"Choppy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nervous, brisk, Cascading, intermittent, choppy, The brittle voice of Mrs. Fiske Shall serve me now as copy. Assist me, O my Muse, what time I pen a bit ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... any kind was in sight. The horizon formed a small, close circle round the ship. Clouds hung low, running before the wind, and bringing intermittently little dashes of rain that seemed still further to compress the walls of horizon. The sea was not what could be called rough, but merely choppy and fretful, with short waves that would not have troubled a larger craft. The steamer proved to be a small, undistinguished dingy-looking boat, more like a commercial tramp than a government vessel. An officer, apparently the mate, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... social amenities other than the out-hanging latch-string and the general pot, he had succeeded to his own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet. Quick to take a cue, he circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected fragments with whomsoever he ran up against. The Miss Mortimer, who spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the Canadian voyageurs, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... to obliterate all signs of life on that part of the earth, with the exception of a few horrible, naked, and shattered trees. Nothing green was visible anywhere. In fact the land looked as though it had been a very choppy earth-brown sea suddenly frozen to stillness. Everywhere was shell-holes, shell-holes, shell-holes—large and small. Only by careful searching could one ascertain where enemy trenches had been. Dotted about over this terrain were the Hun "pill-boxes," concrete shelters in which ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... little later at the bow quartz port-hole. Down the long shaft through which they had risen they saw the glaring flame of the Gorm. As they looked, its regular pulsations turned irregular: it leaped and splashed as though it was a stormy, choppy sea. Then it gave one final mighty heave, and the universe seemed to shatter beneath them. The "walls" of the shaft collapsed about them and they were enswathed in a raging storm of ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost undiminished swells—the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the wind and occasionally breaking. It was a thirty-foot sea in the open. In the lane it was somewhat less—not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all round about was heaving in it—tumbled about, rising and falling, the surface ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence; and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of thane of Glamis. The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures; but how much more, when ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in and out along the edge of this woods," said Tom, "so that you're kind of mixed up, that's all. It's always those little turns that throw people out, just like it's a choppy sea that upsets a boat; it ain't the big waves. I used to get rattled like that myself, ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... that mysterious fashion by which information passes down a line of waiting men. The line rose, advanced, and dropped again. Companies deployed to the left and behind—fighting their way through the chaparral as a swimmer buffets his way through choppy waves. Every man saw now that the brigade was trying to form in line of battle for a charge on that curving, smokeless flame of fire that ran to and fro around the top of the hill—blazing fiercely and steadily here and there. For half an hour the officers struggled to form the scattering men. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... message across the Channel to the British front, which became the magic carpet of transition from the life of the burrowing army in its trenches to the life of battleships; from motors trailing dust over French roads, to destroyers trailing foam in choppy seas off English coasts. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... over it with the frenzy of one possessed. She crushed it and finally made of it nothing but a little green, flabby lump which no longer moved or spoke. Then she wrapped it in a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her nightgown, barefoot; she crossed the dock, against which the choppy waves of the sea were beating, and she shook the cloth and let drop this little dead thing, which looked like so much grass. Then she returned, threw herself on her knees before the empty cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled and prayed for forgiveness, as if ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... seemed superfluous to point out that we had gone quicker than he, but to avoid argument we clambered in. The driver, in a temper, slashed his horses, and off we went, over ruts and stones full speed ahead. It was like being in a small boat in a smart cross-choppy sea, with little torpedoes exploding beneath the keel at three minute intervals; and this road was marked on the map as a first-class road; the mind staggers at what the second and third-class must be like. These countries are still barbarous ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those choppy times of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome, since he protested the King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and had with entire serenity declined ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... was choppy and glittered like jewels in the sunlight. Sea-gulls skimmed the surface and circled in the wake of the steamer, which was travelling fast, the speed of the engines causing a gentle vibration of the decks, while the ratlins trembled ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... waters of the coast. It did not empty into the British Channel, for the simple and sufficient reason that there was no such channel at the time. Where now exists that famous passage which makes islands of Great Britain, where, tossed upon the choppy waves, the travelers of the world are seasick, where Drake and Howard chased the Great Armada to the Northern seas and where, to-day, the ships of the nations are steered toward a social and commercial center, was then good, solid earth crowned with great forests, and the present little ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the shore, but got in where the surface of the ice was rough and choppy. Ned Allen and Toby reached out to grasp Hen as they neared him. Young Dutcher made a switching-away movement, and the next instant he had fallen flat on his face. He ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... beautiful day, but there was just a little breeze blowing, and the sea was a little "choppy" outside, and, as a consequence, the ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... where, for he did not dine in the saloon with the other passengers, and he looked above messing with the stewards. As the mate and he were much together it was supposed that Dalston made use of the first officer's cabin. The ship had encountered dirty weather from the very outset; head winds and choppy seas all the way down Channel, so that she was still 'kicking about off the coast'—this is how the seamen phrased it—when she ought to have been crossing the Bay or stretching away out into the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... boat seemed changed. By the motion the men were rowing across a choppy current, probably toward shore. Joe found this to be so, a little later, for the boat's side grated against what ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... introduced to a potentate in whose presence all men trembled. He was a sturdy little man, about fifty, short and stout, with a big round head, gray hair brushed up, a red face, a masterful way of speaking, a thick, affected accent, and every now and then he would break out into a choppy sort of volubility. He had forced himself on Paris by his enormous self-confidence. A business man, with a knowledge of men, naive and deep, passionate, full of himself, he identified his business with the business of France, and even with the affairs of humanity. His own interests, the prosperity ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Across Gaul and over the choppy channel they came, borne by the very galleys that were to have succored the British king. Up through the mouth of Thames they sailed, and landing at Londinium, marched in close array along the broad Roman road that led straight ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... strained his eyes to keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda. A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more than one good ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... awfully choppy," said Slim apprehensively, as they left the car. "Do you think, Jerry, that we're likely to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... came: the wind was his whip: One choppy finger was on his lip: He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... differ as much as the short, choppy waves of the ocean and the slow, long swell of the ocean, but not more so. The sailor handles his boat in one way in a choppy sea and in a different way in a rolling sea, for he knows that these two kinds of waves act dissimilarly. The long, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... with a number of different subjects: Why does it not seem "choppy"? How does the author manage to link the different parts together? How would you describe this piece to some one who had not read it? Mr. Smith is an artist who paints in water-colors: do you see how his painting influences ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... for a herd of fifty-odd walruses that were sleeping on the ice. The wind was blowing fairly hard, and it is never easy to shoot accurately from a whale-boat which is doing a cake-walk in the arms of a choppy sea. When we got twenty yards from the ice cake, we began to fire. I hit a couple of walruses, but did not kill them, and with fierce grunts the huge brutes wriggled into the sea. They were coming our way, and all hands stood by to show the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... little past six away we steered for home, but with a head wind and rather choppy sea, so there was no help for it but to tack, which made a long trip of it; but to make it short to the reader we reached home about nine p.m., tired, wet, and hungry, for it began to drizzle at sundown. Still, I never enjoyed a trip better than this ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... o'clock that night we were abreast of the buoy which marks Longnose Ledge, when the pilot shifted his helm for the Elbow, and we began to feel in earnest the influence of the short, choppy sea, into which the City of Cawnpore was soon plunging her sharp stem to the height of the hawse pipes, to the rapidly-increasing discomfort of many of the passengers. By seven o'clock—which was the dinner-hour—we were ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... down over the cliffs with such terrific violence, that in spite of every effort to keep her in her station she began to lose ground. In the afternoon the wind force was ninety miles an hour, and as they continued to lose ground they got into a more choppy sea, which sent the spray over them in showers, to freeze as ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... alive, she hung on to the precious burden, still trying to lift her over the edge, but unable to do so. It was all she could do to keep her grasp on the wet clothing and keep the child's head above water as the eddies tossed her boat around on the rough surface of the lake. The waves were choppy and every time she would nearly succeed in lifting the baby in, a sudden lurch would almost make her ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... her! She's going down!" yelled Al Torrance, clinging to a stay beside Whistler, as the cutter bobbed through the rather choppy seas. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... a north-east wind suddenly arose which stirred the blue waters of the Mediterranean until the short choppy waves gave to the vessel a new and peculiar roll, differing from any previously experienced by those on board. As a result, many of the passengers, not being able to adjust themselves to this unfamiliar change ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... was a bridge builder named Elton Reeves. Elton had a pleasant, sun-burnt face and a little choppy moustache beneath which his teeth ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Then came grand times. Our noble craft had by this time got a good list on her from our collected cargo— ill stowed. This made my home, the bamboo staging, about as reposeful a place as the slope of a writing desk would be if well polished; and the rough and choppy sea gave our vessel the most peculiar set of motions imaginable. She rolled, which made it precarious for things on the bamboo staging, but still a legitimate motion, natural and foreseeable. In addition to this, she had a cataclysmic ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... sailed toward the west, and a gleam of daylight was streaking the sky at the east, before the churning, choppy waters began leaping less high, and once again I was tossed crest-high, where I was glad to catch sight of a sailing-vessel that was steadying herself in the distance, and a white yacht was skipping like a frightened but rescued ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach. Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful but lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; who was ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the light-house point and made for the breakwater, the wind increased, driving a choppy sea before it. Then it was that the Richard rose to the occasion and demonstrated her natural ability to cope with a ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning since the appearance, twelve years previously, of Dramatis Personae[117] There is, of course, throughout the whole the presence of a vigorous personality; we can in an occasional mood tumble and toss even in the rough verse of Pacchiarotto, as we do on a choppy sea on which the sun is a-shine, and which invigorates while it—not always agreeably—bobs our head, and dashes down our throat. But vigour alone does not produce poetry, and it may easily run into a kind of good-humoured effrontery. The speciality ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... descriptions, we came out upon the open road again. And now, there being no surface at all to speak of, we perforce went slow, and I watched where, just in front, a string of lorries lumbered heavily along, pitching and rolling very much like boats in a choppy sea. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... is, it's against nature to suppose that women can fight men." Mrs. Marvell's remarks were rather like the emergence of scattered spars from a choppy sea. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other things the British Channel was the most disappointing thing we encountered in our travels. All my reading on this subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The channel may have been suetty but it was not choppy. The steamer that ferried us over ran as steadily as a clock and everybody felt as fine ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... limb, rather loose-jointed; but not ungraceful, except as his simple manner and unassuming rig—neither soiled nor fresh—made him seem so; at all events what he might look like was apparently of slight moment to him. He had a good walk—Kate noticed that when he crossed the platform; not the choppy, high-heeled gait of a man that never does anything but ride, but an easy step that matched the expressions of his eyes. His quick movements seemed, as usual with bronzed Western men, younger than his face; and his twenty-eight years would, as a first impression, have passed ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... sea boat, but in the course of an hour the choppy waves kicked up by the storm set her to bobbing about like the proverbial cork. The gloom of the night had changed to a blackness that made it impossible to see an arm's length away. Standing on the starboard bridge, I could scarcely distinguish the faint white foam gathered under the forefoot. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... leaving San Pablo the country gets somewhat "choppy," and the road a succession of short-hills, at the bottom of which modest-looking mud-holes patiently await an opportunity to make one's acquaintance, or scraggy-looking, latitudinous washouts are awaiting their chance to commit a murder, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... at the finish came the instant shout of names; out of the short choppy cries two names especially emerged, "Flack! Flack! Flack!" "Westby! Westby! Westby!" Those two were the favorites for the event. Irving saw the scratch men forge ahead, and mingle with the handicap runners; ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... in France with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches and dead history—only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was coming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... fresh voyage without any dread, forgetting that the Mediterranean, if not so wide as the Atlantic, is still a sea, and often as tempestuous and uncomfortably "choppy." Alas! she was soon to be awakened from her forgetfulness: the sea was ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he stooped again to resume his game with the sea. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... this is that the vast body of water which forms the North Sea, in forcing its way between the narrow straits of Dover, is driven into short cross-waves and currents, which make the sea always choppy ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of sixty years ago; and the whole letter was as easily legible as print. Across the top was written: "To Agatha Redmond, daughter of my ward and dear friend, Agatha Shaw Redmond"; and below that, in the lawyer's choppy handwriting, was a date of nearly a year previous. As Agatha Redmond read the second letter, a smile, half of sadness, half of pleasure, overspread her countenance. It ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... stumbled ... or been frightened?... What in the world was it?... Merritt recovered his balance and quite instinctively drove the spurs home; the only response was a grunt from Elisha. The long racing stride shortened to a choppy one. The horse was not tired, nor was he quitting in the general acceptance of the term; he was merely stopping to a walk with all possible speed. Merritt was seized with panic. He drew his whip and began ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... "I can manage a sail; I know the argot, I could tell the shrouds from the bulwarks, and I've rowed a boat in a choppy sea." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "That's not all." The dancers clapped and the orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve could ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... me sick. Lollin' around here an' not paying no attention, by golly—he's liable to be ten mile from here by this time!" When Slim stopped, his jaw quivered like a dish of disturbed jelly, and I wish I could give you his tone; choppy, every sentence an accusation that should have ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... use, Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy country ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... for though these praams in their coasting trips repelled the attacks of British cruisers, which dared not come into shallow waters, it did not follow that they would have the same success in mid-Channel, far away from coast defences and amidst choppy waves that must render the guns of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... very "choppy," and up went our sail, and we flew along pretty fast. We had left behind us Mount Victory (a volcano which is always sending forth volumes of dense smoke) some time before, and some time afterward we were joined ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... Castle was abreast, speed was increased to 30 knots. There was an easterly breeze blowing against the ebb-tide, with the result that quite a choppy sea was met with outside Southampton Water. Like a knife, the sharp cutwater of the Capella cleft the waves, sending up showers of white spray; but such was her speed that, before the wind could carry the spindrift on deck, the swift vessel was ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... and the Eleanor shot for the opening in the bar. Quick as she had been, however, she was no quicker than Gladys, and the Defiance and the Eleanor passed through the bar and out into the open sea together. Here there was more motion, since the short, choppy waves outside the bar were never wholly still, no matter how calm the sea might seem to be. But Bessie, who had been rather nervous as to the effect of this motion, which she had been warned to dread, found it by no ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... like a very benevolent parent than a tutor. Perhaps he was rather old for his work, but he was so extraordinarily peaceful that you could not help liking him, and I had a vague feeling that he was my grandfather. The change from Mr. Edwardes to him was like going to bed in a choppy sea and waking up in a punt on the Cherwell. I can't explain the feeling I had for him, but he seemed to be surrounded by a homely atmosphere, and he reminded me of hot-water bottles and well-aired beds without making me feel stuffy. You worked for him because it struck you as being ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... seem to understand her and returned to the see-saw, and suggested three a side and he would look after Jane very carefully. So he and Jane and Jennifer got on one end, and Jessica, Joyce and Joan sat on the other, and screaming and laughing they tossed like a boat on a choppy sea: until Jessica without any warning jumped off her perch in mid-air and destroyed the balance, and down they all came helter-skelter, laughing and screaming more than ever. But Jane reproved Jessica for her trick and said nobody would believe her ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... rage and triumph rose and fell and swelled again. Bentley became the center of a struggling vortex of roaring humanity and found himself tossed hither and thither like a chip in a choppy sea. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... complicated," the Weather Man answered, "but maybe I can give you an idea of it. Suppose you were on a big steamboat in a choppy sea. As the steamer's length would extend over several of these waves, none of them would be big enough to make the vessel heave. If you were on that same choppy sea in a small canoe, you would be tossed in every direction. Now, if you think of the long red wave of light ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... and never in all his experience had the redoubtable Captain Broom ever been on so choppy a sea. It was hard to distinguish fog from whiskers. At the second hunch upward, the Captain shot into space. The boys did not tarry to watch for his descent. A word from Juarez to the mule, and Missouri turned directly south just as Jack ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... river itself. In the distance behind them was Eagle Butte, towering above the town they had left a few brief moments before, and beyond that the Costejo Mountains, rugged and massive and covered in part on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... large party of V.A.D.'s, and other persons connected with the Red Cross, on board a Channel steamer. The day was grey and cold, and Bridget having tied on her life-belt, and wrapped herself in her thickest cloak, found a seat in the shelter of the deck cabins whence the choppy sea, the destroyer hovering round them, and presently the coast of France were visible. A secret excitement filled her. What was she going to see? and what was she going to do? All round her too were the suggestions of war, commonplace and familiar ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had changed into angry, choppy waves from the tops of which the spindrift streamed in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... hundred miles straight to sea in a boat intended for shore travel. It's likely to storm." He sniffed the air and held his cheek to the breeze that was already breaking the water into little choppy waves. "It is going ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... engine, built by Mr. Green, had worked perfectly. About an hour was spent at Yarmouth, and then the machine was en route to Scarborough. Haze compelled the pilot to keep close in to the coast, so that he should not miss the way, and a choppy breeze some what retarded the progress of the machine along the east coast. About 2.40 the pilot brought his machine to earth, or rather to water, at Scarborough, where he stayed for nearly ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... or a fish. To take one of those cockleshell row boats and scull a few miles down the coast would lead him where? Only along the coast, rock-strewn beyond the sands and faced with cliffs. Of boat craft he had no knowledge, the sea was choppy, and the sailing boats now out seemed going like race ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... to be contended with and overcome before each convoy was able to sail. Then danger and difficulty came hand-in-hand. On a bright morning, with probably a fresh breeze blowing and a choppy sea, the work of the escorting flotilla was easy, but with such climatic conditions the risk of attack was so great in the waters around the coasts that troopships usually left harbour under cover of night. No lights were then allowed, and it will ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... shock followed almost immediately, less violent than the first but quite as sickening. For one instant the house tossed and pitched like a ship on a choppy sea. Then it settled down on its foundations. Most Japanese houses are built on wooden supports, stout square pillars rounded off at the base and resting in a round socket of stone. This gives a certain elasticity for resisting shocks which a firmly ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... long been up, the clouds were flying fast across the sky, and the wind was working round to the east, knocking up a short choppy sea as it met the ebb, and covering the river ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... to a difficult, narrow, canon trail, where the pony hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she came upon the head. It gushed ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... rattle of cable that vibrated through the ship, when a small white boat shot out from behind the smart Kittiwake, impelled by the short and regular beat of ten oars. There was a man seated in the stern enveloped in a large black boat cloak—for Gibraltar harbour is choppy when the westerly breezes blow—a man who looked the Croonah up and down with a curious searching eye. The boat shot alongside the vast steamer— the bowman neatly catching a rope that was thrown to him—and the officer clambered up ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... two boats were now bobbing side by side, for they were well out in the bay, and the sea was quite choppy. The tide was running out, and help had come to the boys ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... time," he said. "Never halloo for the prairie until you are clear of the forest. If the wind remains in its present quarter, we are fortunate. Should it happen to veer round to the eastward, and you see the rocks of Tierra del Fuego lashed by the choppy sea that can run even through a land-locked channel, you will be ready to open two bottles as a thanks-offering. Is this your first trip round ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... murmured an answer. But for his attitude she cared little so long as she had him riding away from that house on the hill where Lord Nick in all his terror would appear in some few minutes. Besides, as they swung up the road—the chestnut at a long-strided canter and Nelly's black at a soft and choppy pace—the wind of the gallop struck into her face; Nelly was made to enjoy things one by one and not two by two. They hit over the hills, and when the first impulse of the ride was done they were a mile or more away ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... of a perfectly ducky giant cactus which she had seen through her glasses one day. Indeed, the dismal honking of the machine called Bill back to the trail, where Sudden came jouncing along like a little, leaky boat laboring through a choppy sea. Bill rode off without noticing Mary V ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... of pain in his eyes sent a wave of remorse through Archie's soul. Congdon bore his affliction manfully. There was about him nothing even remotely suggestive of Eliphalet Congdon's grotesque figure or excited, choppy speech. He had suffered and perhaps his wound was not alone responsible for his pallor or the hurt look in his eyes. As Congdon played nervously with his watch chain, he inspected Archie with ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... becomes poor in flesh, the coat is rough and lusterless, and the skin tight and harsh, producing a condition termed "hidebound," with considerable "tucking up" of the abdomen. The horse shows a short, stilted, choppy gait, which later becomes stiffer and more restricted, while on standing a position simulating that in founder is assumed, with a noticeable drop to the croup. The animal at this stage usually lies down and remains recumbent for several days at a time. Bed sores frequently ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... fright, saw her champion stagger back and half crumple to the deck. Then she saw him make a brave and desperate rally, as, though torn with agony, he lurched forward in an endeavor to clinch with the brute before him. Again the mucker struck his victim—quick choppy hooks that rocked Mallory's head from side to side, and again the brutal blow below the belt; but with the tenacity of a bulldog the man fought for a hold upon his foe, and at last, notwithstanding Byrne's best efforts, he succeeded ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their embarkment below the portage, they now strolled around here and there, intending to wait until their friends caught up with them. Off to the east they could see, from among the short, choppy hills, a country which seemed for the most part covered with continuous growth of poplars, sometimes broken with glades, or ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... emission of breath that gives to long, rapid phrases a smooth and limpid quality; and it is the taking of breath at inopportune moments, as badly taught singers are obliged to do, that makes such phrases choppy and ineffectual. This fault is never observable in artists trained in the real traditional Italian school of singing—not necessarily by Italians, but in the traditional school of the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... obediently. Presently they were moving in a wide circle with the houseboat as a center. A slight surface wind had arisen and the water in the cove was a bit choppy, but not enough to obscure bubble tracks made by Scuba ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... Antarctic had yet to learn that we knew nothing about its barometer. Nothing very terrible happened after all. When I got up to the bridge for the morning watch we were in open water and it was blowing fresh. It freshened all day, and by the evening it was blowing a southerly with a short choppy North Sea swell, and very warm. By 4 A.M. the next morning there was a big sea running and the dogs and ponies were having a bad time. Rennick had the morning watch these days, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... acquaintance, and could not place them. The blizzard had now subsided, and the stars shone overhead. He must have lain unconscious for some time before being found. All around him, and as far as eye could reach, the snow lay in short choppy waves, which took on the appearance of motion by reason of the shadows. As he watched, something lifted up its head above a ridge, and he saw that it was one of the huskies. Either his team had followed him, or the man had brought them with him. Rising to his ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Sailors stood by the rail, peering into the fog, but it seemed to her that no one else was afoot on board the steamer. Already the boat was beginning to show signs of the uneasy trip ahead. Many foghorns, far and near, were barking their lugubrious warnings; the choppy waves were slashing against the vessel with a steady beat; the bobbling of the ship increased as it plunged deeper into the cross-seas. But she had no thought of the ship, the channel or the perils that surrounded her. Her mind was back in London with her heart, and ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... journey down the St. Lawrence began. When they reached the ocean they joined a convoy of a dozen ships, screened in a cold mist and rocked by a choppy sea. Then began the ocean voyage of twelve days, through fog and rain and over a rough, gray sea. At night it was early to bed, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... twenty-four hours out from port and ploughing along steadily through a choppy sea when Mr. Mott, the First Officer, reported to Captain Trigger that a stowaway had been found ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... we were off early, as the wind had changed, but the lake was very rough and a heavy choppy sea was running. Before we were half way across the lake nearly all were sea-sick, passengers and sailors. The poor fellow at the helm stuck to his post casting up his accounts at the same time, putting on an air of ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... river was now all mud. The Plate is a treacherous place for storms. One sailing there should always be on the alert for squalls. I cast anchor before dark in the best lee I could find near the land, but was tossed miserably all night, heartsore of choppy seas. On the following morning I got the sloop under way, and with reefed sails worked her down the river against a head wind. Standing in that night to the place where pilot Howard joined me for the up-river sail, I took a departure, shaping ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... regarded are the outlines, varieties of planes, and depths, and if these be properly considered everything else will take care of itself, and then the whole work can not be left too rough. Its very roughness and choppy cuts will give it a softness and quality when in its place that no amount of smoothing or high finish can ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... difference to us at the outside. We shall have pretty nearly a dead beat down the Solent. Fortunately the tide will be running strong with us, but there will be a nasty kick up there. You will see we shall feel the short choppy seas there more than we shall when we get outside. She is a grand boat in a really heavy sea, but in short waves she puts her nose into it with a will. Now, if you will take my advice, you will do as I am going to do; put on a pair of ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the eloquence of Borrow, though the thought might have been his; it may not be in that grand style of which we hear so much and read so little, but—and this is the substance of the matter—it is interesting, it is moving, and worth pages of choppy dialogue. You read it, first of all, it may be in your youth, when your heart burnt within you as you wondered what was going to happen, but you can return to it in sober age and read it over again with a smile it has taken a lifetime to manufacture. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a trying, weary night, and when the sun arose the sea was one panorama of short, choppy waves. The seamen were tired with rowing, and it was evident that no great effort was being made ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... with each other in sublimity, though they were too sour to appreciate the grandeur of the scene. The vessel hugged the Spanish shore, and Perth was on the lookout for an opportunity to spring the trap; but the sea was so rough and choppy, and the current so swift, that he was not willing to embark in the boats. It looked altogether too perilous. Besides, Bitts did not lean against the mast and go to sleep, and Cleats sent a hand down to bring ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... cast off from the tug; and then, heeling over to leeward as she felt the full force of the breeze on her quarter, she gave a plunge downwards, ploughing up the water, now beginning to be crested with little choppy waves as the wind met the current, and sending it sparkling and foaming past her bulwarks, and away behind her in a long creamy wake, that stretched out like a fan astern till it touched ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lawn space is always beautiful. It is restful. It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person. One's grounds lose all individuality thus treated. A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn. Do not centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into the background. Make a pleasing side feature of them. In choosing ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Dick gave the word, and John, without one instant's hesitation, struck out for the island, now not over forty yards away over the choppy, rain-whipped water. His head was seen bobbing over the waves, but gaining distance. Uncle Dick hardly ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... is always to be expected in crossing the Channel, but my friends said in going up the Channel we would not get those choppy waves, and that I would find that the Hela swam ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... floe-ice, ultimately drove them ashore, and nearly cost the little party their lives. On that last day of the long struggle up the stream, a stiff north-easter was cutting the middle reach of the mighty river, two miles wide here, into a choppy and dangerous sea. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... surface of the river was now beginning to behave in an unusual way. Where, heretofore, the water had been choppy and whitecapped, the water now broke in longer, foam-crested waves. Owing to the course of the wind the waves were rolling upstream. Within five minutes from the time when Dave first called attention to the rougher water the waves had considerably ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... morning at 5.20 the youthful sun was shining on the choppy water of the Irish Sea, just off the Little Orme, to the west of Llandudno Bay. Oscillating on the uneasy waves was Denry's lifeboat, manned by the nodding bearded head, three ordinary British longshoremen, a Norwegian who ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... in September, in the year 1542, two broad, clumsy ships, each with the flag of Spain flying above her many sails, were beating their way up the coast of southern California. All day the vessels had been wallowing in the choppy seas, driven about by contrary winds. At last the prow of the leading ship was turned toward shore, where there seemed to be an opening that might lead to a good harbor. At the bow of the ship stood the master of the expedition, the tanned, keen-faced ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... Maud was her size when it blew hard and there was a heavy sea. She was too small to be at all steady on great waves, though the larger they were the better weather she made of it. Her worst behavior was in a smart, choppy sea, when the waves were not long, but short and violent. But this was not the kind of a sea ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... France, and was in line formation with the U.S.S. Susquehanna, the U.S.S. Antigone, and the U.S.S. Ryndam, the latter being on the left flank of the formation and about 800 yards from the President Lincoln. The weather was pleasant, the sun shining brightly, with a choppy sea. The ships were about 500 miles from the coast of France and had passed through what was considered to be the most dangerous part of the war zone. At about 9 a.m. a terrific explosion occurred on the port side of the ship about 120 feet from the bow and immediately afterwards ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... from or goin' to the docks, I wanders down there too, and loafs around watchin' the steamers arrive, and the big sailin' yachts anchored off in the harbor, and the little boats dodgin' around in the choppy water. There's a crisp, salty breeze that's makin' the flags snap, the sun's shinin' bright, and take it altogether it's some brilliant scene. Only I'm ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn, a stout, blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with a gleam of fun in his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as it bobbed on the crest of the choppy Maelar waves. He hailed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... laden with the milky silt of countless glaciers tore their way through the rocks to the sea, could be seen receding inland through the fog. Then the foul weather settled over the sea again; and by the first {51} week of August, with baffling winds and choppy sea, the St. Paul was veering southwestward where Alaska projects a long arm into the Pacific. Chirikoff had passed the line where forests dwarf to willows, and willows to sedges, and sedges to endless leagues of rolling tundras. Somewhere near ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... linger long in Shanghai, but embraced the first opportunity to reach Foo Chow. It was a coast voyage of several days and was attended with much discomfort, as the choppy seas through which we sailed made all of us very ill—a remarkable experience, considering the fact that during the whole of our protracted voyage we had not suffered an uncomfortable moment. We reached Foo Chow, however, in due time, and Mr. Gouverneur at once assumed his official duties. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... thirty days," said Jones, when his dispatches were placed in his hands, about midnight of October the thirty-first. And, running by the whirling eddies of "Pull-and-be-damned" Point, he soon had the Ranger clear of the low-lying Isle of Shoals: the sea cross and choppy, but the good ship bowling along before a fresh ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... lucid in explanation, and his emotion had made his surprising story choppy and unsatisfactory. His explanation of the use of the plate and of the telltale piece of cotton which his keen eyes had not missed, seemed plausible enough, and fell like a bomb-shell among ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... make his style seem choppy, like a wave-tossed sea; but his sentences are so full of vigor that they almost call aloud from the printed page. His style was not an imitation of the German, but a characteristic form of expression, natural to him and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... A choppy sea had followed Margarite's return. Up and down, to and fro, and one day it might seem Margarite was in control, and the next, Don Diego, but with Margarite's wave racing up behind. Then appeared three ships with men and supplies and Don ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... membrane of the uterus atrophies and becomes old cicatricial tissue, and sinks into quiet decay. The nervous system begins to readjust itself; but no longer having free outlet through the soft, lymphoid tissues of the uterus, the wave pressure meets with resistance and a choppy sea results. Vertigos, bilious attacks, and so forth are nothing more than reflex waves. The weakest organ of the individual is the one that generally suffers. And that the kidneys, which all along have borne the brunt of life, ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling the Luckenbach. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again—it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not—but we only sighted it once, and then ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... dress at the throat. She took the fan from Madame Ratignolle and began to fan both herself and her companion. It was very warm, and for a while they did nothing but exchange remarks about the heat, the sun, the glare. But there was a breeze blowing, a choppy, stiff wind that whipped the water into froth. It fluttered the skirts of the two women and kept them for a while engaged in adjusting, readjusting, tucking in, securing hair-pins and hat-pins. A few persons were sporting ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... cold morning, with a grey, cold, choppy sea on, the spray from which dashed over the boat, wetting me thoroughly, and making me feel pinched, blear-eyed, and miserable. I even envied the seals I saw cosily asleep in dry, sandy caves, at the foot of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... liquid mass and momentum. Van slipped off and swam by the broncho's side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress. It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... shower from the madly rippling ivy leaves. The sky was high and pale, and crossed by hurrying and scattered clouds; a clean, roaring gale tore over the hills, and ruffled the rain pools in the road, and bowed the trees like whips. The bay was iron colour; choppy waves chased each other against the piers. Now and then a pale flicker of sunlight brightened the whole scene with blues and greens and shadows spectacularly clear; then the clouds met again, and the wind sang like ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... they are not so angry. The heads are not breaking over as they did last night, and the boat will go better over these long waves than she did through the choppy sea at the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... quartet of hoe we would have ordinarily sent the vaa spinning through the water; but we were nearing the southernmost extremity of the Presqu'ile, and the wind and current from the northeast swept about the broken coast in a confusion of puffs and blasts, choppy waves and roaring breakers, and made our progress slow and hazardous. The breeze caught up the foam and formed sheets of vapor which whipped our faces and blinded us, while an occasional roller broke on our prow, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien |
