"Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shallowness; they found their position to be in Encounter Bay, east of Spencer's Gulf, and from what they saw it was evident that no ship could enter it during the prevalence of the S.W. winds. All hope of a safe return centred in themselves. The thunder of the surf, that they had so longed for, brought no message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back, while yet some strength remained to them; and above all they were surrounded by hostile blacks. Sturt had now a terrible task before him. His men were weakened ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters, looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey; The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,— And the yearly galleon sails no more, In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... she had defied him, but deep in her heart she had feared—how she had feared!—that Saltash would fail to hold her against him. Again, a deep compassion came over Jake, stirring the very depths of him. Poor little girl, flung to and fro as flotsam in the cruel surf of life's breakers! He had done his best to deliver her, but Fate had been against him. Fate had ordained that she should be the victim of this man's caprice, the slave of impulses which might or might not be her destruction. It was as if he watched her trying to ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... creamy like lather! O beers that were foamy like suds! O fizz that I loved like a father! O fie on the drinks that are duds! I sat by the doors that were slatted And the stuff had a surf like the sea— No vintage was anywhere vatted Too strong for ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... they clear! they clear! Safely they clear! Inside the surf steers now the ship to ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... her voice with the sweet sounds that make the undertone of Venetian life; the plash of the oar, the cooing of doves about the Salute, the bells of Murano, softened in the distance, the sound of the surf beating outside the Lido of a still evening, when one floats far out on the lagoon, and the familiar, every-day world seems farther away than those other worlds, shining overhead. He speculated a good deal over this new preoccupation, ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... yet, however. Next you round a sloping shoulder of a hill and slide down into a shore road, with the beating, creaming surf on one side, and on the other a long succession of the sort of architectural triumphs that have made Coney Island famous. You negotiate another small ridge and there, suddenly spread out before you, ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... flowing over and sinking the ship, I lay a long time wondering vaguely at an imagination that could make such a description possible, and as a heaving swell would start along the rail at the waist, and go thundering along in a roaring surf the entire length of the midship section over the edge, fetching up with a crash against the forward cabin bulkhead, I heartily wished the writer were aboard to share our sufferings. There was no spoon and teacup business ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... passions, than myself am whirled When tempests tug me o'er the world; I cannot understand your ways. We clouds live our divinest days Beneath great sunny depths of sky, High above all that you think high, Drifting through sunset's surf of gold, Dawn-lakes and moonlight's clear waves cold, In realms so distant, chill and lone, That Love, impatient, leaves the throne To ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... tug, and he saw that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... in the quiet woods I knew that Edward was holding her back from me. It is true that, in his boy's way, he had been fond of me; but I should not have dared to take her out without him in the days when his live lips had filled the beach with song, and his small brown body had danced among the surf. Now it seemed that I ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... 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
... trees, directly across the lawn in front of him, loomed the dark shadow of a long, low, cottage-like building, and from a window a light twinkled out between the tree trunks; while from beyond again came the roll of surf, low, rhythmic, like the soft accompaniment ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... spinning along, and, if only I had the gift of words, I could make such pictures of the islands we sailed by, the colours of the waters, the joy of our going—the white coral sand beaches and the big cocoanut palms leaning over them, and the white surges that curled along and along the surf reef, over and over again, running like children to meet each other and join each other's hands, or like piano keys rippling white ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... 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
... despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... there are hardly any limits to this exaggeration so long as the laws which nature observes in her increase be observed. Thus, for instance: the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three inches high, are not representation of either the form or the surface of the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake if simply exaggerated, represent the forms of Atlantic surges; but as nature increases her ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... points, the steamer at last arrived off Cape Coast; but not yet were they to land. A strong wind was blowing, and the surf beat with such violence, on the shore, that it was impossible even for the surf boat to come out. The officers had nothing to do but to watch the shore. Even this was only done under difficult circumstances, for the steamer was rolling ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... sat down on a boulder with the water dripping from her skirt, looked ruefully at him and the dinghy, which was rolling over in the surf. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... and the yawl lying at anchor there was visible when it suddenly slackened in its headlong career, went about, seaward, and describing the greater part of a circle, came slowly in towards the bar, nosing about there beyond the line of white surf, for all the world like a terrier at ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each time one reads them. One sees the "sea like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island," and straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild angry howl ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived—stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... London society. My Aunt Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous dread of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the shingle. If I ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and thither and broken on the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer to stand aloof and watch. If I had a little more of daring in my nature I might achieve something. I am afraid I am but a waster in the world's factory; ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the corner of his 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... remoulding. Every day came like the discharge of a great double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble as his walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind should leap into the questions of the hour like a naked boy into the surf. He made mistakes, sometimes in a childish, sometimes in an older way, some against most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep the main direction of truth, after his own young way of thinking and telling it. He had no such power to formulate ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... her to take moonlight walks with him on the bridge, for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of pouring into her ear the longest of his ballads. He would lead her away to sequestered rustic seats, whence the rush of the surf to the sands was heard soft and soothing; and when he had her all to himself, and the sea lay before them, and the scented shade of gardens spread round, and the tall shelter of cliffs rose behind them, he would pull out his last batch of sonnets, and read them in a voice ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the captain with a dry smile. "Folks that know the water don't go exactly that way to work. There was regular wracking-boats, built for the surf, and crews for each, you see: best man in the starn. The man in the starn, he generally owned the boat and chose his crew. Picked men. He kept them year after year. Then the wracking-masters hired him, his boat and his crew. Best crew chosen first, of course. Two dollars a day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Support subteni. Support (prop) subportilo. Supporter partiano. Suppose supozi, konjekti. Suppress subpremi. Supremacy superegeco. Supreme superega, cxefa. Surcharge supertakso. Sure certa. Surely certe, nepre. Surety garantiajxo. Surety, to be garantii. Surf sxauxmo, mar—. Surface suprajxo. Surfeit supersati. Surge ondego. Surgeon hxirurgiisto. Surgery hxirurgio. Surly malgaja. Surmise konjekti. Surmount venki. Surname alnomo. Surpass superi. Surprise surprizi. Surrender kapitulaci. Surreptitious ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... July morning, lingered for a moment on the Major's house, before she proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back page of her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young women dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes which Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust herself to. Neither the Major nor Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time that the first signals of animation might be expected. Indeed, at this moment, she quite ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... always, back through many generations. She had held her head high, for she was of his women, of the women of his people, with all their rights and all their claims. She had held it high till that stormy day—just such a day as this, with the surf of snow breaking against the house—when they carried him in out of the wild turmoil and snow, laying him on the couch where she now sat, and her head fell on his lifeless breast, and she cried out to him in vain to come back ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... of August we anchored off Mazatlan, a picturesque and ancient adobe town in old Mexico. The approach to this port was strikingly beautiful. Great rocks, cut by the surf into arches and caverns, guarded the entrance to the harbor. We anchored two miles out. A customs and a Wells-Fargo boat boarded us, and many natives came along side, bringing fresh cocoanuts, bananas, and limes. Some Mexicans bound for Guaymas came ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... amethysts,—and beyond them, to the left, the glorious spectre of Fuji, towering enormously above everything. Between sea-wall and sea there is no sand,—only a grey slope of stones, chiefly boulders; and these roll with the surf so that it is ugly work trying to pass the breakers on a rough day. If you once get struck by a stone-wave,—as I did several times,—you will not soon forget ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... concluding touch of life to my necessarily skeleton-like generalities, memory pictures me a certain painting of Okio's which I fell in love with at first sight. It is of a sunrise on the coast of Japan. A long line of surf is seen tumbling in to you from out a bank of mist, just piercing which shows the blood-red disk of the rising sun, while over the narrow strip of breaking rollers three cranes are slowly sailing north. And that is all you see. You do not see the shore; you do not see the main; you are looking but ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... what I am.... That is where blood tells!" I stood beside the corpse and gazed and waited, to see whether those dead pupils would not stir, whether those benumbed lips would not quiver. No! everything was motionless; the very seaweed, among which the surf had cast him, seemed to have congealed; even the gulls had flown away—there was not a fragment anywhere, not a plank or any broken rigging. There was emptiness everywhere ... only he—and I—and the foaming sea in the distance. I cast a glance behind me; ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... she in Spanish, pointing to the surf that thundered beyond the reef. 