"Choppy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The sea was choppy and fretful. The little bride boat danced and careened about recklessly. Between the Sabah and Piang lay Bongao, and straight for Bongao he headed, skilfully keeping the vinta steady. A white mist rose, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... her! She's going down!" yelled Al Torrance, clinging to a stay beside Whistler, as the cutter bobbed through the rather choppy seas. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... get to Mitrovitza; it seemed superfluous to point out that we had gone quicker than he, but to avoid argument we clambered in. The driver, in a temper, slashed his horses, and off we went, over ruts and stones full speed ahead. It was like being in a small boat in a smart cross-choppy sea, with little torpedoes exploding beneath the keel at three minute intervals; and this road was marked on the map as a first-class road; the mind staggers at what the second and third-class must be like. These countries are still barbarous at heart, but Europe cries out upon ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... the boat seemed changed. By the motion the men were rowing across a choppy current, probably toward shore. Joe found this to be so, a little later, for the boat's side grated against what was ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... interesting fishing point; but how was a little houseboat to get a look at it, lying there alongside a big schooner that she couldn't see over? Altogether, Gadabout fumed and fussed so much here, pitching about in the choppy water, jerking her ropes, and battering her big neighbour, that it was a relief to all concerned when she got her oil aboard, cast off her ropes, and, giving the schooner a last vindictive dig in the ribs, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... followed almost immediately, less violent than the first but quite as sickening. For one instant the house tossed and pitched like a ship on a choppy sea. Then it settled down on its foundations. Most Japanese houses are built on wooden supports, stout square pillars rounded off at the base and resting in a round socket of stone. This gives a certain ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the country gets somewhat "choppy," and the road a succession of short-hills, at the bottom of which modest-looking mud-holes patiently await an opportunity to make one's acquaintance, or scraggy-looking, latitudinous washouts are awaiting their chance to commit a murder, or to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "I didn't. I just felt that something was going to happen and then we struck the boat. I guess it's all right and we'd better get the Fortuna with her nose into it or we'll roll the engines off their beds. This is surely a choppy sea!" ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of sight of land. The wind was fresh and the sea lively with short, choppy waves, crested by white-caps. Yet, for boats as staunch as these submarines, sea was not a difficult one ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... with greater frequency. He strained his eyes to keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda. A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more than one good swimmer drowned in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... The two boats were now bobbing side by side, for they were well out in the bay, and the sea was quite choppy. The tide was running out, and help had come to the boys not ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... catches every sound and an amplifier that magnifies it and makes it discernible to our ears. When you listen in on a wireless telephone you will be uncontestably conscious of this. Also you must take into consideration that the waves sent out by a radio transmitter are not choppy, irregular ones such as you get when a stone is tossed into the water; wireless waves go out in regular, well-formed relays that neither overlap nor obscure one another. Were this not so the signals made would be jumbled together and ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... little later at the bow quartz port-hole. Down the long shaft through which they had risen they saw the glaring flame of the Gorm. As they looked, its regular pulsations turned irregular: it leaped and splashed as though it was a stormy, choppy sea. Then it gave one final mighty heave, and the universe seemed to shatter beneath them. The "walls" of the shaft collapsed about them and they were enswathed in a raging storm ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Clouds hung low, running before the wind, and bringing intermittently little dashes of rain that seemed still further to compress the walls of horizon. The sea was not what could be called rough, but merely choppy and fretful, with short waves that would not have troubled a larger craft. The steamer proved to be a small, undistinguished dingy-looking boat, more like a commercial tramp than a government vessel. ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Hun positions lasting about ten days. The effect of this bombardment was to obliterate all signs of life on that part of the earth, with the exception of a few horrible, naked, and shattered trees. Nothing green was visible anywhere. In fact the land looked as though it had been a very choppy earth-brown sea suddenly frozen to stillness. Everywhere was shell-holes, shell-holes, shell-holes—large and small. Only by careful searching could one ascertain where enemy trenches had been. Dotted about over this terrain were ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... not have made ten minutes' difference to us at the outside. We shall have pretty nearly a dead beat down the Solent. Fortunately the tide will be running strong with us, but there will be a nasty kick up there. You will see we shall feel the short choppy seas there more than we shall when we get outside. She is a grand boat in a really heavy sea, but in short waves she puts her nose into it with a will. Now, if you will take my advice, you will do as I am going to do; put on a pair of fisherman's boots and oilskin and sou'wester. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... then, during which she very ridiculously cried and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and wailed ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... "Nearly all the hurricane signs are beginning to show. Look at the sea! If you'll notice, the surface is fairly glassy, showing that there is not much surface wind. Yet, in spite of that, there is a heavy, choppy, yet rolling swell coming up ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... we've crossed the bar already!" said Cleopatra, gazing out of the window at a nasty choppy sea that was adding somewhat to the disquietude of the fair gathering. "If this is merely a joke on the part of the Associated Shades, it is a mighty poor one, and I think it is time ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... to Camalodunum. Across Gaul and over the choppy channel they came, borne by the very galleys that were to have succored the British king. Up through the mouth of Thames they sailed, and landing at Londinium, marched in close array along the broad Roman road that led straight up to the gates of Camalodunum. Before ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... might join with hers as with some cousin's, Here, now, at noon, Hugging her bereaved sadness close, And still, to-night, with equal satisfaction, Thy mother's blind contentment with her son." While half-seduced, half-chafed, his mind was shaken As with conflicting gusts a choppy sea, His eyes, still greedy of their visions, Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat, And to the ebon threshold of each house, Conjured forth the man that each was planned for: Great creatures smiling with his father's smile, Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied, Wearing loud-coloured raiment, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach. Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful but lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; who ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... a short choppy sea raised by the immediate action of a breeze. A swell consists of the long heaving waves which follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of different sorts of waves on a shingle beach is interesting. Short seas (i.e. short from crest to crest), even when ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... down on the rushing waters, in which he was for the moment lost. Emerging from the boiling foam at the foot of the fall, he scrambled on a rock and stood up to look for the channel. From that point he had a wearisome pull in dead, choppy water, until he reached New Hampton. At many places along the route, well disposed persons were liberal with their advice to give up such an "outlandish" mode of traveling and to "git on land like a human critter." Though the advice ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... a difficult, narrow, canon trail, where the pony hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she came ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... ninety other things the British Channel was the most disappointing thing we encountered in our travels. All my reading on this subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The channel may have been suetty but it was not choppy. The steamer that ferried us over ran as steadily as a clock and everybody felt ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... cicatricial tissue, and sinks into quiet decay. The nervous system begins to readjust itself; but no longer having free outlet through the soft, lymphoid tissues of the uterus, the wave pressure meets with resistance and a choppy sea results. Vertigos, bilious attacks, and so forth are nothing more than reflex waves. The weakest organ of the individual is the one that generally suffers. And that the kidneys, which all along have borne the brunt of life, should ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... journey down the St. Lawrence began. When they reached the ocean they joined a convoy of a dozen ships, screened in a cold mist and rocked by a choppy sea. Then began the ocean voyage of twelve days, through fog and rain and over a rough, gray sea. At night it was early to bed, because lights ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... the skiff through the choppy waves with vigorous strokes and shot her around at the last moment for a perfect landing. The mainsail and jib went up with rapid jerks while the rings rattled their protest. The strenuous physical exercise ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... of the head; weight is supported for an equal length of time upon each one of the two legs, but the stride[4] is shortened. The gait, in such cases, is peculiar, animals appearing stiff and they are said, by horsemen, to have a "choppy" gait. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... on our knees that morning, for the waves were choppy. By ten o'clock the bands of cloud had merged into a dun canopy, and by noon a slow, cold rain was drizzling. I dreaded a halt, but the necessity pressed. I selected a small cove, well tree-grown, and we ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... particularly rough roads, a second horse was added, alongside the shaft horse, and sometimes a third animal. The motion was pleasant enough over the occasional smooth places, but the usual motion was much like that of a cork in a whirlpool, or of a small boat in a choppy sea. Little attention was paid to rocks or ruts; it was almost impossible to capsize the thing. One wheel might be two feet or more higher than the other, whereupon the rider on the upper side would be piled on top of the ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... thank the man. He turned into the street. The buildings swam in a garish light, he felt his head rocking, and his feet seemed scarcely to touch the paving stones rising and dipping under him like a choppy sea. He drifted into a bar, and drank brandy, and went forth again with renewed strength and ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... lightly over the choppy water, and a strong affection for the ketch that had been his home, his occupation, his solace through the past dreary years expanded his heart. He knew the Gar's every capability and mood, and they were all good. She was an exceptional boat. His feeling ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... British front, which became the magic carpet of transition from the life of the burrowing army in its trenches to the life of battleships; from motors trailing dust over French roads, to destroyers trailing foam in choppy seas ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and the men lay on their oars, with the boat gradually slackening its speed till it rose and fell, rocking slowly on the choppy sea, and the eye-like lantern gave another derisive wink twice, and then seemed to ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and out along the edge of this woods," said Tom, "so that you're kind of mixed up, that's all. It's always those little turns that throw people out, just like it's a choppy sea that upsets a boat; it ain't the big waves. I used to get rattled like that myself, ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... with the frenzy of one possessed. She crushed it and finally made of it nothing but a little green, flabby lump which no longer moved or spoke. Then she wrapped it in a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her nightgown, barefoot; she crossed the dock, against which the choppy waves of the sea were beating, and she shook the cloth and let drop this little dead thing, which looked like so much grass. Then she returned, threw herself on her knees before the empty cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled and prayed for ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... not all." The dancers clapped and the orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve could dance ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Admiralty Records 1. 2733—Orders of Vice-Admiral Buckle to Capt. Yates, 29 April 1778.] In such work as this man-o'-war boats were of little use. Just as they could not negotiate Deal beach without danger of being reduced to matchwood, so they could not live in the choppy sea kicked up in the Downs by a westerly gale. Folkstone market boats and Deal cutters had to be requisitioned for pressing in those waters. Their seaworthiness and speed made the Downs the crux of inward-bound ships, whose only means of escaping their attentions was to incur another ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... hired at Falmouth for quite a moderate sum. But the coast is a dangerous one, for although the morning run past the dreaded Manacles, Helford river, St. Keverne's, and right down to the Lizard, may present no difficulties, the return evening journey, with a stiff breeze from the land making a choppy sea, and the puzzling lights at the complicated entrance to the anchorage, are disturbing elements that make one feel thankful to have the skipper on board to guide the little craft through the maze ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... an angle and ran in a parallel line along the slope, Albert by his side. He wished to keep to the forests and thickets, knowing they would have little chance of escape on the plain. As they ran he told Albert, in short, choppy ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of the river's wide flow, swollen by recent heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter driftwood, while making slow but certain headway ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Sailors stood by the rail, peering into the fog, but it seemed to her that no one else was afoot on board the steamer. Already the boat was beginning to show signs of the uneasy trip ahead. Many foghorns, far and near, were barking their lugubrious warnings; the choppy waves were slashing against the vessel with a steady beat; the bobbling of the ship increased as it plunged deeper into the cross-seas. But she had no thought of the ship, the channel or the perils that surrounded her. Her mind was back in London with her heart, and there was nothing ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... outer border there were bay-trees set in big Italian terracotta jars; but the bay-trees were placed far apart so that they should not mask the view, and that was wise, for it was a fine view. It is rugged country in that part of Westchester County—like a choppy sea: all broken, twisted ridges, and abrupt little hills, and piled-up boulders, and hollow, cup-like depressions among them. The Grey house sat, as it were, upon the lip of a cup, and from the southward terrace you looked across a mile or ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... at that choppy eloquence, openly seized the friendly young hand and wrung it till Alice begged, laughing but bruised, for mercy. When he came up, later, to bid her good-night, his face ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... girls appeared we had yanked up all the sails that