"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for? Why, just to find out what was the matter with his trial balance, that's all. When one of Labe's trial balances starts out for snug harbor and ends up on a reef with six foot of water in her hold, naturally Labe wants to get her afloat and pumped dry as quick as possible. He ain't used to it, for one thing, and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... cooperation in hundreds of workaday tasks: of currencies kept in effective relation, of development loans meshed together, of standardized weapons, and concerted diplomatic positions. The Atlantic Community grows, not like a volcanic mountain, by one mighty explosion, but like a coral reef, from the accumulating activity ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... gale. They were all good ships; but like those other excellent ships, the "Arctic" and "Pacific," they could not defy the powers of pure accident. In the same gale the "Empire City" was dismantled, having all of her upper works swept off, while the "Illinois" was injured by being on the Colorado Reef. They have both been undergoing most costly repairs for several weeks. While writing this, the "Philadelphia" is also in the shop. She recently broke her shaft and her cross-tail, and had to put into Charleston. All of these repairs cost an immense sum of money, and are calculated, with the severe ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... old Dutch charts give a very considerable extent to this reef; Van Keulen makes it cover a space of sea, forty-seven miles long, and twenty-five broad. We only saw the islands at the south end, with three detached reefs between them and the shore; one of which (the southernmost) may probably be the TURTLE DOVE. The islands lie West 4 degrees North true, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... you please, Has two or three (or more) degrees Of variation; And many a soul has gone to grief On this or that or t'other reef Through faith unreckoning or brief Miscalculation. Misguidance is of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the Holmes right a head of her. The wind had at four P.M. shifted to the N.N.W.; the land on her lee beam, nine leagues, was that part of Jutland a few miles to the southward of Bovenbergen. At eight o'clock the Horn Reef, bearing S.S.W. distance forty miles; at this time a tremendous heavy sea was setting on the shore in the direction of E.S.E. At six lost sight of the Bellete; the last sight we had of the Defence she was standing ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... 5 sq km land area: 5 sq km comparative area: about eight times the size of The Mall in Washington, DC note: includes Ashmore Reef (West, Middle, and East Islets) and ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... through, and, once outside Deer Island, nothing lay between me and Nahant. The well-known beach and the sandy headland called "Grover" stood out at the edge of Lynn Bay, and the rise and fall of the white surf, too distant to be heard, marked the long reef stretching seaward. After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the land, boys, See all clear to reef each course; Let the fore-sheet go, don't mind, boys, Though the weather ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... swept the mighty chief, Like some great ocean wave across the bar Of intercepting rock, whose jagged reef But frets the victor whom it cannot mar. Into the senate his triumphal car Rushed like a conqueror's through the broken gates Of some fallen city, whose defenders are Powerful no longer to resist the fates, But yield at last to him whom wondering ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is known by its brownish-yellow colour, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... matter of the poem, the wild voyage of the mad monkish lover with the dead Bride of Heaven, it strikes, of course, on the common reef of the Romantic—the ridiculous. But the recurring contrasts of a pure, clear peace in sea and sky, are of rare and atoning ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... ashore there and was totally wrecked, nearly all her crew perishing. Her captain, a singularly capable seaman named Hallowell, was out of her upon a courtmartial, and it was thought she would not have been lost had he been on board. Another, the Gibraltar, struck so heavily on a reef that she had to be sent to England. Upon being docked, a large piece of rock was found to have penetrated the bottom and stuck fast in the hole. Had it worked out, the ship would have foundered. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... it seemed as if the other sails were about to share the same fate. The ship flew from billow to billow, after recovering from the first rude shock, as if she were but a dark cloud on the sea, and the spray flew high over her masts, drenching the men on the topsail-yards while they laboured to reef the sails. ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... with glare for shade, Tartarean heat for coolness, cannon thunder and shouting for quietness, grey enemies for nursing women, and for home a battlefield in a hostile land. Heavy ordnance wagons, far from the guns they were meant to feed, traces cut and horses gone, rested reef-like for the tides to break against. Travelling forges kept them company, and wagons bearing officers' luggage. Beneath several the mules were pinned; dreadful sight could any there have looked or pitied! Looming through there were the great supply wagons, with others of lighter stores, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... his sport. All day he brooded as he strode Betwixt the reef-encircled port And the oak-grove of ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... o'clock this day we left the entrance of the harbor and bore away for Kennebeck river. In the latter part of the night, there came on a thick fog and our fleet was separated. At break of day we found ourselves in a most dangerous situation, very near a reef of rocks. The rocks indeed appeared on all sides of us, so that we feared we should have been dashed to pieces on some of them. We were brought into this deplorable situation by means of liquor being dealt out too ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... to my stormy shriek! Toilers upon the sea, the Whistling-buoy would speak! List to my sobbing shout! list, for my word is brief: Death is beneath me here! death on the sunken reef Where the jagged ledge is hid and the slimy seaweeds grow, And the long kelp streamers wave in the dark green depths below, Where, under the shell-clad hulk, the gaunt shark makes his lair,— Toilers upon the sea, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by their tails! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When glassy calm did come, To see them squatting tailor-wise Around a keg of rum! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When in she sailed to land, To see them ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... solemn boom of cannon to-day announced that the convention have passed the ordinance of secession. We must take a reef in our patriotism and narrow it down to State limits. Mine still sticks out all around the borders of the State. It will be bad if New Orleans should secede from Louisiana and set up for herself. Then indeed I would ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the Indians; but on his return to the Reconcave, he was wrecked on the reef off Itaporica, where the natives murdered him, but spared Caramuru, who ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... again, and reached the Molucca Islands November 4th. In his passage thence to the island of Celebes, he incurred the most imminent danger of the whole voyage. The ship struck, as they were sailing before a fair wind, on a reef of rocks, so precipitous that it was impossible to lay out an anchor to heave her off. They stuck fast in this most hazardous situation for eight hours. At the end of that time the wind shifted, and the ship, lightened of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... accepted in thus reducing our submarine strength in southern waters. At the same time some Grand Fleet submarines were organized into a watching patrol in the area off the Shetland Islands, through which enemy submarines were expected to pass. The watch off the Horn Reef and in the Heligoland Bight, which had previously been in force, was ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... was now gradually drawing toward land. Suddenly, she swerved and headed straight for a huge reef that could be seen protruding above the surface of the water. A cry of dismay went up from those ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... that her eyes rested upon the edge of the wilderness. It seemed to him that she must be thinking of that; and he noted with pain, as often before, the contrast between her and her surroundings. From every direction the forest appeared to be rushing in upon that perilous little reef of a clearing—that unsheltered island of human life, newly displaying itself amid the ancient, blood-flecked, horror-haunted sea of woods. And shipwrecked on this island, tossed to it by one of the long ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... merchantmen by a vessel from Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia, forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats, when she was entirely helpless either to fight or sail. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... grating of the keel as she was forced in; the violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous waves which again bore her up and carried her clean over the reef, will never be ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... were in the act of eating a lobster for the first time in our lives, when the captain and the sailors began to swear violently at the pilot, whom I could see at the helm, rigid with fear, striving to avoid a reef—barely visible above the water—towards which our ship was being driven. Great was our terror at this violent tumult, for we naturally thought ourselves in the most extreme danger. The vessel did actually receive ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... There was a glamour of romance about him when he was at sea, and "JACK ashore" was for ages held up as the presentment of all that was happy, and contented, and free from care. His hardest duty was supposed to be shinning up the ratlin to "reef," or "brail up," or "splice the mainbrace," or do some other of those mysterious things that caused him to look so mythical to the minds of land-lubbers and the simple-hearted kind of women that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... more of the above authorities, for differences between them were frequent and sometimes considerable, and in one instance alone a reduction of 12' in the chart was obtained. It is said in Hawkesworth (III, 202), "As soon as we got within side the reef (through Providential Channel) we anchored in nineteen fathom;" and afterwards (p. 204), that the channel, "bore E. N. E. distant ten or twelve miles." In the first chart the distance is 141/2 miles, and nearly the same in that which ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... to Him I cried In that terrible moment of need,— A craggy reef in the gulf's dark side; I seized it in haste, and from death was then freed. And there, on sharp corals, was hanging the cup,— The fathomless pit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... fathoms. It consists of a central plateau descending to the water in three terraces, each with its "tread" and "rise." The shore terrace descends by a steep cliff to the sea, forming the "rise" of a submarine "tread" in the form of fringing reef which surrounds the island and is never uncovered, even at low water, except in Flying Fish Cove, where the only landing-place exists. The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents "rounded, flat-topped ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... blowing hot from Arabia, to Port Sudan, where we put in at 11 A.M. on the 30th September. The temperature was 105 deg. F. in the shade. Here half of C Company, under Captain T.W. Savatard (afterwards killed on Gallipoli) were left to garrison and construct defences for the place. Once a desolate coral reef, it is now a great harbour with the promise of a greater future. This first night of Africa we rowed happily across its starlit lagoon in the full glamour of the ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did 'ee set ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... advanced. The dam of brush and uncemented smooth brown stones, stretching across the Pinas, was gradually rising. The hillside section of ditch through the fields was finished and only the miners continued at the granite reef, the ring of their hammers on drills going steadily and the roar of the shots now and again booming out at nightfall. Excavation went forward in the spaces between the drops on the ridge leading forth upon the mesa. The carpenters had ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... of rigging the gaff to the spar. Figure 7 shows the method of crotching the main boom and Fig. 8 a reef point knot, which may come in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef—but that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the universe. The damned thing—as he had expressed it—had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... ship up before dark, to escape the risk of running on one of them during the night. Voules feared that if it was done the canvas would not stand, and that she would then be drifted helplessly on any reef or island in her way. No sun was to be seen; the whole sky wore one uniformly leaden hue, while the dark seas of the same tint rose and fell, their tops covered with masses of foam which, blown off by the wind, filled the atmosphere. "Should there come ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... expect that future exploration will develop Midian as it has done India. The quartzose outcrop called the "Wynaad reef" (Madras Presidency) produced only a few poor penny-weights per ton, two and seven being the extremes, while much of it was practically unproductive. Presently, in February, 1878, the district was visited by Sir Andrew Clarke, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... flight, Who lies and listens, as the clear notes fall Through tingling silence of the frosty night— Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep; So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, With heart that kindled to the call of song, The voice of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English possession, as Columbus's ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... the wind. He could only cling to his place and see the vessel driven ashore, without being able to lift a hand to save her. Suddenly he was conscious of a grating, grinding sensation beneath his feet, and knew that the vessel had struck a coral reef. She swung round broadside to the wind; the boats on the weather side were wrenched from their davits and hurled away in splinters; and in the midst of such fury and turmoil there was no possibility of launching the remaining two boats ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... I speak of bed-fellows; pocket- fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master's righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master - or as I more justly call ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne, who knows every ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... vessels to, and soon afterwards the San Antonio joined and passed under our stern, when Mr. Hemmans informed me that the guns he had fired were intended as signals to his boat, and that they were not meant for us. He had been aground, he said, on a reef near the Palm Islands, but had received no damage: light, however, as he pretended to make of this accident, it was a sufficient lesson for him, and we soon found he had profited by it, for instead of preceding us, he quietly fell into our wake, a station which he never afterwards left, until ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... passengers to keep quiet, and the ladies and children to dress and sit at the doors of their state-rooms, there to await the advice and action of the officers of the ship, who were perfectly cool and self-possessed. Meantime the ship was working over a reef-for a time I feared she would break in two; but, as the water gradually rose inside to a level with the sea outside, the ship swung broadside to the swell, and all her keel seemed to rest on the rock or sand. At no time did the sea break over the deck—but the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... stern, While the Greek galleys, with no lack of skill, Hemmed them and battered in their sides, and soon The hulls rolled over, and the sea was hid, Crowded with wrecks and butchery of men. No beach nor reef but was with corpses strewn, And every keel of our barbarian host Hurried to flee, in utter disarray. Thereon the foe closed in upon the wrecks And hacked and hewed, with oars and splintered planks, As fishermen hack tunnies or a cast Of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... are employed in gathering the buaze, in preparing the fibre, and in making it into long nets. The knot of the net is different from ours, for they invariably use what sailors call the reef knot, but they net with a needle like that we use. From the amount of native cotton cloth worn in many of the southern villages, it is evident that a great number of hands and heads must be employed in the cultivation of cotton, and in the various slow processes ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... blew. During the day, those sails proved almost as much of a nuisance as a help. The fiendish, sullen williwaws that blow furiously and without warning about the Strait required watching, and more than once it was necessary to reef everything and depend on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... some never go out. They satisfy themselves with the channel trade." He pointed. "We're getting out to the open sea now, past the reef." ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... boat; Main Beach Cove, a little to the north-east; and Deadman's Cove, farther away. Of these, only Main Beach was available between one hour on either side of low water. The fact that the boat was making for it, and had already successfully skirted the submerged reef lying off it, proved that ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,—these were the features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Nancy Bell That we sailed to the Indian Sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which has often occurred ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... sorts of sea-weed, a gay garden on a white ground, shimmering through crystal! And down below the crabs crawled about, and the fishes shot hither and thither; and over the surface of the water, from reef to reef and island to island, the tern and sea-gulls skimmed and ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... good stack of letters and memos on the desk waiting for him. On top of the mail stack was a letter labeled PRIVATE in a beamed spacegram envelope. He did not recognize the name at the head of it but the return address was General Delivery, Reef ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... to a peer, I can hand, reef and steer, Or ship a selvagee; I'm never known to quail At the fury of a gale,— And I'm never, never sick ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... maybe, from the fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the shore. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few substitutes for them, are not ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... white-crested. A gust of wind struck the boat; the water began to beat heavily against it, so that it was tossed about like a piece of cork. Since Simon had not put up the sail there was now no need to reef it. Flakes of foam flew over the spars, the beams groaned. The clouds rushed on, driving the heaving, thundering waves before them. Soon the little boat was overtaken by darkness, which was only relieved by flashes of lightning. Long ago Simon had let go the rudder, and exclaimed, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the best has not been ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Afterward they might be, politically speaking, whatever they chose to be, but for the time being they were just Americans. Into this unique condition Jason Mallard projected himself, an upstanding reef of opposition to break the fine continuity of a mighty ground swell of national unity and ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mounts eighty heavy guns; but since the Civil War, additional batteries, some of them armed with Rodman guns, have been erected. A little above Fort Hamilton, and a few hundred yards from the shore, is Fort Lafayette, built on a shoal known as Hendricks' Reef. It was begun during the war of 1812, cost $350,000, and was armed with seventy-three guns. It was used during the Civil War as a jail for political prisoners. In December, 1868, it was destroyed by fire, and the Government is now rebuilding ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... down in one piece. Somehow, I know it. Don't you let them do it to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection onwards. Don't do it. This isn't just nosing into the Slot, over the reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and beginning to sweat. This is much more, Harry. This is bloody frightening. Are the three minutes up yet? My stomach is crawling at the thought ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... like too many people today who expect to get things without workin' for them. But this troop is not run on sich lines. Some day ye'll come bang up aginst another troop, and how'll ye feel if ye git licked. Why, when I asked some of you boys to tie a clove-hitch ye handed me out a reef-knot, which is nothin' more than a 'granny' knot, which any one could tie. I want yez to do more than other people kin, or what's the use of havin' a troop? So git away home now, fer we'll have no more fun until yez git through with ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... with myrtles and oleanders, expended itself upon the shingly beach in the centre of the bay. This sheltered cove, about 300 yards across the chord of the arc, formed rather more than a semicircle by the natural formation of the coast, and was further improved by a long reef of hard sandstone, which extended from either ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... reason another strange phenomenon of Lundy, about which the imagination of an earlier people must have lingered, passes barely remarked. There is a great promontory on the coast, opposite the reef called the Hen and Chickens, which is pierced by a sort of tunnel about eight hundred feet in length and sixty feet in height, through which a boat can sail on calm days at high-water; and in the centre of the tunnel, bubbling up through the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... own, crinkles and cracks; the skirting, having absorbed moisture and now drying again, opens its joints; the rough-cast coquettes with the frost and opens chinks and crannies for the humbler creation. I fail to see the necessity of (and, accordingly, I resent bitterly) all these coral-reef methods. Better walls than this, and better and less life-wasting ways of making them, are surely possible. In the wall in question, concrete would have been cheaper and better than bricks if only "the men" had understood it. But I can dream ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?" Ingram called out to Sheila when they had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... a good second," chimed in Teddy. "Wow!" he cried, as a giant breaker thundered down on the reef, "that must have been the daddy of them all, I guess. Let's go up to the lookout room as soon as we're through and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... litter and with the help of the Asika and Jeekie, dug a little in this gravel, not without reward, for in it they found several nuggets. Above, too, where they went afterwards, was a huge quartz reef denuded by water, which evidently had been worked in past ages and was still so rich that in it they saw plenty of visible gold. Looking at it Alan bethought him of his City days and of the hundreds of thousands of pounds capital with which this unique proposition ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... that Hartog, fearing it might lead to further disputes, determined to get it over as soon as possible, and for this purpose he altered the ship's course to an island he sighted on the horizon which we made during the same afternoon, when we came to anchor in a natural harbour formed by a coral reef and opposite to a hard sandy beach well suited to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... reef of rocks which lies to the south of the harbour at Colombo, the beautiful little painted crabs[1], distinguished by dark red markings on a yellow ground, may be seen all day long running nimbly in the spray, and ascending and descending in security the almost perpendicular sides of the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... said. "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then try it ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... having all the Subordinates stand on one Foot and tremble whenever he showed up. In fact, he was a very hefty Proposition all through the Business District. But when he struck the Street leading to his House he began to reef his Sails and lower all ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... current; might compare the products of volcanos poured out upon the land with those ejected beneath the waters; and might mark, on the one hand, the growth of the forest, and, on the other, that of the coral reef. Yet, even with these advantages, he would be liable to fall into the greatest errors, when endeavouring to reason on rocks of subterranean origin. He would seek in vain, within the sphere of his observation, for any direct analogy to the process of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... but no symptoms of its being inhabited—that there was no anchorage that he could discover, as the shore rose perpendicularly, like a wall, from the ocean. We therefore ran to leeward, and discovered that a reef of coral rocks extended nearly two miles from that side of the island. The boats were again lowered, and after surveying, the mate reported that there was a passage, with plenty of water, for the ship, through the very centre of the reef, which would bring her into ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... change the mulberry-leaf To shining silk; the lapidary's skill Makes the rough diamond sparkle at his will, And cuts a gem from quartz or coral-reef. Better a skillful cobbler at his last Than unlearned poet twangling on the lyre; Who sails on land and gallops on the blast, And mounts the welkin on a braying ass, Clattering a shattered cymbal bright with brass, And slips his girth and tumbles ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... four miles of it, from the rocks of Borth Head, where the waves could be watched breaking on the seaweed-covered reef, and sending up columns of white spray against the black face of the cliffs, away to the yellow sand dunes near the Dovey's mouth, and the reaches of wet sands where we noted on summer days "the landscape winking through ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... some while over the down-hill profile of our eastern road when I chanced to glance northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea lying outspread. It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all along the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard it—and saw the white sweep of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... all. We hadn't a nice trip. Don't know how Finlay kept her going and I thought I'd lost her on Tortillas reef; but we can ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... conveying important truths to the listening congregation within, "was took from the wreck of the Tamalpais. Brother Horley bought it at auction at Horse Shoe Bay and presented it. You know the Tamalpais ran ashore on Skinner's Reef, jest ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and pedantic mode of saying that the best pipe of all is the last one smoked at night. It is the penultimate moment that is always the happiest. The sweetest pipe ever enjoyed by the skipper of the Hesperus was the one he whiffed just before he was tirpitzed by the poet on that angry reef. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... with the exception of six. In fact, the Chub was made into a cullender, and completely disabled, before he struck her colours. The same fate attended the Confiance, the Linnet, and the Finch, the latter of which grounded on a reef of rocks about the middle of the engagement. The gun-boats appear absolutely to have run away. Thus was the British fleet captured by an inferior fleet of the Americans. Commodore Downie was killed by a ball from the American gun-boats very early in the contest, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... next morning, and then very leisurely, that the Ebba began to make preparations for her departure. From the extremity of New-Berne quay the crew might have been seen holystoning the deck, after which they loosened the reef lines, under the direction of Effrondat, the boatswain, hoisted in the boats ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... a shred, sir," said Philip; "the scissors shall only be used to cut the threads, with which the ladies take in a reef here and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... as a pilot, only as an able seaman, if you know how to hand, reef, and steer, and how to ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... statements of seamen of all classes, that the bell-buoy, fixed to one of the outer Manacles, is utterly inadequate to warn vessels of their nearness to danger. And when the sounds of that bell came in the landward breeze to where I stood looking across the reef, they seemed, not a message of warning to those who cross the deep, but as the death-knell of the hundreds of men, women, and children who have breathed their last in ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... wrecked at this spot. One split on the reef. Another was caught in the backwater. Others sank in the whirlpool below the rapids. Others went under at the first leap into the cataract. Two of the canoes had foolishly been lashed abreast. They sidled, shipped a billow, and sank. All the men clung to the gunnels; but ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... signal to form the line as most convenient. The fleet then formed in the following order:—Goliath, Zealous, Vanguard, Minotaur, Theseus, Bellerophon, Defence, Orion, Audacious, Majestic, and Leander. The Culloden was then astern the Swiftsure, and the Alexander to leeward, tacking to clear the reef. The Admiral hove to, to pick up a boat, and also the four next ships astern of the Vanguard, which gave the Orion an opportunity, by standing on and passing them, to get up with the Zealous ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... while the other was strewn with danger. In the latter channel, after a hundred strokes of the oars, the ships in single file, led by the Pretoria, would have been dragged by a submarine current toward a reef of rocks which was visible in the distance, and over which the sea, calm everywhere else, broke tumultuously. The commanders of the several galleys could perceive their peril only one by one; each would be made aware of it only by the rapid drifting of the galley ahead of him. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... had been signalled and managed to approach, the supposed corpse was slung down to it, and a fisherman accidentally touching the wound, the man revived. The Wolf light is about seven miles out, erected with immense labour and cost on a most perilous reef of rocks. Both lighthouses are often quite isolated by stress ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... knows something, who has brains enough to prophesy the destiny of the American Republic, no matter what his opinions may be upon any religious subject. Suppose we are in a storm out at sea, and the billows are washing over our ship, and it is necessary that some one should reef the topsail, and a man presents himself. Would you stop him at the foot of the mast to find out his opinion on the five points of Calvinism? What has that to do with it? Congress has nothing to do with baptism ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of these words, "Because I am God, and not man, therefore the children of men are not consumed"—just as it is because the ship rides by a cable, and not a cobweb, that, when sails are rent, and yards are gone, and breakers are foaming on the reef, she mounts the billows and survives the storm. That we are not suffering the pains of hell, that we have hopes of heaven and ever shall be there, we owe not to our good works, but to God's good will; to that only. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... seen but the boundless ocean with not a speck of a sail or a bit of land within sight. It was a little kingdom all of its own. A quarter of a mile from shore the low rollers broke ceaselessly on a coral reef, while overhead, the gulls swept around and around, their plaintive whistle being ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... once bought a mine from that man. His name was Algernon Maddox Cholmondely then, and he was homeward bound to assume the ancestral acres in Flint. He escorted me down the hole and displayed visible gold sparkling all along the reef. A week after he had gone I found that he had put it there with a shot-gun—an old "salter's" trick, but new to me at the time. You are not likely to be seeing Patrick Algernon Terence Maddox O'Ryan-Cholmondely again, but, if you should, remember me to him, please—with the business end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... engaged he heard a hurried trampling of feet on deck, mingled with sharp orders from the captain. At first he thought the sounds might have reference to taking in a reef to prepare for a squall, but as the noise rather increased, his curiosity was roused, and he was about to return on deck when Peter the Great suddenly leaped into the cabin and took hurriedly from the opposite locker a brace of highly ornamented ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... which made a clean breach over her, and the men became exhausted with the wet and the inclemency of the season. On the third day of the gale, and seventh since they had parted company with the fleet, a squall brought the mainmast by the board; the foresail was lowered to close-reef, when a heavy sea struck the vessel, and pouring a torrent over her decks, swept overboard the three men who were forward reefing the sail. Mr Bullock, the master's mate, was at the helm—Willy, as usual, down below, attending ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you that it is some dangerous reef!" exclaimed Kit; "some hole or cavern which the water ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... an "able seaman" to get his passage to America. When out at sea it was discovered he didn't know one rope from another. During a storm he and the mate had a terrible fight. "The sea was sweeping the deck and we were ordered to reef a shroud. I didn't know how, and the mate called me a name that no Welshman will stand for. I thought we were all going to be drowned anyhow, and I might as well die with my teeth in his neck. So I flew into him and we fought like wildcats. I couldn't ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... days later when Mr. Tredgold, after considering audibly which island he should visit first, gave him the position of Bowers's Island and began to discuss coral reefs and volcanic action. They were now well in among the islands. Two they passed at a distance, and went so close to a third—a mere reef with a few palms upon it—that Mr. Chalk, after a lengthy inspection through his binoculars, was able to declare ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... their course lay is now dotted with mining-fields and townships, and fertile spaces of tilled tropical plantations. The coast-line rich in harbours is the busy haunt of steamers, and the narrow waterway between the mainland and the great barrier reef the home of many lightships. But when Kennedy and his party made their pioneer journey, the great desolation of the wilderness beset them on every side from the land, whilst the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... boats entered a little sound, and by nine o'clock in the evening we arrived at the Gulf of Mexico, in a region of shoal water, much cut up by oyster reefs. The tide being very low, the boats were anchored inside of an oyster reef, which afforded protection from the inflowing swell of the sea. We shaped our course next day for St. Marks, along a low, marshy coast, where oyster reefs, in shoal water, frequently barred our progress. From South Cape to St. Marks the coast, broken by the mouths of several ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... it now, to port and landward. The white, hard sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted Marie. It little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the quiet reef shortly. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... said the Doctor's voice behind them. "God help the ship that should touch that reef this day, though a nautilus might float in safety! See, how the groundswell is tearing away at those rocks; you can just distinguish the long heave of the water, before it breaks. There is the most dangerous groundswell in the world off this coast. Should this country ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... gave chase in all haste and coming up with her before long, threw grapnels on board and made fast to her. Then they made all sail for their own island and were but a little distant from it, when the wind veered and rent their sails and cast them on to a reef on our coast. Thereupon we sallied forth on them, and looking on them as booty driven to us by fate, slew the men and made prize of the ships, in which we found the treasures and rarities in question and forty damsels, amongst whom was Sufiyeh. We carried the damsels to my father, not ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... assisted by a few able sea-men, form the crew of the ship. They stand watch, make, reef, and take in sail; do all the dirty work, tarring down, painting, scraping, and slushing. They stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various |
