"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... till now, been held in abeyance by Merelli, who had foreseen difficulty. And, now that it was reached, it proved a reef indeed. For, of the four singers, only the basso had any conception of time. Thus when Merelli, in despair, came apologetically to Ivan to suggest an alteration of the rhythm—which made the whole beauty of the song—Ivan rose ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Unlike was she to maidens dwelling in those islands, for her hair was black as the waters of the long winter night, and her eyes were as the twin midnight rocks that look up from the white waves of the moonlit sea in yonder reef; withal was she most beautiful to look upon, and her voice was as music that stealeth ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Pedro the cabin boy—and went to sleep. The rest of the crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite big to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship, was a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven the Santa Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the masts fell out and the Santa Maria had made her ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... cover many thousand square miles in the Pacific and in the Indian Oceans. There is one reef, or rather great series of reefs, called the Barrier Reef, which stretches, almost continuously, for more than 1,100 miles off the east coast of Australia. Multitudes of the island in the Pacific ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... are made by men in a simple open form of netting, worked on the common principle of the reef knot, and having diamond-shaped holes, with a knot at each corner of each hole. I shall refer to this form of netting as "ordinary network." The nets are made of thick, strong material, except as regards the hand fishing nets, which are made of the fine material used for making leg-bands. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... he brought the sloop about and headed her for the light-ship on Brenton's reef, and they sailed in silence. Awhile she watched the sapphire waters break to dazzling whiteness under the westerning sun. Then, in an ecstasy she did not seek to question, she closed her eyes to feel more keenly the swift motion of their flight. Why not? The sea, the winds of heaven, had aided ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cliffs of death; and gothic art seemed to me a more living thing now that, detaching it from the towns in which, until then, I had always imagined it, I could see how, in a particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see reproductions of the most famous of the statues at Balbec,—shaggy, blunt-faced Apostles, the Virgin from the porch,—and I could scarcely breathe for joy at the thought ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... he started on his way, than the mother's heart enters upon a period of increasing perturbation. Suppose something should happen to the steamer—that it should break down, or catch fire, or run on a reef—or that there should be a railroad accident—or that George should lose his ticket, or be robbed of his money and find himself in some far-away spot, not knowing what to do with no one to go to? Then that long motor ride through ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... by the Cohasset tides. Beside this lies a cask ripped from the deck of a Gloucester fishing schooner that sought the halibut even on the chill banks that lie just south of the point of Greenland. And so they come, chips from a Maine shipyard, wreckage from a Bermuda reef, and a thousand tiny things ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... follow far Beyond the purple seas; Beyond the rosy foaming bar, The coral reef, the trees, The land of parrots, and the wild That rolls before the fearless child Its ancient mysteries: Onward and onward, if we can, To Old ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... 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 are green ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... perhaps, but so beatifically clean! Then it was that we learned her worth, drinking in the knowledge without effort, lulled hour after hour by her whisperings which asked for no answer, by the pulse of her tiller soft against the palm. Patter of reef-points, creak of cordage, hum of wind, hiss of brine—I think at times that she has found a more human language. Who that has ever steered for hours together cannot report of a mysterious voice 'breaking the silence of the seas,' as though ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... replied Jack, "and I have a plan that will offset it. You see that projecting reef there?" and Jack pointed to the north. The others signified that they did. "Well," Jack continued, "back of that is as cosy a little harbor as you would care to see. I noticed it as we came by. We'll take the Essex there, and she ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... captain Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is known by its brownish-yellow ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... upon the advice himself. No more did I. Indeed, one needs both arms and a stout back to pass reef points. We leaned into the work, put our united brawn into it, and progressed briskly. All the while I stared beneath me, into the whistling, inky void, trying to discern that spot on the deck below, where the braces that held this yard steady were ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... now in the gray tower. A faint noise, like an oncoming sigh, above Rosamund's head heralded the organ's awakening, and was followed by the whisper of its most distant voice, a voice which made her think—she knew not why—of the sea whispering about a coral reef in an isle of the Southern Seas, part of God's world, mysteriously linked to "my Welsley." She shut her eyes, seeking to feel more strongly the sensation of unity. When she opened them she saw, sitting ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... instances. Many flat fish, as, for example, the flounder and the skate, are exactly the colour of the gravel or sand on which they habitually rest. Among the marine flower gardens of an Eastern coral reef the fishes present every variety of gorgeous colour, while the river fish even of the tropics rarely if ever have gay or conspicuous markings. A very curious case of this kind of adaptation occurs in the sea-horse (Hippocampus) of Australia, some of which bear long foliaceous appendages resembling ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands 14 US - American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... know what kind of a business man Mr. Chipperton was, but when Rectus told him that he had written a letter to his father which would make the thing all right, he was perfectly satisfied; and the next day we all went out in a sail-boat to the coral-reef, and had a splendid time, and the "Tigress" went off without any Chippertons. I think Mr. Chipperton put the whole thing down as the result of his lecture to Rectus up ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Sir Archibald, "that Mrs. William had rather have you come safe than unexpected. Be modest, Skipper Bill, and reef the Venture when ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... strangely interesting that I will give a short account of it, as I have seen it practised. A species of sucking fish ('Remora') is used. On the occasion to which I allude two of these were caught by the blacks in the small pools in a coral reef, care being taken 'not to injure them'. They were laid in the bottom of the canoe, and covered over with wet sea weed—a strong fishing line having been previously fastened to the tail of each. Four men went in ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... sea was blue with a blue she had never seen, and the sky was like an inverted bowl of copper. The low shore, covered with bush, stretched away in the distance; a line of waves was breaking on the reef. They came in sight of the island of Mombassa, with the overgrown ruins of a battery that had once commanded the entrance; and there were white-roofed houses, with deep verandas, which stood in little clearings with coral cliffs below them. On the opposite shore thick groves ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... there was a vacuum where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its shrill and desolate wail, then dying ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... as if I was coming up into a reg'lar twister, and thought it would be safer to reef a mite and make for ca'm waters. My head begun to whirl, and I cal'lated I'd best weigh anchor ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... half M-'s size, a very tiny ten-year-older, who has been my delight; he is so completely 'the officer and the gentleman'. My maternal entrails turned like old Alvarez, when that baby lay out on the very end of the cross-jack yard to reef, in the gale; it was quite voluntary, and the other newcomers all declined. I always called him 'Mr. -, sir', and asked his leave gravely, or, on occasions, his protection and assistance; and his little dignity was lovely. He is polite ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... heliograph, and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this is civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... erect, 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 ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish Land Act of 1870 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... sailed with me pretty nearly since I came to sea, is as anxious to teach you as you can be to get instruction; but remember, Walter, you must begin at the beginning, and learn how to knot and splice, and reef, and steer, and box the compass, before you begin on the higher branches of seamanship. You will learn fast enough, however, if you keep your eyes and ears open and your wits about you, and try to get at the why and wherefore of everything. ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... vicinity of the first boat, because its pilot was sailing less skillfully than mine. Suddenly, in the twilight, I felt a shock, then another, and still another. The water poured in rapidly. I had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk was able barely to pass because it had a foot less draught than mine. Soon my ship was quite full, listed over, and all of us—twenty-eight men—had to sit on the uptilted edge of the boat. The little island lies ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... reef completely submerged at full tide and only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on it meant placing a foundation under water, a ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... the following knots: Reef, sheet-bend, clove-hitch, bow line, middleman's, fisherman's, sheepshank," ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... is another's. Is that seamanly behavior, now, I want to know? But I'm a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; and I'll trick 'em again. I'm not afraid on 'em. I'll shake out another reef, matey, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pocket-Handkerchief" was James Fenimore Cooper's first serious attempt at magazine writing, and Graham's Magazine would publish other contributions from him over the next few years, notably a series of biographic sketches of American naval officers, and the novel "Jack Tier; or The Florida Reef" (1846-1848). Though hardly one of Cooper's greatest works, "Autobiography" remains significant because of: (1) its unusual narrator—an embroidered pocket-handkerchief—that is surely the first of its kind; (2) its critique of ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... to Him I cried In that terrible moment of need,— A craggy reef in the gulf's dark side; I seized it in haste, and from death was then freed. And there, on sharp corals, was hanging the cup,— The fathomless pit had ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rapids, and half a minute more would see us plunged into the seething, foaming slide of angry waters. To right and left, where the jagged reef touched the forest, stood three or four painted redskins, with muskets to their shoulders. And some distance below the falls, where the water broadened and shallowed, I made out the feather-decked heads of more Indians. This was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... the resemblance, and hailed her approach in thrilling nautical terms, such as: "Why didn't ye reef yer topgallant, ma!" when the handkerchief was torn off her head; and "hang to the main-royal, ma," as Grandma's apron was caught up and borne, wildly fluttering, about her ears; and "keep your ballast, ma," ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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 what good is that ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... ascertain, by direct observation, the action of a mountain torrent, as well as of a marine current; might compare the products of volcanos poured out upon the land with those ejected beneath the waters; and might mark, on the one hand, the growth of the forest, and, on the other, that of the coral reef. Yet, even with these advantages, he would be liable to fall into the greatest errors, when endeavouring to reason on rocks of subterranean origin. He would seek in vain, within the sphere of his observation, for any direct analogy to the process ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the two boats in at the foot of a sandbar, and made them fast to old stakes driven into the top of the low reef. He brought his patient some hot soup, and after they had eaten supper, he sat down to talk to him, keeping the man company in his pain, and leading him on to talk about the river, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... a hundred men, and a few women and children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Then rose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not devoid ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Promise, which, grandly unmoved by their fuming rage, turned them up into the black sky, where they went screaming northward, high over the heads of the white houses huddled in the calm below; and the seas they brought—gigantic, breaking seas—went to waste on Raven Rock and the Reef of the Thirty Black Devils, ere, their strength spent, they growled over the jagged rocks at the base of the great cliffs of Good Promise and came softly swelling through the broad south tickle ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... "Reef every thing now!" Riddell shouted, leaping himself first into the rigging like a wild-cat. "Cheerily, men—with a will!" All his ill-humor was gone ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... is close to the beach. A heavy surf rolls mournfully over the reef. The moon had just risen, when, in deep and solemn silence, the bodies of these misguided men were lowered into the graves prepared for them. Away from home and country, they had found a fearful termination of a miserable existence. Perhaps ties had still ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... insurgents' port of entry and the base of considerable illicit trade with Turks Island. The harbor of Puerto Plata, the most important city on the north coast, is formed by a small bay, enclosed on the sea side by a reef of coral rock. There is plenty of depth within, but little room, and only three or four large steamers can with safety anchor here at the same time. The harbor is well protected except on the north. During gales from that direction it becomes ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the good ship Nancy Bell That we sailed to the Indian sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which has ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 and lamentable, he plunges ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... ut. Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I've said, how'd you reef the foresail, Harve? Take ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... of the Spratly Islands are claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam; parts of them are claimed by Malaysia and the Philippines; in 1984, Brunei established an exclusive economic zone, which encompasses Louisa Reef, but has not publicly ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... politics by imagination. Borden had nothing but a demoralized remnant, which the Liberals pillaged when they discarded Free Trade, helped themselves to a high, virtually protective, tariff for revenue only, took a reef out of the Tory "old flag" monopoly by establishing the British Preference and sent a contingent to the South African War in the name of Empire. Laurier was master in Quebec, in the new West whose two new Provinces he created, in immigration, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... propriety, because in verse, invited me to fly with thee to a desolate isle in the Southern Sea—wherever that is—and forgetting my shame and likewise blame, while you do the same with name and fame and its laurel-leaf, go to moral grief on a coral reef—" ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ballast, thinking we might make better time if we lightened ship, you choose to make all sorts of nasty insinuations about us wanting to knock you out! Shows where your mind is. Another fellow wouldn't ever let such a fool notion get a grip on him. And you'd better put a reef in that tongue of yours, my boy, unless you want to have it ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... half speed through the narrow channel in the coral reef which makes the natural breakwater of the harbor. This channel is carefully buoyed on either side, and at night safety-lamps are placed upon each of these little floating beacons, so that a steamship can find ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... kind was out of the question, and sleep would have been impossible to any but worn-out sailors. The little crew was often aroused in the blackness of the night to haul down a burst jib, to get in another reef, or to crawl out on a plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas as the schooner lay with her lee rail under. Glad as they were of the respite it was even more trying to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth waves that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in the vessel banged to and fro. When ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... hands on the spokes he went forward and lowered the sail. There were two lines of reef points in the section of canvas and Dan took in both. When he hoisted it again there was just ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... water. It consists of large blocks of a volcanic conglomerate, some of which measure nineteen feet by six or eight, and ten feet in thickness; whilst a little farther north another wall extends E.N.E. to a natural reef of rocks." (Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... sharp squall, which hurled the Dazzler over till the sea rushed inboard. 'Frisco Kid luffed quickly, at the same time slacking off the main-sheet. Then, single-handed,—for French Pete remained below,—and with Joe looking idly on, he proceeded to reef down. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... ruled 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
... after sunrise, and being unable to reef the sail single handed he managed partially to brail it up. All day the craft flew along with the wind on the quarter, making six or seven miles an hour; and he felt that by morning he would be well ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... junction near the middle of the river with the four working westward from Long Island City. Toward the end of the work it was evident that the shields in Tunnels B, C, and D would meet in the soft material a short distance east of the Blackwell's Island Reef if work were continued in all headings. In order that the junction might be made in firm material, work from Manhattan in those three tunnels was suspended when the shields reached the edge of the ledge. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... whole state determines the voice with which conscience shall speak to him, and so the worse he is, and the more he needs it, the less he has it. The rebels cut the telegraph wires. The waves break the bell that hangs on the reef, and so the black rocks get many a wreck to gnaw with their sharp teeth. A man makes his conscience dumb by the very sins that require a conscience trumpet-tongued to reprehend them. And therefore it needs that God should speak ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... them and the shore widened, the surf became stronger and higher, until by the time they reached the reef the canoe was dancing like a ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... uninhabited islands came under Australian authority in 1931; formal administration began two years later. Ashmore Reef supports a rich and diverse avian and marine habitat; in 1983, it became a National Nature Reserve. Cartier Island, a former bombing range, is now ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not very likely to be so with the wind rising out of the northeast; and ere long the Petrel's topmast was sent down, and a double reef put in her mainsail. Until midnight it blew hard with a fast rising sea, and a mist as thick as a hedge. After this, it was ugly weather all the way home, and as they passed Ailsa Craig the wind changed to full north, and fetched ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... by three other vessels, left France June 17, 1816, heading for Saint-Louis (Senegal), with the governor and principal officers of the colony as passengers. On July 2 the vessel stranded on a reef, and after five days of ineffectual effort to float her, was abandoned. A raft was constructed and one hundred and forty-nine men embarked on it, the remainder of the crew and passengers, four hundred all told, taking to the boats. For twelve days, the raft floated at the will ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... Nancy Bell That we sailed to the Indian Sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... in all were wrecked at this spot. One split on the reef. Another was caught in the backwater. Others sank in the whirlpool below the rapids. Others went under at the first leap into the cataract. Two of the canoes had foolishly been lashed abreast. They sidled, shipped a billow, and sank. All the men clung ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... aground, on a ledge of rock that lifted her bow six feet above her stern. Morris, who had rushed upon deck at the first alarm, was unable to make out the ship's position, and feared that they were on Cashes Ledge, a reef so far from the land that it would have been impossible to save in the boats more than half the crew. He had determined, however, to instantly lower the boats and send them off in search of land, when a gust of wind, blowing away the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... vegetable life was wholly absent. The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by dusty foam, as upon a reef which it endeavours to cover up. In Egypt, whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death. There is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant vegetation, there not a blade of grass, not ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... But they tell the tale, That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief: For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Viorne, for the darkness seemed to be growing denser. The young people groped their way along the slope of the Garrigues, till they came to a rock on which they sat down. Around them lay an abyss of darkness. They were stranded, as it were, on some reef above a dense void. And athwart that void, when the dull tramp of the little army had died away, they only heard two bells, the one clear toned and ringing doubtless at their feet, in some village across the road; and the other far-off and faint, responding, as it were, with ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... pretty deep," commented Amos Henderson. "Luckily it was soft mud instead of a rocky reef or we'd have damaged the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... the brown sailors as they came over the side and slowly began to cast the moorings that held the Morning Star. Few are the ships that sail many seasons among the Dangerous Islands. They lay their bones on rock or reef or sink in the deep, and the lovers, sons and husbands of the women who weep on the beach return no more to the huts in the cocoanut groves. So, at each sailing on the "long course" the anguish ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... expression of determination that, even though the countenances wearing it were youthful, boded no good to the treacherous enemies of freedom whose trail they were that very moment following. Then they flashed past Robbin's Reef light and snuggled into their slip at ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... the end of the reef, is a huge rock called the Morte Stone, very dangerous on that exposed coast. The Normans are supposed to have given its sinister name, and many since their time have found it a true rock of death. No fewer than ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... of mail, passed through a glassy pool among the rocks, treading sedately on pointed claws; the lancons tunnelled the oozing beach under her pink feet, like streams of living quicksilver; the big, blue sea-crabs sidled off the reef, sheering down sideways into limpid depths. Landward the curlew walked in twos and threes, swinging their long sickle bills; the sea-swallows drove by like gray snow-squalls, melting away against the sky; a vitreous living creature, blazing with purest sapphire ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Prospero's isle, and the Hesperides, and Paradise, and every timeless and untroubled spot. Such tales have been made of them by men who have been there, and gone away, and have been haunted by the smell of the bush and the lagoons, and faint thunder on the distant reef, and the colours of sky and sea and coral, and the beauty and grace of the islanders. And the queer thing is that it's all, almost tiresomely, true. In the South Seas the Creator seems to have laid Himself out to show what He can do. Imagine an island with the most ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Of course, with his family and the Keltridges and even the despised Dolph Dennison, it was different, although even the irresponsible Dolph had floundered and struck bottom on a conversational reef or two, and it had taken all Reed's grip to haul him off and steer him into ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... and mangrove swamps with mud, or like some imperfect ones about the West India Islands, within the reefs of which there are large swamps. All the reefs I have myself seen could be associated only with nearly pure calcareous rocks. I have received a description of a reef lying some way off the coast near Belize (terra firma), where a thick bed of mud seems to have invaded and covered a coral reef, leaving but very few islets yet free from it. But I can give you no precise information without my notes (even if ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... kind in Europe, as we were cruising about for two days in sight of it. Its height, and the boldness and strength with which it is built, are truly wonderful; but still more wonderful is its position upon a dangerous reef, situated ten miles from the coast; at a distance, it seems to be founded in the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses,— Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind, 'fore long the trees begin to show belief,— The maple crimsons to a coral-reef. Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: 70 Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a time it might take a thought to develop. Compass in hand, standing on a rock some hundred fathoms above the ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed my future, filling it with books as an engineer or builder traces on vacant ground a palace or ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... was a mighty sycamore that almost dammed its course. With its gnarled and swollen roots half dug from their crevices by the tumultuous violence of cloudbursts, it clung like an octopus to a shattered reef of rocks and sucked up its nourishment from the water. In the pool formed by its roots the minnows leapt and darted, solemn bull-frogs stared forth from dark holes, and in a natural seat against the huge tree trunk Big Boy sat cooling his ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... the reef tackles rigged from the main yard, and the life-boat was slung clear of the lee rail. Then, watching a chance, she was let go with Hans and Johnson in her to keep her clear and dropped back to the mizzen channels, where the volunteers were ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... 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
... mart, is the seat of the political sickness of Samoa. At the foot of a peaked, woody mountain, the coast makes a deep indent, roughly semicircular. In front the barrier reef is broken by the fresh water of the streams; if the swell be from the north, it enters almost without diminution; and the war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. In wild weather, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the break of the reef. That’s Falesá, where your station is, the last village to the east; nobody lives to windward—I don’t know why. Take my glass, and you ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... accumulator batteries, which were in danger of freezing. When at last the windmill was ready, it had to be attended to, turned according to the wind, etc. And when the wind was too strong some one had to climb up and reef the mill sails, which was not a pleasant occupation in this winter cold, and involved much breathing on fingers and rubbing of the tip of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... said briskly to the new mate, "keep all hands on deck now they're here. Get in the topsails and jibs and make a good job of it. We're in for a sou'-easter. Better reef the jib and mainsail too, while ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... It is extremely important to ascertain what they are and how formed. One account treats them as growing corals, another as masses of something resembling oolite, piled together, barrier-wise. You see that this lies at the root of the progress of the reef, so important to navigation, of the use to be made of it in placing our signals, of the use as a foundation for light-houses, and of many other questions practically important and of high scientific interest. I would place a vessel at your ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... had shot up to its full height; the reef points of the mainsail were loose, and the gaff was crowned with its topsail; foresail and jib were full; and she was flying as if her soul thirsted within her after infinite spaces. Yet what more could she want? All around her was wave rushing upon wave, and above her ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... warriors. In the wraith-like shadows he saw the armored forms of Conquistadores in mortal strife with vulpine buccaneers. In the whirring of the bats which flouted his face he heard the singing of arrows and the hiss of hurled rocks. In the moan of the ocean as it broke on the coral reef below sounded the boom of cannon, the curses of combatants, and the groans of the dying. Here and there moved tonsured monks, now absolving in the name of the peaceful Christ the frenzied defenders of the Heroic City, now turning to hurl curses at the swarming enemy and consign ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... understood that I express no opinion on the controverted points. I doubt if there are ten living men who, having a practical knowledge of what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master the very difficult biological and geological problems involved in their study. I happen to have spent the best part of three years among coral-reefs and to have made that attempt; and, when Mr. Murray's work appeared, I said to myself that until I ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... as owner of the piece, was going to make a lot of money out of it. Now, even this material balm was denied him. He had sold out, and he was feeling like the man who parts for a song with shares in an apparently goldless gold mine, only to read in the papers next morning that a new reef has been located. Into each life some rain must fall. Quite a shower was falling now ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... split rails with an axe now, if I had an axe. An axe or a paddle. Harry, I'm not getting back down in one piece. Somehow, I know it. Don't you let them do it to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection onwards. Don't do it. This isn't just nosing into the Slot, over the reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and beginning to sweat. This is much more, Harry. This is bloody frightening. Are the three minutes up yet? My stomach is crawling at the thought of you pushing that ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... side. He was outwardly calm, but with a proud flush under his pallor; she was visibly excited, and could not stand on the same spot for many seconds together. By this time the noise made by the bookmakers in the inclosure below was like that of ten thousand sea fowl on a reef of rock, and Glory was trying to speak above the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... is desolate; I know the winds have stripp'd the gardens green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, but we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile; There ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... bloody and black, And the 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 could attract An eye ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... way appears a long band of green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of color from the extended spur of verdure in which the western end of the island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked vessel on her beam-ends,—the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered off short; ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... uncle who had also been a sea-captain, and who, in rescuing a wrecked crew from an Australian reef, was himself capsized, and after a long swim finally eaten by a shark,—said shark being captured next day, and found to contain his head entire, two gold rings still in his ears, which he wore for near-sightedness, after the manner of common sailors, and one of which, after its strange ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... no risks," 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 is the ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... that his men were of no great use to him, "But, then," he would say, "there is little to do on a gunboat trim I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too— And it IS such a treat to sail with a gentle ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... there are certainly many caves under the fields and vineyards of Salissa. There is one excellent natural harbour, a bay, about a mile wide, in the south coast of the island. It is protected from heavy seas by a reef of rock, a natural breakwater, which stretches across and almost blocks the entrance ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... enough to keep up the right pressure of steam and drifted in upon a reef. I said once before that it would happen ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... going to stop there, but they drove on to a smallish house upon the very farthest point. It was not a pretentious place; but Mercedes was pleased with a fine stone terrace that was built into the very last reef of the sea, and with the pretty little lawn and ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... the creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After that ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... batteries, some of them armed with Rodman guns, have been erected. A little above Fort Hamilton, and a few hundred yards from the shore, is Fort Lafayette, built on a shoal known as Hendricks' Reef. It was begun during the war of 1812, cost $350,000, and was armed with seventy-three guns. It was used during the Civil War as a jail for political prisoners. In December, 1868, it was destroyed by fire, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... she described it, with the silly old Empire. Whatever it was in England, here it was a family affair; I mean in the town of Elgin, in the shops and the offices, up and down the tree-bordered streets as men went to and from their business, atomic creatures building the reef of the future, but conscious, and wanting to know what they were about. Political parties had long declared themselves, the Hampden Debating Society had had several grand field nights. Prospective lifelong friendships, male and female in every form of "the Collegiate," had been put to this touchstone, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and sky in a few minutes, and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over one another's shoulders, millions deep. Next morning, we cast anchor off the Island. There was a snug harbour within a little reef; there was a sandy beach; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent green feathers; there were all the objects that are usually seen in those parts, and I am not going to describe them, having something ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,— Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed, A barn full of the harvesting of storms; And at full tide, the little hampered waves Lift up the litter, so that, against the light, The yellow kelp and bracken of the sea, Held up in ridges of green ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... have been there before you. Probably, because the cellar is so very dark, God wants to station a candle there, and has placed you there because you can accomplish a work for Him, and for others, of priceless importance. Where is the light needed so much as on a dark landing or a sunken reef? Go on shining, and you will find some day that God will make that cellar a pedestal out of which your light shall stream over the world; for it was out of his prison cell that John illuminated the age in which his lot was cast, quite ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... long time, then, I had waited in vain; but I now resolved to wait no longer. I had made a bold determination on that very morning; which was, that I should take the dinghy and visit the reef myself. This, then, was the grand excursion on which I was bound, when I removed the little boat from her fastenings, and shot out upon the bosom ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... sailor who had been on the lakes in the roughest weather, "no boat would live now to reach the reef. Better wait till your ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 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 ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grip on it somehow, and staying there in company with other people's babies whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death, until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by the Fireplace Shoals, or were rescued from the Soda Reef by some gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view to taking salvage out ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... stopped at night at a kraal about half-way. Early the next morning they were led by Daaka and some Caffres who accompanied him to the sea-shore, and when they had arrived at the beach, it being then low water, Daaka pointed to a reef, upon which were to be seen the guns, ballast, and a portion of the keelson of a ship—all that ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... been twisted off by the whirling eddies, and were now rapidly scattering, each striving to clear the reef. Only the four vessels bound together—Estein's, Thorkel's, Liot's, Osmund's—swept in an unresisting cluster towards ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... eight-knot breeze and a strong current in our favour, and just before breakfast Tom descried from the masthead Amanu, or Moeller Island, which we had hardly expected to make before ten or eleven o'clock. Some one remarked that it seemed almost as if it had come out to meet us. The reef encircling this island varies much in height and vegetation. In some places it supports a noble grove of trees, in others the sea breaks over the half-submerged coral-bed, the first obstacle it has met for 4,000 miles, with a roar ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... daily expected to arrive in this very port. If a permit to sell came back from the capital in time, well and good. If no more than time to replenish stores was allowed, good enough, despite the loss of sales. But what if the Spanish fleet arrived? The 'King's Island' was a low little reef right in the mouth of the harbor, which it all but barred. Moreover, no vessel could live through a northerly gale inside the harbor—the only one on that coast—unless securely moored to the island itself. Consequently whoever held the island ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... hollered our capting. "Reef your arft hoss, splice your main jib-boom, and hail your chamber-maid! What's up in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... colonizing expedition of 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... swept the mighty chief, Like some great ocean wave across the bar Of intercepting rock, whose jagged reef But frets the victor whom it cannot mar. Into the senate his triumphal car Rushed like a conqueror's through the broken gates Of some fallen city, whose defenders are Powerful no longer to resist the fates, But yield at last to him whom ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... beings are united by pleasure, all social conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... leave out the first reef, so as to catch as much wind as I could risk, and steer for the sea, the sea, ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Padre Island the coast of Texas deepens at the rate of about a fathom to the mile, until at twenty fathoms there is a coral reef, and on the easterly side of this reef the water deepens, as by the side of a perpendicular wall, to a very great depth. This reef marks the boundary of the Gulf stream, and also the boundary of the terrible tornado. The tornado of the Gulf of Mexico ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... fire beat over golden shores and red clouds extended as an army in regular column upon column. At the zenith, billows of scarlet leaped in feathery foam against a purple continent and the flaming tide extended from reef to reef among a thousand aerial bays and estuaries of alternating gloom and glow until shrouded and dimmed in an orange tawny haze of infinite distance. In the immediate foreground of this majestic display, like a handful of rose-leaves ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Well, we hoisted our jib, drew aft our foresheet, and were soon clear of the harbour; but we found that there was a devil of a sea running, and more wind than we bargained for; the brig came out of the harbour with a flowing sheet, and we lowered down the foresail to reef it—father and brother busy about that, while I stood at the helm, when the agent said to me, 'When do you mean to make a voyage?' 'Sooner than father thinks for,' said I, 'for I want to see the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... rings, And, the tremor of vast invisible wings, That are not heard but felt: They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek, They mope and mouth, but they never speak To utter their awful history. Oh, when will the darkness break and melt, Like blocks of ice on a golden reef, And little by little, as leaf by leaf, In light and color and form increased, The rose of morning blooms in the east,— The old yet ever new mystery! And I fall on my knees to worship the light That casts out the evil demon ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... was. It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... exactly to pass, for the master and his boat's crew were lost before the Investigator was joined by the Lady Nelson, from Port-Jackson; and when the former ship was condemned, the people embarked with their commander on board the Porpoise, which was wrecked on a coral reef, and nine of the crew ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... reef-girt shore seemed to forbid the approach of a vessel. Nevertheless he set up long poles with flags on them at different points of the island, so that a passing ship might see them for ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... evidence of his own crew was against him. He was promptly tried by court-martial and beheaded. The other ship, the "Kwang-chia," never reached Port Arthur. She was wrecked during the night after the battle, with much loss of life, on a reef ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the Indians; but on his return to the Reconcave, he was wrecked on the reef off Itaporica, where the natives murdered him, but spared Caramuru, who returned ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... country. As for the tribes, they enjoyed it. Jenieve could see their night fires begin to twinkle on Round Island and Bois Blanc, and the rising hubbub of their carnival came to her like echoes across the strait. There was one growing star on the long hooked reef which reached out from Round Island, and figures of Indians were silhouetted against the lake, running back and forth along that high stone ridge. Evening coolness stole up to Jenieve, for the whole water world was purpling; and sweet pine and cedar breaths, humid and invisible, were ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tons. Large nets are used, which, during the months between March and October, are dragged, dredge-like, over the rocks. A large crew will haul in a season from 600 to 900 pounds. To prevent the destruction of the industry, the reef is divided into ten parts, only one being worked a year, and by the time the tenth is reached the first is overgrown again with a new growth. In 1873 the Algerian fisheries alone, employing 3,150 men, realized half a million of dollars. The choice grades are always valuable, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... take in a reef or two, then, that's all," said Herrick. "Bear a hand, my boy, and we'll soon turn ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the shore. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few substitutes for them, are not far wrong in speaking of the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the 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
... thank God, had none. Nasty, sneaky, cheeky little things of flies got into my eyes: could see no more, no ways. Mud water one shilling a bucket! Got the dysentery; very bad. Thought, one night, to reef the yards and drop the anchor. Got on a better tack though. Promenaded up to the famous Bendigo. Had no particular objection to Celestials there, but had no particular taste for their tartaric water. Made up my mind to remember my days of innocence, and turned shepherd. Fine landscape ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... with terror. A different fear seized La Salle, for he knew that the shot was a signal of disaster. Looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails, and his heart sank with the conviction that she had struck upon the reef. Smothering his distress,— she was laden with all the stores of the colony,—he pressed forward among the filthy wigwams, whose astonished inmates swarmed about the band of armed strangers, staring between curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... find his way across the Pacific to the Cape of Good Hope. After much intricate and dangerous navigation among the Spice Islands-in the course of which Drake made a treaty with the Sultan of Ternate, and the Pelican was all but lost on a reef-she rounded the Cape in January, sailing into Plymouth Sound on September 26th, 1580, a little less than three years from the day when she began her voyage. Drake was the first commander who conducted a circumnavigation from ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the uncontradicted statements of seamen of all classes, that the bell-buoy, fixed to one of the outer Manacles, is utterly inadequate to warn vessels of their nearness to danger. And when the sounds of that bell came in the landward breeze to where I stood looking across the reef, they seemed, not a message of warning to those who cross the deep, but as the death-knell of the hundreds of men, women, and children who have breathed their last in ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... like hell, Flounderin' in the flooded waist, scramblin' for a hold, Hangin' on by teeth and toes, dippin' when she rolled; Ginger Dan the donkeyman, Joe the 'doctor's' mate, Lumpers off the water-front, greasers from the Plate, That's the sort o' crowd we had to reef and steer and haul, Bringin' home the Rio Grande—ship and freight ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... is flat or shelving the coast of Sumatra, as of all other tropical islands, is defended from the attacks of the sea by a reef or ledge of coral rock on which the surfs exert their violence without further effect than that of keeping its surface even, and reducing to powder those beautiful excrescences and ramifications which have been so much the object of the naturalist's ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... had lodged on a reef a few feet down stream, but the lantern was gone beyond recovery. The situation was serious. Nugget's lantern was in Randy's canoe, and worse than all, only four matches ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous waves which again bore her up and carried her clean over the reef, will never ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... to a peer, I can hand, reef and steer, Or ship a selvagee; I'm never known to quail At the fury of a gale,— And I'm ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... northeast point of Winter Island. On the 31st the tide took us through between these, the breadth of the passage being three quarters of a mile, in no less than sixteen fathoms water. We then passed within a dangerous reef of rocks, lying a full mile from the shore, and having numerous heavy masses of grounded ice upon it. After clearing this in a good depth of water, we were, by the evening, carried along shore within a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... with consternation that the tide did not reach our boat, and by dint of hard labor we constructed a railroad from a neighboring fence, and moved the Mayeta on rollers upon it over the mud and the projecting reef of rocks some five hundred feet to the water, then embarking, rowed close along the shore to avoid the current. A deep fog settled down upon us, and we were driven to camp again on the left bank, where ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... 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
... was as rough as ever, and the symptoms became alarming. The barometer fell several millimeters. The wind came in violent gusts, and then for a moment or so failed altogether. Under such circumstances a sailing vessel would have had to reef in her topsails and her foresail. Everything showed that the wind was rising in the northwest. The storm-glass became much troubled and ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... as the unconscious figure lends itself to. When they rise from their beds, they sit in the shelter of the cliff and knit or sew, while one of them reads aloud, and another stands watch to announce the coming of the seals, which frequent a reef near the shore in great numbers. It has been said at rival points on the coast that the ladies linger there in despair of ever being able to remount to the hotel. A young man who clambered along the shore ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... scene: the island mountains crowned with the perennial island cloud, the embowered city studded with rare lamps, the masts in the harbour, the smooth mirror of the lagoon, and the mole of the barrier reef on which the breakers whitened. The moon shone too, with bull's-eye sweeps, on his companions; on the stalwart frame of the American who called himself Brown, and was known to be a master mariner in some disgrace; and on the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sambuks to keep near together 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... And withal the reef of Science that these little "scientists" built and are yet building is so wonderful, so portentous, so full of mysterious half-shapen promises for the mighty future of man! They do not seem to realise the things they are doing! No doubt long ago even ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Tongan visitor examined the pea and declared that it had been taken from a steelyard designed to weigh up to 400 lbs. 'Reo was so hurt at the insinuation that he immediately took the whole apparatus out beyond the reef in his boat and indignantly sunk it in fifty fathoms of water. Then he returned to his house, and he and his wife (he had married again) bade a sorrowful farewell to his friends, and said his heart was broken by ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke |
