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More "Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... owing to the motion of the ship, he missed the cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling in the surf, and all the sailors tossed into the foaming waves. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... had been eagerly and incautiously communicated at Ellangowan, with the gratuitous addition, that, doubtless, "he had drawn the Young Laird over the craig with him, though the tide had swept away the child's body—he was light, puir thing, and would flee farther into the surf." ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... both Tunis Latham and the girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride: And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... fishermen rowed a boat quietly out to sea, the sharp creaking of the rowlocks coming lazily to our ears in the pauses of the wind. The little waves fell with a soft thud, followed by the crisp echo of the surf, feeling all round the shingly cove. The whole place, in that fresh spring day, was ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... madness. Getting three or four round pieces of driftwood, which were slippery with water-slime, she laid them along the dock; two other billets she placed under the boat's keel. Then gathering her strength for one pull, she sent the boat into the churning surf. One of the fishermen advanced to detain her, but she waved him back with a gesture so determined and imperious that he hesitated. He then held consultation with his friends. Two or three now hurried down to the water's edge, but the boat had shot out beyond their reach, ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, Sir Arthur had concluded that an attack at the mouth of the Tagus was impracticable, owing to the strength of the French there, the position of the forts that commanded the entrance of the river, and the heavy surf that broke in all the undefended creeks and bays near. There was then the choice of landing far enough north of Lisbon to ensure a disembarkation undisputed by the French, or else to sail south, join Spencer, and act against ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... It was the impact of resistible power. A great sheet of water rose like surf from the tail of the jam; a mighty cataract poured down over its surface, lifting the free logs; from either wing timbers crunched, split, rose suddenly into wracked prominence, twisted beyond the semblance ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... through the open, windows, extending outward until it mingled with the horizon, Padre Florentino was relieving the monotony by playing on his harmonium sad and melancholy tunes, to which the sonorous roar of the surf and the sighing of the treetops of the neighboring wood served as accompaniments. Notes long, full, mournful as a prayer, yet still vigorous, escaped from the old instrument. Padre Florentino, who was an accomplished musician, was improvising, and, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... misery carries its own justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous and the unkind are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the heart-strings of love trembling. There are sins which men must leave behind them, and sins which they must carry with them. Society scouts the drunkard because he is loathsome, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... navigators, when, as they came coasting along from the north in their frail galleys, on their voyages to Greece and Italy, they saw it frowning defiance to them as they came, with threatening clouds hanging upon its summit, and the surges and surf of the AEgean perpetually thundering upon its base below. To make this stormy promontory the more terrible, it was believed to be the haunt of innumerable uncouth and misshapen monsters of the sea, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the surf, they had taken long tramps along the beach when the tide was out, they had sailed in his yacht, "The Dolphin," they had been up at the great hotel, where a fine ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... a bigger swindle than surf-bathing, the United States Postal authorities haven't heard of it yet. It is all very well for the women. They can hang on to the ropes and squeal at the big waves and have a perfectly lovely time. Some ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... chattels, and were gathering in a howling chattering mob by the surf-boats ready to go on board, when the first notion came to me of joining her. It was the Danish harbour-master who gave it. He came up, under his old white umbrella with the green lining, to the house where I was staying, and told me that the tramp was going ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... then, suddenly, with the sharpness of bugles, winter came. It came in a single night, and the miners awoke to howling wind, driving snow, and freezing water. Storm followed storm, and between the storms there was the silence, broken only by the boom of the surf on the desolate shore, where the salt spray rimmed the beach with ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... fingers of the rain clouds had reached down, spanning from Criffel to Screel. The sea mist did what faith also can do. It removed mountains. One after another they faded and were not. A chillish wind began to blow up from the Solway, and even in Eden Valley was heard the distant roar of the surf, through the low pass which is called the Nick of Benarick. The long grass first stood in beads and then began to trickle. Flowers drooped their heads if of the harebell sort, or stood spikily defiant like the yellow ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Nature holds grimly onto her own and sedulously heals the scars that man makes. Beat to windward in the December twilight following that first trail of the Pilgrim pinnace, listen to the sullen boom of the breakers on the cliff, hear the growl of the surf-mauled pebbles on Plymouth beach, feel the sting of the freezing spray and the bitter grip of the north wind and you shall find this first Pilgrim trail the same today as it was three ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... looking at the pines all the way in; he had steered by them from point to point. Now he saw them just over Fish Rock, where the surf was whitening, and over the group of fish-houses, and began to steer straight inshore. The sea was less rough now, and after getting well into the shelter of the land he drew in his oar. Chauncey could pull the rest of the way without it. A sudden change in the wind filled the three-cornered ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... left-hand bank, one came almost unawares on a sharp bend to the left: here the river suddenly ended, and the sea began; the rushes and reeds and high grasses ceased; a low, rocky barrier stayed them. Rounding this point, lo, your boat swayed instantly to the left: a gentle surf-wave took possession of you, and irresistibly bore you towards a yellow sand beach, which curved inward like a reaper's sickle, not more than a quarter of a mile long, from the handle to the shining point; smooth and glistening, strewn with polished pebbles and tiny shells, it seemed some half-hidden ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... man no more. How long the night lasted I cannot tell; to me it seemed an age, and no second of it was free from fear. Whether we were driving north, south, east, or west no one knew, while the fury of the storm would have drowned the thunder of waves on a surf-beaten shore. But the Aguila was an English boat, built by honest English workmen, and her planks held firmly together despite ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... themselves are stacks of upper chalk, with flints, and are the remains of an extension of the chalk. The cliffs here are about four hundred feet in height, and at their base the sea breaks frequently in a long surf line on the steep shingly shore. In calm weather visitors engage boatmen at Totland and Alum Bays to take them in boats through the Needles and land ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... rather cold." There was silence while Daddy saw once more the golden sand of the African beach and the snow-white roaring surf, with the long, smooth ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... horse tethered to an iron pin, or else sit down and admire those who do go round and round. No one looks back at the gradually extending beach and the fine curve of the shore. No one lingers where the surf breaks—immediately above it—listening to the remorseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to the sea. There, looking downwards, the white edge of the surf recedes in hollow crescents, curve after curve for a mile or more, one succeeding before the first ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... a high chamber in the Hotel del Coronado, on the great and fertile beach in front of San Diego. It is the 2d of June. Looking southward, I see the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the sun as blue as the waters at Amalfi. A low surf beats along the miles and miles of white sand continually, with the impetus of far-off seas and trade-winds, as it has beaten for thousands of years, with one unending roar and swish, and occasional shocks of sound as if of distant thunder ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... morning invariably found the reunionists strengthening their acquaintance with the ocean. Breakfast over, a bathing suit procession to the nearby beach became the usual order of things. They spent long sunny hours playing about in the surf, or stretched at ease on the white sand, exchanging an apparently exhaustless flow of light-hearted conversation relating to almost everything under the sun. Imbued with tireless energy, their afternoons brought them fresh entertainment ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Stutson James Suabilty Benjamin Subbs Jacquer Suffaraire Manuel Sugasta Miles Suldan Parks Sullevan Dennis Sullivan Patrick Sullivan Thomas Sullivan George Summers Rufus Sumner Amos Sunderland Edward Sunderland (3) Francis Suneneau John Suneneaux Andre Surado Godfrey Suret Jack C. Surf Francis Surronto Hugh Surtes John Surtevant John Sussett Franco Deo Suttegraz Louis John Sutterwis George Sutton John Sutton Thomas Sutton Jacob Snyder Roman Suyker Simon Swaine Zacharias Swaine Thomas Swapple Absolom Swate James Swayne Isaac Swean Peter Swean (2) Enoch Sweat John Sweeney ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... down, the weather threatened still more; the wind blew strong, and the rocky beach was lashed by the waves and white with spray, while the surf roared as it poured in and broke upon the sand in the cove. The whole family had retired to bed except Ready, who said that he would watch the weather a little before he turned in. The old man walked towards the beach, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... other and from West Africa. The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it gives you pleasure when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision of a wall of dancing white, rainbow-gemmed surf playing on a shore of yellow sand before an audience of stately coco palms; or of a great mangrove- watered bronze river; or of a vast aisle in some forest cathedral: and you hear, nearer to you than the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that he did so. His religion did not lead him to do as some people would have done— begin to talk to the soldiers about their souls—but he looked after their bodies. Hungry, wet, sleepless, they were in no condition to scramble through the surf, and the first thing to be done was to get some food into them. Of course he does not mean that they had eaten absolutely nothing for a fortnight, but only that they had had scanty nourishment. But Paul's religion went harmoniously with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... midnight hours! by sea and land! How heavily they sped! Sometimes upon a surf-beat strand My weary feet would tread, And when the stars looked calmly down From cloudless foreign skies— Their soft light seemed a radiance thrown ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... with rounded hills. Slowly finer points appeared, the ridge of mountains showed details and we could recognize the tops of the giant banyan trees, towering above the forest as a cathedral does over the houses of a city. We saw the surf, breaking in the coral cliffs of flat shores, found the entrance to the wide bay, noticed the palms with elegantly curved trunks bending over the beach, and unexpectedly entered the lagoon, that shone in the bright sun like ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... earthy savour of the bog plants, the rude disorder of the boulders, the inimitable seaside brightness of the air, the brine and the iodine, the lap of the billows among the weedy reefs, the sudden springing up of a great run of dashing surf along the sea-front of the isle,—all that I saw and felt my predecessors must have seen and felt with scarce a difference. I steeped myself in open air and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gradually declining to that point, which I doubted not terminated in Cape Jervis. The natives kept aloof during the night, nor did the dogs by a single growl intimate that any had ventured to approach us. The sound of the surf came gratefully to our ears, for it told us we were near the goal for which we had so anxiously pushed, and we all of us promised ourselves a view of the boundless ocean ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... feet, saying, "Run before the next wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her course had ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... ideal bungalow and when I had finished it I constructed my ideal garden. And then I made a sea and a coast-line, and when it was finished it was so real to me that I actually seemed to go into its rooms, sit on the verandah, breathe in its sea-airs and listen to the surf below its cliff. I remember that one of its rooms did not please me entirely, and that I seemed to pull it down—in thought—and reconstruct it according to my wish. This took time, for brick by brick I thought the new room into existence. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... 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, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. The western ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tongue of land, beaten upon by white rollers of surf, that seemed as if they strove to overwhelm the old forts set far above their reach. A rocky island too, rising darkly out of a golden sea; and then we entered the mouth of a wonderful bay, like the pictures of Norwegian fords. As we steamed on, past a little town protected ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... frowningly overhead, its base all worn and furrowed by the furious surges that for ages had dashed against it. All around lay a chaos of huge boulders covered with seaweed. The tide was now at the lowest ebb. The surf here was moderate, for the seaweed on the rocks interfered with the swell of the waters, and the waves broke ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... by where the muddy mouth of the river yawned wide, there rose ever a thin white line of surf, and underneath those crested waves there dwelt a very fearsome thing, called the Bar. I grew to hate and be afraid of this mysterious Bar, for I heard it spoken of always with bated breath, and I knew that it was very cruel to fisher folk, and hurt them ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... a touch of the equinox, and the Leman has been in a foam, but its miniature anger, though terrible enough at times, to those who are embarked on its waters, can never rise to the dignity of a surf and a rolling sea. The rain kept me housed, and old John and I seized the occasion to convert a block of pine into a Leman bark, for P——. The next day proving fair, our vessel, fitted with two ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thing instinct with life, walking the waters—and our feelings are not only excited for the safety of the crew, but for that of the vessel itself, to which we attach a degree of interest as for a friend. A gale was now up; the boat put off to their aid was in danger of being swamped by the surf, and found it impracticable to make way against a violent head-wind and tide united. Nothing short of a miracle could now save the ship; however the wind suddenly shifted a little, and I began to hope that if she was to be wrecked, it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... from Redding came on August 1, 1908, when the sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, in the surf of the Jersey shore. Moffett was his nearest male relative, and a man of fine intellect and talents. He was superior in those qualities which men love—he was large-minded and large-hearted, and of noble ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... returned, 'tis thou art blind, Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; Only the soul hath power o'er itself.' With that again there murmured 'Nevermore!' And Rhoecus after heard no other sound, Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 150 Like the long surf upon a distant shore, Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. The night had gathered round him: o'er the plain The city sparkled with its thousand lights, And sounds of revel fell upon his ear Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, With all its bright sublimity of stars, Deepened, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... descended pitilessly upon their unprotected heads. A day of suffering and of peril was before them. As the day advanced, the wind increased to almost a gale. The waves frequently broke into the boat, drenching them to the skin, and glazing the boat, ropes, and clothing with a coat of ice. The surf, dashing upon the shore, rendered landing impossible, and they sought in vain for any creek or cove where they could find shelter. The short afternoon was fast passing away, and a terrible night was before them. A huge billow, which seemed to chase them with gigantic speed and force, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... commercial England. Each lounges decorously through life after his own fashion; only the one lounges in a Russia leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a rolling surf in Tahiti or the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... loud in the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... along the edge of the surf and down a dainty little flowery path, noticing meanwhile how the whole bay was filled by hundreds of empty canoes, while scores of others were drawn up on the strand, and then the first thing I chanced upon was a group of people—youthful, of course, with ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... been to the Lido for a short swim in the slight but bracing surf of the Adriatic. They had had a midday breakfast in a queer little restaurant, known only to the initiated and therefore early discovered by Larry, who had a keen scent for a cook learned in the law. They had loitered along the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... The next moment, however, I knew it could not be a man, for the object suddenly glided over the face of the cliff and slid down the sheer, smooth lace like a lizard. Before I could get a square look at it, the thing crawled into the surf—or, at least, it seemed to—but the whole episode occurred so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I was not sure I had ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the island, we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung around towards the shore. Some people came down to the water edge and hallooed to us, as we did to them; but the wind was so high, and the surf so loud, that we could not ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the West Wind, and his storms and tempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself could not control the havoc that he created. He warred upon all fishing craft, he demolished canoes and sent men to graves in the sea. He uprooted forests and drove the surf on shore heavy with wreckage of despoiled trees and with beaten and bruised fish. He did all this to reveal his powers, for he was cruel and hard of heart, and he would laugh and defy the Sagalie Tyee, and looking ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... surprise, found his spirit responding to this man's praise, slaver and pirate though he was, and he threw more strength into his swing. Soon they drew near to the island, and he heard such a roaring of the surf that he shuddered. He saw an unbroken line of white and he knew that behind it lay the cruel teeth of the rocks, ready to crunch any boat that came. Every one ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lone distress, That I might hark the sea-bird's wondrous band— Sweet source of happiness. That I might hear the clamorous billows thunder On the rude beach. That by my blessed church side I might ponder Their mighty speech. Or watch surf-flying gulls the dark shoal follow With joyous scream, Or mighty ocean monsters spout and wallow, Wonder supreme! That I might well observe of ebb and flood All cycles therein; And that my mystic name might be for good But "Cul-ri. Erin." That gazing toward her ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... secret he had been telling me as we came along, and then the parting when I didn't expect it, all I had of the man about me gave way somehow in a moment. And I sat alone, crying and sobbing on the sand-hillock, with the surf roaring miles out at sea behind me, and the great plain before, with Matthew walking over it alone on his way ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... realised after examination of Lake Alexandrina, as it is now called. Upon ascertaining their exact position on the southern coast, nothing was left but to take up the weary labours of their return; the thunder of the surf brought no hopeful message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back while yet ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... journey, in perfect security, no one thinking about his arms. The evening was extremely bright and pleasant. But the wind rose during the night, and the waves began to break heavily, making our island tremble. I had not expected, in our inland journey, to hear the roar of an ocean surf. The strangeness of our situation, and the excitement we felt, in the associated interests of the place, made this one of the most interesting nights I ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... ship rose and fell in the swell, the trees alternately disappeared and came into sight; and, on getting nearer, a coral island hove in view; it consisted of a ring a quarter of a mile or so in width, with a lagoon in the centre. First was seen a line of surf, then a white sandy beach, and beyond a belt of green ground, sparsely sprinkled with cocoanut and pandanus trees, and here and there with a few bushes of low growth. The ship stood along the shore at a respectful distance, a look-out being kept for inhabitants, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wished you could do something big?" pursued Julie. "You've done a thing that makes the rest of us feel pretty small, you know. Why, while there was any question of your getting better, there wasn't a dance given at any of the hotels between here and Surf Point, and all sorts of people came here with inquiries every day. This place was absolutely hushed. The maids used to fight for the privilege of carrying your trays up. None of us thought of anything but 'How is Miss Carter?' And you'll be 'The young lady who saved those children ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... clouds came up in rapid procession; the surf began to sigh and moan; the sea-fowls caught the sound, and cried as they only cry when the ocean is angry. The boats lying out hoisted sail and scudded away for the nearest haven of shelter. Then a white line of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of pressure, of prodigious poetry and beauty and amazement. This was a strange jungle of life. Tall coasts of windows stood up into the pure brilliant sky: against their feet beat a dark surf of slums. In one foreign street, too deeply trenched for sunlight, oranges were the only gold. The water, reaching round in two arms, came close: there was a note of husky summons in the whistles of passing craft. Almost everywhere, sharp above many smells of oils and spices, the whiff of coffee ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... to enter the sea and wade to the vessel, but Skallagrim caught him in his arms as though he were but a child, and, wading into the surf till the water covered his waistbelt, bore him to the vessel and lifted him up so that Eric reached the bulwarks ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... wearing white helmets on their heads and suits of snowy white as they walk about amid brown-skinned natives whose bare bodies gleam like satin, lands where lines of palm trees wave their long fronds over the pearly surf washing at their roots. We will visit also other lands where you look out over a glowing pink and mauve desert to seeming infinity, and see reflected in bitter shallow water at your feet the flames of such a sunset glory as you never yet have imagined. Or you can ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red waves—sunset ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... was caught by a wave and thrown down, and as it retired it seemed to drag her along with it; we older ones lost our presence of mind entirely, and screamed and cried, and did nothing, but that heroic little fellow ran into the boiling surf and caught her dress, and with the dog's assistance, dragged her to a safe place. She said he was, "Very ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... to be worked, and again to the south a vast stretch of like character extending to Norton Bay. The tundra, which is nothing but the old beach, follows the present shore, and is fully as rich as the surf-washed sands. More productive and larger than all is the inland region traversed by rivers and creeks that form a veritable network of streams, all ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... cautious look, his eyes sparkled once more. Go back to the Life-saving Station where he had worked in his lusty youth—back to the sound of the surf upon the shore, back to the pines and cedars of the Beach, out of the bondage of dry old lavender to the goodly fragrance of balsam and sea-salt! Back to ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... which hangs suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between earth and heaven, or, at least, between mass and class, and which stretches out its tentacles and sucks nourishment from both. These with a regularity almost religious, spent an hour of every day, weather permitting, splashing in the gentle surf or posing on the beach in costumes more or less revealing, according to the contour of the wearer. The climax of the afternoon, the coup-de-theatre which all awaited, was the appearance of Mlle. Paul, late of the Varietes. This was such a masterpiece in its way that it is worth pausing ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... spectacle more strange—nay awful. Neither pen nor pencil can give any idea of it. It was exciting, grand, wierd and beautiful." Fireworks from the ships looked like volcanoes bursting from the deep, while multiplied fireboats had an effect upon the stony ink-blackness of the surf, like rolling flames pouring in upon the shores. At midnight the Prince passed from this scene to a special Native entertainment in his honour. The great railway station had been converted into a decorated theatre crowded ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... storm-wind may bluster and blow, Tearing the trees from the root-broken ground, Or the wild sea-surf may leap and may flow In solemn silence with never ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the rocks and surf was passed, came another danger of the hideous brutes in brown skins and the briefest shirts, who came towards the boat, straddling through the water with outstretched arms, grinning and yelling their Arab invitations to mount ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had been a pleasure to him since that day six months ago when his old schooner, dismasted and leaking in a gale, had foundered near the Wolves, two sharp-toothed islands near Grande Mignon. Four islanders had been lost that day, and he alone had lived through the surf. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Waddy; the pulsing whirr of invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... mortal maid lies indolent Save one sweet cheek which the cool velvet turf Had touched too rude, tho' all the blooms besprent, One soft arm pillowed. Whiter than the surf ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... place where we halted for dinner, on the banks of the Rugufu River, is eighteen and a half hours, or forty-six miles, from Ujiji; and, as Kabogo is said to be near Uguhha, it must be over sixty miles from Ujiji; therefore the sound of the thundering surf, which is said to roll into the caves of Kabogo, was heard by us at a distance of over one hundred miles ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... ships were wafted towards the blue cloud, it was proved beyond a doubt to be land, for some palm-trees and tall pines became distinguishable, and above all other sounds came, faint but distinct, the heavy, regular boom of surf. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... the dash of the surf and the cries of the wheeling sea fowl made the only sound in that part of the world; then from those half-clad rapscallions arose a shout of "Kirby!"—a shout in which the three leaders did not join. That one who looked a gentleman rose from the sand ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... broadside and the ripple of surf threatened to swamp it, only a naked boy ran into the water and pulled the bow high up on the sand. The man stood up and sent a questing glance along the line of villagers. A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... miles in its transverse axis, half filled with smooth water of the deepest caerulean hue, and half with a solid sheet of glittering snow-white salt, the offspring of evaporation." "If," says Mr. Hugh Miller, "we suppose, instead of a barrier of lava, that sand-bars were raised by the surf on a flat arenaceous coast during a slow and equable sinking of the surface, the waters of the outer gulf might occasionally topple over the bar, and supply fresh brine when the first stock had been exhausted ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Dead are Arnold's finest narrative poems. They are stately, dignified recitals of the deeds of heroes and gods. The series of poems entitled Switzerland and Dover Beach are among Arnold's most beautiful lyrics. A fine description of the surf is contained in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... stands on upon the heads of the people in the streets below; I didn't like it. But this morning I looked directly down on a little fleet of fishing boats over which we passed, and on the crowds assembling on the beach, and on the bathers who stared up at us from the breaking surf, with an entirely agreeable exaltation. And Eastbourne, in the early morning sunshine, had all the brightly detailed littleness of a town viewed from high up on the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... faces in their frames of hair, of their arms, of their figures, seen through their wet clinging dresses, satisfied me and filled me with joy, gave me for a short time that peace and content—in harmony with the strong sunlight on the waves and the rhythmic surf on the shore—I was seeking. The summer evenings on the pier or along the beach had a peculiar savor; one felt the youth and beauty there even on dark nights, the air was fragrant with them, white dresses and summer hats disappearing down the beach or over the sand hills. It was easy—doubtless ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hum of the waves breaking lazily along the shore of Colveston Bay; or, if the wind blew hard from the sea, it carried with it the roar of the breakers on the bar mouth, and the distant thunder of the surf on ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... affects the brain-mind center of persistence. A man whose jaw habitually hangs loose may be capable of great determination for a while, but he is not persistent in character. He might clench his teeth, stiffen his body, and plunge into the surf to rescue a drowning person; but his first resolution to effect the rescue would be weakened by the cold water and by fear. He lacks the quality of the bulldog that will die rather than loose its teeth from ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... squall blew the tent over their heads, got up and assisted Montague to erect it anew in a more sheltered position, after which, saying that he meant to take a midnight ramble on the shore to cool his fevered brow, he made straight for the sea, stepped knee-deep into the raging surf, and bared his breast to ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the harbour-master had difficulties of selection. The boat got off; the coxswain was called Charlie Cain; one of his crew was named Gorry, otherwise Orry. It was a perilous adventure. The Norwegian had lost her masts, and her spars were floating around her in the snow-like surf. She was dangerous to approach, but the lifeboat reached her. Charlie cried out to the Norwegian captain: "How many of you?" The answer came back, "Twenty-two!" Charlie counted them as they hung on at the ship's side, and said: "I only see twenty-one; not a man shall ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... a little surf breaking along the beach as our keel touched the ground. Our blankets came dripping from the bottom of the boat, and my satchel had taken water enough to spoil my paper collars and a dozen cigars. My greatest calamity on that night ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... coast of Coromandel these small rafts are named Catamarans, and are employed for carrying letters or messages between the shore and the ships, through the tremendous surf which continually breaks on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... wretched man's shoulders as the fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, hurled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the foam. She was not playing or running races with the waves, but walking soberly and anon halting to scan the beach ahead. Her legs were bare to the knee, and she had hitched up her short skirt high about her like a cockle-gatherer's. In the roar and murmur of the surf she did not hear the Elder approaching, but faced around with a start as he ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill - O the breath of the distant surf! - ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... run her ashore, hoping by that means to be able to save all aboard her. The vessel grounded some 180 miles south of Fremantle on December 2, 1876; but she was some distance from the shore, and it seemed to the captain that no boat could pass through the surf which would have to be crossed to reach land. He swept the coast through his glass, but not a house or human being could he see, and he gave up all hope of receiving ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... station was a beautiful one. It lay amidst rivers and hills, and its position was such that the roar of the surf on both eastern and western coasts of the island could be distinctly heard. Shortly after his permanent settlement, Mr. Puckey made a journey to the extreme north of the island and reached Cape Reinga. Standing on the black cliffs against which the sea was dashing with terrific force, listening ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... men had come down and were helping us on shore. But before I well knew anything, Agatha was on her feet; I heard her cry 'Wilfred, Wilfred!' and then I saw her dragging him, quite like a dead thing, out of the surf, just in time before another great wave rushed in which would have washed them both back, if a man had not grappled her at the very moment, calling out, 'Let go, let go, he's a dead man!' She did not let go; when the wave broke, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Indians numbered about a dozen, and half of these could be seen in a knot, gesticulating in their extravagant manner, while the others were running up and down the shore as if they had detected something interesting in the surf. ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... menace than a Charles Klinkner in the field of finance, trying to raid him for several millions. The hawks and weasels and 'coons were so many Dowsetts, Lettons, and Guggenhammers that struck at him secretly. The sea of wild vegetation that tossed its surf against the boundaries of all his clearings and that sometimes crept in and flooded in a single week was no mean enemy to contend with and subdue. His fat-soiled vegetable-garden in the nook of hills that ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... stimulate a timid inshore navigation which sometimes develops to extensive coastwise intercourse, where a network of lagoons and deltaic channels forms a long inshore passage, as in Upper Guinea, but which fears the break of the surf outside.[448] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... resorts of Rockaway and Coney Island are reached in from one to two hours by steamer. At either of these places a day may be spent on the sea shore. The surf-bathing is excellent at both, and each may also be reached by a railway. Of late years, Coney Island has become a favorite resort of the roughs of New York and Brooklyn, and, as a consequence, is not as attractive to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the sand; and the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an unseen shore; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a ship-wrecked mariner cast ashore on a desert island. The sullen roar of the crowd echoed against the buildings enclosing the square like the dull boom of the surf. Over on Third Avenue the yellow lights of the elevated cars crossed the dark opening of Sixteenth Street at regular intervals, and recalled to Robertson a piece of scenery at a fair, where a lighted train ran continually between the mouths of two tunnels in the mountains. He pulled ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... ten-oared boat. The weather was cold and the wind from the North; the boat was lying at Hvalshausholm. When they left the wind had freshened a little; they reached the island and caught the ox. Grettir asked whether they preferred to ship the ox or to hold the boat, for there was a high surf running on the shore. They told him to hold the boat. He stood by her middle on the side away from the land, the sea reaching right up to beneath his shoulders, but he held the boat firmly so that she could not drift. Thorgeir took the ox by the stern and ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... There was but one, however; nor could the most scrupulous examination show him a human being. After remaining a quarter of an hour on the boom, during all which time the only sounds that were heard were the sighings of the night-air, and the sullen and steady wash of the surf, Captain Truck came on deck again, where he found his mate waiting his report with intense anxiety. The former was fully aware of the importance of his discovery, but, being a cool man, he had not magnified the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... found a solitude. The weeds were thicker than ever, so that he had constantly to edge away from where he supposed the mainland to lie. But there were no waterfowls and no birds on the islets. Suddenly as he rounded a large island he saw what for the moment he imagined to be a line of white surf, but the next instant he recognised a solid mass, as it were, of swallows and martins flying just over the surface of the water straight towards him. He had no time to notice how far they extended before they had gone by him with a rushing sound. Turning to look ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... grew the cliffs. Down and crashing down fell the trees, the noise of their fall accompanying the battle chant of the Valkyr beside me like wild harp chords of storm-lashed surf. Up to the precipices the forest rolled, unbroken. Now the cliffs loomed overhead. The dawn had ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... that the lads regained their boat, which driven before the wind, seemed determined to reach the shore without them. They succeeded at last, dressed themselves, and stood in for the land. A long line of heavy surf was beating violently against the beach, and by some mismanagement, the boat got capsized among the breakers. One lad was thrown on shore, but Davy Jarvis got entangled in the surf, which beat continually over him, and rendered all ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... in some places peat-meadows are buried deep under the sand, and the peat is cut through it; and in one place a large peat-meadow has made its appearance on the shore in the bank covered many feet deep, and peat has been cut there. This accounts for that great pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. The old oysterman had told us that many years ago he lost a "crittur" by her being mired in a swamp near the Atlantic side, east of his house, and twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself entirely, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... labors of beneficence, was that of building wiser than they knew, and there is no more reason now why we should stop when we strike the salt water of the seas, and consent to it that where we find the white line of surf that borders a continent we shall say to the imperial popular Republic, thus far and no farther shalt thou go, and here shall thy proud march be stayed—than there was that George Washington, as the representative of the English-speaking ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... them, wild and fragrant, among their leaves, in her hand. Between his fairness, and Sir Joshua's May-fairness, there is a strange, impassable limit—as of the white reef that in Pacific isles encircles their inner lakelets, and shuts them from the surf and sound of sea. Clear and calm they rest, reflecting fringed shadows of the palm-trees, and the passing of fretted clouds across their own sweet circle of blue sky. But beyond, and round and round their coral bar, lies the blue of sea and ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the moss-rose, the blush of the morning, The soft cheek of Kathleen discloses their dye; What ruby can rival the lip of mavourneen? What sight-dazzling diamond can equal her eye? Her silken hair vies with the sunbeam in brightness, And white is her brow as the surf of the sea; Thy footstep is like to the fairy's in lightness, Of Kathleen ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... gleaned it in their lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls, which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come in, saying with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... reef showed above water, but its extent and limits were very clearly defined by the ripples and agitation—gentle though this last was—of the surface of the water above it. The surf was breaking heavily on its outer margin in clouds of gleaming white that flashed and glittered in the brilliant sunshine; and an occasional undulation of swell came sweeping in across the reef, causing a thousand swirls and eddies to appear as it traversed the vast barrier of submerged rock— coral, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... danger was fearful. Not before, since she struck, had one of the huge rollers failed at much shorter intervals to dash over and over the ship. Should one of them overtake the boat her fate would be sealed. On came the boat towards the beach. A number of seamen rushed down into the surf to receive her and haul her up as soon as she should touch the sand. The excitement among the crowd was tremendous. Far off I saw one of these huge billows rushing onwards. If it broke before the boat could reach the beach it would overwhelm her. The least excited of the crowd, to all appearance, ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... out this impression, which a comparatively new suit of canvas, well stopped down, brass stanchions forward, and two little guns under tarpaulins, almost confirmed. One thing struck me as peculiar. Her complement of boats was ample enough. She had two surf boats, a dingy, and a dory slung to the davits. In addition another dory,—the one you picked me up in—was lashed to the top of ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dash of the surf and the cries of the wheeling sea fowl made the only sound in that part of the world; then from those half-clad rapscallions arose a shout of "Kirby!"—a shout in which the three leaders did not join. That one who looked a gentleman rose from the sand and made me a low bow. "Well met, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... island and a boat sent out, which was carefully steered through the breakers. Forgetting the treasure which he had concealed in the cave, and the friendly treatment which he had so long received from the tribe who knew of its whereabouts, the sailor rushed into the surf, and throwing himself into the boat bade the men pull back to the ship. When he was standing on the deck of the latter he recognised fully his own position. Above him floated the Spanish flag, fierce glances of hatred from all the crew were turned ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... demises To take us away from this hole And do just whatever we long to do. Tell me your perfect day." Said one, "Why, to fly to an island Far away in a deep blue lagoon; One would never be tired in my land Nor ever get up too soon." "Every time," cried the girl darning stockings, "We'd surf-ride and bathe in the sea, We'd wear nothing but little blue smockings And eat mangoes and crabs for our tea." "Oh no!" said a third, "that's a rotten Idea of a perfect day; I long to see mountains forgotten, Once more hear the bells of a sleigh. I'd give all I have ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Let the vessels run their own way to destruction: who can stay the eastern wind, and the current of the Solway sea? I can find ye Scripture warrant for that: so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad quicksand. There's a surf running there would knock the ribs together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and commanded by the Prince of Darkness. Bonnilie and bravely they sail away there; but before the blast blows by they'll be wrecked: and ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... safety of the crew, but for that of the vessel itself, to which we attach a degree of interest as for a friend. A gale was now up; the boat put off to their aid was in danger of being swamped by the surf, and found it impracticable to make way against a violent head-wind and tide united. Nothing short of a miracle could now save the ship; however the wind suddenly shifted a little, and I began to hope that if she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... it. And a beautiful beach, and surf bathing, and a boardwalk miles long, and piers, and merry-go-rounds, and shops, and hot sausages, and moving-pictures, and rolling-chairs, and lovely music, and ice-cream waffles, and orangeade, and popcorn. Your mother will see it all, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... with the first ecstacy—it is Balzac. Upon that rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new aestheticisms, the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought that ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... delicious bath which you may have in the Adriatic, where the light surf breaks with a pensive cadence on the soft sand, all strewn with brilliant shells. The Adriatic is the bluest water I have ever seen; and it is an ineffable, lazy delight to lie and watch the fishing sails of purple ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... stay in this port, a singular fact occurred. A violent surf broke over the shore, and prevented the shore-boats from reaching the strand. Although he was provided with a life-belt, one of the sailors, who could not swim, refused to jump into the sea to reach the boat. Threatened with being left alone on the island, he still persistently ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... this exaggeration so long as the laws which nature observes in her increase be observed. Thus, for instance: the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three inches high, are not representation of either the form or the surface of the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake if simply exaggerated, represent the forms of Atlantic surges; but as nature increases her bulk, she diminishes the angles of ascent, and increases her divisions; and if we would ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... among birds. Beauty, speed, and immunity from danger from birds of prey are theirs. Ethereal and aerial creatures! Is that the cry of the sea in the bird's voice? Is that the motion of the waves in its body? Is that the restlessness of the surf in its behavior? ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... church. Soon the sounds of the organ are heard. Faint in the first, long-drawn, deeply pensive chords, they rapidly gain strength. And with a passionate sadness, their human melodies now wrestle with the dull and gloomy plaintiveness of the tireless surf. Like seagulls in a storm, the sounds soar amidst the high waves, unable to rise higher on their overburdened wings. The stern ocean holds them captive by its wild and eternal charms. But when they have risen, the lowered ocean roars more dully; now they rise still ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... spacious fire-place in the "baronial" hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... has traveled among simple-living people, men and women we call savages, because they live in the woods and not in cleared land or cities, will bear witness that a savage may be a perfect gentleman. Now as I write their faces rise before me. Joyous, free limbed, white toothed swimmers in Samoan surf, a Hawaiian eel-catcher, a Mexican peon with his "sombrero trailing in the dust," a deferential Japanese farm boy anticipating your every want, a sturdy Chinaman without grace and without sensitiveness, but with the saving quality of loyalty to his own word, ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... the coming of death, we plunged into the reef. I have no knowledge of what took place—and there are no words to tell the story. Solid water swamped us; the thunder of the surf stopped the mind. But we didn't touch, there was a way through, we had crossed the outer margin of the reef. We ran the terrible gauntlet of the reef, surrounded on every hand by towering breakers, lost ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them for the fate of Idmon. Now at the hour when the sun passes his noon-tide halt and the ploughlands are just being shadowed by the rocks, as the sun slopes towards the evening dusk, at that hour all the heroes spread leaves thickly upon the sand and lay down in rows in front of the hoary surf-line; and near them were spread vast stores of viands and sweet wine, which the cupbearers had drawn off in pitchers; afterwards they told tales one to another in turn, such as youths often tell when at the feast and the bowl they take delightful pastime, and insatiable ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... that repenteth; and to the joyful cry, My son that was dead is alive again, they respond, as they receive the returned penitent from the Father's arms into their own, My brother that was dead is alive again, that was lost is found! Never from surf-beaten shore or rocky headland do spectators watch with such anxious interest the life-boat, as, now seen and now lost, now breasting the waves and now hurled back on the foaming crest of a giant billow, she makes for the wreck, as they watch those who, with the Bible in their hearts and hands, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... piercing scream seemed to come from the sea out beyond the surf, some yards higher up the coast. "Help! help! I'll drown, ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... servant who had travelled at the back of the carriage waited on him; Baptistin, who rode in front, attended the count. Albert bathed, took his supper, and went to bed. All night he was lulled by the melancholy noise of the surf. On rising, he went to his window, which opened on a terrace, having the sea in front, and at the back a pretty park bounded by a small forest. In a creek lay a little sloop, with a narrow keel and high masts, bearing on its flag the Monte Cristo arms which were a mountain ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... growth, but they grow quite down to the edge of the sea. The natives have been attracted to this main road, and from Galle to Colombo it is almost one continuous village; there is no prettier sea-shore in the world, nor a more beautiful surf. Every few miles we come upon large numbers of fishermen drawing in their nets, which are excessively long and take in several acres of sea in their sweep. An artist who would come to Ceylon and devote himself to depicting "the fishers of Ceylon's isle" (how well that sounds! and a good title is ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... thundered on the beach, and rushed inland in fields of gurgling foam that looked like phosphoric light in the darkness. Into this the carriage was thrust as far as it could be with safety by many strong and willing hands. Then the men in the surf seized the launching lines, by means of which the boat could be propelled off its carriage. A peculiar adaptation of the mechanism enabled them, by pulling backward, to force the boat forward. For a moment they stood inactive ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... they had reached was just outside the northern boundaries of Harlem, a sylvan spot still unspoiled by the rude invasion of the flat-house builder. The land, thickly wooded, sloped down sharply to the water, and the perfect quiet was broken only by the washing of the tiny surf against the river bank and the shrill notes of the birds in ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... into the surf, and the two seamen clambered in after. Ezra and his father sat in the sheets, while the others rowed. The sea was running very high—so high that when the dinghy lay in the trough of a wave they could see neither the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there was visible when it suddenly slackened in its headlong career, went about, seaward, and describing the greater part of a circle, came slowly in towards the bar, nosing about there beyond the line of white surf, for all the world like a terrier at the lip ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... seldom seen in the village, but on the other hand he often walked and rode along the sea-beach; and people claimed to have heard him from a distance, talking to the waves and listening to the rolling and hissing of the surf, as though he could hear the answering voice of the spirit of the sea. Upon the topmost summit of the watch-tower he had a sort of study fitted up and supplied with telescopes—with a complete set of astronomical apparatus, in fact. Thence during the daytime ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... eleven the Kinta appeared, a black shadow on a silver sea, roaring for a boat, but the surf was so heavy that it was some time before the police boat was got off; and then Mr. Maxwell, whose cheery, energetic voice precedes him, and Mr. Walker landed, bullying everybody, as people often do when they know that they are the delinquents! It was lovely in the white moonlight ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... tenth breaker, a great wave struck her a little on the side, and over she went, spilling out her contents as heedlessly as though they had been iron or lead in place of flesh and blood. In an instant, Flint was in the surf, and striking out for the spot where he had seen a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... British fabrics. The rumor of five hundred doubloons disturbed his rest in Sierra Leone! So much gold could not linger in the hands of natives as long as Manchester and Birmingham were represented in the colony; and, accordingly, he coasted the edge of the surf, as rapidly as possible, to pay me a profit of four dollars a thousand for the cigars, and to take his chances at the exchange of my gold for the sable cargo! By this happy hit I was enabled to pay for ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... who were the most feeble among us, were placed below deck, together with a few of the least skilful of the negroes, who composed the crew, and the hatches closed upon us, to prevent the sea from coming in between decks, while the dangers occasioned by the surf running over the bar, was passed. The wretched condition to which we were reduced, was such as to awaken a feeling of sympathy, even among the blacks, who shed tears of compassion for our misfortunes; during this time, the most profound silence reigned on board; the voice ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... orchard. After that the two of them put in nearly the whole of the growing season dodging one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot Hunter. Often after laborious hours spent in repairing the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... All the countryside was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island, with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the air on the nearer islets accented and gave ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... which, doubtful of their power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the AEgean climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys. Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut with a precision of curve like that of the sea ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... weather did not keep truce very long. A wailing blast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voices of half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans not only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must have long since covered the beach over which they had come and was now trying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... he gazed out through the open window, off toward the whispering lines of surf on the eastern shores of Staten Island—the surf forever talking, forever striving to give its mystic message to the unheeding ear of man. And as he gazed, his blue eyes narrowed with the intensity of his thought. Once, as though ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... my feelings. Six years in a tomb, a comic opera sort of tomb, where a silly surf was forever pounding, and foolish palms kept waving. Six years—for nothing. Six years, while Hayden, guiltier than I, stayed behind to enjoy the good things of life, to plead for the girl whose lover he ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... camp drums beat, fifes screamed shrilly, trumpets blared, and the shouts and voices of the assembled soldiers sounded like the distant roar of the surf. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... anchorage at 4.30 P.M. We soon got into one of the country boats made for landing in the surf (without nails, and all the planks sewn together). We were hoisted by the waves upon the beach, and found there a considerable crowd, with the Governor, Sir W. Denison; Sir H. Grant, etc., and a guard of honour, to receive us; Sir W.D. drove me out to this place, Guindy, which is about eight miles ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... boat. The weather was cold and the wind from the North; the boat was lying at Hvalshausholm. When they left the wind had freshened a little; they reached the island and caught the ox. Grettir asked whether they preferred to ship the ox or to hold the boat, for there was a high surf running on the shore. They told him to hold the boat. He stood by her middle on the side away from the land, the sea reaching right up to beneath his shoulders, but he held the boat firmly so that she could not drift. Thorgeir took the ox by the ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... pausing or looking behind, he by and by heard the sea roaring at a distance. At this sound, he increased his speed, and soon came to a beach, where the great surf waves tumbled themselves upon the hard sand, in a long line of snowy foam. At one end of the beach, however, there was a pleasant spot, where some green shrubbery clambered up a cliff, making its rocky face look soft and beautiful. A carpet of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... with rolling surf, a long and very high pier, showing the great rise of the tide,—at this point sixty feet in the spring,— and directly before one the peculiarly striking promontory of Blomidon, with the red sandstone showing through ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... cast into the mill of revolution for a total remoulding. Every day came like the discharge of a great double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble as his walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind should leap into the questions of the hour like a naked boy into the surf. He made mistakes, sometimes in a childish, sometimes in an older way, some against most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep the main direction of truth, after his own young way of thinking and telling it. He had no such power ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... there; but once more, after a glance at Vane's face, he kept silent. After all, Vane was leader; and when he looked as he did then, he usually resented advice. The mouth of the bay grew wider, until Carroll could see most of the forest-girt shore on one side of it; but the surf upon the point was growing unpleasantly near. Wisps of spray whirled away from it and vanished among the scrubby firs clinging to the fissured crags behind. The sloop, however, was going to windward, for Vane was handling her ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... which had so roused the soldier's admiration. Out of the haze which still lay thick upon our right there twinkled here and there a bright gleam of silvery light, while a dull, thundering noise broke upon our ears like that of the surf upon a rocky shore. More and more frequent came the fitful flashes of steel, louder and yet louder grew the hoarse gathering tumult, until of a sudden the fog was rent, and the long lines of the Royal cavalry broke out from it, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... London society. My Aunt Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous dread of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the shingle. If I ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and thither and broken on the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer to stand aloof and watch. If I had a little more of daring in my nature I might achieve something. I am afraid I am but a waster in the world's factory; but ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... a long walk alone. I walked along the beach. In the dark I took off my clothes and plunged for a swim into the chilly surf ... a high sea was thundering in. I was caught in the undertow, swept off my feet, and dragged beyond by depth ... for a moment I was of a heart to let go, to permit myself to be drowned ... I was even intrigued, for the moment, by the thought of what ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a name—"Galatea"; and always on still nights the myriad silver stars would seem to breathe to him "Galatea" ... and on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in longing, hopeless and unutterable—"Galatea!... Galatea!..." For her he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he laid the beautiful ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... nymphs to come and play with her. They knew Proserpina's voice, and were not long in showing their glistening faces and sea-green hair above the water, at the bottom of which was their home. They brought along with them a great many beautiful shells; and sitting down on the moist sand, where the surf wave broke over them, they busied themselves in making a necklace, which they hung round Proserpina's neck. By way of showing her gratitude, the child besought them to go with her a little way into the fields, so that they might gather abundance of flowers, with which she would make each ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... soft breezes sweep across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... boys engaged a room at the hotel, which was quite a large one, for Easton was a favorite summer resort and the town was filled with visitors. The lads strolled about the town, had their dinner, and then went for a bath in the surf. They retired early, for they ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... had no snow-capped mountains in the distance; no amethyst foothills to enchain the eye; no wonderful canyons and splendid rocky passes to make the tourist marvel; no length of yellow sea sands nor plash of ocean surf; no trade, no amusements, no summer visitors;—it was just a quiet, little, sunny, verdant, leafy piece of heart's content, that's what Beulah was, and Julia couldn't spoil it; indeed, the odds were, that it would sweeten ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll sure have to swim for it. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... repose in memory—the memory of an old New England village, or a corn field and a split-rail fence and then the level prairie, or cotton fields and the red handkerchiefs of the negroes, or the vineyard slopes of Sicily, or the great white surf beating up the cliffs of Connemara. It may be that the second and third generations of immigrants, born on the East Side, are true New Yorkers, just as a vanishing generation of elderly men and women on Murray Hill and the Avenue are true New Yorkers. But the great majority of New ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... some things in words. I seemed to be out of the world of everyday life, and surrounded by what was pure and fresh and powerful and beautiful—it all comes back to me now, when I think of the surf breaking on the rocks, and the lights and colours, and ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... the sea opened on our sight through the alley-way of jungle, and a broad inviting cocoanut grove nodded and beckoned on our left. Instead we paddled out across the sandbar to play with the surf of the Atlantic, but found it safer to return and glide across the little bay to the drowsy straw and tin village. Here—for the mouth of the Chagres like its source lies in a foreign land—a solitary Panamanian policeman in the familiar Arctic uniform enticed us toward the little ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of earth when the shot struck home. Above the Russian trenches lay a long white cloud of powder forming a great wall of waves. The dull thunder of the guns was tremendous. It whistled and howled, it cried and moaned, it roared like the surf of the ocean, like the terrifying growl of a thunderstorm, and then it threw back a hundredfold clear echo. In between came the dull crack of the Russian shrapnel. They broke in the broad, swampy lowlands of the Rawka; ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... hardly decent, to let his grief spend itself in the lighted-up street. The Front was deserted and dark, for there was rain in the wind, and the sound of the surf had a quick savage chop in it. Away, over the sea, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... a knotted tangle of flags at the yardarm of their leader, altered course a little; they were making for an opening in the wall of rock, on either side of which gaunt promontories thrust their naked shoulders into the surf. The long black, viperish hulls passed through under the ever-watchful eyes of the shore batteries, and the hooded figures on the Destroyer bridges threw back their duffle cowls and wiped the night's accumulation of dried spray and cinders ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... But not on the surf-beaten islands, Nor yet upon Morven's land, Does she drive, for her rudder, unshattered, Is firm in ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... surges of the Gulf of Mexico were beating heavily upon the sandy beach of Point Isabel, but the dull and boding sounds were not the roar of the surf. There came a long silence, and then another boom. Each in succession entered the white tents of the American army on the upland, carrying with it a message of especial importance to all who were within. It was also of more importance to the whole world than any man who heard it could then ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... and the surf diminished rapidly, which caused us to be on the alert at a very early hour on the 22nd, but we had to wait until six A.M. for the return of Augustus who had continued out all night on an unsuccessful pursuit of deer. It appears that he had walked a few miles ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... north side, and connected by sand-banks and breakers. These islets were clothed with wood, among which the cocoa-nut trees were only distinguishable. We ranged the south side of this isle or shoal at the distance of one or two miles from the coral-bank, against which the sea broke in a dreadful surf. In the middle is a large lake or inland sea, in which was a canoe ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... then," Steve explained, "but I could have sworn I heard surf." He leaned over the chart. "This doesn't show anything, though, nearer than the land. Toot your ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... poor souls upon the wreck, it being hauled taught from the upper part of the stern, made an easy descent to any who had art enough to walk or slide upon a rope, with a smaller rope fixed above to hold by. This was a means of saving a number of lives, though many were washed off by the impetuous surf, and perished. The flood coming on, raised the surf, and prevented any more from coming at that time, so that the ropes could be of no further use. We then retired from the rocks; and hunger prevailing, set about boiling some of the drowned turkeys, &c. which with some flour ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... changed the smoke of turf, A heathery land and misty sky; And turn'd on rocks and raging surf ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... intoxicated seamen, who, as soon as they were afloat, again raised their shouts and songs of revelry as they were borne away by the wind and sea towards the beach. Philip, who held on by the stump of the mainmast, watched them with an anxious eye, now perceiving them borne aloft on the foaming surf, now disappearing in the trough. More and more distant were the sounds of their mad voices, till, at last, he could hear them no more,—he beheld the boat balanced on an enormous rolling sea, and then he saw ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... she had feared!—that Saltash would fail to hold her against him. Again, a deep compassion came over Jake, stirring the very depths of him. Poor little girl, flung to and fro as flotsam in the cruel surf of life's breakers! He had done his best to deliver her, but Fate had been against him. Fate had ordained that she should be the victim of this man's caprice, the slave of impulses which might or might not be her destruction. It was as if he watched ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... it was his duty to go and join his workmen on the dikes, and he went. And when the poor fellows toiling there saw that their engineer was coming to help them, they set up a cheer. The engineer had a rope put around him and was lowered down into the surf, and other men came and had ropes put about them, and they were lowered down. And after a while the cry was heard: "More mortar and more blocks of stone!" But there were no more. "Now," said the Holland engineer, "men, take off your clothes!" and they took them off, and they stopped ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... be omitted of this noble breed of water-dogs. A vessel was driven on the beach of Lydd, in Kent. The surf was rolling furiously. Eight poor fellows were crying for help, but not a boat could be got off to their assistance. At length a gentleman came on the beach accompanied by his Newfoundland dog: he directed the attention of the animal to the vessel, and put a short stick into his ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... a baby under two years should never be given a sea bath, a word of caution about sea bathing for young children may not be amiss. The cruelty with which well-meaning parents treat young, tender children by forcibly dragging them into the surf, a practice which may be seen at any seaside resort in the summer, can have no justification. The fright and shock that a sensitive child is thus subjected to is more than sufficient to undo any ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride: And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... from the coast of Brazil, is but a spot upon the ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... cheer loud, I say; 'Tis the race of a century witnessed to-day! Though ye live twice the space that's allotted to men Ye never will see such a grand race again. Let the shouts of the populace roar like the surf, For Salvator, Salvator, king of the turf, He has rivaled the record of thirteen long years; He has won the first place in the vast line of peers. 'Twas a neck-to-neck contest, a grand, honest race, And even ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... gently along the outer or barrier reef which fringed the coast of beautiful verdured Upolu, and then, as the sun sank, there shone out myriad stars upon the bosom of a softly heaving sea, and only the never-ceasing murmur of the surf as it beat against the coral barrier, or the cry of some wandering sea-bird, disturbed the warm silence of the ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... scanned the beach his eye was caught by three ladies and three natives standing about a surf-boat in animated discussion. The youngest of the ladies, who wore a bathing-suit of conspicuous hue and did most of the talking, suddenly detached herself from the others and came flying across ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory—prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given Nelson death—surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, we owed them here. Those sails that strained so full bent into the battle—that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste full front to the shot—resistless and without reply—those triple ports whose choirs of flame rang forth in their courses, into the fierce revenging monotone, which, when it died away, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, Ethereal estuary, frith of light.... Bird of the sun, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... required the greatest coolness and skill, as the wind was blowing strong and the current running rapidly; the vessels were difficult to manage, especially as they were under almost constant fire of the British guns. Perry accompanied Scott through the surf, and rendered valuable service. He it was who as Commodore Perry soon after became known to the world as ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... we camped on shore, but sometimes the bank wuz so steep an' the waves so high we had to sail on for miles to find a creek we could run into, an' once we rowed all night. As we weathered P'int Pelee, the surf nearly ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... occasion, there was a good deal of both; so much as greatly to terrify the females. Of all the craft known, however, one of these egg-shells is really the safest, if properly managed, among breakers or amid the combing of seas. We have ourselves ridden in them safely through a surf that would have swamped the best man-of-war cutter that ever floated; and done it, too, without taking on board as much water as would serve to wash one's hands. The light vessel floats on so little of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... who, an hour later, emerged from the bath-houses and scampered across the satiny beech into a discreetly playful surf, Genevieve was the one real swimmer. She was better even than Penny, and she ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... is a bigger swindle than surf-bathing, the United States Postal authorities haven't heard of it yet. It is all very well for the women. They can hang on to the ropes and squeal at the big waves and have a perfectly lovely time. Some of the really daring ones ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... dearth of "C's." Not more than a dozen of the crowded Monarchic's passengers were dancing with impatience beneath the third letter of the alphabet, and Mr. Rolls, Jr., walked straight up to tall Miss Child without being beaten back by a surf of "C's." To be sure, Miss Carroll was under the same letter, and observed the approach of Peter with interest, if not surprise; but she was seated on a trunk at ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, and left the mountains steeped ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... observed that the surf had driven the ship over the bar, and she was now in the mouth of the river, and aground near the end of the village. Everything being now out of her, about ten o'clock in the morning they set fire to her; after which they all mustered together on an unoccupied piece of ground near the ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... came under the shelter of the headland, and then a member of the crew, in obedience to whispered orders from Jamison, dropped into the dinghy which had been trailing behind, and shouted to his mate to follow. Then Jamison himself stepped into the dinghy, which was swinging about wildly in the surf. ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did not appear till he was past sixty. After ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... cap. As he did so a packet of cigarettes, a skein of darning worsted and a picture postcard (depicting a stout lady in a pink costume surf bathing) fell out on to the deck in the manner of an unexpected conjuring trick. An attendant ship's corporal retrieved them, while the conjurer affected an air ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... accumulating haze, while across the dim yellow flame in the tower of the Lantern the snow flurried in grey, shapeless, interminable shadows. Hither and thither the wind rushed, bold and blusterous, sometimes carrying landward the intermittent crashing of the surf as it fell, wrathful yet impotent, on the great dike by which, twenty-odd years before, the immortal Richelieu had snuffed the last heroic spark of ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... now about two cables' length from each other, with a high rocky coast, lashed with a tremendous surf, about three-quarters of a mile to leeward. The promontory extended about two points on the weatherbow of the frigate, and a low sandy tongue of land spread itself far out on her weather quarter, so that both vessels were completely embayed. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "I must go because I am the only seaman among you, and I will take four of those black fellows with me. I do not apprehend any danger unless we have to make a surf landing, and even then they can all swim like fishes, while I am very well able to take care of myself in the water. I shall sail down the coast until I come to a port, and there put in. Then I will get a vessel of some sort and come back for you. I shall leave with you two of these negroes—Cheditafa, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... there came a windy day when the surf was so heavy that there were but few bathers. Ackland was a good swimmer, and took his plunge as usual. He was leaving the water when Miss Van Tyne ran down the beach and was about to dart through the breakers in ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... delicious twilights. This last fortnight has been so peaceful, and even Davy has been almost well-behaved. I really think he is improving a great deal. How quiet the woods are today . . . not a murmur except that soft wind purring in the treetops! It sounds like surf on a faraway shore. How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... detrimentally affects the brain-mind center of persistence. A man whose jaw habitually hangs loose may be capable of great determination for a while, but he is not persistent in character. He might clench his teeth, stiffen his body, and plunge into the surf to rescue a drowning person; but his first resolution to effect the rescue would be weakened by the cold water and by fear. He lacks the quality of the bulldog that will die rather than loose its teeth ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... afterwards he set them both down on their feet, saying, "Run before the next wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah's He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. His laughter was submarine and profound Like the old man of the sea's Hidden under coral islands Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, Dropping from fingers of surf. I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair Or grinning over a screen With seaweed in its hair. I heard the beat of centaur's hoofs over the hard turf As his dry and passionate talk devoured ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... lagoon, and walked a short distance over sand dunes, thickly grown with trees, to the beach, which only appeared in sight when we reached the top of the last dune. It was a gently sloping sandy stretch, upon which a fine surf was beating. There were no pebbles save bits of water-worn coral and shell. Quantities of sea-gulls were flying about and flocks of little snipe ran down over the retreating surf, catching food, turning and running rapidly in before the coming wave. A single ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the scattering birches and alders along the trail hung motionless in the warm sunshine, the drowsy cawing of a crow upon a distant larch came to our ears with strange distinctness, and we even imagined that we could hear the regular throbbing of the surf upon the far-away coast. A faint murmurous hum of bees was in the air, and a rich fruity fragrance came up from the purple clusters of blueberries which our horses crushed under foot at every step. All things ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Harbor before, and so we all plunged without fear or apology into the delicious sense of foreignness; we moved as those in dreams. No one could ever precisely remember what we said or what we did, only that we were somehow boated ashore till we landed with difficulty amid high surf on a wave-worn quay, amid an enthusiastic throng of women in dark-blue hooded cloaks which we all took for priestly vestments, and of beggars in a combination of patches which no sane person could reasonably take for vestments of any sort, until one saw how scrupulously ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the storm broke in all its fierceness, but it was terrible! There was a roar over the lake as if a drove of bisons were tearing madly about. The great waves pounded and battered against the sides of the vessel as if they would break through, and the surf flew up from the point that jutted out and made the harbor. Gulls and bitterns went screaming, and Jeanne held her breath in very terror. Earth and lake and sky were one vast picture of desolation, for where the eye stopped ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... I. was offended. "Why, bless you, that ain't no stars and stripes. That there's the flag of Tortilla. There's no stars there. The red's my old undershirt, the blue I found thrown up in the surf one day and the white is a bit of sail I had with me when I dropped in to take my throne. That flag ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... bellow of swamped obesity, the whine of the convalescent invalid, the yell of unmixed delight, the te-hee and squeak of the city exquisite learning how to laugh out loud, the splash of the brine, the cachinnation of a band of harmless savages, the stun of the surge on your right ear, the hiss of the surf, the saturnalia of the elements; while overpowering all other sounds are the orchestral harmonics of the sea, which roll on through the ages, all shells, all winds, all caverns, all billows heard in "the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the chimneys. From somewhere in the city came sounds like the distant beating of drums, and beyond, far beyond, a vague muttering, now growing, swelling, rumbling in the distance like the pounding of surf upon the rocks, now like the surf again, receding, growling, menacing. The cold had become intense, a bitter piercing cold which strained and snapped at joist and beam and turned the slush of yesterday ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... boats of the fleet under command of Major Warren, with the 65th regiment and the flank companies of the first and second regiment, and at noon arrived within four miles of their destination. This operation was attended with considerable difficulty and risk, owing to the heavy surf that beat on the shore; and which was the occasion of some loss of ammunition, and of a few boats being upset and ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... always needs corpses. She makes ointments out of them, or perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf, where it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that she sits and searches for shipwrecked ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... under our burdens and take the lances of pain through His vitals, and wrapped himself in all the agonies which we deserve for our misdoings, and stood on the splitting decks of a foundering vessel, amid the drenching surf of the sea, and passed midnights on the mountains amid wild beasts of prey, and stood at the point where all earthly and infernal hostilities charged on Him at once with ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Cathedral steps alone. It was a fine morning for flights of the imagination. The soft thunder of the Cathedral organ became at my will the booming of the surf on a distant coral reef. The pigeons wheeling overhead became gulls, whimpering in the cordage. Little did the ancient caretaker reck, as he swept the stretch of flagging before the carved door, that ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... shrug of his shoulders without turning his face, and Jaime walked along the beach in the direction of the tower. His feet, shod in hempen sandals, crunched on the gravel at the edge of the wash from the surf. Among the azure pebbles were fragments of pottery; portions of earthen handles; concave pieces of bowls bearing vestiges of decoration, which had, perhaps, belonged to swelling urns; small, irregular ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... belongings on to the lowest ledge of rock, returns to the island, and lifts her up, supporting her body with one arm as she clasps his neck, while with the other he slowly and anxiously feels his way with his stout stick among the big seaweed-grown stones in the surf. I see them clearly now, a serious bespectacled youth of some twenty—one years and a golden—haired girl, some two or three years younger, in a clinging white dress. The young St. Christopher at last deposits his sacred burden ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... made the land we sought; and got ashore through a tremendous surf. Here we found the island had lately been the seat of war—some of the heathen having resolved to put an end by violence to the Christian religion there, or as they call it, the lotu. The Christians had gained the victory, and then had treated their enemies with the utmost kindness; which had ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... put off through the surf with an air of triumph. He was a splendid sailor. His boat leapt through the breakers and flew before the wind with a mere rag of canvas. "Dangerous weather to be out!" I exclaimed to the fisherman, who stood with hands buried in his pockets, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Ducks Mallard Pintail Gadwall Wigeon Shoveler Blue-Winged Teal Cinnamon Teal Green-Winged Teal Wood Duck Black Duck Diving Ducks Canvasback Redheads Ringneck Scaup Goldeneye Bufflehead Ruddy Red-Breasted Merganser Common Merganser Hooded Merganser Whistling Ducks White-Winged Scoter Surf Scoter Black Scoter Common Eider Oldsquaw Harlequin Swans Canada Geese Brant Snow White-Fronted Geese At a Glance Guide Comparative Sizes Of Waterfowl Wetlands Attract ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... they were speaking, a fitful gust swept by the house, wailing and screaming and rattling the windows, and after it came the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild, angry howl of some savage animal just beginning to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the pole well in the sandy turf, And called a jackdaw near to watch the place. Meanwhile the angel paddled in the surf, And playfully dared his brother ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... said. "Everyone does. He is such a dear, gentle old soul. He was born on the ranch 72 years ago. And mother's grandfather sailed from New York to Nicaragua, crossing over to the Pacific Coast by foot and in the canoes of natives. At San Juan del Sur he was carried out through the surf into boats that took him to the steamship which brought him to San Francisco. Father's stories of the old days in Los ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the sea and shore was almost indescribable: on one side rose Point Loma, grim, gloomy as a fortress wall; before me stretched away to the horizon the ocean with its miles of breakers curling into foam; between the surf and the city, wrapped in its dark blue mantle, lay the sleeping bay; eastward the mingled yellow, red, and white of San Diego's buildings glistened in the sunlight like a bed of coleus; beyond the city heaved the rolling plains rich in their garb of golden brown, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... with the larger island of Juan Fernandez, and thirty leagues farther W. That he had endeavoured to send his boat on shore there for water, of which he observed several streams; but the wind blew so strong upon the shore, and caused so great a surf, that it was impossible to get to land. The attempt, however, was not entirely useless, as the boat came back loaded with fish. This island had been represented, by former navigators, as a mere barren rock, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... There is a sublimity of desolation on its shores, the effects of a conflict maintained for ages, and on a scale so gigantic. The isolated, spire-like crags that rise along its base, are so drilled and bored by the incessant lashings of the surf, and are ground down into shapes so fantastic, that they seem but the wasted skeletons of their former selves; and we find almost every natural fissure in the solid rock hollowed into an immense cavern, whose very ceiling, though the head turns as we look up to it, owes evidently its comparative ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... sun was glowing over the steel blue sea. Not a sail broke the distance; only the ceaseless tossing of white foam above the rips, and close at hand a dory or two, rocking and rolling just outside the line of surf. In the foreground was a broad strip of sand and silvery beach grass then a narrower strip of sand without any grass at all, and then the huge breakers which came crashing in, wave on wave, mounting up, curling over, falling, breaking and racing up the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... saw land on both boards, and a great surf running up in the firth. They cast anchor outside the breakers, and the wind began to fall; and next morning it was calm. Then they see thirteen ships coming out ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... further end of the bay was a small piece of sandy beach, towards which Tom steered the boat. As there was no surf, they ran her up on it, and stepped out without difficulty. A nearer acquaintance, however, showed them that the country was not of so tempting a character as they had at first supposed. There were a few trees close to the beach, some of which had been broken in two by the storm, and now ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... pages, the Kawa's owner, Dr. Traprock, has no hesitancy in saying, "Frankly, without Triplett the thing never could have been done." The accompanying photograph was taken just after the captain had been hauled out of the surf in Papeete. It will be remarked that he still maintains an indomitable front and holds his trusty Colt in readiness ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... of the fellows who come down here summers who I know will be glad to go Dutch on a motor boat," he said. "We can take the bulliest trips, way out to deserted sand islands, where the surf is the best ever. We'll take along a tent and spend the night there sometime, or we can stretch out in the boat. Then we must see if we can get hold of some horses. Do you ride? Think of it! We've been married months, and I don't know yet whether ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... him to keep up with the others, yet in doing so there was the pleasure of the athlete in having acquired a new mastery over his muscles; and the fascination of being at home in the snow as a sea-bird is at home in the surf, which is the chief element of delight in all winter sports, was his for the first time. With the drunken wretch who was almost frozen he felt small sympathy, but he had the sense that all modern men have on such occasions, that he ought to be ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... of the outer of the two islets raced long lines of surf, and between us and it lurked a sand bar, against which the great rollers dashed with a bull-like roar. The wind drove us straight upon this bar. A moment of deadly peril and it had us fast, holding us for the waves to beat our life ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... in view of Suakim, the city of white coral, with her surf-beaten opalesque reefs stretching as far as the eye could follow. It seemed strange to me to be peacefully moving toward her outlying forts, for when I was last in her vicinity one could not go twenty yards outside the town without being shot at or running the gauntlet of a few spears. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... morning Jim and his friends went out on the terrace. The tide was full and the woods across the bay looked like islands. A line of white surf marked the edge of the marsh, which ran back, broken by winding creeks, to the foot of the rising ground. Sometimes a gleam of sunshine touched the lonely flats and they flashed into luminous green, silver, and yellow. Then the color faded and the light moving on forced up for a few moments ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of the little island of Sacrificios, some three miles south of Vera Cruz. The vessels could not get anywhere near shore, so that everything had to be landed in lighters or surf-boats; General Scott had provided these before leaving the North. The breakers were sometimes high, so that the landing was tedious. The men were got ashore rapidly, because they could wade when they came to shallow water; but the camp and garrison equipage, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... advance of the summer season at Biarritz. It is the latter part of June. The air is soft and warm, the billows lap the shore enticingly. But fashion has not yet transferred its court; the van of the column only has arrived. A few adventurous bathers test the cool surf; the table-d'hote is slimly attended; the liverymen confidentially assure us, as an inducement for drives, that their prices are now crouching low, for a prodigious ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... us the flames were roaring and surging like the breaking of a heavy surf upon the seashore, and every moment the fire was extending by the aid of the grass and dead branches of trees, which were like tinder, no rain having fallen in that part of the country for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... four hundred Canadians and Indians. The harbor was protected by six ships of the line and five frigates, three of the latter being sunk at its mouth. The English ships were six days on the coast before a landing could be attempted, on account of a heavy surf continually rolling with such violence, that no boat could approach the shore. The violence of the surf having somewhat abated, a landing was effected on June 8th. The troops were disposed for landing ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... big reef which stretched between her and the shore; her hull was almost hidden by the surf which broke over her, the only dry place on her being the fore-top, which was crowded with sailors; and it was evident that she must soon break up under the battering seas which ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and clear; and the night breeze was delicious after the steamy breath of day. The weary confinement of walls made the splendid expanse a luxury to the sight, whilst the tumbling of the surf upon the near shore, and the music of the jackal, predisposed to sweet sleep. We now felt that at length the die was cast. Placing my pistols by my side, with my rifle butt for a pillow, and its barrel as a bed-fellow, I sought repose with none of that apprehension which even the most stout-hearted ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... accomplished, and that there would come some one gasp of terror and delight, some sensation entirely new to me; but I found myself in smooth water, before I had time to feel anything but the buoyant pleasure of being carried so lightly through this surf amid the breakers. Now and then the Indians spoke to one another in a vehement jabber, which, however, had no tone that expressed other than pleasant excitement. It is, no doubt, an act of wonderful dexterity to steer amid these jagged rocks, when one rude touch ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... all too quickly, and before we have become accustomed to the level expanses of the sea a strip of land appears to starboard. This is Ruegen, the largest island of Germany, lifting its white chalk cliffs steeply from the sea, like surf congealed into stone. The ferry-boat swings round in a beautiful curve towards the land, and in the harbour of Sassnitz its rails are fitted in exactly to the railway track on German soil. We hasten to take our seats in the carriages, for in a few minutes the German engine comes up and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an unseen shore; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between desert sand and cloudless sky like the golden ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... persons is the metallic car, a small covered boat, which can hold three or four persons who, entering by a comparatively small aperture, are shut in and drawn ashore, safely protected from injury even though overturned by the surf. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... poplar precede lightning patience devise disease insight dissent decease extant dessert ingenuous liniment stature sculpture fissure facility essay allusion advise pendant metal seller minor complement currant baron wether mantel principal burrow canon surf wholly serge whirl liar idyl flour pistil idol rise rude team corps peer straight ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... am weary of the madness of the town, Deathly weary of all women, and all wine. Back, back to Nature! I will go and lay me down, Bleeding lay me down before her shrine. For the mother-breast the hungry babe must call, Loudly to the shore cries the surf upon the sea; Hear, Nature wide and deep! after man's mad festival How bitterly my ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... The waves tossing surf in the moonbeam, The albatross lone on the spray, Alone know the tears wept in vain for the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... deride and pursue us will fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left of them but here and there, cast high and dry upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... heaven's dome. Sultry the night, tempests foretelling: For the last time before I roam I see the surf in splendor swelling. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... are," answered the nymph of the land to the nymph of the sea. "As sune as the keel o' the coble touches the sand, deil a bit mair will the lazy fisher loons work, but the wives maun kilt their coats, and wade into the surf to tak the fish ashore. And then the man casts aff the wat and puts on the dry, and sits down wi' his pipe and his gill-stoup ahint the ingle, like ony auld houdie, and neer a turn will he do till the coble's afloat again! And the wife she maun get the scull on ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... men gathered together on the beach. We sailed right in, till we were within ten yards of the sands, and there we moored the lugger by the head and stern, so that her freight could be discharged. The men on the beach waded out through the surf (though it took them up to the armpits), and the men in the lugger passed the kegs and boxes to them. Waves which were unusually big would knock down the men in the water, burden and all, and then there would be laughter from all hands, and grumbles from ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... sloping upwards with those grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost always, volcanic land. Nearer still, the purple changed to green. Tall palm-trees and engine-houses stood out against the sky; the surf gleamed white around the base of isolated rocks. A little nearer, and we were under the lee, or western side, of the island. The sea grew smooth as glass; we entered the shade of the island-cloud, and slid along in still unfathomable blue water, close under the shore of what should ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the sun was glowing over the steel blue sea. Not a sail broke the distance; only the ceaseless tossing of white foam above the rips, and close at hand a dory or two, rocking and rolling just outside the line of surf. In the foreground was a broad strip of sand and silvery beach grass then a narrower strip of sand without any grass at all, and then the huge breakers which came crashing in, wave on wave, mounting up, curling over, falling, breaking and racing up the sharp slope of sand, with never a halt ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Regiments. Onward swept the immense mass of men, swiftly and silently, in the dark shadows of night. Not a flash of light was seen in the distance! No sentinel hoarsely challenged the approaching foe! All was still save the footsteps of the soldiers, which sounded like the roar of the distant surf, as it beats upon the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the wave-splashed beach. There were a few more minutes of breathless anxiety. Then, after the boat had disappeared completely from sight, hidden by a huge grey wall of sea, she seemed suddenly to climb to the top of it, to hover there, to become mixed up with the spray and the surf and a great green mass of waters, and then finally, with a harsh crash of timbers and a shout from the fishermen, to be flung high and dry upon the stones. Philippa, clutching the iron railing, saw for a moment nothing but chaos. Her knees became weak. She was unable to move. There ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had secured an end of the smallest of these to his waist; he now stood prepared to divest himself of all his superfluous clothing at a moment's notice, and to attempt the hazardous experiment of rushing into the boiling surf, to drag out any poor unfortunate whom he might be able to reach. Others were engaged in various ways in preparing themselves to render what assistance was in their power, when a cry from Grummet announced that the crisis ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch of brown plain, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Young with the garnered youth of many Springs, They laugh like happy bathers, while the seas Break in their open arms, And the slow-moving breeze Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. Even the surly ocean knows their charms, And under the shrill laughter of the surf, He booms and sings his ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... brother but, as they sat in the porch, a negro boy brought the town paper, and Mrs. Crittenden found a paragraph about a soldier springing into the sea in full uniform at Siboney to rescue a drowning comrade, who had fallen into the surf while trying to land, and had been sunk to the bottom by his arms and ammunition. And the rescuer's name was Crittenden. The writer went on to tell who he was, and how he had given up his commission to a younger brother and had gone as a private in the regular army—how he had been offered ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the little schooner, through the heavy surf, across the dangerous reef, had been watched from the naval vessels with intense anxiety, and expectation that we would be wrecked and all hands lost. This feeling was changed to admiration when it was seen that the schooner was being ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... acquaintance. People were coming and going from the line of bath-houses that backed upon the low sand-bank behind them, with its tufts of coarse silvery-green grasses. The Maxwells bowed to some of the ladies who tripped gayly past them in their airy costumes to the surf, or came up from it sobered and shivering. Four or five young fellows, with sun-blackened arms and legs, were passing ball near them. A pony-carriage drove by on the wet sand; a horseman on a crop-tailed roan thumped after it at a hard ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey, The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,— And the yearly galleon sails no more In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed patron has found ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... merely formed itself into pack, and was now lying along the coast of North Somerset, ready at an hour's warning to spread itself over the waters. The southerly gale, however, piped cheerily. A heavy swell and surf—Oh! most pleasant sound!—beat upon the fixed ice of Assistance Harbour; yet no pack came, nor floe-pieces either, and thus was placed beyond all doubt the fact that, at any rate, as far west as Griffith's Island, Barrow's Strait ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... board with any of them. We went to the house of a lady who was a friend of Mr. Cholott, and she gave us a splendid room, that looked right out over the harbor. We could see the islands, and the light-house, and the bar with the surf outside, and even get a glimpse of the ocean. We saw the "Tigris" going out over the bar. The captain wanted to get out on the same tide he came in on, and he did not lose any time. As soon as she got fairly out to sea, we hurried ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Hutchinson's Hill, you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... A boat's crew from another schooner had been cast ashore, and, as they were in peril of falling into the Russians' hands, Wyllard led a reckless boat expedition to bring them off again. He succeeded, in so far that the wrecked men were taken off the roaring beach through a tumult of breaking surf, but as they pulled seaward the fog shut down on them, and one boat, manned by three men, never reached the schooners. They blew horns all night, standing off and on, and crept along the smoking beach next day, though the surf made landing impossible. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... impetuous lady. "She is the only person who lets me enjoy things, and now I cannot enjoy them in her absence. Yesterday I drove alone over the three beaches, and left her at home with a dress-maker. Never did I see so many lines of surf; but they only seemed to me like some of Kate's ball-dresses, with the prevailing flounces, six deep. I was so enraged that she was not there, I wished to cover my face with my handkerchief. By the third beach I was ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the soft expanse of Chincoteague Bay. There seemed a slender hand of silver reaching down from the sky to tremble on the long chords of the water, lying there in light and shade, like a harp. The drowsy dash of the low surf on the bar beyond the inlet was harsh to this still and shallow haven for wreckers and oystermen. It was very far from any busy city or hive of men, between the ocean and the sandy ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... agent's wildest dream. The blue water gradually shifted to green, then lighter green, and finally the white of lovely beaches on both sides of the island. Lines of surf marked the position of reefs off ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... tossing surf in the moonbeam, The albatross lone on the spray, Alone know the tears wept in vain for the ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... passed out and along the narrow way between the tall hedges. The full moon was just showing red and sleepy-looking, but she would be white and wide awake in a few minutes. The grass was thick with dew, and there was not a sound save the growl of the surf ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... advantage. Famishing, shipwrecked or marooned, he fought with the big Pacific surf for rock-clinging mussels, and carried them up the sands to the dry flotsam of the spring tides. Of this he built a fire, and among the coals he laid his precious trove. He watched the steam jet forth and the locked shells pop apart, exposing the salmon-colored ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... descended the ridiculous rapids of Lachine, which splashed and murmured around them like a very mild surf at Shelter Island. They spent a couple of days in looking for the antiquities of Montreal, trying to find the romantic atmosphere of New France under the ancien regime. Then they went to ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... eyes of the ancient navigators, when, as they came coasting along from the north in their frail galleys, on their voyages to Greece and Italy, they saw it frowning defiance to them as they came, with threatening clouds hanging upon its summit, and the surges and surf of the AEgean perpetually thundering upon its base below. To make this stormy promontory the more terrible, it was believed to be the haunt of innumerable uncouth and misshapen monsters of the sea, that lived by devouring the hapless seamen who were thrown upon the rocks from ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... after long persuasion that a bevy took to the water. This was a sign of a general capitulation, and some hundreds immediately followed, jostling each other in their haste, squawking, whirring their flippers, splashing and churning the water, reminding one of a crowd of miniature surf-bathers. We followed the files of birds marching inland, along the course of a tumbling stream, until at an elevation of some five hundred feet, on a flattish piece of ground, a huge rookery opened out—acres and acres of birds ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... through little valleys, and vanishes at last behind. And we follow a curving road overlooking the sea. Green hills slope steeply down to the edge of the way on the right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast stretch of dun sand and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that it is discernible only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and thousands of cockle-gatherers are scattered over the sands, at such distances that their stooping figures, dotting the glimmering sea-bed, appear no larger than gnats. And some are coming ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... of Major Warren, with the 65th regiment and the flank companies of the first and second regiment, and at noon arrived within four miles of their destination. This operation was attended with considerable difficulty and risk, owing to the heavy surf that beat on the shore; and which was the occasion of some loss of ammunition, and of a few boats being upset ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... be crossed. It was sufficiently smooth when they came over it, but how it would be on their return was the question. Those who had before been on the coast declared that they had frequently seen a surf breaking over it in which even a lifeboat ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... were no sooner in the lighters than he made for Jidjelli. But Jidjelli daunted even him. The nearer we got, the worse it looked. My own feeling was that the gathering seas had taken charge of our scallop, a cork in the surf, and were pitching her, helpless, towards terrible walls built of night out of a base of thunder and bursting waters. I gripped a rail, and saw a vague range of summits appear above the nearing walls and steadily develop towards distinction. Then the howling ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... The crumbling surf on the shingle rattles, The great waves topple and pour, Full of the fury of ancient battles, Clamant with ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... his experiences over a bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. For it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare and two of board and lodging. The Maire, a man worth a million of money, sat in the front seat, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been appointed, was, at this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Company's settlements. In the preceding century Fort St. George had arisen on a barren spot beaten by a raging surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extreme shallowness; they found their position to be in Encounter Bay, east of Spencer's Gulf, and from what they saw it was evident that no ship could enter it during the prevalence of the S.W. winds. All hope of a safe return centred in themselves. The thunder of the surf, that they had so longed for, brought no message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back, while yet some strength remained to them; and above all they were surrounded by hostile blacks. Sturt had now a terrible task before him. His men were weakened and on half rations; ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... fallen from the wretched man's shoulders as the fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... on the close-cropped turf, See how the white cliff spreads the surf, On green-eyed seas that glitter and trail Into the ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Nautilus passed well out from El Tur, which sat at the far end of a bay whose waters seemed to be dyed red, as Captain Nemo had already mentioned. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds, by the sound of surf chafing against rocks, or by the distant moan of a steamer churning the waves of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the hushed, restrained expression left in all eyes that have deeply mourned and bitterly wept. The look was serene and youthful, with such happiness as might come from health and elemental life,—such as a Dryad might have in her songful bowers, or a Naiad plunging in the surf. But it was a shallow face, and pleased only as the sunshine does. For my part, I would rather listen to the sorrowful song of the pine-tree: that is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... with some indignation, "your memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse dispatch, and work far ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... that live in the South Country Are the kindest and most wise, They get their laughter from the loud surf, And the faith in their happy eyes Comes surely from our Sister the Spring, When over the sea she flies; The violets suddenly bloom at her feet ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... sometimes raise their voices to be audible. Perhaps it is from this circumstance, that I always imagine St. Andrews to be an ineffectual seat of learning, and the sound of the east wind and the bursting surf to linger in its drowsy classrooms and confound the utterance of the professor, until teacher and taught are alike drowned in oblivion, and only the sea-gull beats on the windows and the draught of the sea-air rustles in ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hale-po. In the opinion of the author it is the name of the board. A skilled Hawaiian says it is the name given the surf of a place at Napoopoo, in Kona, Hawaii. The action is not located there, but in Puna, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... from her room, to breakfast, at eight o'clock, I pointed out to her the extraordinary height and violence of the surf, and the singular appearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down the valleys before us. At this time I had so little apprehension of what was coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the storm should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a quarter ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... send for her own carriage. James was sent back the next day, and returned on Thursday with coach, horses, and William her coachman. That matter being finished, and the trunks being unpacked, she decided to take her first bath in the sea, expecting me to support her through the trying ordeal of the surf. As we were returning from the beach we met a carriage containing a number of persons ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... appalling. The thundering sounds of city life were rolling along the great thoroughfare of the metropolis, now rattling, shrill, and startling, then roaring, swelling, and subsiding again, like the distant surf; but around us, there was silence and space. In the brief moment that we stood face to face, my mind was at work with preternatural activity. I remembered that I had a set of diamonds,—the bridal gift of Mrs. Linwood,—a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... walking through the lonely forests the mind of the visitor is involuntarily carried back to the scenes that took place there, as well as to the actors who centuries ago passed away. Now silence broods over the place once so active with life, and nothing but nature remains, while the distant surf is ever sounding an everlasting requiem to the memory ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... stall, to thrust His shoulder under our burdens and take the lances of pain through His vitals, and wrapped himself in all the agonies which we deserve for our misdoings, and stood on the splitting decks of a foundering vessel, amid the drenching surf of the sea, and passed midnights on the mountains amid wild beasts of prey, and stood at the point where all earthly and infernal hostilities charged on Him at once with their keen ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... typical Scotchman, tall and broad shouldered, with an eye like cold steel. Not many people had contradicted the Rev. Hugh Grantley, at least to his face. His voice could be as sweet as the ripple of a mountain stream, or vibrate with the thunder of the surf that beats upon ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... to add in this connection that I have frequently been consulted, by those taking salt-water baths, as to the care of the hair during and after the bath. If the bather is in good health, and the hair is normal, the bather can go into the surf and remain at least fifteen minutes, and on coming out should rub the hair thoroughly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist and foam; one breaker smote the sea wall in a surge of froth, another plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came rain; lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm was on us for the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... me what you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio gave to the Satyrs; 'cymbals, pipes, and whistling reeds,' and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... over Alulvan, And crisp with summer-heat its turf; Far, far across its empty pastures Alulvan's sands are white with surf: And he himself is grey as the sea, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... same time, but the mainmast was seen still standing. In another minute down came the mainmast with a crash, followed shortly afterwards by the foremast and bowsprit, and, high above the roar of the surf and howling of the wind, the rending and crashing of the ship's timbers ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... southward for about half-a-mile, where it terminated in a sandy beach bordered by a broad patch of smooth water, athwart which marched an endless line of mimic breakers from the wall of flashing white surf that thundered upon the outer edge of the protecting shoal three-quarters of a mile to seaward. The point was pretty thickly covered with bush and trees, chiefly cocoa-nut and other palms—except in the immediate vicinity ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the first to go on guard and during the initial hour of his vigil practically nothing came to disturb him. He heard the occasional cry of the nightbirds and the booming of the surf on the reefs and the shore of the isle, and saw numerous fireflies flit to and fro, ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... escaped the threatening sea that had come so rapidly up. I do not know if I am doing justice to the occurrence. There was more of apparent than real danger in it, and I myself was less nervous, because I had not long before been accustomed to the heavy surf of Norfolk Island. It was, however, a moment of great excitement. We had literally shot towards the shore, and were now within fifty yards of it, when Mr. Witch said to me, "Take care of yourself, Sir; we shall catch ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... that he knew that the aeroplane's descent in his garden was purely accidental, he was ready to do all in his power to speed the parting guest. In a few minutes Smith was hurrying along the shore road with a German on either side, at his left the surf roaring on the fringe of coral reef, at his right a screen of tufted palms and plantations running up the lower slopes of the mountains. He soon came to a collection of drinking-bars and stores, all bearing German names. Herr Schwankmacher, now transformed into a cordial host, invited him ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Lieutenant Stewart with folded arms and thoughtful mien, stood on the foredeck, measuring with his eyes the distance between the wreck and the rock. After some minutes spent in deep consideration, he threw off his coat, fastened a rope round his body, and plunged into the boiling surf. The soldiers looked on in anxious silence—for the bold swimmer had almost immediately disappeared from their view—a wave had buried him deep in its bosom—but again his head was seen above its foaming crest, and with strong arms he parted the angry waters as he swam boldly forward, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... the environments of evil and forego forever the voice that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of the surf might startle one who ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... gain the ship a second time: the swell was so great, and the surf so strong, that no boat could venture—no vessel dared approach. Meanwhile, the generous crew were agitated by a thousand fears. In vain they waited for the wished-for boat: no answer was returned ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... to a little bay, south-west from their ships, in search of water: the surf prevented their landing, but the carpenter swam on shore; and near four remarkable trees, standing in the form of a crescent, he erected a post, on which a compass was carved, and left the Prince's flag flying ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the children were well again and her own health so much improved, that she was able to indulge in surf-bathing, which she "enjoyed tremendously," and early in the fall the whole family returned to town greatly refreshed by the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... daylight; by moonlight it might have furnished a far more interesting item than the above. An hour after, I am gratified at obtaining my first glimpse of the Sea of Marmora off to the right, and in another hour I am disporting in the warm clear surf, a luxury that has not been within my reach since leaving Dieppe, and which is a thrice welcome privilege in this land, where the usual ablutions at mehanas consist of pouring water on the hands from a tin cup. The beach is composed of sand and tiny ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... through the gloom of night; but at length, as they strained their eyes looking down the river, they saw in the distance a faint, white, phosphorescent gleam, and as it appeared the roar grew louder, and rounder, and more all-pervading. On it came, carrying with it the hoarse cadence of some vast surf flung ashore from the workings of a distant storm, or the thunder of some mighty cataract tumbling over ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... sticky, salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that breaks all day. ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... menacing, but welcome rude to me; The eye withdraws in horror from yon mountains rude and bare, Where flag of green nor tree displays, nor blushes flow'ret fair. And how shall bark so frail as mine that beetling beach come near, Where rages betwixt cliff and surf the battle-din of fear? It seems as, like a rocking hull, that Island of the main Were shaken from its basement, and creaking with the strain! But the siege of waters nought prevails 'gainst giant Hirt the grim, Save his face to furrow with some scars, or his brow with mist to dim. Oh, needs a welcome ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ran away, so little did they know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far off on ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... attached to something which enabled him to keep his head above the water, but how it was or what it all meant he could not comprehend in the midst of the deafening rushing noise of the wind and the beating stinging blows of the surf that ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... uniformity of outline as to afford little guide. Yet I held to my original course fairly well, for I could pilot somewhat by the dim north star; and it was not long before my alert ears caught the pounding of surf along the shore-line. Much encouraged, I pressed forward with greater rapidity, ignoring the lanes between the dunes, and clambering over the mounds themselves in my eagerness to reach the lake before the complete closing down ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... circle like a horse tethered to an iron pin, or else sit down and admire those who do go round and round. No one looks back at the gradually extending beach and the fine curve of the shore. No one lingers where the surf breaks—immediately above it—listening to the remorseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to the sea. There, looking downwards, the white edge of the surf recedes in hollow crescents, curve after curve for a mile or more, one ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... started; the leader being old Bill, who to some end, that I could not then divine, bore a boat-sail bundled on his back. Our first business was to make way to our surf or life boat. This lay about three miles from the village, reckoning as the crow flies, and was sheltered under a rude house which stood on the shores of a bay opening by an inlet into the sea. Our common way of gaining this house was through a circuitous passage of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of three routes. First, he may sail by a Netherlands India boat to Samarang (or Soerabaia, if, as often happens from December to February, it is impossible to land at the former place owing to the surf); this occupies about thirty-six hours. There is an excellent hotel at Samarang—the Pavilion—where the night can be spent, and the following day the train will carry him to Amberawa, a distance of 50 miles by rail (or 30 ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... water slowly crept higher in the outer bay. Slowly the brown ooze became a smooth, even, brown paste, and then, a few minutes later, the usual transformation scene took place. The bay was so protected by the long arm of land that half surrounded it that there was not only no surf, but no large waves even. The first you knew, the deepening water hid the ugly mud-flats, which were so level that only two or three inches of water were needed to transform the bay into a thing ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... Portanferry. This building adjoined to the custom-house established at that little seaport, and both were situated so close to the sea-beach that it was necessary to defend the back part with a large and strong rampart or bulwark of huge stones, disposed in a slope towards the surf, which often reached and broke upon them. The front was surrounded by a high wall, enclosing a small courtyard, within which the miserable inmates of the mansion were occasionally permitted to take exercise and air. The prison was used ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Comes in the shop every day. About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... for the nearest land, and all our twenty-five men got ashore safe, although both lifeboats were badly smashed up in the surf as we were ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... was also used, and here the conditions were even worse. Strictly speaking Jaffa is a port only in name, for all vessels have to anchor off-shore and passengers and stores have to be landed in surf-boats. In the rainy season the bar is almost impassable four days in the week and the roar of the breakers can be heard miles away. Even when the sea was calm enough for stores to be landed, the ground swell was such as to make the ordinary landsman ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... would answer during the heat of the day, and an old colored woman promised to have his clothing dry in an hour. So the one cloud on our pleasure proved to have a very bright lining, for Bobsey, since he was no longer afraid of the water, could roll in the sand and the gentle surf to his ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, half ashamed of being amused. She was Coney Island! Her heart a shoot the chutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, the surf creaming no higher than ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... that sort that slathers over the watther like thick oil. Beyond the hill I cud hear the surf pounding like a riveter in a boiler. Overhead was a sheet of gray cloud, flying in curds before the wind, and in me mouth was the taste of the deep sea, blown in upon me with ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... threw off his coat and called out, "Who will come with me and try to save that crew?" Instantly twenty men sprang forward, with "I will," "and I." But seven only were wanted; and running down a galley punt into the surf, they leaped in and dashed through the breakers, amidst the cheers of those on shore. How the boat lived in such a sea seemed a miracle; but in a few minutes, impelled by the strong arms of these gallant men, she flew on and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... monotonous thunder of the surf and discern a glassy ocean farther out, for the morning was calm, promising also to ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... they paused and looked up and down the rapids rushing down the slope in all their wild variety, with the white crests of breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet, smooth sweep of currents over broad shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy swirl and suck ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... coast. Like mad things, their heads thrown back, hair flying, mouths open, the spray smiting their open eyes, with all the ecstasy of their new-found energy, they clambered over the slippery seaweed and leaped from rock to rock, swept along with the winds, daring the waves, shouting down the surf. ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... semicircle is only terminated on either side by the lofty cliffs which, in some places, are fringed at the base by a margin of sand and shingle, and in others descend with sheer precipices into the ever-boiling surf. Owing to the mountainous nature of the country, the railroad cannot approach within a distance of five miles, and to reach the school you must drive through the dark groves which cover the lower shoulder of one of the surrounding ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... sends us, not without thunder and the curtailed lightning of northern seas. He was planning and shaping his course; for the watchers on board "The Last Hope" had already seen him, as he could ascertain by a second light, which suddenly appeared, swung low, casting a gleam across the surf-strewn water, to show him where the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... gazed out through the open window, off toward the whispering lines of surf on the eastern shores of Staten Island—the surf forever talking, forever striving to give its mystic message to the unheeding ear of man. And as he gazed, his blue eyes narrowed with the intensity of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... at least the Hawaii National Park has the advantage over the Alaskan park because it involves the life and scenery of the tropics. We can find snow-crowned mountains and winding glaciers at home, but not equatorial jungles, sandalwood groves, and surf-riding. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... you will give you some idea of how much one of the beneficiaries enjoyed himself. There is nothing finer in the world than surf bathing ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her course ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... river. After coffee we took leave of our eccentric but warm-hearted host, who, on shaking hands, insisted on our bloody dogships dining with him once more before we sailed. We promised to do so conditionally. Eighteen sail of merchant vessels had assembled, and we expected seven more. The surf had been high on the bar, and we had not had communication with the shore for the last two days. A canoe came off from Mr. C. with Paddy Whack, who delivered a note to the captain. "What is it about, boy?" said he. "Paper peak, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,—barred with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sandbank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... another passed under the boat. They lifted her high up, as if to show us the surf. As the boat sank slowly down into the trough of the wave, the surf disappeared and with it much of the shore. The wave had ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... way, that way floated, Quick sparks of sea-fire keen like eyes From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted Shores and faint cliffs ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his eye was caught by three ladies and three natives standing about a surf-boat in animated discussion. The youngest of the ladies, who wore a bathing-suit of conspicuous hue and did most of the talking, suddenly detached herself from the others and came flying ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... opening which, on entering, they gradually descended winding round in a curve, the passage enlarging a little until two could pass abreast without stooping. Following this a distance of nearly two hundred feet they were astonished to hear the roar of water which sounded like the breaking of surf against rocks. The sound grew louder and louder as they advanced, until its roar filled the cavern with stunning echoes reverberating along its hidden passages. The cavern now became more lofty and wider, the sides more rugged, and at last it terminated on the brink of a stream ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... exceeded three tons to the square foot. But even a calm sea constantly chafes the shore. It heaves in gentle undulations known as the ground swell, the result of storms perhaps a thousand miles distant, and breaks on the shore in surf. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... falling of the bolts upon them, they had been forced to creep into a hole or cave on the east side of the rock, where they were found almost in a state of stupefaction. There was great difficulty in getting them off the rock, for the surf was too high to enable the boat to effect a landing; but the men themselves becoming conscious of their perilous situation, and of the efforts that were being made to save them, adopted the only means of escape which now remained. By great efforts, a small boat had been got near ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... by ascending a hill, discover a place to lay the boat in. This I agreed to; and the quarter-master immediately threw off his clothes. I made a lead-line fast to him under his arms, that we might pull him in if we found him exhausted. He went over the surf with great ease, until he came to the breakers on the beach, through which he could not force his way; for the moment he touched the ground with his foot, the recoil of the sea, and what is called by sailors the undertow, carried him back again, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shallows of a great lagoon, whose waters were fast becoming of crystal-clearness and as smooth as a pond, while sea-ward there was the great sheltering reef with everlasting breakers thundering and fretting and throwing up a cloud of surf. ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... perpetual elementary warfare which hardens the fibre, and strengthens the hold; as in those invincible algx towering in the stormy straits of Tierra del Fuego, swept from Antartic homes toward the equator,—defying the fierce flail of surf that pulverizes rock, "Breed is stronger than pasture; and no matter how savage a stepmother the circumstances of life may prove, the inherited psychological strain will sometimes dominate, and triumph." According to the Talmud: "A myrtle, even in a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the deeper part of the weir secure, and for an hour or so he laboured in the water with head, hands, and feet. While with deft fingers he weaved creepers and branches to the stakes, his feet beat the surface into surf and surge to the scaring of the fish to the remote limits of their retreat. But the tighter the weir became, the more the pressure was on it. Fast as repairs were made at one spot gaps appeared in another which demanded immediate attention. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... stiddy sailin' a little spec wuz seen in the distance one mornin' gradually growin' in size, and other little specks wuz sighted, also growin' gradual, and at last they turned to solid land rising up out of the blue water, clad in strange and beautiful verdure behind the white foamin' billers of surf. And instinctively as we looked on't I broke out singin' onbeknown to me, and Josiah jined in ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... in the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... King's Road now, and the brightly lighted shop-windows almost dazzled Bessie. On the opposite side she could see a dark line that was evidently the sea; a dull, heavy surging of waves broke on her ear; now and then the splash of the white surf ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... took place inside of the little island of Sacrificios, some three miles south of Vera Cruz. The vessels could not get anywhere near shore, so that everything had to be landed in lighters or surf-boats; General Scott had provided these before leaving the North. The breakers were sometimes high, so that the landing was tedious. The men were got ashore rapidly, because they could wade when they came to shallow water; but the camp ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... security, with the pleasing hope of safely reaching their destination on the following day. After midnight the wind increased; but though the ship drove rapidly before it, no danger was perceived till about day-break,—when, already in the surf, there was no longer a possibility of escape. The crew immediately proceeded to set all sail the storm would permit, in hopes of weathering the point; but their gallant efforts could not long delay the fate of the ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... in a high chamber in the Hotel del Coronado, on the great and fertile beach in front of San Diego. It is the 2d of June. Looking southward, I see the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the sun as blue as the waters at Amalfi. A low surf beats along the miles and miles of white sand continually, with the impetus of far-off seas and trade-winds, as it has beaten for thousands of years, with one unending roar and swish, and occasional shocks of sound as if of distant thunder on the shore. Yonder, to the right, Point ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... abated after midnight, and the surf diminished rapidly, which caused us to be on the alert at a very early hour on the 22d, but we had to wait until six A.M. for the return of Augustus, who had continued out all night on an unsuccessful pursuit of deer. It appears that he had ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... her window on this sunny July morning, lingered for a moment on the Major's house, before she proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back page of her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young women dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes which Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust herself to. Neither the Major nor Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time that the first signals of animation might be expected. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... stone mantel toll solemnly one. The embers drop monotonously through the grate—a dog bays deeply somewhere in the quadrangle below—the wailing wind of coming morning sighs lamentingly through the tossing copper-beeches, and the roar of the surf afar off comes ever and anon like distant thunder. The house is silent as the tomb—so horribly silent that the cold drops start out on the face of the tortured man. Who knows? Death has been on the threshold of that ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... their breasts Beards, the thick growth of many a proud campaign; And on their brows the bright invisible crown Victory sheds from her own radiant form, As o'er her favourites' heads she sings and soars. But dreams came not so calmly; as around Turbulent shores wild waves and swamping surf Prevail, while seaward, on the tranquil deeps, Reign placid surfaces and solemn peace, So, from the troubled strands of memory, they Launched and were tossed, long ere they found the tides That lead to the gentle bosoms of pure rest. And like to one who from a ghostly watch ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answerable for this entombment. It is said that the village which surrounded the church was buried by a sandstorm in the fourteenth century. This scene of desolation, on a windy day, when the "sand fiend" revels and riots, is best left to the booming surf and avoided by those who do not wish ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... the end of it—on until he had left quay and village far behind, and had come to a spit of sand which ran out into the sea exactly opposite the group of rocks of which Mrs. Wooler had spoken. There they lay, rising out of the surf like great monsters, a half-mile from where he stood. The tide was out at that time, and between him and them stretched a shining expanse of glittering wet sand. And, coming straight towards him across it, Copplestone ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... chance no fog comes rolling in, The Torridge where its branching crystal spreads To join the Taw. Hard by from a chalk cliff A torrent leaps: 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 ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... came in view of Suakim, the city of white coral, with her surf-beaten opalesque reefs stretching as far as the eye could follow. It seemed strange to me to be peacefully moving toward her outlying forts, for when I was last in her vicinity one could not go twenty yards outside the town without being shot at or running the gauntlet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... (most of the country's forests - once the largest in West Africa - have been cleared by the timber industry); water pollution from sewage and industrial and agricultural effluents natural hazards: coast has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding is possible international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83; signed, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... not willingly navigate the Serpentine. Shipping disasters have been frequent not only at sea, but also while landing here, for Nome has no harbour, but merely an open, shallow roadstead, fully exposed to the billows of the ocean. There is therefore frequently a heavy surf along the beach, and here many a poor miner has been drowned within a few yards of the Eldorado he has risked his ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the billows! Break on them with the ocean's foam and roar when bursting on the reefs! Hang on them as the forked lightning plays above the foaming surf! Give out the vigilance; give out the anger—the anger of the devouring wild dog—till their line is broken; till they flow ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... flower, and played at literature as he played tennis, with swerve and speed? Bolles was a bachelor, the author of a successful comedy, and a member of the smart literary club which was over the reviewer's horizon, although in the great ocean of letters the humourist was no more than a surf bather. Stockton shook his head. No one but a married man and an unsuccessful author could ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... founded among the sand hills beside a great, uneasy stretch of water which a dreamer might liken to a naughty child that had run away from its mother, the ocean, through a little gateway which the land left open by chance and was hiding there among the hills, listening to the calling of the surf voice by night, out there beyond the gate, and lying sullen and still when mother ocean sent the fog and the tides a-seeking; a truant child that played by itself and danced little wave dances which it had learned of its mother ages agone, and laughed up at the hills ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... sea, by where the muddy mouth of the river yawned wide, there rose ever a thin white line of surf, and underneath those crested waves there dwelt a very fearsome thing, called the Bar. I grew to hate and be afraid of this mysterious Bar, for I heard it spoken of always with bated breath, and I knew that it was very cruel to ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... at the few rude head-boards and scattered mounds of those quiet sleepers by the sea, but bestowed more attention upon the beach-miners on our left. Here, at the edge of the water, and even standing in the surf, were many men at work, beach-mining with Long-Toms' or other contrivances, and ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... now is,—a party that may combine for resistance, and will not combine for inventive construction. We are living in an age in which the process of unsettlement is going blindly at work, as if impelled by a Nemesis as blind as itself. New ideas come beating into surf and surge against those which former reasoners had considered as fixed banks and breakwaters; and the new ideas are so mutable, so fickle, that those which were considered novel ten years ago are deemed obsolete to-day, and the new ones of to-day will in their turn be ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ability to understand what is imposing and powerful in a poetical composition, and in the desires it awakens, if he only once in his life had seen the "Horseman," [A remarkable mountain in Nordland.] on a stormy day, with its height of 1700 feet, riding southwards out in the surf, while his cloak fluttered from his shoulder towards the north, and, besides the giant himself in his might, had seen, in prefect illusion, the horse's head, his ear, his neck, his ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... "Oh, come on," he continued, and led the way down to the beach, where there were some bathing pavilions and several houses. The professor was walking along behind, in the vain hope of yet discovering a horned toad, perhaps on its way to get a dip in the surf or drink some ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... frames of hair, of their arms, of their figures, seen through their wet clinging dresses, satisfied me and filled me with joy, gave me for a short time that peace and content—in harmony with the strong sunlight on the waves and the rhythmic surf on the shore—I was seeking. The summer evenings on the pier or along the beach had a peculiar savor; one felt the youth and beauty there even on dark nights, the air was fragrant with them, white dresses and summer hats disappearing down the beach or over the sand hills. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in the extreme. The party seemed includes between two walls of fire. The main conflagration was now fearfully close, burning flakes were already falling among them, and the sound of the fire was like the hiss of the surf upon a pebbly beach. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... wire, a caravan of burros streams, driven by a wide-hatted graceful horseman.... Twelve thousand feet! I am brother to the eagles now! The matchless streams, the vivid orange-colored meadows. The deep surf-like roar of the firs, the wailing sigh of the wind in the grass—a passionate longing wind." Such ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not very formidable breakers—only the tide rolling over a sand-bar, or a tiny reef of rocks. It was at best but a big surf, crested with occasional flakes of foam, and sweeping in successive ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... of Long Island, where the ocean heaves in its wildest and most crystalline surf, a small cove had broken itself into the slopes of an irregular hill, after generations of beating storms and crumbling earth, taking a crescent shape, and forming one of the most picturesque bits of landscape to be found along the coast. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... that way floated, Quick sparks of sea-fire keen like eyes From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted Shores and faint cliffs and ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... warm on the waves of the grass that lifts like a scented sea. No sound of the surf, no sob of the tides; but the drone of the drowsy bee Is drawing me out from the purple shades to wade in the daffodils, Where the long green billows go drifting by to lap the ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... indomitable grit, a half-drowned father and daughter, clinging to a capsized fishing-smack in a winter sea, would not be alive—there are even fisherfolk who cannot swim. Monsieur le Cure saw this at a glance, alone he fought his way in the freezing surf out to the girl and the man. He brought them in ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... men near me clinging to slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold, black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Pontinha, the curved scorpion's tail of rock and masonry, Messieurs Blandy's coal stores, to the west. Big ships must still roll at anchor in a dangerous open roadstead far off shore; and, during wet weather, ladies, well drenched by the surf, must be landed with the aid of a crane in what should be the inner harbour. The broken-down circus near Reid's is to become a theatre, but whence the money is to come no one knows. The leper hospital cannot afford ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the point I have described, the mouth of the river lay before us—a long line of surf, with heavy breakers rolling and roaring in from the sea, apparently barring our exit. Outside of it was the corvette, close-hauled with three reefs in her topsail, standing off-shore, and, as far as we could see, uninjured. But the pirate ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... daylight. And what an interesting experience ours had been in the one short night! By the break of day my crew were again astir, preparing to land and fill water at a good landing which we now perceived farther around the point to leeward, where the surf was moderate. ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the opinion of the author it is the name of the board. A skilled Hawaiian says it is the name given the surf of a place at Napoopoo, in Kona, Hawaii. The action is not located there, but in Puna, it seems to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... wheel, Thankful, on her way to the Wellmouth railway station, passed her "property." The old house, its weather-beaten shingles a cold gray in the half-light of the mist-shrouded, sinking sun, looked lonely and deserted. A chill wind came from the sea and the surf at the foot of the bluff moaned and ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dashing rain on the windows and with the low continual growl of Solway surf in our ears, we bent ourselves to fill a gap in a hopeless day ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... open water on the north beach of the island, and all the loosened ice had been driven landward. The first sound of the surf is one of the most delightful that the Inuit can hear, for it means that spring is on the road. Kotuko and the girl took hold of hands and smiled, for the clear, full roar of the surge among the ice reminded them of salmon and reindeer time and the smell of blossoming ground-willows. Even as they ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the dog and his master wended their way homeward. They crawled slowly and quietly across a street over which thundered an endless procession of vehicles; they moved like snails through the surf of the ocean of life. Arriving at length at the door of a wretched tenement house, the blind man and his ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... of those small skin canoes the Alaskan natives use. And it's touchy as a duck; comes bobbing up here and there, but right-side up every time. And it's frail looking, frail as an eggshell, yet I would stake a bidarka against a lifeboat in a surf. Do you know?"—he went on after a moment—"I would like to see you in one, racing out with the whitecaps up there in Bering Sea; your face all wet with spray, and your hair tucked away in the hood of a gray fox parka. Nothing else would show; the rest of you would be stowed below in a wonderful ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... sound quite simple and easy when you read about them in books of adventure. Shipwrecked mariners on coral islands in the Pacific always lash a few logs together with incredible speed, and perform wonderful journeys through boiling surf to rescue kegs of provisions and other useful commodities which they observe floating about on the waves. The waters of the moat, being tranquil, and overgrown with duckweed, would surely prove more hospitable than the surging ocean, and ought to support a raft, of however amateur a description. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... lacked its most convincing force and significance. But Aunt Sibylla paused. Among the usually restless audience, there was a moment of almost breathless suspense. Not half a mile away, behind a strip of cedar woods, we could plainly hear the surf rolling in from the bay, breaking hard against the shore with its awful, monotonous moan, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... corpse tightly in the cloak, which had fallen from the wretched man's shoulders as the fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, hurled it into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... bathing excursions she wore a somewhat similar garment to that of the gymnasium, instead of one of those long serge gowns reaching to the ankles that ladies were wont to disport themselves in amidst the surf—gowns in which it was impossible to do anything but bob up and down at the end of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot Hunter. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... sir," said he, "that you will not be offended with what I am going to say. Singing comes cheap to those who do not pay for it, and all this is done at the cost of one whose bones lie rotting in some wilderness or grinding to powder in the surf. If these men were to see my father come back to Ithaca they would pray for longer legs rather than a longer purse, for money would not serve them; but he, alas, has fallen on an ill fate, and even when people do sometimes say that he is coming, we no longer heed ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... 'Anything come ashore?' he asked faintly, trying to turn his head towards the reef. Conquering his repugnance, the young man walked out on the long point. There was nothing there; but farther down the coast barrels were washing up and back in the surf, and one box had stranded in shallow water. 'Am I, too, a wrecker?' he asked himself, as with much toil and trouble he secured the booty and examined it. Yes, the barrels ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... peninsula, on the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their mark. But neither ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... or grinding of the ice above us, cake upon cake, now sounded like the rushing of heavy winds, or the incessant roaring of a surf upon the sea-shore. The piles were becoming visible, by their height and their proximity, as the ragged barriers set slowly but steadily down upon us; and the whole river seemed to me to be in motion downwards. At this awful instant, when I began to think it ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... June the vessel lay to off Madras; and Macaulay had his first introduction to the people for whom he was appointed to legislate in the person of a boatman who pulled through the surf on his raft. "He came on board with nothing on him but a pointed yellow cap, and walked among us with a self-possession and civility which, coupled with his colour and his nakedness, nearly made me die of laughing." This gentleman ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... On the Surf Line from San Diego to Los Angeles, a seventy-mile run along the coast, there is so much to see, admire, and think about, that the time passes rapidly without napping or nodding. Take a chair seat on the left of car—the ocean side—and enjoy the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and think they've had ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... strength, and then once more pushed out into the transparent depths of the lagoon. Bight ahead of us, after another hour's paddling, lay a long, gleaming point of sand covered with a grove of palms; beyond that a wide sweep of pale green shallow water; beyond that again the wild tumble and fret of the surf on the ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Island was continued outward by a kind of shallow terrace, which is covered by the sea, and where the sea is quite shallow; and at a distance varying from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a half from the proper beach, you would see a line of foam or surf which looks most beautiful in contrast with the bright green water in the inside, and the deep blue of the sea beyond. That line of surf indicates the point at which the waters of the ocean are breaking ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... becomes gradually wild, solitary, and desolate. It leads him sometimes through tangled thickets, sometimes under shelving rocks, and sometimes it brings him out unexpectedly to the shore of the sea, where he sees the surf rolling in upon the beach at his feet, and far over the water the setting sun going down to his rest beneath the western horizon. At length the twilight gradually disappears, and as the shades of the evening come on, lights glimmer in the solitary villages that he passes ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... ship water, which is not desirable when there is a cargo. But the boys at the towns sometimes put out in their rude punts into the very vortex of disturbance, being dashed about in the white roar at the base of the ponderous paddle wheels, like a Fiji Islander in his surf-boat. We heard, the other day, of a boatload of daring youngsters being caught by the wheel, their craft smashed into kindling-wood, and they themselves all drowned ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... gave vent to this malediction, the boat ran swiftly past a low rocky point, over which the surf was breaking wildly. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sea, yer honour. Mr. Walter has been asking us; but there's no boat could get through that surf, not if all Ireland ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... of nature are scattered with a more lavish hand across the country lying between the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the shores where the surf romps and rolls over the auriferous sands of the Pacific, in Golden Gate Park, than in a journey of the same length in any other part of the world. Such, at least, is the verdict of many whose fortune it has been to traverse that favored stretch of country. Nothing but ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... promontory, we found ourselves opposite a beach bordered by a broad line of surf, which indicated that the water here was very shallow for some distance from the shore. Both the surf and the beach seemed to be alive with black children, so diminutive were the forms who disported themselves in the breakers, or ran up and down upon the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... Light Upon Surfaces; Cloud Shadows); River Fog (Light Graded by Atmospheric Density); The Chant (Gradation through Values of Separated Objects) The View-Metre Three Pictures Found with the View-Metre View Taken with a Wide Angle Lens Photography Nearing the Pictorial The Path of the Surf—Photo (Triangles Occuring in the leading line); The Shepherdess—Millet (Composition Exhibiting a Double Exit) Circular Observation—The Principle; The Slaying of the Unpropitious Messengers (Triangular ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... intrudes upon their reverie, to disturb its natural course. The sough of the tidal surf breaking upon the beach, the occasional cry of a soaring sea-bird, or the more continuous and melancholy note of the chuck-will's-widow, do not attract their attention. They are sounds in consonance with their thoughts, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... coasts of Chili and California. They had afterwards visited Easter Island, Nootka Sound, Cook's River, Kamschatka, Manilla, the Isles des Navigateurs, Sandwich and the Friendly Islands. M. la Perouse had also anchored off Norfolk Island, but could not land, on account of the surf. In this long voyage he had not lost any of his people by sickness; but two boats crews had unfortunately perished in a surf on the north-west coast of America; and at Masuna, one of the Isles des Navigateurs, M. L'Angle, Captain of the Astrolabe, had met with a fate still more ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... from the north, and a mountainous swell from the north-east. Shortly after daybreak on the 13th of September, we saw Sulphur Island, in the south-west quarter, and by eleven in the forenoon were close up to it. We intended to land, but were prevented by the high wind, which caused so great a surf all round the island, as to render this impracticable. The sulphuric volcano from which the island takes its name is on the north-west side; it emits white smoke, and the smell of sulphur is very strong on the lee side of the crater. The cliffs near the volcano are of a pale yellow ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... Delaware. It seemed to her that boys were darting to and fro and swapping seats, and one boy had thrown a handful of beans. She walked down the aisle as if into water, wading through pools and waves of boys, who plashed and gurgled around her. She walked back again, and a surf of boys was thrown at her feet. The waters rose and licked and spilled and flowed onward again. Podge felt a sense of strangling, as if going down, in a hollow gulf of resounding wave, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch of brown plain, dotted with poppet ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... We went to the house of a lady who was a friend of Mr. Cholott, and she gave us a splendid room, that looked right out over the harbor. We could see the islands, and the light-house, and the bar with the surf outside, and even get a glimpse of the ocean. We saw the "Tigris" going out over the bar. The captain wanted to get out on the same tide he came in on, and he did not lose any time. As soon as she got fairly ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... retired merchant, or hints the possibility that he may have sold his place to a poet or philosopher—or to some old East India sea-captain, perhaps, who cannot sleep without the sound of waves, and so plants pines to rustle, surf-like, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... hardly forbear asking whether this be a band of malefactors and felons flying from justice. What are their crimes, that they hide themselves in darkness? To what punishment are they exposed, that, to avoid it, men, and women, and children, thus encounter the surf of the North Sea and the terrors of a night storm? What induces this armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... new station was a beautiful one. It lay amidst rivers and hills, and its position was such that the roar of the surf on both eastern and western coasts of the island could be distinctly heard. Shortly after his permanent settlement, Mr. Puckey made a journey to the extreme north of the island and reached Cape Reinga. Standing on the black ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... cross its top without the slightest danger of grazing, but still raised so high toward the surface as to produce a considerable constant ground-swell, which broke in windy weather into huge sheets of surf, like the one that had just struck and washed over the Australasian, carrying Muriel with it. The very same cause that produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit rapidly landward; and once he had got well beyond the region of the bar that begot them, he found ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she opened her eyes and ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... had been already made. The surf was breaking over the ledges in all directions, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they succeeded in getting clear out into deep water. A breeze which had sprung up from the east, tended to raise the sea a little, but when they finally got away from the dangerous reef, the breeze befriended ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... we are rolling so that it is scarce possible to write comprehensibly. We see the sad-looking shores of Tampico, long, low, and sandy, though to the south stretching out into gloomy, faintly-seen woods. We can distinguish the distant yellow sand and the white surf breaking furiously over the bar. The day is gloomy but not cold. A slight rain accompanies the light north wind. Sea-gulls are flying in circles round the ship and skimming the surface of the waves. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... easterly tradewinds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season May to November Terrain: mostly hilly to rugged and mountainous with little level land Natural resources: sun, sand, sea, surf Land use: arable land 15%; permanent crops 6%; meadows and pastures 26%; forest and woodland 6%; other 47% Environment: rarely affected by hurricanes; subject to frequent severe droughts, floods, earthquakes; lack of natural freshwater resources Note: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... very instant, the wind came roaring and rushing with such a violent gush that Venetia could scarcely stand; George put his arm round her to support her. The air was filled with thick white vapour, so that they could no longer see the ocean, only the surf rising very high all ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... rose high on the lagoon as the Pelican paused in her story, and beyond the rookery the children could see blue water and a line of surf, with the high-pooped Spanish ships rising and falling. Beyond that were the low shore and the dark wood of pines and the shining leaves of the palmettoes like a lake spattered with the light—split by their needle points. They could see the dark bodies of the Indian ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... darkness set in on the wide river, where the afterglow was reflected from the waters, it was black beyond thought, so black that a few yards from the fire the sharpest pair of eyes could not see a hand held a foot away. And with the darkness came a sense of mystery, a hollow murmur as of the surf heard a long way off, which intensified the brooding stillness; and at times the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... unrest our hearts and fancies find repose in memory—the memory of an old New England village, or a corn field and a split-rail fence and then the level prairie, or cotton fields and the red handkerchiefs of the negroes, or the vineyard slopes of Sicily, or the great white surf beating up the cliffs of Connemara. It may be that the second and third generations of immigrants, born on the East Side, are true New Yorkers, just as a vanishing generation of elderly men and women on Murray Hill and the Avenue are ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... came down from the heavens, And the magical tropic moon, To dance a measure together Over the still lagoon; And the whisper of distant forests, The noise of the surf in our ears, Seemed like the song of the ages ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... topsy-turvy, so that the grass never grew there again. It is now called Brenna. Then they stoned Stigandi to death, and there he was buried under a heap of stones. Olaf kept his word to the bonds-woman, and gave her her freedom, and she went home to Herdholt. Hallbjorn Whetstone-eye was washed up by the surf a short time after he was drowned. It was called Knorstone where he was put in the earth, and his ghost walked about there a great deal. There was a man named Thorkell Skull who lived at Thickshaw on his father's inheritance. He was a man of very dauntless heart ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... lady. "She is the only person who lets me enjoy things, and now I cannot enjoy them in her absence. Yesterday I drove alone over the three beaches, and left her at home with a dress-maker. Never did I see so many lines of surf; but they only seemed to me like some of Kate's ball-dresses, with the prevailing flounces, six deep. I was so enraged that she was not there, I wished to cover my face with my handkerchief. By the third beach I was ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Swart Piet lifted Ralph in his great arms, and crying aloud: "Return into the sea out of which you came," he hurled him over the edge of the cliff. Two seconds later the sound of a heavy splash echoed up its sides; then, save for the murmur of the waterfall and the surge of the surf upon the beach, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... except that now and then was a dying groan or heave of the storm of a week before. A pleasant Sunday at sea was spent with worship, sermon, and song. After sixty hours on salt water, Carleton's ear caught the boom of the surf on the beach. The sea-gulls flitted around, and after the sun had rent the pall of fog, the town ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... manager of the theater can paint the ocean and, if need be, can move some colored cloth to look like rolling waves; and yet how far is his effect surpassed by the superb ocean pictures when the scene is played on the real cliffs and the waves are thundering at their foot and the surf is foaming about the actors. The theater has its painted villages and vistas, its city streets and its foreign landscape backgrounds. But here the theater, in spite of the reality of the actors, appears thoroughly unreal ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... shallowness; they found their position to be in Encounter Bay, east of Spencer's Gulf, and from what they saw it was evident that no ship could enter it during the prevalence of the S.W. winds. All hope of a safe return centred in themselves. The thunder of the surf, that they had so longed for, brought no message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back, while yet some strength remained to them; and above all they were surrounded by hostile blacks. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to meet a bluer sea, the sand on the shore was as white as the blown snow, and the sea-birds that circled around the cupola in the crystalline, fragrant air were singing. The melody blended strangely with the sound of the surf on the shining ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... near, and standing up to his knees in water, Mr. P. gave the appropriate heart-rending cry for succor. But in spite of the prevailing calm, he perceived that there was a surf upon the rocks, and a noise of many waters. At the top of his voice Mr. P. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... precious title for sale among the young women of London society. My Aunt Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous dread of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the shingle. If I ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and thither and broken on the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer to stand aloof and watch. If I had a little more of daring in my nature I might achieve something. I am afraid I am but ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the Casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, and feathered mountains rising behind; and Jack and Jane, or Adam and Eve, impending like a pair of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description. The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high as the maintopmast would have been had it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... we content ourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voice that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of the surf might startle one who ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... slumbering, giant rocks and cold, dark, fathomless depths, there was a new life in a hard, rugged, roomy, new world. We hugged close to the north coast; and the numerous rocky islands to our left stood guard like a wall of adamant between us and the heavy surf that flung against the barrier. We were rapidly approaching the headquarters of our company. When south-bound brigades, with prisoners in hand-cuffs, began to meet us, I judged we were near the habitation ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... hopping up and down in the beach grass, squealing like a Guinea hen with a sore throat, and waving his gun with one wing—arm, I mean—and there in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar—two of Lonesome Huckleberries' best decoy ducks—ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world—except rum, maybe—and the rest of the flock was digging up the beach for home as if they'd been telegraped for, and ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dust, Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, Ethereal estuary, frith of light.... Bird ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... rather a fantastic style, I could not perceive any other indication of the sex. One of the party—a lively young girl of sixteen or seventeen—seemed to be a perfect mermaid. She plunged and swam, ducked and dived, kicked up her delicate little feet, and disappeared under the surf in a way that struck me with awe and admiration. Never was there such an enchanting picture of perfect abandonment to the enjoyment of the occasion. A poetic feeling I took possession of me. Visions of grottoes under the deep ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... sand-bags, another and another man fell to his knees or toppled sidelong, tripping his fellows into a little knot or windrow of kicking arms and legs; but the main wave poured on, all the faster. Among and above them, like wreckage in that surf, tossed the shapes of scaling-ladders and notched bamboos. Two naked men, swinging between them a long cylinder or log, flashed through the bonfire space and on into the dark below ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... early morning, and there was no shooting, for a southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line, the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... third day we reached Grand Bassa, and anchored off the beach about two miles, along which the surf was breaking so high that any attempt to land would be hazardous. Toward evening it moderated, and a canoe with three naked natives came off. One I found could speak a little English. I told him to say to the governor that I would come on shore in ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... constructed of mango wood, calked with straw, and sewn together with cocoa-nut fibre. The ships drop their anchors in the roads half a mile from the shore; the Massulah boat pulls off alongside, receives its cargo at the gangway, and is then beached through the surf. It is no uncommon circumstance for the boat alongside, assisted by the rolling of the ship, to rise and fall twenty-five feet relatively to the height of the ship's deck at each undulation. Ladies are lashed into chairs, and from the ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... far end of a bay whose waters seemed to be dyed red, as Captain Nemo had already mentioned. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds, by the sound of surf chafing against rocks, or by the distant moan of a steamer churning the waves of the gulf with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... hark the sea-bird's wondrous band— Sweet source of happiness. That I might hear the clamorous billows thunder On the rude beach. That by my blessed church side I might ponder Their mighty speech. Or watch surf-flying gulls the dark shoal follow With joyous scream, Or mighty ocean monsters spout and wallow, Wonder supreme! That I might well observe of ebb and flood All cycles therein; And that my mystic name might be for good But "Cul-ri. Erin." That gazing toward her ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... a vast mass of water came rushing down the river, forcing the ships from their anchors, and dashing them against each other with such violence that the foremast of the Admiral's vessel was carried away, and the squadron placed in great danger; a furious storm and the heavy surf on the bar preventing them from running ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... already, though they knew it not. It was the outflow of its current into the ocean that caused the break in the coral reef through which their boat had been enabled to pass. Otherwise they might have found no opening, and perished in attempting to traverse the surging surf. The madrepores will not build their subaqueous coral walls where rivers run into the ocean; hence the open spaces here and there happily left, that form deep transverse ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... full of slopping and shouting and shrieking human creatures, clinging with bare white arms to the life-lines that run from the shore to the buoys; beyond these the lifeguard stays himself in his boat with outspread oars, and rocks on the incoming surf. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that old worthy, who was just poking his head up out of the forecastle,—"Trull, is that noise the surf?" ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... or a big estate in commercial England. Each lounges decorously through life after his own fashion; only the one lounges in a Russia leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a rolling surf in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the sea was bursting over the wall of the eastern extremity of the Esplanade very magnanimously. So (the swell not being favourable for tide-observations) I gave them up and determined to go to see the surf on the Chesil Bank. I started with my great-coat on, more for defence against the wind than against rain; but in a short time it began to rain, and just when I was approaching the bridge which connects the mainland with the point where the Chesil Bank ends at ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... and, as darkness closed the eyes of the harassed garrison, with the fleet all was activity. In boats and pinnaces the troops were being rapidly embarked, and soon Drake in person was piloting the flotilla for the surf-beaten shore. At a point within the bay, but some ten miles from the town, a practicable landing-place had been found. Watch-houses overlooked it, but watchmen there were none. Drake had got touch with the maroons. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... length the curtain began slowly to rise, and his view extended further and further toward the river, until all was visible, even to the very land. Not a craft of any sort was in sight. Even the wreck had disappeared, though this was subsequently discovered in the surf, having drifted out with the current until it struck an eddy, which carried it in again, when it was finally stranded. No vestige of le Feu-Follet, however, was to be seen. Not even a tent on the shore, a wandering boat, a drifting spar, or a rag of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... While walking through the lonely forests the mind of the visitor is involuntarily carried back to the scenes that took place there, as well as to the actors who centuries ago passed away. Now silence broods over the place once so active with life, and nothing but nature remains, while the distant surf is ever sounding an everlasting requiem to the memory ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... specter in the eyes of the ancient navigators, when, as they came coasting along from the north in their frail galleys, on their voyages to Greece and Italy, they saw it frowning defiance to them as they came, with threatening clouds hanging upon its summit, and the surges and surf of the AEgean perpetually thundering upon its base below. To make this stormy promontory the more terrible, it was believed to be the haunt of innumerable uncouth and misshapen monsters of the sea, that lived by devouring the hapless seamen ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were accompaniments ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... to walk to rehearsal by way of Fifth Avenue, and turning out of Forty-fourth Street to become part of the people-sea of the southward current, felt the eyes of the northward beating upon his face like the pulsing successions of an exhilarating surf. His Fifth Avenue knew its ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... of us the flames were roaring and surging like the breaking of a heavy surf upon the seashore, and every moment the fire was extending by the aid of the grass and dead branches of trees, which were like tinder, no rain having fallen in that part of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach, got ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the Hall. Giorgione would have set them, wild and fragrant, among their leaves, in her hand. Between his fairness, and Sir Joshua's May-fairness, there is a strange, impassable limit—as of the white reef that in Pacific isles encircles their inner lakelets, and shuts them from the surf and sound of sea. Clear and calm they rest, reflecting fringed shadows of the palm-trees, and the passing of fretted clouds across their own sweet circle of blue sky. But beyond, and round and round their coral bar, lies the blue of sea ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... old. My home is near the sea. There are a great many visitors here in the summer, and they bathe in the surf. We have no snow here. The hills are already covered with green (April 4), and soon there will be a great many wild flowers. My teacher reads stories to us from HARPER'S ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... say the Bells of San Blas To the ships that outward pass To the harbour of Mazatlan? To them it is nothing more Than the sound of surf on the shore— Nothing more to master or man. But to me, a dreamer of dreams, To whom what is and what seems Are often one and the same, The Bells of San Blas to me Have a strange wild melody, And are something more than ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... Everything is yet tender and succulent; the very air is bright and new; the warm breath of the meadow comes up in your face; to your knees you are in a sea of daisies and clover; from your knees up, you are in a sea of solar light and warmth. Now you are prostrate like a swimmer, or like a surf-bather reaching for pebbles or shells, the white and green spray breaks above you; then, like a devotee before a shrine or naming his beads, your rosary strung with luscious berries; anon you are a grazing Nebuchadnezzar, or an artist taking ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... floats like a purple flower; Orange and rose are the sails at sea; Silk and pink the surf-line free Tumbles and chimes, and the perfect hour Clasps us and folds us in its power, Folds us and holds us, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... was anchored off the north-east end of the island in thirteen fathoms gravelly sand; and in the afternoon I went on shore in a bay on the east or leeward side, where we found the water smooth and the landing more practicable than upon the north side where a tremendous surf was rolling in upon the beach. We disturbed a great many seals but only killed three; and were much disappointed in finding that these animals were not of the fur species, as in M. de Freycinet's account of the island they are said to be; they were ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... back-door rule, son. Always leave yourself a way out. Now ... let's check that equipment the surgeons put in your neck." Stetson put a hand to his throat. His mouth remained closed, but there was a surf-hissing voice in ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... for the tide was falling and she had already sewed a foot. Then I went about "laying out" the larger anchor, which was no easy matter, for my only life-boat, the frail dory, when the anchor and cable were in it, was swamped at once in the surf, the load being too great for her. Then I cut the cable and made two loads of it instead of one. The anchor, with forty fathoms bent and already buoyed, I now took and succeeded in getting through the surf; but my dory was leaking fast, and by the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... Sighted the centre of Dorre Island, and stood in to within about two miles of the shore, which we found steep and rocky with a heavy surf breaking on it; we then tacked and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... come; With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold, Nor are we wont men's voices to behold. Yet these must be corporeal at the base, Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is Save body, having property of touch. And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist, The same, spread out before the sun, will dry; Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in, Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know, That moisture is dispersed about in bits Too small for eyes to see. Another case: A ring upon the finger thins away Along the under ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... curiosity alike pause there; toward all beyond their only feeling is one of vague dislike and dread. And so I doubt not it was with the ordinary inhabitant of Western Europe before the discovery of America. The Unknown, breaking in surf on his very shores, did not invite him, but dimly repelled. Thought about it, attraction toward it, would seem to him far-fetched, gratuitous, affected, indicating at best a feather-headed flightiness of mind. The sailors of Columbus probably regarded him much as Sancho Panza does Don ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
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