'Go back! Here is the devil—the sea hath more mercy—go back whiles ye may!' And now she checked all at once and falls a-shivering, for a voice reached us, a man's voice a-singing fair to hear, and the song he ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the left-hand bank, one came almost unawares on a sharp bend to the left: here the river suddenly ended, and the sea began; the rushes and reeds and high grasses ceased; a low, rocky barrier stayed them. Rounding this point, lo, your boat swayed instantly to the left: a gentle surf-wave took possession of you, and irresistibly bore you towards a yellow sand beach, which curved inward like a reaper's sickle, not more than a quarter of a mile long, from the handle to the shining point; smooth and glistening, strewn with polished pebbles and tiny shells, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... she breathed. "My boy! Where are we? What is it? Oh, I was sleeping so soundly! Have we reached harbor yet? What's that noise—that roaring sound? Surf?" ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion. On summer days the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still more on a moonlit night, it has a fairylike beauty. To-day a heavy, black sky hung above a still blacker sea, and the ice-wall, which shines in the light with a dazzling white purity, looked more like an old white-washed wall than anything else. There was not a breath of wind; the sound of the surf at the bottom of the precipice now and then reached my ears — this was the only thing that broke the vast silence. One's own dear self becomes so miserably small in these mighty surroundings; it was a sheer relief to get back to ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... government wanted much to get hold of. He was a fine, dashing, handsome fellow; I had often seen him, but we never came to close quarters. One night, I was lying wrapped up in my poncho at the bottom of my boat, which was rocking in the surf, waiting for two of my men, who were gone on shore. There came to the shore, this man and one of his people, and they stood so near the boat, that I could distinctly hear their conversation. I suppose it was the devil who tempted me to put a bullet through ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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 behind the screen ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stared before me with bleary, sleep-laden eyes. And in the shallow water, not more than thirty yards from shore I saw an enormous pale pink shell. Dome-shaped, it towered up in a graceful rainbow curve to a tremendous height; and round its base the surf broke gently in little waves of white. It could have belonged to ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... and a few nice chaps up at the Fort, I should have been miserable. As it was, I left him to himself a good deal, and he didn't like that either. I think Attra was a jolly place, and the landing in surf boats was no end of fun. Cathcart got beastly wet, and you should have seen what a stew he was in because he'd put on a beautiful white suit and it got spoilt. Well, things weren't very lively at Attra ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scream seemed to come from the sea out beyond the surf, some yards higher up the coast. "Help! ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... bulwarks and stanchions had got entangled with the wreck of the fore- topgallant mast, some twenty yards or so to leeward of the ship; and, clinging to the mass, Frank could see the boy holding on with a grip of desperation and terror, drenched with his ducking and the surf that washed over him, and with his mouth wide open as if yelling for assistance—although never a sound reached those on board for the roar of a giant could not have been ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... apartments, where a bath and supper were prepared. The servant who had travelled at the back of the carriage waited on him; Baptistin, who rode in front, attended the count. Albert bathed, took his supper, and went to bed. All night he was lulled by the melancholy noise of the surf. On rising, he went to his window, which opened on a terrace, having the sea in front, and at the back a pretty park bounded by a small forest. In a creek lay a little sloop, with a narrow keel and high masts, bearing on its flag the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and join his workmen on the dikes, and he went. And when the poor fellows toiling there saw that their engineer was coming to help them, they set up a cheer. The engineer had a rope put around him and was lowered down into the surf, and other men came and had ropes put about them, and they were lowered down. And after a while the cry was heard: "More mortar and more blocks of stone!" But there were no more. "Now," said the Holland engineer, "men, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... still she danced on. As she danced, there arose in the sky above—slow, bright and clear—the Morning Star. Yama saw her twinkling feet pass him as she drew nearer and nearer to the sea; and as the first pink light began to show behind the pine trees she reached the surf. Flinging her arms high above her head, she plunged in, with her snowy mantle billowing round her. Long, long Yama gazed after her, ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While the summers ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of surf seemed to fill the committee room as Landrus banged in vain on the table. Photographers' flashes lit the scene with spurts of lightning. Wily was on his feet screaming, and Baker thought he heard the word, "Fraud!" repeated numerous times. Landrus was finally heard, ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... swell of the ocean burst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a very great and glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I suspected a sort of beach, there was the silver tremble of surf; but in the main, the heave coming out of the north-east, the folds swept the base ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... infancy to be as much at home in the water as upon the land, and could swim a dozen leagues at sea or pull at the oar all day long without seeming fatigue. Wonderfully expert in their handling of boats, especially in the heavy surf that rolls in upon the coast with ceaseless volume and resistless power, its perilous line almost unbroken by a good harbor, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar, their services in communicating ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... wonderful thing 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. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... headlong among them, "as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened," the wind rising "with an extraordinary great sound," the sweeping gusts of rain coming before it "like showers of steel," and at last, down upon the shore and by the surf among the turmoil of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, "the tremendous sea itself," that came rolling in with an awful noise absolutely confounding to the beholder! In all fiction there is no grander description ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 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 is trembling ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made his way ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Hawaii National Park has the advantage over the Alaskan park because it involves the life and scenery of the tropics. We can find snow-crowned mountains and winding glaciers at home, but not equatorial jungles, sandalwood groves, and surf-riding. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that breaks all day. ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... 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 ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... island of the sea. The surf beats at night. I lie and listen. Jane Stirling came to see us off. She brought violets—great, swelling English violets. I smell them in the mouldy cloister cells, night and day. This monks' home is cold and bleak. The wind rattles through it, and at night it moans. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... in the morning they saw coming upon them through the darkness a breaker of such a height that at first Elias thought they must be quite close ashore near the surf swell. Nevertheless, he soon recognised it for what it really was—a huge billow. Then it seemed to him as if there was a laugh over in the other boat, and something said, "There goes thy boat, Elias!" He, foreseeing the calamity, now cried ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... forgetting the more serious business which had brought us to Crescent Beach. While we children disported ourselves like mermaids and mermen in the surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold lemonade, hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our respective fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. I was very proud of my connection with the public life of the beach. I admired greatly our shining soda fountain, the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... barrier of coral. A long cleft, perhaps eight feet wide, at the outer edge of the reef, ran in, narrowing to a mere crack near the shore. Watching a favorable chance, the boats were guided through the surf into a cleft as far as shoal water, when the men jumped on to the reef and carried baggage and instruments ashore as quickly as possible. The boats, which were new when they entered the surf, came out much the worse for wear, and the boat in which Dr. Hastings landed was stove in. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... weeks the children were well again and her own health so much improved, that she was able to indulge in surf-bathing, which she "enjoyed tremendously," and early in the fall the whole family returned to town greatly refreshed by the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... our view. As we could not find any place where we could possibly land our boat in safety, I and two more swam on shore with bags tied round our necks to hold the eggs in, and the boat with one of the men lay off, out of the surf. I should think the ground occupied by these birds (if I may be allowed so to call them) was at least a mile in circumference, covered in every part with grasses and reeds, which grew considerably higher ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... men lay down grotesquely on his oar. He fired again, and one of the remaining two stood up, shook a fist towards the shore and, staggering backwards, capsized the boat in the surf. He must have sunk like lead with his wound, for he never rose to the surface; but the last man, who was Pierce, battled gallantly with the flood, and endeavoured to reach the boat, which was bottom upwards. In this, however, he failed, for the tide seemed ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she opened her eyes and found ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... report. There was no Judith with the wife of Moses Shoos: nor had there been that night. 'Twas still but gray abroad—a drear dawn: promising a belated, sullen day. We awoke the harbor to search the hills, the ledges of the cliffs, the surf-washed shore. 'Twas my uncle hither, the maid-servant thither, myself beyond. Clamorous knocking, sudden lights in the cottages, lights pale in the murky daylight, and a subdued gathering of our kind men-folk: I remember it all—the winged haste, the fright of them ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... evening, shortly before sunset, we sighted the Island of Mauritius, the Bamboo Mountain at Grand Port being the first part seen. We rapidly closed in with the land, and during the night were near enough to see the surf on the coral reefs fringing the shore, it assuming the appearance, in the bright moonshine, of a sandy ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... and preservative, it was imagined that there was water of which whoever should drink would not die, but live forever. I have already alluded to the Fountain of Youth, supposed long before Columbus saw the surf of San Salvador to exist in the Bahama Islands or Florida. It seems to have lingered long on that peninsula. Not many years ago, Coacooche, a Seminole chieftain, related a vision which had nerved him to a desperate escape from the Castle of St. Augustine. "In my dream," said he, "I visited the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the other, opened upon the invaders. Nothing, however, could check the intrepidity with which they advanced. The night was exceedingly dark: most of the boats missed the mole and went on shore through a raging surf, which stove all to the left of it. The Admiral, Freemantle, Thompson, Bowen, and four or five other boats, found the mole: they stormed it instantly, and carried it, though it was defended, as they imagined, by ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... er— I—" began Bob. "Oh, come on," he continued, and led the way down to the beach, where there were some bathing pavilions and several houses. The professor was walking along behind, in the vain hope of yet discovering a horned toad, perhaps on its way to get a dip in the surf or drink some ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... appeared over the crest. When they saw the boat they gave a shout, and breaking, ran down the hill at full speed. Before they reached the village, however, Atkins had leaped into the boat, and with a cheer the men ran her out into the surf, ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... tense passage of time, that I had forgotten the Samurai. Nor did I remember him until the chart-house door swung open and I caught him by the arm. He steadied and swayed beside me, while he watched that cruel picture of rock and snow and spouting surf. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the madcap wind, he walked up on the nearer hills, and saw that this island was narrow, lying between blue fields of sea, both bay and ocean filled with wave crests, ever moving. The outer sea beat upon the sandy beach with a roar and volume of surf such as he had never seen before, for under the water the sand-bank stretched out a mile but a little below the sea's level, and the breakers, rolling in, retarded by it and labouring to make their accustomed course, came on like wild beasts that were chafed into greater anger at each ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... accompanying click of Ellen's needles. Sometimes at the opera she took on a gossamer tint from the singer's face, and longer ago than he could afford operas, he had understood that all the beauty of the world, bursting apple buds, the great curve of the surf that set the beaches trembling, derived somehow its pertinence from her. Now at the age of forty he had ceased to think very ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... comfort me in my distress in that time, two of the sailors robbed me of all my money, and ran away from the ship. I had been so long used to an European climate that at first I felt the scorching West India sun very painful, while the dashing surf would toss the boat and the people in it frequently above high water mark. Sometimes our limbs were broken with this, or even attended with instant death, and I was day ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bar of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... and the weather did not keep truce very long. A wailing blast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voices of half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans not only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must have long since covered the beach over which they had come and was now trying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... small tent at the extreme edge of the marsh behind a large mass of rocks. I turned in thoroughly depressed, but awoke the next morning refreshed, and determined to retrieve my careless shooting of the day before. A bad surf breaking on the beach prevented our going further up the bay in our baidarkas, as we had planned to do. We loafed in the sun until evening, while our natives kept constant watch of the great meadow where we had seen the bears the day before. We had just turned in, although ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... rolling wildly upon (happily) a sandy beach beneath the cliffs. I told my men to be ready to jump out the moment that we should touch the sand, and to secure the canoe by hauling the head up the beach. All were ready, and we rushed through the surf, the native boatmen paddling like steam engines. "Here comes a wave; look out!" and just as we almost touched the beach, a heavy breaker broke over the black women who were sitting in the stern, and swamped the boat. My men jumped into the water like ducks, and the next moment we ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... movements of the little schooner, through the heavy surf, across the dangerous reef, had been watched from the naval vessels with intense anxiety, and expectation that we would be wrecked and all hands lost. This feeling was changed to admiration when it was seen that the schooner was being very skillfully ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... perfect summer night when Elizabeth leaned out of her window into the stillness. The roar of the surf was as distinct as if it came from the pebbled beach below; yet, modulated by distance, it formed the base, sustained and rythmic, into which there fell harmoniously that legato treble of murmur which makes us seem to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... Needles comes suddenly into view, and is a very impressive sight. The Needles themselves are stacks of upper chalk, with flints, and are the remains of an extension of the chalk. The cliffs here are about four hundred feet in height, and at their base the sea breaks frequently in a long surf line on the steep shingly shore. In calm weather visitors engage boatmen at Totland and Alum Bays to take them in boats through the Needles and land them ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... sharp declivity of the beach, the rollers break with great force, and the surf is very high. At one point is grouped a cluster of rocks, half in the water, half on the beach, among which, as the tide comes in, the waves break with furious force, dashing high over the outermost barrier, and then plunging and leaping forward, like a troop of wild horses, their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... these he changed 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
... himself joined, and the little party felt better. They were seated on bits of broken boxes taken from the wreck, forming a little circle about the gasolene stove, which Tom had set up on the beach. The wind had almost entirely died away, though the sea was still heaving in great billows, and masses of surf. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... themselves now for the privilege of joining in this dangerous errand; but by common consent Coomber was constituted the leader of the party, and he chose three of the most stalwart of the single men, and the rest were allowed to run the boat down through the surf. Then, with a loud cheer from all who stood on the shore, the seven brave men bent to their oars, and during a slight lull in the wind, they made a little headway towards the wreck. But the next minute they were beaten back again, and the boat well-nigh ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... violent and windless swell. It was still dark, when they were alarmed by the sound of breakers, and an anchor was immediately let go. The peep of dawn discovered them swinging in desperate proximity to the Isle of Swona {54a} and the surf bursting close under their stern. There was in this place a hamlet of the inhabitants, fisher-folk and wreckers; their huts stood close about the head of the beach. All slept; the doors were closed, and there was no smoke, and the anxious watchers on board ship seemed to contemplate ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moods as the heart of a giddy maid to her lovers—to-day it may invite you to come in and take possession of its placid waters in the harbour beyond; to-morrow it may roar and snarl with boiling surf and savage, eddying currents, and whirlpools slapping fiercely against the grim, black ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... 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
... honour. Mr. Walter has been asking us; but there's no boat could get through that surf, not if ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... continued hastily, "tells me there is a most amusing place a few miles down the coast, Las Bocas, a sort of Coney Island, where the government people go for the summer. There's surf bathing and roulette and cafes chantants. He says ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... assented Vince, as if he were standing at a wheel steering. "Yes, I suppose you're right, for I can hear the sound of surf. Listen." ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... the fantastic paraphernalia of his profession, battles his way through the surging human surf, and with his black, ferret-like eyes gleaming with unconscious ferocity through a vision of unkempt hair, thrusts his cocoa-nut alms-receiver under my nose and says, "Huk yah huk!" or "backsheesh!" ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... attracted by one who could trample so on other people's feelings. What, then, had attracted her? His strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for her, his music! Nothing could spoil that in him. The sweep, the surge, and sigh in his playing was like the sea out there, dark, and surf-edged, beating on the rocks; or the sea deep-coloured in daylight, with white gulls over it; or the sea with those sinuous paths made by the wandering currents, the subtle, smiling, silent sea, holding in suspense its unfathomable restlessness, waiting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sloping, grass-covered bank,—at one place running out into promontories that encroach upon the terrace beneath,—at another receding into picturesque, bay-like recesses; and where composed, as in many localities, of rock of an enduring quality, we find it worn, as if by the action of the surf,—in some parts relieved into insulated stacks, in others hollowed into deep caverns,—in short, presenting all the appearance of a precipitous coast-line, subjected to the action of the waves. Now, no geologist can or does doubt that this escarpment was at one time ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... agent's wildest dream. The blue water gradually shifted to green, then lighter green, and finally the white of lovely beaches on both sides of the island. Lines of surf marked the position of reefs ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... out to the west as he petulantly spoke in the Tammany dialect, then in the language of the blank-verse Indian. He began, "Another day of anxiety has passed, and yet we have not been discovered! The Great Spirit tells me in the thunder of the surf and the roaring cataract of the Harlem that within a week we will be discovered for the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... what care the captains endeavoured to maintain a wide offing, I could not conceive the reason of our being now so near this dangerous region. The wind was blowing hard towards the shore, if that can be called a shore which consists of steep abrupt precipices, on which the surf was breaking with the noise of thunder, tossing up clouds of spray and foam to the height of a cathedral. We coasted slowly along, rounding several tall forelands, some of them piled up by the hand of nature in the most fantastic shapes. About ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to windward was disappearing under the rising tide, and moment by moment the seas broke more strongly over the rocks. The fishermen studied the shore anxiously. So did I, and with a sailor's eye, though I could see little chance for a swimmer to gain that surf- hammered line of rocks. I made signs toward the headlands on either flank. The Japanese shook their heads. I indicated that dreadful lee shore. Still they shook their heads and did nothing. My conclusion was that they ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... eastward, had considerably increased, and her Majesty, upon the Duke's taking his leave, evinced very great anxiety respecting the safe landing of his Grace. Everybody who knows this coast is aware that when the wind is blowing at all from the eastward that there is a very heavy surf on the beach, and consequently great difficulty in landing. His Grace, however, on thanking her Majesty for the concern she evinced on his account, made light of the matter, and returned on board the Ariel, which brought him as near the shore as possible; here ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... the morning, we found ourselves among the breakers of the terrible bar of Findhorn. And shortly after, the poor Friendship took the ground right on the edge of the quicksands, for she would neither stay nor wear; and as she beat hard against the bottom, the surf came rolling over ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... time the lads watched the games as the hardy men relaxed their work-tensed muscles. The sullen booming of surf on the rocky coast ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... "I shouldn't call this exactly a watering-place. It lacks the splendor and gayety of Newport, in a certain degree, and it hasn't the illustrious seclusion of Nahant. The surf isn't very fine, nor the beach particularly adapted to bathing; and yet, I must confess, the outlook from here is as lovely ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... delicious vegetables grow ten months of the year. The region is especially famed for potatoes, which become almost a fruit here. The farm I live on is charmingly situated about a mile from the old Mission, and two from the beach, on which a tremendous surf breaks and thunders day and night. From my house I look over the coast-table and range of mountains, the hills of Monterey, the bay, and a near landscape, exquisitely diversified by plain and wood, hill and valley, and almost every shade that herbage and foliage, in a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... away on the little coastwise steamer, there was an old sea running which made the surf leap high on all the rocky shores. I stood on deck, looking back, and watched the busy gulls agree and turn, and sway together down the long slopes of air, then separate hastily and plunge into the waves. The tide was setting in, and plenty of small fish were coming with it, unconscious of ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... he sped swiftly and unswervingly; already he saw the white wreath of surf along the coast. Then he descried a great black waste stretching out beneath him. It was ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Beards, the thick growth of many a proud campaign; And on their brows the bright invisible crown Victory sheds from her own radiant form, As o'er her favourites' heads she sings and soars. But dreams came not so calmly; as around Turbulent shores wild waves and swamping surf Prevail, while seaward, on the tranquil deeps, Reign placid surfaces and solemn peace, So, from the troubled strands of memory, they Launched and were tossed, long ere they found the tides That lead to the gentle bosoms of pure rest. And like to one who from a ghostly watch In a lone house ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... carry health and life to those who breathe them, would carry only disease and death. And the thousands of people who now love the ocean and seek its shores every summer, to get strong and well by breathing the air that sweeps over its surface, and by bathing in its foaming surf, would all be afraid of the ocean; and would keep as far away from its shores as they could. And so we see how the ocean stands before us as a grand illustration of the lesson of liberality which our Saviour taught when he said, "Give, and it shall be given unto you." The ocean ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... hath Oxford: all are dear, But dearer far the little town, The drifting surf, the wintry year, The college of the scarlet gown, St. Andrews by the Northern sea, That is a ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... (most of the country's forests - once the largest in West Africa - have been cleared by the timber industry); water pollution from sewage and industrial and agricultural effluents natural hazards: coast has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding is possible international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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
... night heaped the sea upon the shore in thundering surges twenty and thirty feet high. I watched these at their awfulest, from the wide windows of a cottage that crouched in the very edge of the surf, with the effect of clutching the rocks with one hand and holding its roof on with the other. The sea was such a sight as I have not seen on shipboard, and while I luxuriously shuddered at it, I had the advantage of a mellow log-fire at my back, purring and softly crackling in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... Tuesday," she announced as she rejoined Gregory. "Too bad, too. Best man I've got in shallow water. You ought to see him handle a dory in the surf." ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Jelnik's grounds through the hedge behind the spring-house, and ran like a hare through his garden. I had to hammer upon his door before I could make Achmet hear me, so loud and surf-like was the noise of the wind in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... marshes that fringe the shores of the bay. This road bore the euphonious name of Eel Street,—so named by the boys of the town. When about half-way from its end, I turned off to the right, and followed a wooded lane to the house of an honest surf-man, Captain George Bogart, who had recently left his old home on the beach, beside the restless waves of the Atlantic, and had resumed his avocation as a ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... wreck, Fiercely blazed the riven deck; Thick and fast as falling stars, Crashed the flaming blocks and spars; Loud as surf, when winds are strong, Wailed the scorched and stricken throng, Gazing on a rugged shore, Fires ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various |
