"Comber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a wave, far ahead the boys could see the lights of the Brutus. Only for a second, however, for the next minute she would vanish in the trough of a huge comber, and then they could hear the strained towing cable "twang" like ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was Mr. D'Aeth, Mr. Douglas, from Sarawak, and Mr. Collins, the boatswain; in the second cutter, Mr. Elliott, the master, and Mr. Jenkins, midshipman. The Jolly Bachelor was commanded by Lieutenant Tottenham, and Mr. Comber, midshipman, with Mr. Brooke's medical friend, Dr. Treacher, and an amateur gentleman, Mr. Ruppel, from Sarawak. The force from the Dido was about 80, officers and men. The command of the boats, when sent away from a man-of-war, is the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... wave, outside; but she staggered free and shoved her nose into the green of the trough that followed, as though she were headed for the depths through one of those gigantic eddies that blinked like treacherous eyes of the abyss. Then, crash! The next comber came full aboard, the water churning into a white roar or atomized in spray, and sweeping aft in cascades over the bales of tobacco, while the crew, soaked to the skin, held on for dear life. Tonet grew pale, and clenched his teeth. He didn't mind bad ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... isles with other beaches. One may present a narrow strip of soft sand, cringing and squeaking under foot, almost entirely composed of finely ground coral and shells, among which polished fragments of red coral are to the beach-comber as the "colours" the gold fossicker may find in his dish—prospective of reward. They reinspire the like fervour which leads to the discovery of mountains as well as microbes, for may they not signify the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... a romance that man's life must have been! They tell me that about forty years ago he'd landed in that place, a Russian Pole, ignorant of the language, without any money or friends, a low-down beach-comber. And here he was, a millionaire. Every tug on the river has his big M on the funnel. He had fleets of steamers, mines, railways, banks; and he was even tendering for the contract of the new docks the city wanted. No wonder others came to make their fortunes. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... beach and clung "tooth and toenail" when the breaker receded. Slim was completely exhausted; but before another comber rolled in those who were strong managed to drag the weaker ones out of the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... your time like this—loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and—and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... in a chaotic instant the air and earth again were shorn of their blessed peace. Instantly the sky became streaked with trails of smoke from over-passing shells. Far to the north they fell and burst into white spray, as though a long Atlantic comber were pounding ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... was tremendous, causing her to heel like a yacht under a heavy press of canvas; ay, and to travel like a yacht, too, notwithstanding the heavy sea that was running. But the little beauty behaved superbly, luffing to each comber as it approached, and taking it in a blinding shower of diamond spray, it is true, but still with an easy, buoyant movement such as I had never experienced before. It was the first opportunity that had been afforded me of testing the barque's ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... Beyond the comber's crashing thunder Strange beaches flash into my ken; On jetties heaped head-high with plunder I dance and dice with sailor-men. Strange stars swarm down to burn above me, Strange shadows haunt, strange voices greet; Strange women lure and laugh ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... course in unhurried strokes toward the bar. This swimmer had come alone from the hotel bath-houses and had strolled down into the streaming bubbles of an outgoing wave without halting to inspect the other bathers. There was a businesslike directness in the way he kept onward and outward until a comber lifted him ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... of Diaz was of vital importance was an unknown Italian map-maker, already possessed with the one idea that was to make him more famous than Diaz, but which as yet had brought him only poverty and humiliation. Christopher Columbus, son of a Genoese wool-comber, sailor and trader and student of men and of maps from the age of fourteen, had come, about the year 1477, from London to Lisbon, where he married in 1478 Felipe Moniz de Perestrello, whose father had been a captain in the service of Prince ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... sea had both been steadily increasing until it had grown to be what sailors expressively term "a regularly dirty night", and we were no sooner clear of our sheltering reef of rocks than we were struck by a comber that pretty nearly half-filled the boat that I happened to be in, the other boat, which was astern of us, faring little or no better. The men, however, bent to their oars with a will, and in about ten minutes, by keeping the boats stem-on to the sea, we forced our way out through the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... evening, Brousson changed his disguise to that of a wool-comber, and carrying a parcel on his shoulder, he set out on the same evening with another guide. He visited many places in which Protestants were to be found—in Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Nevernois, and Burgundy. He also visited several of his friends in the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... tunes you can't forget," said the surgeon. "Heard a scoundrel of a beach-comber sing it years ago. Down in New Zealand, that was. When the fever rose on him he'd pipe up. Used to beat time with a steel hook he wore in place of a hand. The thing haunted me till I was sorry I hadn't let the rascal die. This creature might ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of thinking,—even of believing; individual conscience had unfolded itself among them;—Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. [1] Ideas of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men; witness one Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in Warwickshire, who happened to write books!—the finest human figure, as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling^; vagrant, scatterling^, landloper^, waifs and estrays^, wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab^, Wandering Jew, Hadji, pilgrim, palmer; peripatetic; somnambulist, emigrant, fugitive, refugee; beach comber, booly^; globegirdler^, globetrotter; vagrant, hobo [U.S.], night walker, sleep walker; noctambulist, runabout, straphanger, swagman, swagsman [Austral.]; trecker^, trekker, zingano^, zingaro^. runner, courier; Mercury, Iris, Ariel^, comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... quickened their fire to a pitch of intensity never before attained. Intermittent darkness and flashing so played on the enemy line from Gommecourt to Maricourt that it looked like a reef on a loppy day. For one instant it could be seen as a white rim above the wire, then some comber of a big shell struck it fair and spouted it black aloft. Then another and another fell, and others of a new kind came and made a different darkness, through which now and then some fat white wreathing devil of explosion came out and danced. Then it would show out, with ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield |
