"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spoil; I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... boat over, and she had already a dangerous lot of water surging among the ballast; while, when they were forced to put her head to the wind, she drifted with a heavily running tide, and right to leeward was a long reef of rocks that would inevitably crunch her into matchwood. The younger brothers said not a word, but looked at Rob, ready to obey his slightest gesture, and Rob stood by the mast calling out from time to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... fields for centuries to very little purpose. Their want of pumps, of quartz-crushing machinery, and of scientific appliances, has limited their labors to scratching the top soil and nibbling at the reef-walls. A large proportion of the country is virtually virgin ground; and a rich harvest has been left for Occidental science, energy, and enterprise. It is fast becoming evident that Africa will one day equal half a dozen Californias. The annual product of gold in Africa ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... aspirations of humanity. Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of God's works as the coral reef attains continental proportions—that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day know the truth. Is there any ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Archibald, "that Mrs. William had rather have you come safe than unexpected. Be modest, Skipper Bill, and reef the Venture when she howls ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... such rites as beseemed her degree. In those days the Quality were very rich in their deaths; and, for my part, I dissent from the starveling and nipcheese performances of modern funerals. It is most true that a hole in the sand, or a coral-reef, full fathom five, has been at many times my likeliest Grave; but I have left it nevertheless in my Will—which let those who come after me dispute if they dare—that I may be buried as a Gentleman of long ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in a few places, yet on the whole the agreement was very good. The borings revealed two depressions or channels where the rock surface passed below the grade of the projected tunnels, these depressions being separated by a rock reef which extends down stream from Blackwell's Island. In 32d and 33d Streets in Manhattan, borings were made from the river to the station site at intervals of about 100 ft., wash-borings and core-borings alternating. In Long Island City, where the tunnel lines were to pass diagonally ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Alfred Noble
... not lovelier Sappho was Giving herself all silvery to the sea From that Leucadian rock. Beneath your feet Lie sand and surf in curving parallels. Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's back Dripping with brine, and guards a sunken reef Whose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel; There frets the sea and turns white at the lip, And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang. A very ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... say it is, there'll be roads cut through all along shore. The town could use any of 'em; at least that arrangement might be made. Think it over, Ros. If they do offer and offer enough, I'd sell, if I was you. Say! that would be a reef under His Majesty's bows, hey? Jolt ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... tasks: of currencies kept in effective relation, of development loans meshed together, of standardized weapons, and concerted diplomatic positions. The Atlantic Community grows, not like a volcanic mountain, by one mighty explosion, but like a coral reef, from the accumulating ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the wharf and beckoned so frantically that the big man swarmed up the rigging to the dock as though he were going aloft to reef a topsail ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the Sun himself Leapt laughing through the rain And struck his harper hand along The ringing coast; and that wind-song Whose joy is mixed with pain Forgot the undertone of grief And joined the jocund strain, And over every hidden reef Whereon the waves broke merrily Rose jets and sprays of melody And ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... within half a degree of the truth. We found Point Venus, the northern extremity of the island, and the eastern point of the bay, to lie in the longitude of 149 deg.13', this being the mean result of a great number of observations made upon the spot. The island is surrounded by a reef of coral rock, which forms several excellent bays and harbours, some of which have been particularly described, where there is room and depth of water far any number of the largest ships. Port Royal bay, called by the natives Matavai which is not inferior to any in Otaheite, may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... day after leaving Ulietea, at eleven o'clock a.m., we saw land bearing N.W., which, upon a nearer approach, we found to be a low reef island about four leagues in compass, and of a circular form. It is composed of several small patches connected together by breakers, the largest lying on the N.E. part. This is Howe Island, discovered by Captain Wallis, who, I think, sent his boat to examine ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... year of groping for he knew not what, with money gone, and not much progress made, Rembrandt took a reef in his pride and settled down to paint portraits, and to do a little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... water and the sky, and as these experienced commanders have a subtle insight into the weather, especially in familiar latitudes, he remarked to the first lieutenant that it looked rather unsettled; and, as a matter of prudence, ordered a reef in the topsails, and the royal yards to be sent down: ship to be steered W. by S. This done, he turned in, but told them to call him if there was any ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... for it at sundown today. Tell Captain Blizzard to go around the point—he will know—and continue for twelve leagues farther on. This must be done by night, for he must not slacken. Then he will see by moonlight a reef. The water is phosphorescent, and when it breaks over the reef it will shine in the night. Then must he heave to, and you will go over the side, and as a fish, find out the channel, for the coral is dangerous and the way into the cove ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... their sails before the sudden squalls that came down from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose. For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast anonymity ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... here and gave the belated one his place, and after a while of squattering about and sniffing and blowing he settled down with quieted eyes to rest. He had reached one of the stopping stages of his life, with the surety with which he would reach the last, on some desolate beach or reef of the sea. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he went up on Brimstone with Percy and the others to take a look at the Barona. The steel hull lay on its side on the foaming reef, a battered, crumpled shape, sadly different from the trim yacht that had left New York so short a time before. A miscellaneous lot of wreckage was swashing in the surf at the base of the point, and Jim and some of the crew were salvaging what they could; ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... and virtuous dog, Ugly. The boys' sailing, swimming and rowing improve, and they rise to various challenges. Eventually they all set off for a longer sailing and fishing expedition. But it all goes pear-shaped, as the weather turns very nasty, and they are marooned on a reef some way out to sea. Clare is not on this expedition, but they need a way to alert him to where they are. It is Ugly that ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the quays and out beyond the ancient fort at the harbour's mouth. On the opposite shore a reef of rock ran out, and on the ridge stood a white wooden cross, "put up," so Nuncey informed her, "because Pontius Pilate landed here one time." Beyond this ridge they found a shingly beach secluded from ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Reade Jeremiah Reardon Lewis Recour John Red James Redfield Edward Redick Benjamin Redman Andre Read Barnard Reed Christian Reed Curtis Reed Eliphaz Reed George Reed Jeremiah Reed Job Reed John Reed (2) Jonathan Reed Joseph Reed Levi Reed Thomas Reed (2) William Reed (2) John Reef Nicholas Reen Thomas Reeves Jacques Refitter Julian Regan Hugh Reid Jacob Reiton Jean Remong Jean Nosta Renan Louis Renand John Renean Pierre Renear Thomas Renee Thomas Rennick Frederick Reno Jean Renovil Michael Renow Jean Reo Barton Repent ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... keep pace with her. But, good as was the schooner, the Dona Inez was better; so much better, indeed, that, in order to avoid running away from us, Fawcett was obliged not only to furl both topgallant-sails, but also to take a single reef in both topsails, while, even then, the brig persisted in creeping ahead, and had to be constantly checked by keeping the weather leaches of her topsails a- shiver. She was undoubtedly a wonderful craft, and doubtless ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... this morning to find the blow quite ended. The heaven was all a mottled grey; even the East quite colourless. The downward slope of the island veiled in wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf stirred on the tallest tree. Only three miles below me on the barrier reef I could see the individual breakers curl and fall, and hear their conjunct roaring rise, like the roar of a thoroughfare ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... untie the reef points. All were aware of the nature of the chase in which they were embarked. The whole crew were full of ardour. They felt it as a personal grievance that the young lady to whom their employer was engaged had not only ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... spasmodic prelude, he began what seemed to me to be a symphony of recollections. Dark and sombre, and all through full of quivering and intense agony, it appeared to recall a dark and dismal night, on a cold reef, around which an unseen but terribly audible ocean broke with eternal fury. It seemed as if a lonely pair were on the reef, one living, the other dead; one clasping his arms around the tender neck and naked bosom of the other, striving to warm her ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... which were Sufiyeh and her maidens, they gave chase in all haste and coming up with her before long, threw grapnels on board and made fast to her. Then they made all sail for their own island and were but a little distant from it, when the wind veered and rent their sails and cast them on to a reef on our coast. Thereupon we sallied forth on them, and looking on them as booty driven to us by fate, slew the men and made prize of the ships, in which we found the treasures and rarities in question and forty damsels, amongst whom ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... face aside, and busied himself with taking another reef in his suspenders. "The Rev'und Gawge wanted me to go," he said, in a low tone. "Besides, how can I know what all's in the books he done left me ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... morning we had above a hundred fathoms; we then stood-to the S.S.E.; this course made almost a right angle with that which we had followed in the night: it bore directly in-shore, the approach to which, in this place, is rendered terrible by a very long reef, called Arguin, which according to instructions we had on board extends above thirty leagues in breadth.[12] According to the instructions given by the Minister of the Marine, this danger is avoided ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... enemy; and I looked upon all these harmless spinsters as my enemies, and their proposals for excursions, and luncheons, and dinners caused me much misgiving, not only because they separated me from Doris, but because I felt that any incident, the proposed picnic, might prove a shipwrecking reef. One cannot predict what will happen. Life is so full of incidents; a woman's jealous tongue or the arrival of some acquaintance might bring about a catastrophe. A love affair hangs upon a gossamer thread, you know, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the poem, the wild voyage of the mad monkish lover with the dead Bride of Heaven, it strikes, of course, on the common reef of the Romantic—the ridiculous. But the recurring contrasts of a pure, clear peace in sea and sky, are of rare and atoning beauty. Such a ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... Sir? In spite of everything we still have hearts of oak. We have not changed since the time of NELSON and Trafalgar. We can still run up the rigging (there isn't any but that is an unimportant detail) like kittens, and reef a sail (there's not one left, but what does that matter?) in a Nor-Wester as our ancestors did before us. And if you don't believe me, go to any public dinner when response is being made for ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... assisted by a few able sea-men, form the crew of the ship. They stand watch, make, reef, and take in sail; do all the dirty work, tarring down, painting, scraping, and slushing. They stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing out" their stations every half hour, to be sure that they ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and Christensan, who were going to Hopedale, went on board and they set sail; but the same evening it came on to blow exceedingly hard, with an immense fall of snow and very thick weather, so that they could not see the length of the ship, and being within half a mile of a dangerous reef of rocks, the captain was obliged to carry a press of sail to clear them, which he did but just accomplish, for after that the gale increased to such a degree, the wind being right on shore, that he could not carry sail any longer, and was obliged ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... her eyes. The pain in her heart was always shadowing; like a jailer it jealously watched and repressed the natural gaiety which was a part of her. Those who have been in serious wrecks are never quite the same afterward; and she had seen her fairest dream beaten and crumpled upon the reef ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... importance of what followed. Sir Charles imparted a bit of confidential information they were not to breathe to any one until he had verified the particulars. Word had just been brought to him that the Nevski had gone on a reef near a neighboring island and was a total wreck. A passing steamer had stood by, taken off the prince and his crew and landed them. Still Mr. Heatherbloom but vaguely heard; he felt little interest at the moment in his excellency or his boat. Betty Dalrymple's ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... thought thus backward roll? Memory's the breeze that through the cordage raves, And ever drives us on some homeward shoal, As if she loved the melancholy waves That, murmuring shoreward, break o'er a reef of graves." ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... white-crested. A gust of wind struck the boat; the water began to beat heavily against it, so that it was tossed about like a piece of cork. Since Simon had not put up the sail there was now no need to reef it. Flakes of foam flew over the spars, the beams groaned. The clouds rushed on, driving the heaving, thundering waves before them. Soon the little boat was overtaken by darkness, which was only relieved by flashes of lightning. Long ago Simon had let go the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... chip of the old block—neck or nothing—carry on all sail till you tear the masts out of her! Reef the t'gallant sails of your temper, boy, and don't run foul of an old man who has been all but a wet-nurse to ye—taught ye to walk, and swim, and pull an oar, and build ships, and has hauled ye out o' the sea when ye fell ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of distraction. The church-town—a single street of cottages winding round a knoll of elms which hide the Vicarage and all but the spire of St. Julian's Church—stands high and a mile back from the coast, and looks straight upon the Menawhidden reef, a fringe of toothed rocks lying parallel with the shore and half a mile distant from it. This reef forms a breakwater for a small inlet where the coombe which runs below Lansulyan meets the sea. Follow the road downhill from the church-town and along the coombe, and you ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... which Mrs. Rattleton was concerned never went slowly; and in the present case the necessity for getting back in time for the races really compelled haste. And so it came to pass that not until the Fleetwings was off the Brenton's Reef light-ship, with her nose pointed well up into the north-east, was there framed in Mr. Port's slow-moving mind a suitable line of argument upon which to base a peremptory refusal to go upon the expedition—and by that time he was so excruciatingly ill in his own cabin ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... take in a reef or two, then, that's all," said Herrick. "Bear a hand, my boy, and we'll ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... about in some anxiety for the wrecked passengers of the foundered steamship which he immediately imagined was cast on the reef just about as far from the Corner House as ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... were a portion of the crew of a whaler, which had struck on a reef of rocks about seventy miles off, and that they had been obliged to leave her immediately, as she fell on her broadside a few minutes afterwards; that they had left in two boats, but did not know what had become of the other boat, which parted company during the night. The captain ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Schwaben the hill of the right bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt. All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef. At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more ragged than those near our ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... into her, including some of the turtle we had cooked, we once more launched her, and then, with no small amount of sorrow and apprehension, I saw my companions pull out towards the passage through the reef, when they were soon lost to sight in the gloom of night. One of Mr Henley's last charges to me had been to keep up a large fire all night, to enable him the better to steer his course, and also to find the island again. Indeed, that ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... In this boat there was great store of silver and gold, and some victuals. On the same evening the fleet came to anchor off Melinda, which is eighteen leagues from Mombaza, and is in lat. 3 deg. S. This place has no good harbour, being only an almost open roadstead, having a kind of natural pier or reef of rocks on which the sea beats with much violence, owing to which the ships have to ride at a considerable distance from the shore. The city stands in a broad open plain, along the shore, surrounded with many palms, and other sorts of trees, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the West Indies, he met with a Spaniard, an old man, who remembered the wreck of the Spanish ship, and gave him directions how to find the very spot. It was on a reef of rocks a few leagues from Porto de ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of fog? I don't know what to make of it. No wind at all; the glass steady as a rock; and a heavy swell rolling up from westward. Take hold of my glass and bring it to bear on the Monk"—this was the lighthouse guarding the westernmost reef of the Off Islands. "Every now and then a sea'll hide ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... stood where the eastern roots of the mountains start in toothed reef and low, premonitory sweep from the level of the plains. Broken chains and spurs edged up toward it. Far beyond, in a faint aerial distance, the soaring solidity of vast ranges hung on the horizon, cloudy crests painted on the sky. Laramie Peak loomed closer, a bold, bare point, gold in the morning, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... better. She must break it off, if her heart is broken in the process. If he does love her—my private opinion is he thinks he does—I won't have Peggy's whole future wrecked by one of Aunt Elizabeth's flirtations. The reef is too small for the catastrophe. I shall find Aunt Elizabeth. Oh yes, I shall find Aunt Elizabeth! I have no more doubt of that than I have that Matilda is putting too much onion in the croquettes for Tom this blessed minute. If I find her I shall find the boy; but ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... a deep-toned accompaniment. The bay is not always so peaceful, however, and many wild scenes and terrible shipwrecks have taken place here, as everywhere along our wild north-east coast. The Bondicar rocks, by Hauxley, and the cruel spikes of the reef at Snab Point, near Cresswell, have betrayed many a gallant little vessel to her doom. Not, however, without bringing on many an occasion proof of the courage which is shown as a matter of course by the fisher folk on ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier—probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... thing we can do," my father replied, "and that is to go south." Accordingly, he turned the craft about, gave it full reef, and started by the compass north but, in fact, directly south. The wind was strong, and we seemed to have struck a current that was running with remarkable swiftness ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... Mesa. High, precipitous, perpendicular, level, and dotted with farm-houses, this singular bit of land stretches several miles out southward to sea, bordered with a rocky beach, and tapered off into the wide ocean with Duxbury Reef—a dangerous rocky reef, curving down to the southward and almost always white with foam, save when the sea is calm, and then the great lazy green waves eddy noiselessly over the half-hidden rocks, or slip like oil over the dreadful dangers ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... me to go to Bermuda and git up some forty-two pieces o' white I-talian marble that had been wrecked three years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from land, or I'd stayed to home in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... storms and under the rains the great rubber forest of M'Bonga would roar like a reef-tormented sea, but on a day like this, when, gazing from the high ground of the fort, the eye travelled across the swelling domes and heat-stricken valleys of foliage, the pale green of the feather-palms, the sombre green of the n'sambyas, to the haze that veiled all things beyond, on a day like ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... irregular—curiously breached and fissured. Vast masses of it have toppled into the sea; and the black ruins project from the deep in a hundred shapes of menace. Sometimes our boat glides between a double line of these; or takes a zigzag course through labyrinths of reef-channels. So swiftly and deftly is the little craft impelled to right and left, that one could almost believe it sees its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose sides, just below the water-line, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Heilprin, of Philadelphia, the eminent geologist and authority on volcanology, declares there is danger that all the West Indian reef islands will collapse and sink into the sea from the effects of the volcanic disturbances now in progress. More than that, he says, the Nicaraguan canal route is in danger because it is ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... arrived from Seaborn & Company. If he had been this story would never have been written. He was down at Hunter's Point drydock, superintending the repairs to the steam schooner Amelia Ricks, which recently on a voyage to Seattle had essayed the overland route via Duxbury Reef. When Matt reached home that night he found his ingenious father-in-law ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... this visitation, it blew great guns. Large black clouds, like chimney-sweepers' feather-beds, scudded over our heads, and the rain came pouring down like—like winking. Tom had been promoted, and was sent up aloft to reef a sail, when one of the horses giving way, down came Tom Johnson, and snap went a leg and an arm. I was ordered to see him carried below, an office which I readily performed, for I liked the man—and they don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... yells from the mate in the waist. Now it was, "Lay aloft and furl the fore royal;" and ten minutes later, "Lay aloft and furl the main royal." Scarcely was this work done before the shout came, "Lay aloft and reef the fore-t'gallant-s'l;" followed almost immediately by "Lay aloft and reef the main-t'gallant-s'l." Next came, "Lay out forrard and furl the flying jib." Each command was succeeded by a silent, dark darting ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... steering by the stars. Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line. It is the Eastern shore of Central Africa. We are running to the southward, before the North East Monsoon, between the mainland and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast. The night is quiet, so quiet that a whisper can be heard fore and aft the dhow; so quiet that a faint booming sound rolls across the water to us from ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... his house to the world, and lived in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive, and whose vital object seems ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... coming in winter, warned them to prepare for tempest. All navigation was regulated by these two constellations. The one said to shipmaster and crew: "Hoist sail for the sea, and gather merchandise from other lands." But Orion was the storm-signal, and said: "Reef sail, make things snug, or put into harbor, for the hurricanes are getting their wings out." As the Pleiades were the sweet evangels of the spring, Orion was the warning ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... reached the summit of the rock, he has laid hands on the gold. He cries, "You shall make love in the dark!... I quench your light, I tear your gold from the reef. I shall forge me the ring of vengeance, for, let the flood hear me declare it: I here curse love!" Tearing from its socket their splendid lamp, which utters just once its golden cry, all distorted ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the creeping-on pirate's ears. Fierce, but cunning, he saw mischief in those shortened sails, and that Union Jack, the terror of his tribe, rising to a British cheer; he lowered his mainsail, and crawled up on the weather quarter. Arrived within a cable's length, he double-reef'ed his foresail to reduce his rate of sailing nearly to that of the ship; and the next moment a tongue of flame, and then a gush of smoke, issued from his lee bow, and the ball flew screaming like a seagull over the Agra's mizen top. He then put his helm up, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Bombay clear over to where the East merges into the West upon the coast of the two Americas. His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough, on the Admiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australia and China a Whalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous coral formation the celebrated clipper had hung stranded for three days, her captain and crew throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and with the other, as it were, keeping off her a flotilla of savage war-canoes. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... time, it was discovered that the ship was thrown on a reef of rocks, and had bilged; and although the water entered her through the holes which the rocks had made, and filled her up to the lower beams, yet that it soon smothered, and, the bilge pieces keeping her upright, she lay comparatively quiet. But being fearful that she might beat over ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... and municipal town of Wellington county, Western Australia, 112 m. by rail S. by W. of Perth. Pop. (1901) 2455. The harbour, known as Koombanah Bay, is protected by a breakwater built on a coral reef. Coal is worked on the Collie river, 30 m. distant, and is shipped from this port, together with tin, timber, sandal-wood and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... bought a mine from that man. His name was Algernon Maddox Cholmondely then, and he was homeward bound to assume the ancestral acres in Flint. He escorted me down the hole and displayed visible gold sparkling all along the reef. A week after he had gone I found that he had put it there with a shot-gun—an old "salter's" trick, but new to me at the time. You are not likely to be seeing Patrick Algernon Terence Maddox O'Ryan-Cholmondely again, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... belike with a single wind-twisted tree, grotesquely suggesting a frizzly chicken; and away below, straight and sheer, are the rocks rising out of the water like the jaws of a mangle. Down there in that ginlike reef Neptune is forever washing out his shirt in a smother of foamy lather. And he has spilled his bluing pot, too—else how could all the sea be so blue? On the outermost rocks the sea-lions have stretched themselves, looking ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... persuasiveness came again into play. He met a very old man, Spaniard or Portuguese, who was said to know where the ship lay, and "by the policy of his address" wormed from him some further information about the treasure-ship. The old man told him that it had been wrecked on a reef of shoals a few leagues from Hispaniola, and just north of Port de la Plata, which place got its name from the landing there of a boat-load of sailors with plate saved from the sinking vessel. Phips proceeded thither and searched narrowly, but without avail. The sea held its ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard the story before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost, the Rainbow Bridge, like the Gods. I know of the place. It is called Gundbiorn's Reef and it is ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... innumerable sails Dawn on the far horizon and draw near; Innumerable loves, uncounted hopes To our wild coasts, not darkling now, approach: Not now obscure, since thou and thine are there, And bright on the lone isle, the foundered reef, The long, resounding ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... West Indies, he met with an old Spaniard who remembered the wreck of the Spanish ship, and gave him directions how to find the very spot. It was on a reef of rocks, a few leagues from Porto ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... another inch of canvas," expostulated English as the mate shook out a reef in the mainsail, but Coppin and Clarke were now in command, since only they professed to know the coast, and the warning was unheeded, especially as the wind had for a moment lulled or rather drawn back for a more formidable spring, swooping down as the last reef point was loosed with a force that ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... piles were removed by the Athenians. But the most awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some of the piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon them, just as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers went down and sawed off even these for reward; although the Syracusans drove in others. Indeed there was no end to the contrivances to which they resorted against each other, as might be expected between two ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of these bold frontiersmen aroused Brock's admiration. His own example had again acted as an inspiration. Shortly after leaving Port Talbot, his batteau, pounding in the sea, ran upon a reef that extended far from shore, and despite oars and pike-poles, remained fast. In the height of the confusion "Master Isaac" sprang overboard, and a moment later voyageur and raw recruit, waist deep in water, following ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... drawled the man; and just then the bow of the boat swung around, was forced heavily down stream by the current, and slam it went against a reef! ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... great store of facts to be treasured up for use in his eager and retentive mind, but those habits of observation which were to be of the greatest service to him in after-years. On his return home in another vessel—the Porpoise—Franklin and his companions were wrecked upon a coral reef, where ninety-four persons remained for seven weeks on a narrow sand-bank less than a quarter of a mile in length, and only four feet above the surface ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... we might now compare to the increasing [Page: 110] nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with which social and civic studies ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... second place, should good fortune suddenly smile upon you, preoccupied as you are with other matters you have not the substitute at hand. If we provide ourselves with the necessary head of game in advance, the huntress is not there. We avoid one reef to founder on another. Moreover, these unlooked for observations, made sometimes on the public highway, the worst of laboratories, are only half-satisfactory. In the case of swiftly-enacted scenes, which it is not in our power to renew again and again until ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... matter came to be investigated, it was discovered that the Cora had run on to a coral reef unmarked in the charts. Coral reefs form with extraordinary rapidity, and are infinitely dangerous, because they are so sharp as to cut like razors. The loss of the Cora was no one's fault; but that fact ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... then back to him. There was no one in sight; the island was out of the lines of communication, and a point just north of them shut off the open water. But she saw that the reef to which Windham clung trended in to the shore a little way off, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Java. Spite of all his care, he was once on the edge of destruction. One evening as night was closing in a grating sound was heard under the Pelican's keel. In another moment she was hard and fast on a reef. The breeze was light and the water smooth, or the world would have heard no more of Francis Drake. She lay immovable till daybreak. At dawn the position was seen not to be entirely desperate. Drake himself showed all the qualities of a great commander. Cannon were thrown ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... rock, about a mile to the left of the town of D——, which was surrounded by numerous small ones. This place was called the wrecker's reef, and was covered at high water, but when the tide was low, Isabel and the others often went there to get shells. They had to be careful to watch the rise of the tide, as, long before the rock was covered the retreat was cut off by ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... like a thunder-clap-like the roar of breakers on a reef, burst from the spectators; a shout of triumph so mighty that the statues quivered, the brazen altars rang, the hangings swayed, the sacred vessels clattered and the lamps trembled and swung; the echo ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where the tide took me after that, till presently the tossing of my boat warned me that I must be on the reef off Kilgorman cliffs. In the darkness I could see nothing, but my memory was strong enough to serve for moon and compass both. On this tide and with this wind ten minutes would bring ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... by the spy-glass on the hill the sea was observed to run low upon the reef, there would be a sound of preparation in the very early morning; and before the sun had risen from behind Ben More, the tender would steam out of the bay. Over fifteen sea-miles of the great blue Atlantic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ships come sailing across the main, But the harbor mouth is hard to gain, For the treacherous reef lies close beside, And the rocks are bare at the ebbing tide, And the blinding fog comes down at night, Shrouding and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... Zephyrs in an excursion up the lake, and another lighthouse was erected in the vicinity of a dangerous reef. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... steered for Vladimir Bay, in the Russian Coast Province of Siberia, north of Korea. She was off the entrance of the Bay at midnight with only ten tons of coal left in her bunkers. Unfortunately, in trying to go in in the dark on the flood-tide she drove hard on a reef. Next day unsuccessful efforts were made to get his ship off and in the afternoon, as her captain expected the enemy's ships might arrive to secure the "Izumrud" and refloat her, he landed his crew on Russian ground, destroyed his ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... 5 sq km land area: 5 sq km comparative area: about eight times the size of The Mall in Washington, DC note: includes Ashmore Reef (West, Middle, and East Islets) ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... disobedient, and of a fault-finding, complaining disposition, and deserves to be lightly spoken of, almost. The timbers used in the construction of Solomon's Temple were floated to Jaffa in rafts, and the narrow opening in the reef through which they passed to the shore is not an inch wider or a shade less dangerous to navigate than it was then. Such is the sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good seaport has now and always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring one. It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... having all the Subordinates stand on one Foot and tremble whenever he showed up. In fact, he was a very hefty Proposition all through the Business District. But when he struck the Street leading to his House he began to reef his Sails and lower ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... trading, or from discovery. I don't say that we shall make anything. The chances are, of course, that we may lose all before we are a month out, but it is always well to be business-like. There is gold in Central Africa. We may discover a gold reef. There are new animals in the forest. We may catch an okapi, and if we could land it in England it would fetch a large sum. We might snare a live gorilla, and there is not a gorilla in the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... however, close the series, for sixty miles farther west stands the group of the Tortugas, isolated in the Gulf of Mexico. Though they seem disconnected, these islands are parts of a submerged Coral Reef, concentric with the shore of the peninsula and continuous underneath the water, but visible above the surface at such points of the summit as have fully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that by Gauffridi, a possession by means of terror. The poor downtrodden ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... a bight having by accident been thrown forward of the windlass, a riding turn was the consequence, and the anchor, in its descent, was suddenly checked about fifteen fathoms from the hawse. A squall soon after coming on, the vessel drifted obliquely towards the shore, and grounded upon a coral reef near half a mile to the southward of the town. The next day, having obtained a convenient anchorage, a message was sent by a friendly Malay who came on board at Soo Soo, demanding the restoration of the ship. The rajah replied that he would not give her up, but that they were welcome to take her ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... The alderman is the reef which for the last five-and-twenty years has done so much to ruin and to wreck every artistic movement which the enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere checking of the obstruction of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... replied his friend. "It's not the wind that worries me, for we can reef close, and the sloop takes big seas like a duck. It's these beastly coast fogs that come in without warning and absolutely bury you. If the wind shifts, then your compass ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... a vain search for the Musgrave Islands, marked on Kruzenstern's map, and soon discovered a large island, surrounded by a coral reef, which had escaped the notice of Duperrey, and is known as Puinipet, or Pornabi. Some very large and fine canoes, each manned by fourteen men, and some smaller ones, worked by two natives only, soon surrounded the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... majority of modern ships, a double top-sail, which facilitates the operation. It was necessary, then, to work as formerly—that is to say, to run out on the foot-ropes, pull toward you a sail beaten by the wind, and lash it firmly with its reef-lines. It was difficult, long, perilous; but, finally, the diminished top-sail gave less surface to the wind, and the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... unabated fury. For four hours the vessel had been driven before the blast; and the captain now declared it was impossible she could weather the tempest much longer, ordered the long boat to be in readiness. His orders were scarcely executed, when the ship bulged upon a reef of rocks, and the impetuous waves rushed into the vessel:—a general groan ensued. Ferdinand flew to save his sister, whom he carried to the boat, which was nearly filled by the captain and most of the crew. The sea ran so high that it appeared impracticable to reach the shore: but the boat had ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... to set down here that we were not driven on any rock or reef or shoal nor did we collide with any other ship. Laboring heavily in the open sea, straining on the crests and wallowing in the troughs of the stupendous billows, the yacht, even as carefully built a yacht as Libo's, began to leak appallingly, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... continued for three solid months, the best doctors in Sydney and Melbourne failing to give relief. Our ship first called at Fanning Island, a cable station (delivering four months' mail), a mere coral atoll with its central lagoon, fringe of cocoanut trees and reef. The heavy swell breaking on the reef, and the wonderful blue of the water, the peaceful lagoon, the bright, clear sky, and the cocoanut trees, formed a picture never to be forgotten. A picture typical ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... manipulation has been mastered. My husband's directions for the arrangement of a hunting-tie are as follows:—"The centre of the stock is placed on the front of the neck, the ends are passed in opposite directions round the back of the neck, brought in front, tied in a reef knot, crossed in front of this knot, and finally secured, as a rule, by means of a pin or brooch of the safety or horse-shoe or fox pattern. A gold safety pin is often used. A brooch pin is naturally safer than an ordinary pin. Nowadays, hunting ties are nearly always made of white ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... because the pilot of the first one was sailing less skillfully than the other. Suddenly, in the twilight the men in the second sambuk felt a shock, then another, and a third. The water poured into it rapidly. It had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk had been able to pass on account of its lighter draft. Soon the stranded boat began to list over, and the twenty-eight men aboard had to sit on ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... coasts where shallow water extends some distance out, the highway of shore drift lies along a low, narrow ridge, termed the sand reef, separated from the land by a narrow stretch of shallow water called the LAGOON. At intervals the reef is held open by INLETS,—gaps through which the tide flows and ebbs, and by which the water of streams finds way to ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... Mrs. Archdale for a moment, had extracted the truth. They had drifted down the French coast. They were on a dangerous reef of rock, and the rising of the wind, the lifting of the fog, for which they all looked so eagerly, might be the signal for the breaking up of the boat. On the other hand, the boat might hold for days. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... finish, making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights, fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labour—you'd have thought Australia was one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... at the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson, Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch., vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... called. "There is a sunken reef on this side. Head for the cove." He pointed to the north end of the floating mass, and Captain Cromwell put about. The island, now that he was close, appeared to be making good headway—at least four or five miles an hour. There was a swish and a swirl of water on ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... useless tiller in her hand. The rudder, swept forward by the tide, drifted away until it went ashore on a reef at the northern end of the passage. The Tortoise, after making one or two ineffective efforts to sail without a rudder, grounded on the beach of Craggeen ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... white-fringed reef set up their post, And sentinel the coast:— Whilst, round each jutting cape, in pillar'd file, The lichen-bearded rocks Like hoary ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... a concerto must be, at the same time, serious in thoughts and in their developments, graceful and brilliant, in order to bring forth the talent of execution of the virtuoso. Here is a double reef to avoid, and here many artists have been wrecked. Vieuxtemps and Leonard are the modern masters who have been the most successful in this difficult style; but how ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... hours before we fell in with a gale, which lasted several days, and we kept under close-reef-topsails and storm-staysails. The gale lasting a week, raised a mountainous swell, but it was very long and regular. On the seventh day the wind abated, but the swell continued, and at evening there was very little wind, when a circumstance occurred which had nearly cost ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... will be the first to go under. He will say, and may be perfectly right in saying, that there is no real cause for anxiety. He will prepare to run slap through the storm, and refuse to reef a single financial sail. He forgets that the mere existence of panic in the minds of others is in itself as hard a factor in the situation as the real value of the properties on the market which are being stampeded. The atmosphere ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... to approach. These are perfectly flat, and are only covered at high water, ending in craggy vertical walls of coral in very deep water. When there is a little wind, it is dangerous to come near these rocks; but luckily it was quite smooth, so we moored to their edge, while the men crawled over the reef to the land, to make; a fire and cook our dinner-the boat having no accommodation for more than heating water for my morning and evening coffee. We then rowed along the edge of the reef to the end of the island, and were glad to get a nice westerly ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 15th do. in the morning we were near a point of the coast off which a large reef extended about a mile in length, we ran in between the land and this reef, which we estimated to be in 23 deg. Lat., and thus sailed along the coast, along which there was another reef, inside which the water seemed to be very smooth and still; we did our best to ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... frail few years I may yet expect Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear, For I have been too long and deeply wrecked On the lone rock of desolate Despair, To lift my eyes more to the passing sail 140 Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare; Nor raise my voice—for who would heed my wail? I am not of this people, nor this age, And yet my harpings will unfold a tale Which shall preserve these times when not a page Of their perturbed annals ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... perseverance, great attention to detail was needed in all this, but the coral polyp has all those qualities, and somehow in the heart of his own creation the individuality of the man himself becomes as insignificant and as much overlooked as that of the little creature that builds the reef. A thousand know Gibbon's work for one ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... picnic was a good way off, being the point of the promontory that shut in the mouth of the river, a great crag, with a long reef of rocks running out into the sea, playfully called the Kitten's Tail, though the antiquarians always deposed that the head had nothing to do with cats or kits, but with the disposition to erect chapels to St. Christopher on the points of land where they might first greet the mariners' eyes. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,—these were the features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of letters and memos on the desk waiting for him. On top of the mail stack was a letter labeled PRIVATE in a beamed spacegram envelope. He did not recognize the name at the head of it but the return address was General Delivery, Reef Three, The ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Buchanan, whose river, the St. John's, owns a bar infamous as that of Lagos for surf and sharks. The southernmost, Lower Buchanan, is defended by a long and broken wall of black reef, but the village is far from smooth water. All these 'towns' occupy holes in a curtain of the densest and tallest greenery. They are composed of groups and scatters of whitewashed houses, half of them looking like ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to consult the map with its ranges. A blistering outbreak of white smokes rose a little beyond the large plume. It was as though the tide had struck a reef out yonder. ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... uncle succeeded in finding out the exact spot where the ship had been wrecked, and at once he gave up his position and went off to the Philippines. He chartered a brig, reached the spot indicated,—a reef of the Magellan archipelago,—they sounded at several points and after hard work dredged up only a few shattered chests that contained not a trace of anything. When their food supply gave out they were forced to return, and my uncle ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and thought-sequence, is a highly abstract study; for although, as has been said, you can do almost anything with words, with words alone you can do next to nothing. The realm where speech holds sway is a narrow shoal or reef, shaken, contorted, and upheaved by volcanic action, beaten upon, bounded, and invaded by the ocean of silence: whoso would be lord of the earth must first tame the fire and the sea. Dramatic and narrative ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make the mate know you know it. That's reputation. The good word, said at the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stern, and the house flag of David Verity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke's fighting mettle. The Andromeda would probably crack like an eggshell the instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; he determined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not put out of action by a bullet before he could ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... peer, I can hand, reef and steer, Or ship a selvagee; I'm never known to quail At the fury of a gale,— And I'm ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... for those who pined with grief; Dead but for fears that could not die; Dead as the world when flower and leaf Are still beneath a gathering sky, And ocean sleeps on reach and reef. ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale, with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank. As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... garboard strakes, my lads, And reef the starboard screw— For it sticks like tar, that sandy bar, To the ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs |
