"Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... big?" pursued Julie. "You've done a thing that makes the rest of us feel pretty small, you know. Why, while there was any question of your getting better, there wasn't a dance given at any of the hotels between here and Surf Point, and all sorts of people came here with inquiries every day. This place was absolutely hushed. The maids used to fight for the privilege of carrying your trays up. None of us thought of anything but 'How is Miss ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... I've been crazy for travel. I used to read my geography book till I wore it out nearly; the exports and the imports, you know? And the pictures of those Arabian men with white turbans, and the South Sea Islanders riding on surf boards—I can see 'em now. There was a castle for Germany, with the moon behind it and the Rhine—do you know 'Bingen on the Rhine'? I love the sound of that. And the ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... to the Lido for a short swim in the slight but bracing surf of the Adriatic. They had had a midday breakfast in a queer little restaurant, known only to the initiated and therefore early discovered by Larry, who had a keen scent for a cook learned in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... split! To mourn in plasmic Temple's fold With gyving sod no King can shirk! A spangled pomp of Death's gray peak Where owls and lizards blink and sit As curdling cries of monsters cold Pierce hollows deep until they irk, Each surf-thrown afrite's eclipsed dome. And cursing clans that felt the heat That dwale obscured in shadows vague, Clash thro' the broken forest boughs Until each ronyon's stuck in loam. There, then, bivouacs a unco Cheat, Whose limbs ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... of the waves, came down the foot of a huge wall of vast cliffs, which rose majestically to an enormous height. Some of these, dividing the beach with their sharp spurs, formed capes and promontories, worn away by the ceaseless action of the surf. Farther on the eye discerned their massive outline sharply defined against ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Peking; among the green hills of Amoy; amid the tall roofs of Antananarivo, and the well-watered gardens of Hankey; among the deep ferns of Raiatea and in the cotton-fields of Samoa; in Calcutta and Benares, within the shadows of the wealthy temples of Kali and Mahadeo; or where the creamy surf in curling waves throws up the garnet sands of Travancore,—each Sabbath-day rises the hymn of praise, the earnest prayer; each month they break the bread and drink the cup in memory of Him whom, not having ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... averaging half a mile in depth, cutting the strong tidal stream which runs round the south coast of Wales and up the Bristol Channel, with steep cliffs and outlying crags and peaks of rock over which the surf is flung ceaselessly, even on still summer days, and with a dangerous tidal race at its northern end and the south-west and south-east angles. It stands, too, in the highway of the winds as well as of the waters, and is so ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Hutchinson's Hill, you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries, ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... current into the ocean that caused the break in the coral reef through which their boat had been enabled to pass. Otherwise they might have found no opening, and perished in attempting to traverse the surging surf. The madrepores will not build their subaqueous coral walls where rivers run into the ocean; hence the open spaces here and there happily left, that form deep transverse channels admitting ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the open sea-coast beaten by the surf, and after being satisfied that I had no hope of escape in that direction it was in part my curiosity that led me on, and partly a vague idea that I would get Confederate transportation back to Columbia and take a fresh start westward bound. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... men They climbed the frowning ridges, With their flaming swords drawn free And their pennants at their knee. They went up to their desire, To the City of the Bridges, With their naked brands outdrawn Like the lances of the dawn! In a swelling surf of fire, Crawling higher—higher—higher— Till they crumpled up and died Like a sudden wasted tide, And the thunder in their faces beat them ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... drew in with the land, they saw that the boiling surf of the western passage would force them to select the northern entrance, which twisted and turned between the rocks and the shoals. It was now nearly ten o'clock, and as the ketch drifted in before the light easterly breeze she seemed ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... communication between the town and the shipping had been suspended for ten days, in consequence of the high surf at the entrance of the river and along the beach, and great difficulty was experienced in getting off the mails. The war in the interior, between the chiefs of Ibadan and Ijaye, continued with unabated fury; the former district is said to contain 100,000 inhabitants, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... night deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... found some difficulty in landing, on account of the swelling surf, that tumbled about with such violence as had almost overset the cutter that carried him on shore; and, in his eagerness to jump upon the strand, his foot slipped from the side of the boat, so that he was thrown forwards in an horizontal direction, and ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... on our own countrymen wearing white helmets on their heads and suits of snowy white as they walk about amid brown-skinned natives whose bare bodies gleam like satin, lands where lines of palm trees wave their long fronds over the pearly surf washing at their roots. We will visit also other lands where you look out over a glowing pink and mauve desert to seeming infinity, and see reflected in bitter shallow water at your feet the flames of such a sunset glory as you never yet have imagined. Or you can ride out across the same desert lying ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... spend on board the vessel. The time is, however, very much beguiled during this last day's sail by the sight of the land and the various objects which it presents to view—the green slopes, the castle-covered hills, the cliffs, the lines of beach, with surf and breakers rolling in upon them; and sometimes, when the ship approaches nearer to the shore than usual, the pretty little cottages, covered with thatch, and adorned with ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... were completed and the girl started off to spend a fortnight with Ruth at the Andrews' beautiful summer home by the sea. Then came gay times. Early morning dips in the surf; clam-bakes on the beach; long, lazy hours spent on the veranda, when the day was too warm for exercise, and when it was cooler, fine spins along the hard, white sand, for miles beside ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... 