of the surface of the water above it. The surf was breaking heavily on its outer margin in clouds of gleaming white that flashed and glittered in the brilliant sunshine; and an occasional undulation of swell came sweeping in across the reef, causing a thousand swirls and eddies to appear as it traversed the vast ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Indians swam off and encompassed him; and, by continually tormenting him, drove, him insensibly ashore. On grounding, the force with which he struck the ground with his fins is not to be expressed, neither can I describe the agility with which the Indians strove to dispatch him, lest the surf should set him again afloat, which they at length accomplished with the help of a dagger lent them by Mr Randal. They then cut him into pieces, which were distributed among all who stood by. This fish, though of the flat kind, was very thick, and had a large hideous mouth, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the pinnace was in motion, seeming to move on her ways. Presently the blockings were washed from under her, and the boat went astern half her length at a single surge. Mark made a bound down the hill, intending to throw himself into the racing surf, and to swim off to the aid of Betts; but, pausing an instant to choose a spot at which to get down the steep, he looked towards the ship-yard, and saw the pinnace lifted on a sea, and washed fairly ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Every light at sea or on shore, in cottage window or at masthead or in lighthouse or on lightship a twinkling diamond point. A moon, apparently as big as a barrel-head, hung up in the east and below it a carpet of cold fire, of dancing, spangled silver spread upon the ocean. The sound of the surf, distant, soothing; and for the rest quiet and the fragrance of the summer ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... watch and looked, and I asked the time. It was five o'clock. He stretched out his hand to Arnold Bentham, who met and shook it weakly; and both gazed at me, in their eyes extending that same hand-clasp. It was farewell, I knew; for what chance had creatures so feeble as we to win alive over those surf-battered rocks to the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the ships toward the sea. Weather turning against them, they taste long delay in the Downs, but at last are forth upon the Atlantic. Hourly the distance grows between London town and the outgoing folk, between English shores and where the surf breaks on the pale Virginian beaches. Far away—far away and long ago—yet the unseen, actual cables hold, and yesterday and today stand embraced, the lips of the Thames meet the lips of the James, and the breath of England mingles ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... high her stern and driving her farther on to the half-hidden tongues of stone. Even as the light played on her she heeled over to starboard at an angle of about forty-five degrees with an ominous rending of timbers which sounded above the roar of wind and surf. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... on the surf-beaten islands, Nor yet upon Morven's land, Does she drive, for her rudder, unshattered, Is firm in the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... about you like a flood, so that you all have the look of visions, or people that dwell only in the fire light, and will vanish from existence, as completely as your own shadows, when the flame shall sink among the embers. Hark! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland, on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach; though, by the almanac, it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must now be dashing within thirty ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... small harbour of Paphos (Kuklia). The great disadvantage of all these harbours and roadsteads is the shallowness of the water for some distance from the land; this has the effect of raising a great deal of surf when the wind blows on shore, and also of compelling vessels of any size to anchor at a considerable distance out, thus making the operations of landing and embarking cargo both tedious and expensiue. It would not, however, be a matter of great expense to construct ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the wonder of the unknown. Beyond the water through which they slid, black and smooth as polished basalt, he saw a lighthouse winking. From his steamer time-table he learned that it must be Great Gull Island light. Great Gull Island! It suggested to him thunderous cliffs with surf flung up on beetling rock, screaming gulls, and a smuggler on guard with menacing rifle. He lost his fear of fear; he ceased to think about his accustomed life of two aisles and the show-case of new ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... without a throb of filial affection; but, nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the ruins of the mole, his father's ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... nothin'! No boat c'd live in that surf f'r a moment. The schooner'll go to pieces mighty soon, I'm feared. It's turrible! turrible! to stan' by an' watch yer ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... laugh like happy bathers, while the seas Break in their open arms, And the slow-moving breeze Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. Even the surly ocean knows their charms, And under the shrill laughter of the surf, He booms and sings ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not a "speck of ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded a horizon of almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves; and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of blasphemy by another who has probably been as startled by Brann's truthful declarations as he himself would have been had he at some time dared to commit such a rash act. Despite these intellectual "pee-wees" Brann's writings will live long after the surf of eternity has carried the penny-a-liners out upon the sea of oblivion. In the tragic death of W. C. Brann the world has lost the most versatile pen the century has produced and it is with sincere grief that ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... mouth;—he was dead! As I laid him back on the pillow and turned to restore some quiet to the ward, a Norther came sweeping down the Gulf like a rush of mad spirits; tore up the white crests of the sea and flung them on the beach in thundering surf; burst through the heavy fog that had trailed upon the moon's track and smothered the island in its soft pestilent brooding; and in one mighty pouring out of cold pure ether changed earth and sky from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... imagination the dark room where she had gone to be by herself, she heard the thunder of the surf on the rocks outside and the rumble of the thunder overhead. She saw once more the vision of Alien as she had seen it then. Allen stretched out cold and dead perhaps on some shell-ridden battlefield or perhaps, more terrible still, a prisoner in ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... silent lies the town on the flat coast, the old castle turned into a farm-house—high grass grows upon the walls. In a storm, when the wind blows against the city, the surf beats against the outermost houses. High upon the church stands a telegraph; the black wooden plates resemble mourning-flags hung above the sinking town. Here is nothing for the stranger to see, nothing except a grave—that of the thinker Birckner. The friends drove ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... heels followed Desmond in equal stealth and silence. At the top, hardly distinguishable from the blackness of the sky, the sentinel was leaning against the parapet, looking out to sea. Many a night had he held that post, and seen the stars, and listened to the rustle of the surf; many a night he had heard the call of the sentry next below, and passed it to the man on the bastion beyond; but never a night had he seen anything but the stars and the dim forms of vessels in the harbor, heard anything but the hourly call of his mates ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... out, and somewhat the wind got up, but they came to the isle and got hold of the ox; then asked Grettir which they would do, bear the ox aboard or keep hold of the craft, because the surf at the isle was great; then they bade him hold the boat; so he stood amidships on that side which looked from shore, and the sea took him up to the shoulder-blades, yet he held her so that she moved nowise: but Thorgeir took the ox behind and Thormod before, and so hove it down to the boat; ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... difficulty persuaded to give the right of way. The badger is a pot-hunter and no sportsman. Once at the hill, he dives for the central chamber, his sharp-clawed, splayey feet splashing up the sand like a bather in the surf. He is a swift trailer, but not so swift or secretive but some small sailing hawk or lazy crow, perhaps one or two of each, has spied upon him and come drifting down ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... their hands aloft; then hurled themselves prone on the sand, throwing it over their heads and wailing. The drums now beat faster and a wild weird chant rose into the air, then died away and all was silent, except perhaps for the lapping of the waves on the sand or the muffled thunder of the surf afar off on the barrier reef. Thus one ghost after another was summoned from the dusty dead and vanished again into the darkness. When all had come and gone, the leader of the chorus, who kept himself invisible ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... crazy for travel. I used to read my geography book till I wore it out nearly; the exports and the imports, you know? And the pictures of those Arabian men with white turbans, and the South Sea Islanders riding on surf boards—I can see 'em now. There was a castle for Germany, with the moon behind it and the Rhine—do you know 'Bingen on the Rhine'? I love the sound of that. And the Black Forest! Think ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... captain well knew that in no way could the dread disease be kept away better than by constant exercise on the sands of the seashore. The sailors entered heartily into their captain's plans, and spent hours racing on the beach, swimming in the surf, and wandering ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... position, and then to bend away to the S.S.W., gradually declining to that point, which I doubted not terminated in Cape Jervis. The natives kept aloof during the night, nor did the dogs by a single growl intimate that any had ventured to approach us. The sound of the surf came gratefully to our ears, for it told us we were near the goal for which we had so anxiously pushed, and we all of us promised ourselves a view of the boundless ocean ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... wood and sea, where the warbling of birds mingled with the distant songs of the ferrymen.[4] Other landscape poems, as they may be called, remarkable for their clear and vivid portraiture, are that of Mnasalcas,[5] the low shore with its bright surf, and the temple with its poplars round which the sea-fowl hover and cry, and that of Anyte,[6] the windy orchard-close near the grey colourless coast, with the well and the Hermes standing over it at the crossways. But such epigrams ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... voice, and perfectly trained, performed. Only later did I learn that amongst the artists were half a dozen of the best performers in Johannesburg. And at the foreshore, between fatigues, drills, and spells of duty the fellows used to gather, to enjoy the one luxury of Swakopmund—the surf-bathing. Here you would meet men upon whom you never expected again to set eyes assembled literally from all over South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi. Belonging to one regiment I met, in privates and corporals, ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... Island shore, where the ocean heaves in wave after wave from the "outer deep," forming coves of inimitable beauty, promontories wooded to the brink, and broken precipices against which the surf lashes continually, there stood, some thirty years ago, an old mansion-house, with irregular and pointed roofs, low stoops, gable-windows, in short, exhibiting all those architectural eccentricities ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... mighty city; a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline—barred with brightness and shade, like the far-away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-banks are ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... are scattered with a more lavish hand across the country lying between the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the shores where the surf romps and rolls over the auriferous sands of the Pacific, in Golden Gate Park, than in a journey of the same length in any other part of the world. Such, at least, is the verdict of many whose fortune it has been to traverse ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... San Blas To the ships that southward pass From the harbor of Mazatlan? To them it is nothing more Than the sound of surf on the shore,— Nothing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... boys, or we'll be rolling in the surf in three minutes! Haul away, Dick! Haul with him, Ford! Up with her! There, that'll give ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... vessel be wrecked to-night, I had better order breakfast for my cousin to-morrow morning—for he is sure to swim ashore." It was a night, however, on which no hope of reaching land could cheer the wrecked seamen. The tide was approaching the full; the wind was blowing a perfect hurricane; the surf upon a high rocky beach, no boat could have lived in for a minute; and the strongest swimmer—even if it had been within the scope of human power and skill to struggle on for any time with those tremendous waves—must infallibly have been dashed to ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... to Bombay); and (3) the development of the railway system of India, which is making Bombay rather than Calcutta the natural ocean outlet for the trade of the country. MADRAS (453,000), the third city of India, is also the third seaport. But it has no natural harbour, and its shore is surf-beaten and for months together exposed to the full fury of the northeast monsoons. An artificial harbour, however, has recently been built. Besides the cities above mentioned there is one (HYDERABAD) with a population of over 400,000; there are two (LUCKNOW and BENARES) ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... towered frowningly overhead, its base all worn and furrowed by the furious surges that for ages had dashed against it. All around lay a chaos of huge boulders covered with seaweed. The tide was now at the lowest ebb. The surf here was moderate, for the seaweed on the rocks interfered with the swell of the waters, and the waves ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... land on both boards, and a great surf running up in the firth. They cast anchor outside the breakers, and the wind began to fall; and next morning it was calm. Then they see thirteen ships coming out ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... only two hours, but daylight had come and they were eagerly seeking him, when he returned among them, dripping and—empty-handed. He had reached the ship, he said, with another; found the box, and trusted himself alone with it to the sea. But in the surf he had to abandon it to save himself. It had perhaps drifted ashore, and might be found; for himself, he abandoned his claim to the reward. Had he looked abashed or mortified, Jenny felt that she might have ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... as a towering surge Chases across the thunder-booming sea A flying bark, whose white sails strain beneath The wind's wild buffering, and all the air Maddens with roaring, as the rollers crash On a black foreland looming on the lee Where long reefs fringe the surf-tormented shores. So chased she, and so dashed the ranks asunder Triumphant-souled, and hurled fierce threats before: "Ye dogs, this day for evil outrage done To Priam shall ye pay! No man of you Shall from ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... man who laughed at him in derision as he held high above his head the figure of a little child. Tarzan half started as though to rush through the surf and strike out for the already moving steamer; but realizing the futility of so rash an act he halted at the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disgorged them, ants of sober, neutral colours, marching in columns to attack other ants. They grew upon the vision and filled it, and the sound of their feet was louder than the beating of the surf on Sea Point, and although martial music beat and blew them on—a brazen whirlwind dominating the mind, blaring at the ears—the trampling of men's feet and the hoofs of horses, and the rolling of iron-shod wheels, triumphed in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... appearing to be absorbed in the single sense of hearing—the best, and indeed the only, means we then possessed of judging of our situation. It was now apparent that we were near some place or places where the surf was breaking on land; and the hollow, not-to-be-mistaken bellowings of the element, too plainly indicated that cavities in rocks frequently received, and as often rejected, the washing waters. Nor did these ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... an island,' she answered, as one in a dream: 'and again I see it. It has two sharp peaks and one that would seem to be cut short. Lawns of green climb up to the peaks between forests. There is a ring of surf all about the shore . . . but the boat has found a passage through . . . and you and Pete are landing . . . and— strangest!—there is a dog leaping about on ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... screaming cloud of tern that had been routed from their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the path to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic pulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached her ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar stained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... floor. She raised her head. Her eyes were fixed on a strip of waning light above the chimneys. From somewhere in the city came sounds like the distant beating of drums, and beyond, far beyond, a vague muttering, now growing, swelling, rumbling in the distance like the pounding of surf upon the rocks, now like the surf again, receding, growling, menacing. The cold had become intense, a bitter piercing cold which strained and snapped at joist and beam and turned the slush of yesterday to flint. From the street below every sound broke sharp and metallic—the clatter ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... "I must go because I am the only seaman among you, and I will take four of those black fellows with me. I do not apprehend any danger unless we have to make a surf landing, and even then they can all swim like fishes, while I am very well able to take care of myself in the water. I shall sail down the coast until I come to a port, and there put in. Then I will get a vessel of some sort and come back for you. I shall ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... hum of bursting surf undertoned all other noises and, prisoned as she was, the schooner and her floe were sweeping slowly toward the land in the grip of a current rather ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... should not be omitted of this noble breed of water-dogs. A vessel was driven on the beach of Lydd, in Kent. The surf was rolling furiously. Eight poor fellows were crying for help, but not a boat could be got off to their assistance. At length a gentleman came on the beach accompanied by his Newfoundland dog: he directed the attention of the animal to the vessel, and put a short stick ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... hissing on the sand. It spread its full glory on dunes and sea: one more of the countless soft nights where peace and calm beauty told of an ageless existence that made naught of the red havoc of men or of monsters. It shone on the ceaseless surf that had beaten these shores before there were men, that would thunder there still when men were no more. But to the tense crouching men in the car it shone only ahead on a distant, glittering speck. A wavering reflection marked the uncertain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... woman, old woman," said I, "It sounds very well, but it cannot be right; This must be a desolate spot of a night, With nothing to hear but the guillemot's cry, The sob of the surf and the wind soughing by. Go inland and get you a cat for your knee And gather your gossips for scandal and tea, Old woman, old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... Utopia in the dreary distance. But she noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their garden-patch, and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would like to have someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had not been so far and so stormy, and the trail ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... once I chanced to go, With pencil and portfolio, Adown the street of silver sand That winds beneath this craggy land, To make a sketch of some old scurf Of driftage, nosing through the surf A splintered mast, with knarl and strand Of rigging-rope and tattered threads Of flag and streamer and of sail That fluttered idly in the gale Or whipped themselves to sadder shreds. The while I wrought, half listlessly, On my dismantled subject, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... gave a name—"Galatea"; and always on still nights the myriad silver stars would seem to breathe to him "Galatea" ... and on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in longing, hopeless and unutterable—"Galatea!... Galatea!..." For her he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... seen coming down the cliff with canoes on their shoulders. Presently one was launched and made off through the heavy surf towards the ships. They were more surprised than ever when one of the young men in it cried out in English as they came alongside, 'Won't you heave us a ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... eminent place whence I might behold the general trend of the island; and now I saw that this was the smallest of three islands and remembered how Resolution had named them to me as Fore, Main and Mizzen islands. I was yet staring at these islands, each with its fringe of white surf to windward where the seas yet broke in foam, when my wandering gaze chanced to light on that which filled me with sudden and strange foreboding, for, plain to my view despite the distance, I saw the royal yards ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... broken by the fresh water of the streams; if the swell be from the north, it enters almost without diminution; and the war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. In wild weather, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go about among the host, and the people hurried back to the council from their tents and ships with a sound as the thunder of surf when it comes crashing down upon the shore, and all the sea is ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... passed a long tongue of land, beaten upon by white rollers of surf, that seemed as if they strove to overwhelm the old forts set far above their reach. A rocky island too, rising darkly out of a golden sea; and then we entered the mouth of a wonderful bay, like the pictures of Norwegian fords. As we steamed ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hotel acquaintance. People were coming and going from the line of bath-houses that backed upon the low sand-bank behind them, with its tufts of coarse silvery-green grasses. The Maxwells bowed to some of the ladies who tripped gayly past them in their airy costumes to the surf, or came up from it sobered and shivering. Four or five young fellows, with sun-blackened arms and legs, were passing ball near them. A pony-carriage drove by on the wet sand; a horseman on a crop-tailed roan thumped after it at a hard trot. Dogs ran barking vaguely about, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through the long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places, and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... its own justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous and the unkind are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the heart-strings of love trembling. There are sins which men must leave behind them, and sins which they must carry with them. Society scouts the drunkard because he is loathsome, and it ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Denmark," sand, not lava, being answerable for this entombment. It is said that the village which surrounded the church was buried by a sandstorm in the fourteenth century. This scene of desolation, on a windy day, when the "sand fiend" revels and riots, is best left to the booming surf and avoided by those who do not wish ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... the famous navigator, Giovanni Verrazzano (See "The World's Discoverers"), who visited the Atlantic seaboard nearly about the same time as the kidnapper Ayllon. Once, as he was coasting along near the site of Wilmington, N. C., on account of the high surf a boat could not land, but a bold young sailor swam to the shore and tossed a gift of trinkets to some Indians gathered on the beach. A moment later the sea threw him helpless and bruised at their feet. In an instant he was seized by the arms and legs and, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... were well used to making a landing through the surf. Arrived off shore, they waited till a big wave came directly at the stern, then with a shout gave way and rode in on its crest, jumping out into the water and pulling the dory high up on what proved to be a shingle beach ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... rose high on the lagoon as the Pelican paused in her story, and beyond the rookery the children could see blue water and a line of surf, with the high-pooped Spanish ships rising and falling. Beyond that were the low shore and the dark wood of pines and the shining leaves of the palmettoes like a lake spattered with the light—split by their needle points. They could see the dark ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... averaging half a mile in depth, cutting the strong tidal stream which runs round the south coast of Wales and up the Bristol Channel, with steep cliffs and outlying crags and peaks of rock over which the surf is flung ceaselessly, even on still summer days, and with a dangerous tidal race at its northern end and the south-west and south-east angles. It stands, too, in the highway of the winds as well as of the waters, and is so scored ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... moment like the coming of death, we plunged into the reef. I have no knowledge of what took place—and there are no words to tell the story. Solid water swamped us; the thunder of the surf stopped the mind. But we didn't touch, there was a way through, we had crossed the outer margin of the reef. We ran the terrible gauntlet of the reef, surrounded on every hand by towering breakers, lost in the appalling roar of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with the land, they saw that the boiling surf of the western passage would force them to select the northern entrance, which twisted and turned between the rocks and the shoals. It was now nearly ten o'clock, and as the ketch drifted in before the light easterly breeze she seemed a modest trader bent upon barter, and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Muligatawney River. Although in an insecure and exposed anchorage, yet the fact that we were in an inclosed lake gave a sense of security to the less experienced, that the snug and rocky harbors to which we had become accustomed, usually failed to give on account of the roaring of the surf a few hundred yards away, on the other side of the narrow barrier that protected ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... to raid the house on the bluff. But would they go on with their bloody work? They would suddenly find themselves leaderless, unguided. Would that suffice to stop them? The vivid memory came to me anew of that arch villain, Sanchez, lying where I had left him, his head resting in the surf—dead. Would the discovery of his body halt his followers, and send them rushing back to their boat, eager only to get safely away? This did not seem likely. Estada knew of my boarding the sloop from the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... another passed under the boat. They lifted her high up, as if to show us the surf. As the boat sank slowly down into the trough of the wave, the surf disappeared and with it much of the shore. The wave ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... strong enough to bear any reasonable weight. My next care was what to load it with, and how to preserve what I laid upon it from the surf of the sea; but I was not long considering this. I first laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having considered well what I most wanted, I got three of the seamen's chests, which I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... came in torrents, tearing at the storm curtains. It beat frantically at them with a noise like that of surf on a beach. But inside the boys were snug and dry, and the Wondership forged steadily forward. It was a weird experience for the boys. About them the artillery of heaven thundered and flashed. They could see each other's faces and ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... formed itself into pack, and was now lying along the coast of North Somerset, ready at an hour's warning to spread itself over the waters. The southerly gale, however, piped cheerily. A heavy swell and surf—Oh! most pleasant sound!—beat upon the fixed ice of Assistance Harbour; yet no pack came, nor floe-pieces either, and thus was placed beyond all doubt the fact that, at any rate, as far west as Griffith's Island, Barrow's Strait was clear of ice. In an angle formed between ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... rage, what is left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures, that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands; capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... paths winding about the country-side; her villages and her heavy-scented country lanes shared its caress with open meadows and murky cities. The sea, binding the little islands in its turbulent immensity, drew the night's beauty to its bosom, and the spray of foam rising from the surf was a shower of star-dust leaping towards ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... security, with the pleasing hope of safely reaching their destination on the following day. After midnight the wind increased; but though the ship drove rapidly before it, no danger was perceived till about day-break,—when, already in the surf, there was no longer a possibility of escape. The crew immediately proceeded to set all sail the storm would permit, in hopes of weathering the point; but their gallant efforts could not long delay the fate of the doomed vessel, ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... waves, like the roar of artillery. There is a sublimity of desolation on its shores, the effects of a conflict maintained for ages, and on a scale so gigantic. The isolated, spire-like crags that rise along its base, are so drilled and bored by the incessant lashings of the surf, and are ground down into shapes so fantastic, that they seem but the wasted skeletons of their former selves; and we find almost every natural fissure in the solid rock hollowed into an immense cavern, whose very ceiling, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... and down in the beach grass, squealing like a Guinea hen with a sore throat, and waving his gun with one wing—arm, I mean—and there in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar—two of Lonesome Huckleberries' best decoy ducks—ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world—except rum, maybe—and the rest of the flock was ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... crowned with rounded hills. Slowly finer points appeared, the ridge of mountains showed details and we could recognize the tops of the giant banyan trees, towering above the forest as a cathedral does over the houses of a city. We saw the surf, breaking in the coral cliffs of flat shores, found the entrance to the wide bay, noticed the palms with elegantly curved trunks bending over the beach, and unexpectedly entered the lagoon, that shone in the bright ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... growing season dodging one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... And the beauty of their faces in their frames of hair, of their arms, of their figures, seen through their wet clinging dresses, satisfied me and filled me with joy, gave me for a short time that peace and content—in harmony with the strong sunlight on the waves and the rhythmic surf on the shore—I was seeking. The summer evenings on the pier or along the beach had a peculiar savor; one felt the youth and beauty there even on dark nights, the air was fragrant with them, white dresses and summer ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Normandy slowness, their nets, their buoys, a big loaf, a jar of butter, and the bottle of brandy and a glass. Then they pushed off the boats, which went down the beach with a harsh noise, then rushed through the surf, balanced themselves on the crest of a wave for a few seconds, and spread their brown wings and disappeared into the night, with their little lights shining at the bottom of the masts. The sailors' ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... baby under two years should never be given a sea bath, a word of caution about sea bathing for young children may not be amiss. The cruelty with which well-meaning parents treat young, tender children by forcibly dragging them into the surf, a practice which may be seen at any seaside resort in the summer, can have no justification. The fright and shock that a sensitive child is thus subjected to is more than sufficient to undo any conceivable good resulting from ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... chiefs sued for peace. With Makana's surrender the war of 1819 ended. The Lynx himself was sent prisoner to Robben Island. After nearly two years' confinement he attempted to escape in a boat with some other prisoners, but the boat was upset in the surf on Blueberg beach, and Makana was drowned, ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... the smoke of turf, A heathery land and misty sky; And turn'd on rocks and raging surf His ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... weeks he wooed her to bring the smile to her lips, but always she grew whiter and more desolate; so that when she walked the terraces above the boiling surf, she seemed like a white flower torn of its petals and tossed up ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as many dogs, exhausted and footsore, lay curled ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Captain and half of the people clambered ashore, Through the surf and the snow in the gloom of that horrible night, There's no one ever will know. For two days more The death-white shroud of the tempest ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... sand-pipers, that I first saw Jessie. She sat upon a rock, and was gazing out at sea. In her hand was a book, which she was not reading—who, indeed, could read collectedly, with that fresh breeze lifting such a pleasant array of dancing white-caps, and rolling inward those strong bodies of surf, which broke upon the shore with the ring of sportive Titans? Her handkerchief had fallen off her head, and her curls were flying wantonly in the breeze. I did not, for the moment, dream that she had any connection with the lighthouse, but rather that she was a chance city visitor ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... six hundred militia, and four hundred Canadians and Indians. The harbor was protected by six ships of the line and five frigates, three of the latter being sunk at its mouth. The English ships were six days on the coast before a landing could be attempted, on account of a heavy surf continually rolling with such violence, that no boat could approach the shore. The violence of the surf having somewhat abated, a landing was effected on June 8th. The troops were disposed for landing in three divisions. That on the left, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... north-east. Shortly after daybreak on the 13th of September, we saw Sulphur Island, in the south-west quarter, and by eleven in the forenoon were close up to it. We intended to land, but were prevented by the high wind, which caused so great a surf all round the island, as to render this impracticable. The sulphuric volcano from which the island takes its name is on the north-west side; it emits white smoke, and the smell of sulphur is very strong on the lee side of the crater. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... put exquisite tinge upon the shell washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of bloom in a child's cheek, let us leave it to the owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the fault-finder ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... standing off and on, and at daybreak the next morning, I bore up for the lee or west side of the island, as neither anchorage nor landing appeared to be practicable on the south side, on account of a great surf,[149] which broke every where with violence against the shore, or against ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... in upon them then, a brilliantly noisy one from Tschaikowsky that bathed them in a vichy of excited surf. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Island was continued outward by a kind of shallow terrace, which is covered by the sea, and where the sea is quite shallow; and at a distance varying from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a half from the proper beach, you would see a line of foam or surf which looks most beautiful in contrast with the bright green water in the inside, and the deep blue of the sea beyond. That line of surf indicates the point at which the waters of the ocean are breaking upon the coral reef which surrounds ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... the great storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morning afterwards—on the 28th, that is—my out-of-door comrade and I made an excursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already beaten down the surf, and the turmoil of the waters was in great part stilled; but the beach was strewn with sea-weeds and eel-grass, and withal presented quite a holiday appearance. From one motive and another, a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of the city ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... craft northward again. Charlie, however, drew his pistol, and Hossein took his place with his drawn tulwar by the helmsman. The boatmen, thereupon, again continued their course; and, though several shots fell near them, they escaped untouched, and anchored just outside the surf, abreast of ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... which are to be seen growing in the shallow waters of the lagoon are of a different kind from those which abound on the outer edge of the reef, and of which the reef is built up. Close to the seaward edge of the reef, over which, even in calm weather, a surf almost always breaks, the coral rock is encrusted with a thick coat of a singular vegetable organism, which contains a great deal of lime—the so-called Nullipora. Beyond this, in the part of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... storms and tempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself could not control the havoc that he created. He warred upon all fishing craft, he demolished canoes and sent men to graves in the sea. He uprooted forests and drove the surf on shore heavy with wreckage of despoiled trees and with beaten and bruised fish. He did all this to reveal his powers, for he was cruel and hard of heart, and he would laugh and defy the Sagalie Tyee, and looking up to ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... run their own way to destruction: who can stay the eastern wind, and the current of the Solway sea? I can find ye Scripture warrant for that: so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad quicksand. There's a surf running there would knock the ribs together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and commanded by the Prince of Darkness. Bonnilie and bravely they sail away there; but before the blast blows by they'll be wrecked: and red wine and strong brandy ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... children here ensued, but the next instant she appeared at the entrance of the grotto and ran down the rocks towards the sea. Skipping from bowlder to bowlder she reached the furthest projection of the ledge, now partly submerged by the rising surf, and then turned half triumphantly, half defiantly, towards the grotto. The weird phosphorescence of the storm lit up the resolute little figure standing there, gorgeously bedecked with the chains, rings, and shiny trinkets of her companions. With a tiny hand raised in mock defiance of the ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... three or four round pieces of driftwood, which were slippery with water-slime, she laid them along the dock; two other billets she placed under the boat's keel. Then gathering her strength for one pull, she sent the boat into the churning surf. One of the fishermen advanced to detain her, but she waved him back with a gesture so determined and imperious that he hesitated. He then held consultation with his friends. Two or three now hurried down to ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... let the sea go down. A hammerhead's nest on one of the trees was fully four feet high. Coarse rushes show the shoals near the islands. Only one shell was seen on the shores. The canoe ships much less water in this surf than our boat did in that of Nyassa. The water is of a deep sea-green colour, probably from the reflection of the fine white sand of the bottom; we saw no part having the deep dark blue of Nyassa, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... motion had been hard enough to bear, was positively stifling now. The sun burned down upon the glassy sea and the white deck till the varnish on the rails cracked and blistered, and the sweat streamed like water from the faces of the labouring seamen. Below at the ship's side half a dozen surf boats were waiting, manned by Kru boys, who alone seemed perfectly comfortable, and cheerful as usual. All around were preparations for landing—boxes were being hauled up from the hold, and people were going about in reach of small parcels and deck-chairs and missing acquaintances. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ever pausing or looking behind, he by and by heard the sea roaring at a distance. At this sound, he increased his speed, and soon came to a beach, where the great surf waves tumbled themselves upon the hard sand, in a long line of snowy foam. At one end of the beach, however, there was a pleasant spot, where some green shrubbery clambered up a cliff, making its rocky face look soft and beautiful. A ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the sun was glowing over the steel blue sea. Not a sail broke the distance; only the ceaseless tossing of white foam above the rips, and close at hand a dory or two, rocking and rolling just outside the line of surf. In the foreground was a broad strip of sand and silvery beach grass then a narrower strip of sand without any grass at all, and then the huge breakers which came crashing in, wave on wave, mounting up, curling ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... every good officer should be, most particular about his boats, and always had them built specially from his own design. They were broader than usual, and had a flat floor and a deep keel, thus they were extremely buoyant, their lines resembling those of the surf-boats on the west coasts of India and Africa, while their deep keels enabled them to sail close to the wind. The men chafed sometimes when, on their way to shore, they found themselves passed by the narrow boats ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... shrug of his shoulders without turning his face, and Jaime walked along the beach in the direction of the tower. His feet, shod in hempen sandals, crunched on the gravel at the edge of the wash from the surf. Among the azure pebbles were fragments of pottery; portions of earthen handles; concave pieces of bowls bearing vestiges of decoration, which had, perhaps, belonged to swelling urns; small, irregular spheres of gray clay in which one seemed to make out, despite the corrosion ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... heavier than usual, only to recede, leaving it darker and blacker than before. The roar of the wind through the rigging came to the ear muffled like the distant rumble of a train crossing a trestle or the surf on the beach, while the loud crash of the seas on her weather bow seemed almost to rend the beams and planking asunder as it resounded through the fo'castle. The creaking and groaning of the timbers, stanchions, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London |