was handy, and the Pyxie was slanted over, just scootin' through the choppy water gay and careless, like she was glad ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... Susquehanna, the U.S.S. Antigone, and the U.S.S. Ryndam, the latter being on the left flank of the formation and about 800 yards from the President Lincoln. The weather was pleasant, the sun shining brightly, with a choppy sea. The ships were about 500 miles from the coast of France and had passed through what was considered to be the most dangerous part of the war zone. At about 9 a.m. a terrific explosion occurred on ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... exclamations and inversions make his style seem choppy, like a wave-tossed sea; but his sentences are so full of vigor that they almost call aloud from the printed page. His style was not an imitation of the German, but a characteristic form of expression, natural to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... trembled. He was a sturdy little man, about fifty, short and stout, with a big round head, gray hair brushed up, a red face, a masterful way of speaking, a thick, affected accent, and every now and then he would break out into a choppy sort of volubility. He had forced himself on Paris by his enormous self-confidence. A business man, with a knowledge of men, naive and deep, passionate, full of himself, he identified his business with the business of France, and even with the affairs of ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... agonizing presage Taken shape within my tortured brain, When good REUTER flashed the welcome message, "Chancellor Returns," across the main. Neptune, be thy waters calm, not choppy, As they speed them on their homeward way, GEORGE and HENRY and, bowed down with "copy," Our ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... the general pot, he had succeeded to his own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet. Quick to take a cue, he circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected fragments with whomsoever he ran up against. The Miss Mortimer, who spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn, a stout, blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with a gleam of fun in his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as it bobbed on the crest of the choppy Maelar waves. He ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... seventy majority." And then there burst out wild cheers and the crowd broke into a myriad little waves like a choppy sea. Men danced and shouted and clapped each other on the back, and the tall facade of the street opposite the hall was a-flutter. Suddenly the white patch leaped into an ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... descending again. The plane roared, shot down the deck, and was gone to form one of the string of climbing objects which grew smaller with incredible swiftness as they shot for the sky. Coburn saw another carrier. There was a huge bow-wave before it. Destroyers ringed it, seeming to bounce in the choppy sea made by so many great ships ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... nervous, brisk, Cascading, intermittent, choppy, The brittle voice of Mrs. Fiske Shall serve me now as copy. Assist me, O my Muse, what time I pen ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... I was sitting beside a young lady whom I had never seen or heard of before. She asked if she might look into my crystal, and while she did so I happened to look over her shoulder and saw a ship tossing on a very heavy choppy sea, although land was still visible in the dim distance. That vanished, and, as suddenly, a little house appeared with five or six (I forget now the exact number I then counted) steps leading up to the door. On the second step stood an old man reading a newspaper. In front of the house was a field ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... no intention of letting the old woman go overboard. Betty in her heavy boots would be wellnigh helpless in the choppy sea. If it were possible to rescue Lawford Tapp ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... portents became more pronounced; the wind increased to such an extent that we first had to stow our topgallantsails again and then single-reef the topsails, and a very nasty short, choppy sea quickly got up, into which the frigate plunged viciously to the height of her figurehead, sending deluges of spray over her weather cathead and into the hollow of her foresail until the canvas was darkened with wet ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... country was thickly veiled with mist and a drizzling rain. A choppy sea added to the chances of making the first attack on ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... no more pleasant weather for days, the skies being overcast and the wind damp and chill. It did not rain, nor were the waves dangerous, although choppy enough to ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those choppy times of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome, since he protested the King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... in a voice that calmed the others like oil on choppy water. "Jacob Ensley is out on a drunk and Billy had to knock him down to quiet him. All of you go back to dinner quickly, for I don't see why Sergeant Rogers should get Jacob this time. Billy will help me get him home and I'll remonstrate with him when he is sober. I'd rather ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... towering above the town they had left a few brief moments before, and beyond that the Costejo Mountains, rugged and massive and covered in part on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him, because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs—a tall, sallow Englishman of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and furtive eyes. Ford had ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... peaceful swells had changed into angry, choppy waves from the tops of which the spindrift streamed ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches and dead history—only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was coming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... dispatches were placed in his hands, about midnight of October the thirty-first. And, running by the whirling eddies of "Pull-and-be-damned" Point, he soon had the Ranger clear of the low-lying Isle of Shoals: the sea cross and choppy, but the good ship bowling along before a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Jonas took their places on board the ship, and sailed for Rome. It was now far in November, and the passage was a boisterous one; and the size of the waves astonished John, accustomed, as he was, only to the short choppy seas of the Lake of Galilee. Jonas made up his mind that they were lost and, indeed, for some days the vessel was in imminent danger. Instead of passing through the straits between Sicily and the mainland of Italy, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... a handsome female elephant approached, careering at a curious choppy gait. With her trunk well up, she was trumpeting every ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... this is that the vast body of water which forms the North Sea, in forcing its way between the narrow straits of Dover, is driven into short cross-waves and currents, which make the sea always choppy and rough. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... she replied. "I can manage a sail; I know the argot, I could tell the shrouds from the bulwarks, and I've rowed a boat in a choppy sea." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... invitation, for the keen salt air had given them the appetite of wolves, and the breakfast was soon disposed of according to directions. Then the two followed the Captain over the side and into the boat, which had been lowered and was now bobbing about on the choppy waves of the bay. When they were settled and the boat was properly trimmed, the Captain rowed toward a small stream of clear water which flowed down from the hills back of the town, and landed them at the foot of the one little ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... wind was his whip: One choppy finger was on his lip: He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... visuelles. Disconnected by his constant abuse of the dash—he must have studied Poe not too wisely—infinitesimal strokes of colour supplying the place of a large-moulded syntax, this prose has not unity, precision, speed, euphony. Its rhythms are choppy, the dabs of paint, the shadings within shadings, the return upon itself of the theme, the reticent, inverted sentences, the absence of architectonic and the fatal lack of variety, surprise, or grandeur in the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a half after sailing night had settled down. The English shore was but a vague, distant line. A short, choppy sea was running. In the sky was a new moon ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... instantaneously. Wayland glanced up. Eleanor MacDonald was looking straight into his eyes. And the sheep rancher's choppy voice was saying to the Missionary, "Some men go up in the mountains to fish for trout; but others stay right down in the Valley and grow rich ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... never in all his experience had the redoubtable Captain Broom ever been on so choppy a sea. It was hard to distinguish fog from whiskers. At the second hunch upward, the Captain shot into space. The boys did not tarry to watch for his descent. A word from Juarez to the mule, and Missouri turned directly south just as Jack ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... heat differ as much as the short, choppy waves of the ocean and the slow, long swell of the ocean, but not more so. The sailor handles his boat in one way in a choppy sea and in a different way in a rolling sea, for he knows that these two kinds of waves act dissimilarly. The long, slow ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... wet wind howled down upon them, and shook a shower from the madly rippling ivy leaves. The sky was high and pale, and crossed by hurrying and scattered clouds; a clean, roaring gale tore over the hills, and ruffled the rain pools in the road, and bowed the trees like whips. The bay was iron colour; choppy waves chased each other against the piers. Now and then a pale flicker of sunlight brightened the whole scene with blues and greens and shadows spectacularly clear; then the clouds met again, and the wind sang ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... to her but a broad sheet with so many columns of printed matter. But as she was putting it down their own name caught her eye. All at once her benumbed faculties regained their power, her heart began to beat wildly, for there, in clearest print, in short, choppy, unequivocal sentences, was the hideous fear which she had contrived so ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of feature gave the cousins special titles in whose selection the boy-instinct for nicknames had shown its unerring accuracy of aim. One was "Choppy," and the other, Billy, was "Cousin Choppy." Their playmates were generally considerate and did not apply these titles unless they "got mad." Forgetting themselves, these titles might be sent flying about freely as snow-balls in a January thaw. There was Worthington Wentworth. ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... either. You fellers make me sick. Lollin' around here an' not paying no attention, by golly—he's liable to be ten mile from here by this time!" When Slim stopped, his jaw quivered like a dish of disturbed jelly, and I wish I could give you his tone; choppy, every sentence an accusation that should have ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... frame. The glint of pain in his eyes sent a wave of remorse through Archie's soul. Congdon bore his affliction manfully. There was about him nothing even remotely suggestive of Eliphalet Congdon's grotesque figure or excited, choppy speech. He had suffered and perhaps his wound was not alone responsible for his pallor or the hurt look in his eyes. As Congdon played nervously with his watch chain, he inspected Archie ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... awash and the conning-tower just on a level with the short, choppy waves, the Ithuriel ran round to the south of the line at ten knots, as they were anxious not to kick up any fuss in the water, lest a chance searchlight from the enemy might fall upon them, and lead to trouble. She got within a mile of the first cruiser unobserved, and then Erskine ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... barely twenty-four hours out from port and ploughing along steadily through a choppy sea when Mr. Mott, the First Officer, reported to Captain Trigger that a stowaway had been found ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Running Water, to distinguish it from the waters of the coast. It did not empty into the British Channel, for the simple and sufficient reason that there was no such channel at the time. Where now exists that famous passage which makes islands of Great Britain, where, tossed upon the choppy waves, the travelers of the world are seasick, where Drake and Howard chased the Great Armada to the Northern seas and where, to-day, the ships of the nations are steered toward a social and commercial center, was then good, solid earth ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... wait. There was a no'thwest wind coming up, and the waves were running pretty choppy on the bar. All I could think of was that gasoline. Was there enough in the pipes and the feed cup on that launch to carry her out to where I was? Or was there too much, and would she make the yacht, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... clothes and was ready as soon as Porky, who considered himself the record dresser. Together they slipped through the dark passage and went up on deck. The Firefly fled like a wild thing, cutting a swift path through a rough and choppy sea. ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... that Mr Marline and those in the gig with him heard us; for, recognising the urgency of the case, they redoubled their exertions to reach Jackson in time, so as to frustrate the intentions of his terrible antagonist. They seemed to put fresh steam in their oars, pulling all they knew against the choppy sea and wind, both of which were against them, counteracting their efforts and pressing the boat back as ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... very cold morning, with a grey, cold, choppy sea on, the spray from which dashed over the boat, wetting me thoroughly, and making me feel pinched, blear-eyed, and miserable. I even envied the seals I saw cosily asleep in dry, sandy caves, at the foot of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... a flying plane.... And now I see the sun—it is sinking behind a rugged line of snowy peaks and the light is dimming.... It is gone now, but it is not dark, for moonlight, pale and silvery, is shimmering on a choppy sea.... Now it is the darkest hour, but it is never black, only a dark, dark grey, for the roof of the world is pricked with a million points of light.... The grey of the east is shot with the rose of dawn.... The rose ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... reading by gulps while the chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was his own name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken up into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trained reporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, but telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which his name recurred again and again. The ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... pine-trees, two miles south of Royan. It was no easy matter to find this spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loo joined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helped to make fast in a choppy sea. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... stood very steadily, but she was terribly rough to ride, and the howdah swung about like a boat in a choppy sea. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... itself to the very last ounce, with tremendous courage and good heart; there was always a touch of fear that Gray Peter, plunging unabated over rough and smooth, might be running himself out. But Sally would not maintain one pace. She was apt to shorten her stride for choppy going, and she would lengthen it like a witch on the level. She kept changing the elevation of her head. She ran freely, looking about her and taking note of what she saw, so that she gave an indescribable effect of enjoying the gallop just as much as her ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... splendid sea boat, but in the course of an hour the choppy waves kicked up by the storm set her to bobbing about like the proverbial cork. The gloom of the night had changed to a blackness that made it impossible to see an arm's length away. Standing on the starboard bridge, I could scarcely distinguish ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... is always to be expected in crossing the Channel, but my friends said in going up the Channel we would not get those choppy waves, and that I would find that the Hela ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... descriptions, we came out upon the open road again. And now, there being no surface at all to speak of, we perforce went slow, and I watched where, just in front, a string of lorries lumbered heavily along, pitching and rolling very much like boats in a choppy sea. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... feasible. It is the slow emission of breath that gives to long, rapid phrases a smooth and limpid quality; and it is the taking of breath at inopportune moments, as badly taught singers are obliged to do, that makes such phrases choppy and ineffectual. This fault is never observable in artists trained in the real traditional Italian school of singing—not necessarily by Italians, but in the traditional school of the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... of space to even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person. One's grounds lose all individuality thus treated. A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn. Do not centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into the background. Make ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... a bridge builder named Elton Reeves. Elton had a pleasant, sun-burnt face and a little choppy moustache beneath which his teeth glistened ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... choppy 'Pentland Firth,' we now entered on still rougher waters, encountering an Atlantic swell, caused by the previous storm. How the ship rolled! Walking on deck became impossible, while sitting in our deck chairs was nearly as bad, for they threatened to slide from ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy country ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... first morning of the voyage, the vessel ran into a nasty choppy sea, which steadily grew worse. There were twenty-five passengers at the captain's table for dinner, and he addressed them in an amiable ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... theme is butchered to death. There is endless repetition in different keys, with different instrumental nuances, yet of true, intellectual and emotional mood-development there is no trace; short-breathed, chippy, choppy phrasing, and never ten bars of a big, straightforward melody. All this proves that Wagner had not the power of sustained thoughts like Mozart or Beethoven. And his orchestration, with its daubing, its overladen, hysterical color! What a humbug ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... dogs from disease. Lieutenant Greely, Dr. Pavy, and Lieutenant Lockwood each led a party, but to the last named belong the honors, for he, with Sergeant Brainard and an Esquimau, made his way northward over ice that looked like a choppy sea suddenly frozen into the rigidity of granite, until he reached latitude 83 deg. 24' north—the most northerly point then attained by any man—and still the record marking Arctic journey for ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the river was now beginning to behave in an unusual way. Where, heretofore, the water had been choppy and whitecapped, the water now broke in longer, foam-crested waves. Owing to the course of the wind the waves were rolling upstream. Within five minutes from the time when Dave first called attention ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... was rather choppy, in spite of the calmness of the day; consequently, the Catwhisker was unable to make a record run to the head of the St. Lawrence River. Ontario is not a placid lake, although it has not the heavy roughness that characterizes Lake Huron. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... it was quite rough and choppy this streak lay perfectly calm, glistening in the sun with ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... impetuous streams laden with the milky silt of countless glaciers tore their way through the rocks to the sea, could be seen receding inland through the fog. Then the foul weather settled over the sea again; and by the first {51} week of August, with baffling winds and choppy sea, the St. Paul was veering southwestward where Alaska projects a long arm into the Pacific. Chirikoff had passed the line where forests dwarf to willows, and willows to sedges, and sedges to endless leagues of rolling tundras. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... early, as the wind had changed, but the lake was very rough and a heavy choppy sea was running. Before we were half way across the lake nearly all were sea-sick, passengers and sailors. The poor fellow at the helm stuck to his post casting up his accounts at the same time, putting on an air of ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... which Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost undiminished swells—the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the wind and occasionally breaking. It was a thirty-foot sea in the open. In the lane it was somewhat less—not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all round about was heaving in it—tumbled about, rising and falling, the surface ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... the eloquence of Borrow, though the thought might have been his; it may not be in that grand style of which we hear so much and read so little, but—and this is the substance of the matter—it is interesting, it is moving, and worth pages of choppy dialogue. You read it, first of all, it may be in your youth, when your heart burnt within you as you wondered what was going to happen, but you can return to it in sober age and read it over again with a smile ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow |