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 gardens among the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... could shut off the surroundings from the eye, the mind might feed without any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf. But the hindrance is found on every side. The sense of artistic fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous Chapel was well enough at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where it could be admired as ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... produce a few fair Christians by dragging shore lines of church doctrine, but our success will be due more to luck than to a knowledge of the working of God's laws.... We have been long-shore Christians for a good many centuries; the day has come for us to break away from the surf of man-made ideas, and launch out till we can feel the swell of a boundless love, a love not confined to the letter of denominational law or creed. We must get into us the spirit of Christianity. We must recognize the fact that the spirit is not a thing that we can confine to ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... the Pitons, and enter another little craterine harbor, to cast anchor before the village of Choi-seul. It lies on a ledge above the beach and under high hills: we land through a surf, running the boat high up on soft yellowish sand. A delicious saline scent ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... "Donkey rides, surf-bathing, breakfast on the grass, all these things are traps set for the marriageable man. And, really, there is nothing prettier than a child about eighteen, running through a field or picking flowers along ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the grass never grew there again. It is now called Brenna. Then they stoned Stigandi to death, and there he was buried under a heap of stones. Olaf kept his word to the bonds-woman, and gave her her freedom, and she went home to Herdholt. Hallbjorn Whetstone-eye was washed up by the surf a short time after he was drowned. It was called Knorstone where he was put in the earth, and his ghost walked about there a great deal. There was a man named Thorkell Skull who lived at Thickshaw on his father's inheritance. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... take after us in a boat, or fire from the shore; but if we show we are going to land they will keep hidden and take us by surprise. If we should head straight in now they would likely hide in the brush and pot-shot us as we land when we are in the surf; but you watch old Cap Riggs, and if we don't give this Devil's Admiral the fight of his life before this little party is wiped out, I'll go back on the farm in Maine. He can't come aboard me and perform like that without ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the sources, but only the vehicles of the power, the belting and shafting which transmit a mighty impulse which they had nothing to do in creating. And the antagonism subserves the purposes of the rule which it opposes, as the blow of the surf may consolidate the sea-wall that it breaks against. And our own follies and sins may indeed sorrowfully shadow our lives, and bring on us pains of body and disasters in fortune, and stings in spirit for which we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... men were engulfed in a wave some thirty feet high, and struggling with it in vain. The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known author of Lavengro, and The Bible in Spain, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the others were saved. We ourselves have known this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was this deed we have known him more than once to risk his life for others. We are happy to ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the surf a-roaring before the break of day; But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... voices rose above the dull boom of the surf, Gregory's thoughts turned to the words of the song. The trail had been long. How long and how devious, he had never quite before realized. Perhaps it was because he was tired and the firelight made him think. The "land of his dreams" was ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the abysmal character of the turbulent chaos, and there is a sensation of infiniteness around and below you not devoid of grandeur; but as an exhibition of the puissance of angry water, I do not think the mid-ocean tempest equal to the storm which brings the thunder of the surf full on the granite bulwarks ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... more pushed out into the transparent depths of the lagoon. Bight ahead of us, after another hour's paddling, lay a long, gleaming point of sand covered with a grove of palms; beyond that a wide sweep of pale green shallow water; beyond that again the wild tumble and fret of the surf on the ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... further to go to reach it," observed Boxall. The last few yards we had taken we had rapidly shoaled the water. "Thank Heaven, we are ashore at last!" he added, as the light surf which rolled up slowly went hissing back and left our feet uncovered. A few paces more, and we were standing on ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... tempered by easterly tradewinds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season May to November Terrain: mostly hilly to rugged and mountainous with little level land Natural resources: sun, sand, sea, surf Land use: arable land 15%; permanent crops 6%; meadows and pastures 26%; forest and woodland 6%; other 47% Environment: rarely affected by hurricanes; subject to frequent severe droughts, floods, earthquakes; lack of natural freshwater resources Note: important location 1,770 km southeast of ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I trust not the tale: For never shall Albin a destiny meet So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat. Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field and his feet to the foe! And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... strangely unlike her home cities—the brisk prairie "parlor city," where she had grown up inch by inch, as it extended itself acre by acre, and the mad modern city where she had struggled for her bread. The tide of slaughter was still to the east: a low rumble, like surf on a far-away beach. Sometimes it came whinnying and licking at the very doorstep, and then ebbed back, but never rolled up on the ancient city. It was only an under-hum to merriment. It sharpened ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... at the pilot. No chatting now, no bystanders, but fixed eyes and firm lips, every muscle set, every nerve tense. Yes, it is serious. Serious! close by us, seeming scarcely a yard away, frowns a black rock. The maddened waves dash up its sullen back, the white, passionate surf surges into its wrathful jaws. Here, there, before, behind, black rocks and a wild uproar of waters, through all which Providence and our pilot lead us safely into the still deep beyond, and we look into each ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... faintly drawn against A dim perspective of perpetual storms, A frowning line of black basaltic cliffs Baffles the savage onset of the surf. But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe lifts His dark, defiant head forever mid The shock and thunder of contending tides, And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls back The rude, eternal protest ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... where beeves are good, And men have quaint, old-fashioned ways, And every burn has ballad lore, And every hamlet has its song, And on its surf-beat, rocky shore The eerie legend lingers long. Old customs live there, unaware That they are garments cast away, And what of light is lingering there ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... as that surf, in fitful swells, Doth bring or bear away the shells From yonder strand,—such passion, strife Would fill, ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... 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 ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... the Kinta appeared, a black shadow on a silver sea, roaring for a boat, but the surf was so heavy that it was some time before the police boat was got off; and then Mr. Maxwell, whose cheery, energetic voice precedes him, and Mr. Walker landed, bullying everybody, as people often do when they know that they are the delinquents! ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour. Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last—"The Kanaka Surf," a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... 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 hear the stillness, and that staccato note of some accidental sound softened ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... sail out, and somewhat the wind got up, but they came to the isle and got hold of the ox; then asked Grettir which they would do, bear the ox aboard or keep hold of the craft, because the surf at the isle was great; then they bade him hold the boat; so he stood amidships on that side which looked from shore, and the sea took him up to the shoulder-blades, yet he held her so that she moved nowise: but Thorgeir took the ox behind and Thormod before, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... got rickshaws and drove out to the Galle Face Hotel, a beautiful place with the surf thundering on the beach outside. If I were rich I would always ride in a rickshaw. It is a delightful way of getting about, and as we were trotted along a fine broad road, small brown boys ran alongside and pelted us with big waxy, sweet-smelling blossoms. We did enjoy it so. At the Galle ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Amazonian Dames Contrive whereby to glorify their names. A ruff for Boston Neck of mud and turfe, Reaching from side to side, from surf to surf, Their nimble hands spin up like Christmas pyes, Their pastry by degrees on high doth rise ... The wheel at home counts in an holiday, Since while the mistress worketh it may play. A tribe of female hands, but manly hearts, Forsake at home their pastry ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Wearied with doing nothing all day, save lying around on the deck of the Arrow a prey to seasickness, he had fallen asleep. Above the splash of the surf and the rustle of the wind in the palmettos, his snores could be heard distinctly, making night hideous. Alec was on the point of waking him with a nudge in the ribs, when Hugh ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... very anxious to make some botanical researches on this desert island, but the surf was so rough that he was afraid to risk a boat ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... made the land we sought; and got ashore through a tremendous surf. Here we found the island had lately been the seat of war—some of the heathen having resolved to put an end by violence to the Christian religion there, or as they call it, the lotu. The Christians had gained the victory, and then had treated their enemies ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... only the rushing sound of surf on a beach. Then the sea sound became fainter and a voice so familiar that it meant home to him came to Chris's ear as if ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... said Mr. Linden, "what does your wisdom say should go in here—besides this basket of substantiate? I think you know more of these people than I do?"—And the surf in its cold ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the same time it is so large and so much exposed to the southeast and northwest winds, that it is little better than an open roadstead; and the whole swell of the Pacific Ocean rolls in here before a southeaster, and breaks with so heavy a surf in the shallow waters, that it is highly dangerous to lie near in to the shore during the southeaster season, that is, between the months ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... he 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 there's ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... in their swift voyage through the air, they had come within sight of the great ocean, and were soon flying over it. Far beneath them, the waves tossed themselves tumultuously in mid-sea, or rolled a white surf-line upon the long beaches, or foamed against the rocky cliffs, with a roar that was thunderous, in the lower world; although it became a gentle murmur, like the voice of a baby half asleep, before it reached the ears of Perseus. Just then ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... swept overboard and went away with the backward rush of water, as the boat was hauled out of danger. Every one saw this, and a terrible cry went up, but only one man moved. Our young sailor sprang after the child. He knew that it was almost certain death to enter that surf without a rope, but a spirit of self-sacrifice—founded on the great example of Jesus—urged him on. He had no time to think—only to act. He caught the child and was dragged along with her into the wild sea. At that ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... "for then we shall have to land in the bay, and although there will be no danger if we get off soon, yet the ladies will get a wetting, and maybe the boat will be damaged. We shall just get a little water going out, for the surf ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... saying, "Run before the next wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her course had ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... thing about this talking, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us;—the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic,—you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that soft material, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... The surf Mrs. Nuddle had raised in the little private sea of her tub had died down, and a froth of soap dried on the rawhide of her big forearms as her heifer eyes roamed the newspaper-gallery of portraits. One sudsy hand supported ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... blasting wind, sweeping the sea of icy sands, hissed and howled round the little sod cabin like surf beating on a half-sunken rock. The wind and the snow and the darkness possessed the plain; and Cold (whose other name is Death) was king of the horrible carnival. It seemed as though morning and sunlight could not come again, so absolute was the ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... it makes the vessel roll? What sounds are these I hear? It seems as if the rising waves were beating on my ear!' 'Oh, it is the breaking of the surf—just that, and nothing more, My Captain Don ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... him rather than not get of him what she wanted. And what she wanted was something serious and risky. Not mere marriage—oh dear no! But a profound and dangerous inter-relationship. As well ask the paddlers in the small surf of passion to plunge themselves into the heaving gulf of mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers turned up to their knees it was enough for them to wet their toes in the dangerous sea. They were having nothing to do with such desperate nereids ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... early, and on going down to the beach as usual to wash himself, he saw Malva. She was seated on the bow of a large fishing boat anchored in the surf and letting her bare feet hang, sat combing her ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... the western sky is dashed with fleecy clouds, like the spray that beats against the chalk cliffs on the shore of the mighty Atlantic; and amid the last plunges of the doomed vessel the spray is tinged redder and redder, ere with her human cargo she disappears amid the surf. But no sooner has she sunk into the abyss than the foam and the fierce breakers die away, and a wondrous calm broods over all things. In twenty minutes' time nothing is left in the western sky but a tiny bar of golden cloud ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... tossing surf in the moonbeam, The albatross lone on the spray, Alone know the tears wept in vain for the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... like walls, but those are surf-waves, as they are called, that is, waves which break upon a shore. The waves I am thinking of just now are more like mountains—translucent blackish-blue mountains—mountains that look as if they were made of bottle-green glass, like the glass mountain in the fairy tale, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... my peaks, and how my pines "Are cressets of pure gold; my quarried scars "Of black crevase and shadow-fill'd canon, "Are trac'd in silver mist. How on my breast "Hang the soft purple fringes of the night; "Close to my shoulder droops the weary moon, "Dove-pale, into the crimson surf the sun "Drives up before his prow; and blackly stands "On my slim, loftiest peak, an eagle, with "His angry eyes set sunward, while his cry "Falls fiercely back from all my ruddy heights; "And his bald eaglets, in their bare, broad ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... their colours from slaty grey to green as we approached them nearer, although their shape was all pretty much the same—tall sugar-loaf peaks surrounded by verdure sloping down in graceful curves to the water's edge, the surf breaking against the shore of those to leeward in clouds of spray, while the waves washed the rocky feet of those on the windward side without ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... party to be his guests at luncheon, which was served in a cosy restaurant overlooking the ocean. And then, although at this season it was bleak winter back East, all but Uncle John and Aunt Jane took a bath in the surf of the blue Pacific, mingling with hundreds of other bathers ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... never came to pass, for, as a feather, the billows softly bore them up and then down so gently; they felt it pass under them, with all its boiling surf and thunderous roar. And so on continually, but the sea getting heavier and heavier. One after another rushed the waves, more and more gigantic, like a long chain of mountains, with yawning valleys. And the madness ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... nothin'! No boat c'd live in that surf f'r a moment. The schooner'll go to pieces mighty soon, I'm feared. It's turrible! turrible! to stan' by an' watch ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a week together on Cape Cod the same summer and took refuge from a storm in one of the huts provided for ship-wrecked people. Listening to the deafening roar of the wind and the surf, they spoke of Cora Brainard. Loramer congratulated Lawrence upon his freedom. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... became a very sea of bales. It was a little edifice with a thatched roof and venetian blinds, commanding a fine view of the whole of Back Bay, with Malabar Point to the right and the governor's house imbedded in trees. Long lines of surf marked the position of ugly rocks which were visible at low water, but among these there was a pathway of soft sand marked off by stakes, along which the shore-end of ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... mistaken then," Steve explained, "but I could have sworn I heard surf." He leaned over the chart. "This doesn't show anything, though, nearer than the land. Toot ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... made to help to unload and load the ship. And, to 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 by day mangled ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this kind of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran for miles close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand between it and the surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It happened to be even in that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually wonderful one, and none of the three had ever seen anything in the least like it. They could but sit silent and stare. The great sea, that little line of lovely islands ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... time, in their swift voyage through the air, they had come within sight of the great ocean and were soon flying over it. Far beneath them the waves tossed themselves tumultuously in mid-sea, or rolled a white surf line upon the long beaches, or foamed against the rocky cliffs, with a roar that was thunderous in the lower world, although it became a gentle murmur, like the voice of a baby half asleep, before it reached the ears of Perseus. Just ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... glittering gravel that would afford delightful retreats for meditation, were it not for the dozens of half-naked brown-skinned imps, children of the fisher-folk of Torre del Greco, who wallow in the warm sand or rush with joyful screams into the tepid surf. The population must have increased not a little since those days, nearly a century ago, when the unhappy Shelley could find peace and solitude in his darkest hours of unrest upon these shores, where it would be well-nigh impossible for a twentieth-century poet ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... wrong?" (Claspt hands and that petitionary grace Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke) "O would I take her father for one hour, For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!" 115 And even while she spoke, I saw where James Made toward us, like a wader in the surf, Beyond the brook, waist-deep ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... be a band of malefactors and felons flying from justice. What are their crimes, that they hide themselves in darkness? To what punishment are they exposed, that, to avoid it, men, and women, and children, thus encounter the surf of the North Sea and the terrors of a night storm? What induces this armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This was not the flight ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... paused and looked up and down the rapids rushing down the slope in all their wild variety, with the white crests of breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet, smooth sweep of currents over broad shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... June, before sunrise, we began our excursion by ascending to the Villa de Laguna, estimated to be at the elevation of 350 toises above the port of Santa Cruz. We could not verify this estimate of the height, the surf not having permitted us to return on board during the night, to take our barometers and dipping-needle. As we foresaw that our expedition to the peak would be very precipitate, we consoled ourselves with the reflection ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... staring round the intruders, and down through a rich woodland lane five hundred feet into the valley, till they could hear the brawling of the little trout-stream, and beyond, the everlasting thunder of the ocean surf. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... room. About the spacious fire-place in the "baronial" hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... their powers are limited. Like the steam-tugs, they can hover around the sands in heavy gales, and venture gingerly near to them; but thus far, and no farther, may they go. They cannot, like the noble lifeboats, dash right into the caldron of surf, and dare the sands and ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Wisconsin lakes, to which (placid inland ponds) they had confined their previous summer sojourns: and the vogue of the fresher resorts farther north on the greater lakes had not yet reached them. This year let the salt surf roll and ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... traveller from distant and friendly lands were to accept as germs of a type those who sport in the surf at fashionable watering-places, he might infer from the display of brown backs and shoulders that Australia had not escaped a smudge of aboriginal blood. But this ardently cultivated tint is notoriously impermanent. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... clinging to slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold, black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... promontory which forms the north side of the entrance, and is called Cape Disappointment. The pinnace was then manned, and two of the partners, Mr. David Stuart and Mr. M'Kay, set off in the hope of learning something of the fate of the whaleboat. The surf, however, broke with such violence along the shore that they could find no landing place. Several of the natives appeared on the beach and made signs to them to row round the cape, but they thought it most prudent to ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... this way, that way floated, Quick sparks of sea-fire keen like eyes From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted Shores and faint ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... clean-edged, broadening—the sea! In a minute or two I caught the murmur of the coast. "Five hundred miles," I began to reckon again, and a holy calm dawned on me as the Lunardi swept high over the fringing surf, and its voice faded back with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... realized without being seen. I embarked at Enzelli on board a small Russian steamer, the Tehran, which had taken the place of one of the usual large vessels employed on the mail-service. The sea was rising as I embarked, and I was lucky in getting on board before the surf on the bar at the mouth of the lagoon became impassable. The steamer had five hundred tons of iron cargo on board, machinery for electric light and other purposes, intended for Tehran, but which could not be landed owing ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... 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. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... groups of stalwart, immaculately clad young gods lolling indolently on tropical shores, with a splendor of palms overhead, and a sparkling blue sea in the distance. Others depicted a group of white-clad men wading knee-deep in the surf as they laughingly landed a cutter on the sandy beach. There was a particularly fascinating one showing two barefooted young chaps on a wave-swept raft engaged in that delightfully perilous task known as signaling. Another showed the keen-eyed gunners busy ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... groups, attracted by the novelty of a steamer that was passing within reach of their voice. On each of the jutting points of the shore was a low and ruddy tower,—last vestige of the thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged shores of the ocean and its eternal surf, the Breton sailors were marveling at this easy navigation, almost touching the coast whose inhabitants looked like a swarm of bees. Had the boat been directed by another captain, so close a journey would have resulted most disastrously: ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... have I heard and felt great throbs of love Vibrating through the universe of worlds, Through every grain of matter, through the hearts That live and swarm beneath the eye of God. Oft standing mid the holy calm of night, The surf of love came rolling on my soul From off the farthest verge of God's great realms, As rolls the surf of ocean on a beach, For ever and for ever, and for ever. Love was the Cause of all things, and the End; For God is Love and ever will be Love: And those who feel most love are most like God— ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... Gorgeous shadows are in motion on White House Peak.... Along the trail as though walking a taut wire, a caravan of burros streams, driven by a wide-hatted graceful horseman.... Twelve thousand feet! I am brother to the eagles now! The matchless streams, the vivid orange-colored meadows. The deep surf-like roar of the firs, the wailing sigh of the wind in the grass—a passionate longing wind." Such ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... boat passed me. I could not see it—but I heard oars, or fancied I did. I tried to call out. But I was too far gone; every time I opened my mouth it filled with water, and I only spluttered. Anyway, I wasn't sure it was oars; it was more likely surf on a rock, I thought. A little later, I felt the ground under my feet, and staggered ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like the surf of a far-off sea. Away to the side, with a stretch of sunburnt grass between, lay the river. Let Bertrand keep to the winding road and all was well. Gallop how he might Grey Roland would wear him down, but let him swerve, let the fluttering of a bird startle him aside, and Ursula ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... ventured very close inshore in the vicinity of the batteries; and our pilot, who had been throughout the voyage in bodily fear of an American prison, began to wake up, and, after looking well round, told us that he could make out, over the long line of surf, a heap of sand called 'the mound,' which was a mark for going ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... of the growing season dodging one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... was a one-story building of corrugated iron, hot, unpainted, and unlovely. It was set on wooden logs to lift it from the reach of "sand jiggers" and the surf, which at high tide ran up the beach, under and beyond it. Inside it was rude and bare, and the heat and the smell of the harbor, and of the swamp on which the town was built, passed freely through the ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... below deck, together with a few of the least skilful of the negroes, who composed the crew, and the hatches closed upon us, to prevent the sea from coming in between decks, while the dangers occasioned by the surf running over the bar, was passed. The wretched condition to which we were reduced, was such as to awaken a feeling of sympathy, even among the blacks, who shed tears of compassion for our misfortunes; during this time, the most profound silence reigned on board; ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... the letter without a throb of filial affection; but, nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... steepest slope seawards, [Footnote: Kohl, Inseln und Marschen Schleswig Holsteins, ii., p. 33. From a drawing in Andresen, Om Klitformationen, p. 24, it would appear that on the Schleswig coast the surf-formed banks have the steepest slope landwards, those farther from the shore, as stated in the text.] and their form differs little from that of dunes except in this last particular and in being lower and more continuous. Upon the western coast of the island ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Liverpool. Not a little curious that our country supplied the money both to carry on the traite and to put it down. Three miles south of the Gallinas the Sulayma River flows in. Here the scenery suggests a child's first attempt at colouring in horizontal lines; a dangerous surf ever foams white upon the yellow shore, bearing an eternal growth of green. Two holes in the bush and a few thatched roofs, separated by a few miles, showed the Harris factories, which caused frequent teapot-storms between 1865 and 1878. The authorities of Liberia, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to within three feet of the front of the stage, and run back to the extreme background. The space between the footlights and the floor of the cave should be covered with blue cambric, painted to represent waves and surf. Directly behind the drop curtain there should be a representation of the roof and sides of the cave. Light frames, covered with brown paper, similar to the floor, and made very irregular at the edges, must be placed at each side of the stage, and at the top; these should be two feet ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... to her if her child suffered. They were in the King's Road now, and the brightly lighted shop-windows almost dazzled Bessie. On the opposite side she could see a dark line that was evidently the sea; a dull, heavy surging of waves broke on her ear; now and then the splash of the white surf ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... absolutely water-proof rouge. Surf bathing will not remove it. It remains a soft beautiful pink until it is washed off with pure soap and water. "Blush of Roses" is not removed by perspiration. "Blush of Roses" is guaranteed ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... upon the ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... ground salve their consciences when they leave their brother to sink, how do they look when we apply them to the actual loss of life at sea? Does "Let things alone" man the lifeboat? Will the inexorable laws of political economy save the shipwrecked sailor from the boiling surf? They often enough are responsible for his disaster. Coffin ships are a direct result of the wretched policy of non-interference with the legitimate operations of commerce, but no desire to make it pay created the National Lifeboat Institution, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... run the dingy into the surf, had shipped oars, and were lustily pulling away—Cap'n Sproul in the stern roaring abuse at them in a way that drowned the howls of Mr. Butts, who came peltering ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... out fishing," promised the man. "And so you're here to get moving pictures; eh? Well, I don't know much about 'em, but you couldn't come to a nicer place than this spot on the coast. And you only have to go a little way to get right where the real surf comes smashing up on the beach. Of course, as I said, we're so land-locked just here that we don't see much of it, even in a storm. Moving pictures; eh? I'd like ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... moment the coast guardsman hesitated; then he obeyed her look. He gave the boat a push which sent it grinding down the pebbles into the sea. The woman began to work at the oars. Every now and then she looked over her shoulder at that thin line of white surf which they were all ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the full flooding tide. Now the Channel Rock danger is o'er. One more stretch of water, some more dangerous rocks, Then the gleaming surf, then ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... across the water, the English sailors bore away bars of silver, bales of linen, timbers of cedar wood, golden crucifixes knobbed with emeralds. When the Spaniards came down from their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand, and driving each other into the surf. The Spaniards, bloated with fine living upon the fruits of the miraculous land, fell in heaps; but the hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold, despatched the wounded, drove the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the sailors by signals—for even her strong voice could not reach them—to throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for succor. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Normandy slowness, their nets, their buoys, a big loaf, a jar of butter, and the bottle of brandy and a glass. Then they pushed off the boats, which went down the beach with a harsh noise, then rushed through the surf, balanced themselves on the crest of a wave for a few seconds, and spread their brown wings and disappeared into the night, with their little lights shining at the bottom of the masts. The sailors' wives, their big, bony frames shown off by their ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... always a cheering influence about the sea; and in my berth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled by the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Surf Duck or Sea Coot (O. perspicillata). A black Duck with white on head, but none on wings: bill ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 herself ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the astronomer Halley, who occupied it, in 1700. Sir James Ross, outward bound for the Antarctic in 1839, spent a day there, landing "in a small cove a short distance to the northward of the Nine Pin Rock of Halley, the surf on all other parts being too great to admit of it without hazarding the destruction of our boats." Ross also writes that "Horsburgh mentions ... 'that the island abounds with wild pig and goats; one of the latter was seen. With the view to add somewhat ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... live in the woods and not in cleared land or cities, will bear witness that a savage may be a perfect gentleman. Now as I write their faces rise before me. Joyous, free limbed, white toothed swimmers in Samoan surf, a Hawaiian eel-catcher, a Mexican peon with his "sombrero trailing in the dust," a deferential Japanese farm boy anticipating your every want, a sturdy Chinaman without grace and without sensitiveness, but with the saving quality of loyalty to his own word, herdsmen ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... rolled across the floor. She raised her head. Her eyes were fixed on a strip of waning light above the chimneys. From somewhere in the city came sounds like the distant beating of drums, and beyond, far beyond, a vague muttering, now growing, swelling, rumbling in the distance like the pounding of surf upon the rocks, now like the surf again, receding, growling, menacing. The cold had become intense, a bitter piercing cold which strained and snapped at joist and beam and turned the slush of yesterday to flint. From the street below every ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... to make some weapons like cutlasses, with which he armed his followers, rose upon the guard and overpowered them; he then seized the boat, and with his Caffres made for the mainland. Unfortunately, in attempting to disembark upon the rocks of the mainland, the boat was upset in the surf, which was very violent; Mokanna clung some time to a rock, but at last was washed off, and thus perished the unfortunate leader ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... after another floated before her eyes first it was Gorgo, the idol of her old heart, lying pale and fair on a sea of surf that rocked her on its watery waste—up high on the crest of a wave and then deep down in the abyss that yawned behind it. She, too—so young, a hardly-opened blossom—must perish in the universal ruin, and be crushed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... say the Bells of San Blas To the ships that outward pass To the harbour of Mazatlan? To them it is nothing more Than the sound of surf on the shore— Nothing more to master or man. But to me, a dreamer of dreams, To whom what is and what seems Are often one and the same, The Bells of San Blas to me Have a strange wild melody, And are ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... tender years. Zuleika was of a gentle, loving disposition, but a vein of romance and poetry had already developed itself in her notwithstanding her extreme youth. She sighed for the unknown delights of the sea, and the wail of the surf sounded to her like the most delicious of mysterious harmonies. Her infant imagination peopled the watery realm with spirits of good and evil always in contention, and the great ships, with their huge white sails, that she saw in the distance from the sandy beach of the Island of Salmis, were ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... stands on upon the heads of the people in the streets below; I didn't like it. But this morning I looked directly down on a little fleet of fishing boats over which we passed, and on the crowds assembling on the beach, and on the bathers who stared up at us from the breaking surf, with an entirely agreeable exaltation. And Eastbourne, in the early morning sunshine, had all the brightly detailed littleness of a town viewed from high up on the side of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... reared in luxury, respectfully declined to receive charity from a low-born stranger. All efforts to induce her to eat were equally unavailing. She would stand for hours on the rocks where the road descends to the beach, and gaze at the playful seals in the surf below, who seemed rather flattered by her attention, and would swim about, singing their sweetest songs to her alone. Passers-by were equally curious as to her, but a broken lyre gives forth no music, and her heart responded not with any more ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... deck, watching the rocks exactly before us, with the rapids roaring loudly around our boat as she rushed upon what looked like certain destruction. Another moment, and we passed within a few inches of the rocks within the boiling surf. Hurrah! we are all right! We swept by the danger, and flew along the rapids, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... and vasty gasp came from the audience, as from five hundred bathers in a wholly unexpected surf. This gasp was punctuated irregularly, over the auditorium, by imperfectly subdued screams both of dismay and incredulous joy, and by two dismal shrieks. Altogether it was an extraordinary sound, a sound never to be forgotten by any one who heard it. It was almost as unforgettable as the sight ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... were the steep red sandstone cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions flashing silvery ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bushes among which he had lain were short but tough, and had run their roots down deeply into the sand. They were friendly bushes. He remembered how glad he had been to grasp them when he made that run from the surf, and to some extent they had protected him from the cold wind when he lay among them ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... warm-hearted host, who, on shaking hands, insisted on our bloody dogships dining with him once more before we sailed. We promised to do so conditionally. Eighteen sail of merchant vessels had assembled, and we expected seven more. The surf had been high on the bar, and we had not had communication with the shore for the last two days. A canoe came off from Mr. C. with Paddy Whack, who delivered a note to the captain. "What is it about, boy?" said he. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... now much more easy, for the high bank had broken the run of the surf. The water beyond it was much smoother, and they were able to swim, pushing ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... recreation, tabooed business transactions with each other, and among these he found a grim sort of enjoyment—of companionship, at least. Here, however, he was so utterly alone as to be almost frightened, and the murmuring and moaning of the surf on the beach near the hotel added to his ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... rain, had longed for purple mountains and cherry blossoms and the sea. But she cast out the wish, and lifted her eyes to mountains across the sound—not purple mountains, but sheer silver streaked with black, like frozen surf on a desolate northern shore—the Olympics, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis |
