"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and rubbed his nose against the canoe, and nibbled a lily root before he noticed me. A shoal of minnows were playing among the grasses near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a reed—a most difficult feat, I should think. He was trying some contortion that I couldn't make out, when a deer stepped down the bank and never saw me. Doing nothing pays one ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... reached perhaps within a mile of the pirate sloop before they found the water too shoal to venture any farther with the sail. It was then that the boat was lowered as the lieutenant had planned, and the boatswain went ahead to sound, the two vessels, with their sails still hoisted but empty of wind, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... for salmon. Immediately on opening the inlet we encountered a rapid current setting outward, and, after rowing a mile and a half to the N.W.b.W., the breadth of the stream varying from one third of a mile to four or five hundred yards, came to some shoal water extending quite across. Landing on the south shore and hauling the boats up above high-water mark, we rambled up the banks of the stream, which are low next the water, but rise almost immediately to the height of about two hundred feet. As we proceeded we gradually heard the noise of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... dam the mountains close in tightly upon the narrow valley. Log cabins and a few simple frame houses nestle upon diminutive farms; the wild beauty of shoal and eddy, bouldered channel and lake-like stretches of pool, rocky walls and timber-clad peaks, begins to charm the stranger and draw him on and on through scenery as attractive as grand toss of mountains and delve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... first boat; and signallin' the channel to Dave Sinclair in the boat behind, with my hand; this way and so. But the second day Dave ran her aground. Young Lewis wouldn't allow that we knew how to lift a boat off a shoal up North. I let him break all the ropes tryin' to drag her off; then I showed him. Meanwhile, all this time, Grimy Caswell was dressin' himself up like a redskin in my boat; and smearin' his face with red earth. When it got dusk-like, he hid in the bushes; ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the lip. But what a great and critical sorrow does leave behind is often far worse than the sorrow itself has been. It is a change in the inner man, which strands him, as Guy Darrell seemed stranded, upon the shoal of the Present; which the more he strives manfully to bear his burden warns him the more from dwelling on the Past; and the more impressively it enforces the lesson of the vanity of human wishes strikes the more from his reckoning illusive hopes in the Future. Thus out of our threefold ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two-quart tin pail. Mr. Bigglethorpe had fastened a handle cut out of the bush to the dish cover, thus converting it into a scoop-net. Barefooted, Marjorie stood in the shallow water, scattering a little oatmeal, when up came a shoal of minnows eager for the food thus provided. At one fell swoop, the young fisherwoman netted a dozen of the shiny little creatures, and transferred them all alive to the tin pail. Mr. Errol had a great ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and assumes the aspect of a tiny flower, with the white denticulations for petals and the two bright red dots, the stigmata at the bottom, for stamens. When the grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel yard. It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones. The maggot has ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... receives ships of any ordinary burthen, the port there being called Topsham. But now by the application, and at the expense, of the citizens the channel of the river is so widened, deepened, and cleansed from the shoal, which would otherwise interrupt the navigation, that the ships come now quite up to the city, and there with ease both deliver and take in ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... they thought themselves clear, and were sailing forward with a strong gale, they were, at the beginning of the night, surprised in their course by a sudden shock, of which the cause was easily discovered, for they were thrown upon a shoal, and, by the speed of their course, fixed too fast for any hope of escaping. Here even the intrepidity of Drake was shaken, and his dexterity baffled; but his piety, however, remained still the same, and what he could not now promise himself from his own ability, he hoped ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... shivered, hung a moment, then backed clear of the Cumberland, in whose side there was now a ragged and a gaping hole. The pilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head upstream. The water was shoal; she had to run up the James some way before she could turn and come back to attack the Congress. Her keel was in the mud; she was creeping now like a land turtle, and all the iron shore was firing at her.... She turned at last in freer water and came down the Roads. Through the port we could ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and tree-covered shoal in the China Sea was an impossible task. All the Orient could do was to visit the principal islands and institute inquiries among the fishermen and small traders. At last, the previous night, a Malay, tempted ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... because you call them fishes and not fish," replied Vavasor. "If the fishes were a shoal of herrings or mackerel, I doubt if you would—at least for many times. If, on the other hand, the men and women in the concert-room were as oddly distinguished one from another as these different fishes, you would prefer ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... which gave that inexpressible sense of brotherhood. Science has given us the steamship,—it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,—the sliding current, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of the boats up on the shore side of a big shoal, and all hands, with sacks, spread out and began picking. Every now and again the clouds thinned before the face of the moon, and we could see the big oysters quite distinctly. In almost no time sacks were filled and carried back to the boats, ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... New York local colour. Books which have a strong sense of place, and are born out of particular streets—and especially streets of an odd, rich, and well-worn flavour—are not any too frequent. Mr. Holliday's Gissingesque appreciation of the humours of landladies and all the queer fish that shoal through the backwaters of New York lodging houses makes this Broome Street neighbourhood exceedingly pleasant for the pilgrim to examine. It was in Mr. Holliday's honour that we sallied into a Hudson Street haberdashery, just opposite the channel of Broome Street, and adorned ourself with ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... who don their best for the occasion, as for a temple festival, and I am suffered to accompany some of them. All the boats in the port would seem to have been hired for the visitors, so huge is the shoal hovering about the ironclad as we arrive. It is not possible for such a number of sightseers to go on board at once, and we have to wait while hundreds are being alternately admitted and dismissed. But the waiting in the cool sea air is not unpleasant; and the spectacle of the popular joy is ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... across the deck like maddened beasts. Now Joe Hawkridge had lingered, on pretext of making sure that one forward gun could be fired, if needs be, as a distress signal should the ship open her seams or strike upon a shoal. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... "You never sees 'em singly, their pirate proas, or junks, allers a sailing with a consort. I ought ter know; 'cause, 'fore I ever jined Cap'en Gillespie, I wer in a Hongkong trader; and many's the time we've been chased by a whole shoal of 'em when going to Singapore or ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... water by this means; but the even colour of it seemed to indicate that there were no hidden dangers to guard against anywhere except just inside the entrance of the inner harbour, where the presence of a shoal obstructing the fairway was clearly indicated by a certain glassiness of surface, which was duly recorded upon ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... accidental waifs that haply meet to part again upon the waves of time, but rather like two happy children playing King and Queen, drifting in a golden boat along the crystal stream of life, never so much as touching on a shoal, but gliding on, sometimes plying silver oars, and sometimes spreading a purple sail to catch the sandal-scented breeze that blows from Malaya loaded with the lazy odour of the South, letting all the hours slip past us unperceived, till ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... time to raise her hands and eyes in mute appeal to heaven, before a shoal of new arrivals—"flower girls," "strawberry girls," "match girls," "morning stars," "evening stars," "springs," "summers," "nuns," "bacchantes," etc., claimed her attention; while a troupe of "brigands," "monks," "troubadours," "clowns," "harlequin," "kings," ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the Matutina crossed the dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre—a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves—an arena, round and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... alongside the schooner, plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had made, and the Sylph, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of the shoal. The deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist the sails it was obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked frantically in a bright, unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now continuously aflame and tossing up red-hot ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shoal work of those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... rejoined them in Cancale Bay. At daylight next morning our signal was made to chase an enemy's lugger in shore. We were gaining rapidly on her when she ran in between some rocks; we then prepared the boats to attack and bring her out, but as we stood in for that purpose we found the water suddenly shoal, and a battery we had not perceived opened its fire on us. We were obliged to haul off, but not before we had fired several shot at both lugger and battery. The latter again fired and knocked away our mizzen top-gallant mast. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... publicity, a shoal of inquiries, and maybe a scandal," I answered thoughtfully. "If Jack has intentionally disappeared for a day or two and all at once finds himself notorious he will ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... that they have nothing to sell. Then follows a direction, which they obey, to cast the net on the right side of the boat. Perhaps they thought the stranger—for it is clear that as yet they had no suspicion of his identity—had seen some sign of a moving shoal which had escaped them. They secure a great haul of fish. Then John has an inkling of the truth; and I know no words which thrill me more strangely than the simple expression that bursts from his lips: It is the Lord! With characteristic impetuosity Peter leaps into the water, and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile from the shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... household, for the little mistress of one day lay in her chamber quite unconscious of her lost authority. Some twelve hours later, the hoped-for heir of Braelands was born, and died, and Sophy, on the very outermost shoal of life, felt the wash and murmur of that dark river which flows to the ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... not detail the incidents that occurred during the remainder of our run to the African coast. There is not much variety in a journey upon the sea. A shoal of porpoises,—a whale or two,—some flying-fish,—a few species of sea-birds,—sharks and dolphins,—are nearly all the living creatures that are ever seen, even upon the longest voyages. Most of our course lay due southward, and directly across the ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... piles, with the water flowing beneath it, and Deerslayer had already discovered that the lake was of a great depth, he was fain to ask an explanation of this singular circumstance. Hurry solved the difficulty by telling him that on this spot alone, a long, narrow shoal, which extended for a few hundred yards in a north and south direction, rose within six or eight feet of the surface of the lake, and that Hutter had driven piles into it, and placed his habitation on them, for the purpose ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... that, after nightfall, the officers who volunteered to command the fireships were assembled on board the Caledonia, and supplied with instructions according to the plan previously laid down by myself. The Imperieuse had proceeded to the edge of the Boyart Shoal, close to which she anchored with an explosion-vessel made fast to her stern, it being my intention, after firing the one of which I was about to take charge, to return to her for the other, to be employed ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... jasper light Greet jejune souls within this shoal, Where witches lure each helot's eye, Each gyving hoodlum, seer and sage. In blazing tankards gleams a sight As o'er their heads giant rocks roll, Of skinless nudes that gasp and die As poisoned lizards vent their rage. Then, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... she had no Texas on board of her, her pilot-house being seated on the roof of the cabin. Her engines were small, being no doubt reduced in weight to make her carrying capacity equal to passing over the shoal places she would find before her, her spars were ready for use, and she had no roof over her main-deck. She could get along very well in dry weather, but what would she do when a rain-storm came up? Tom ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... Spanish Fort. The Westermost point of Mindanao. Two Proes of the Sologues laden from Manila. An Isle to the West of Sebo. Walking Canes. Isle of Batts, very large; and numerous Turtles and Manatee. A dangerous Shoal. They sail by Panay belonging to the Spaniards, and others of the Philippine Islands. Isle of Mindora. Two Barks taken. A further account of the Isle Luconia, and the City and Harbour of Manila. They go off Pulo Condore ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... are indeed as near shore as you think," said the captain, "I know what you say must be true, for in shoal water such a wave will surely carry all before it. But are you certain there ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bembridge or Nab Light-vessel. This vessel carries two bright fixed lights, one hoisted on each of her masts, which can be seen at night ten miles off, and of course it can be distinguished from the revolving Warner light. Farther off to the west, at the end of a shoal extending off Selsea Bill, is another ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... his ways then the hard one, and he with his hand-shoal, Himself over the sand the sea-plain a-treading, The warths wide away; shone the world's candle, The sun slop'd from the southward; so dreed they their journey, And went their ways stoutly unto where the earls' refuge, The banesman of ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... that foul crime; and out of the heavens he sent a storm, and swept the ship far from her course. Day after day the storm drove her, amid foam and blinding mist, till they knew no longer where they were, for the sun was blotted from the skies. And at last the ship struck on a shoal, amid low isles of mud and sand, and the waves rolled over her and through her, and the heroes lost all ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... was all about it. They had grown accustomed to better food, finer bread, store-bought clothes and higher wages, general extravagance—ay, folk had learned to reckon with money more, that was the matter. And now the money was gone again, had slipped away like a shoal of herring out to sea—'twas dire distress for them all, and ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... de daughter o' de wreckin' mahater, a Nassau niggah by de name o' Aleck Gator. W'en de crew done got us off de shoal and was towin' de wreck in, dere she was, stahndin' on de dock, waitin' fer her daddy. Big, overgrown gal, black an' devilish-lookin', noways handsome; but somehow I jes' couldn't keep my eyes offen her. I notice ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept. We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously. But we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers hovered at the river's mouth; that the Belgic had been beached out there on a shoal by a "sub," and that we would be lucky if our throats were not cut in the water as we tried to swim ashore after we had been blown out of ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... this time she ran her keel upon a sand bank so solidly that she stopped dead, with the sails above cracking! There was a hullabaloo for a few minutes, now I tell you. Shouts, commands, the grinding of the schooner's keel, the slatting of sails. The Sea Spell had driven so hard and fast upon the shoal that she canted neither to port, or starboard. And although the sea was still so that she would not be beaten by the waves, it looked much to me as though she were piled up on this unfriendly coast for good ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... wave sent rippling outward by the movement of the boat, there was a rush and splash a dozen yards in front, as a shoal of good-sized fish darted seaward, some in their hurry leaping right out of the water, to fall in again with a plunge, which scared the rest in ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal—there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing—against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... omitted, so that, as built, the pier contains eight caissons and five 53-ft. trusses. The caissons supporting the trusses are 8 ft. wide and 12 ft. long, and those in the pier head are 12 by 12 ft. On account of the shoal water and the great height of the outer caissons in comparison with their cross-section, it seemed advisable to mould them in two sections. The reinforcement in the side walls consisted of round 1/2-in. rods horizontally, and 3/8-in. rods vertically, spaced as shown on Fig. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Reinforced Concrete Pier Construction • Eugene Klapp
... This was, it is supposed, the place where Jimenez, the discoverer of California, lost his life in 1533, and where Cortez planted his ill-fated colony two years later. In entering the bay, the flagship ran on a shoal, and they were obliged to cut away her masts and lighten her of her cargo of provisions, a great part of which was wet and lost. Here Vizcaino landed and built a stockade fort, and leaving the dismantled flagship and ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... mined areas round them could also be laid in which to catch the submarine. Another device was that of altering the position of light vessels and buoys with the object of putting a submarine on to a shoal. ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... its bed was seen to be chiefly limestone rock. There are two rivers flowing into Newton Inlet from fifty to seventy-five feet in width, navigable for canoes at high tide about half a mile, when shoal ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Hudson Bay Company in the interior. There I obtained, at fabulous expense, a train of pure Esquimaux dogs, and started on January 31 through a region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. On February 7 we reached Cedar Lake, thence sped on to Lake Winnipegoosis and Shoal Lake, across a belt of forest to Waterhen River, which carries the surplus floods of Lake Winnipegoosis to Lake Manitoba, the whole length of which we traversed, camping at night on the wooded shore, and on February 19 arrived ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... shoal spaces which lie between them and the mainland, two-thirds dry at low-water, and the remaining third becomes a system of lagoons whose distribution is controlled by the natural drift of the North Sea as it forces its way through the intervals between ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... observer noticed salmon fry descending seawards, and he took occasion to capture a considerable number by admitting them into the salmon cruive. On examination, he found about one-fifth of each shoal to be what he considered sea-trout. Wisely regarding this as a favourable opportunity of ascertaining to what extent they would afterwards "suffer a sea change," he marked all the smolts of that species (about ninety in number) by cutting off the whole of the adipose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Here he stopped, and, with a couple of dexterous turns of the wrist, pegged the bird on its back with outstretched wings. As was only natural, the crow began to shriek at once and beat the air with its claws. In a few seconds the clamor had attracted the attention of a bevy of wild crows on a shoal a few hundred yards away, where they were discussing something that looked like a corpse. Half a dozen crows flew over at once to see what was going on, and also, as it proved, to attack the pinioned bird. Gunga Dass, who ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Coco was sighted at daylight. Later on we saw all the other islands of the Preparis group in succession, and were able to congratulate ourselves on having made a good landfall. At noon we had sailed 120 miles, and were in lat. 14 deg. 5' N. and long. 93 deg. 29' E., the Krisha Shoal being distant 150 miles. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... now; there will be a white squall some day, and they will go down with those lateen sails of theirs, and be food for the very prey they were going to catch; and if you continue living here, you may eat one of your neighbours in the shape of a shoal of red mullets, when it is the season. The great secret, we cannot penetrate that with all our philosophy, my dear Herbert. "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Barren, barren, barren! And yet what a grand world it is! Look at this bay, these blue waters, the mountains, and these chestnuts, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ground, and could not find a whale for many a weary day, and the novices said: "They were all killed before we sailed;" and how, as uncommon ill luck is apt to be balanced by uncommon good luck, one fine evening they fell in with a whole shoal of whales at play, jumping clean into the air sixty feet long, and coming down each with a splash like thunder; even the captain had never seen such a game; and how the crew were for lowering the boats and going at them, but the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... go, and veered to two cables, which did not check her. We then let go the sheet anchor and gave her two cables on that also, but she would not look at it. By this time we had shoaled our water from ten to eight fathoms, and the fury of the gale increasing, we continued to shoal into seven and six fathoms, when the pilots and officers advised the cutting away the masts as the only means of saving the ship and the lives of the people. I resisted their advice for some time, in hopes that a ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... they steered along this island to the southwest, and fell in with two islands at its extremity, and passed between them; that on the north side is named Bolyna, and that on the south Bamdym. Sailing to the west-southwest a matter of fourteen leagues, they fell in with a white bottom, which was a shoal below the water; and the black men they carried with them told them to draw near to the coast of the island, as it was deeper there, and that was more in the direction of Borneo, for from that neighborhood the island of Borneo could already be sighted. This same day they reached and anchored ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... enormous shoal of grampuses, large black fish, about 25 feet in length, something between a dolphin and a whale, with the very ugliest jaws, or rather snouts, imaginable. They are of a predatory and ferocious disposition, attacking ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... he was evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact, run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... fell into the river, he was stunned, and the water carried him a long way down the stream and finally lodged him on a sand shoal. Near this shoal was a lodge of Under Water People (S[u]'-y[e]-t[)u]p'-pi), an old man, his wife, and two daughters. This old man was very rich: he had great flocks of geese, swans, ducks, and other ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... would better take the tiller this time!" he said. "The bottom seems to be shoal all about here. And if you and Miss Everton will sit a little forward, Hilda, you will be more comfortable; I fear I cannot help dripping like hoary Nereus all over ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... receive donations for charitable purposes, and annually relieve great numbers of poor seamen and seamen's widows and orphans; and as they alone supply outward-bound ships with ballast, on notice of any shoal or obstruction arising in the river Thames, they immediately direct their men and lighters to work on it till it is removed. The profits arising to the Corporation by this ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a certain milky look in the waters of the Mediterranean which I never saw anywhere else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in the water like a cloud. Once there was a shoal of porpoises playing round us, and they curled and dived and flopped in the warm ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... young to be much of a politician, and he was not in the priesthood. His transparency was of a totally different order from Captain Con's, which proclaimed itself genuine by the inability to conceal a shoal of subterfuges. The younger cousin's features carried a something invisible behind them, and she was just perceptive enough to spy it, and it excited her suspicions. Irishmen both she and her brother had to learn to like, owing to their bad repute for stability: they are, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Pelican feeding her young with blood taken from her own wounded bosom. A number of Pelicans form a semicircle in shallow parts of the sea near the coast, standing on their long legs; and thus including a shoal of small fish, they gradually approach the shore; and seizing the fish as they advance, receive them into a pouch under their throats; and bringing them to land regurgitate them for the use of their young, or for their future support. Adanson, Voyage to Senegal. In this country the parent ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank, stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger would lie there, high and dry, as soon as ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... perhaps, could do but little to remove the impediments to the navigation of this immense river. This end could only be obtained by taking advantage of the natural causes which have made a deep channel in one part and a shoal out a few yards lower down. Dame Nature, like dames in general, may be easily led if we can only persuade her that she is acting ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance, 5 With the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... time in the Thames, opposite Whitehall. Years had rolled on, but the Quaker mate who had so materially assisted the flying prince—by keeping the secret—arranging the escape with the crew, and when, in fear of danger from a privateer, rowing the prince ashore, and in shoal water carrying him on his shoulders to the land, near the village of Fecamp, in Normandy, yet he had not been with the king to claim any reward. This escape took place in 1651, and nearly twenty ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... five-and-twenty, he had been beguiled from that Arcadia by wily persons who took advantage of his innocent youth, who initiated him into the metropolitan mysteries which sadden the soul and deplete the pocket, who finally abandoned him upon the shoal of a youngest brother's allowance when his father passed away from the place in Lincolnshire, and young Sir Grant, reigning in the old baronet's stead, deemed himself generous in making the family scapegrace any provision at all. Yet such were the outlines of Mr. Musselwhite's ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Should a shoal of small fry Attempt to draw nigh, With a flap of his tail, Th' imperial whale Makes them pay for their rashness, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat. You see they were all of them experienced men. They had years of practice behind them. They knew their ship, and they knew the ocean. There wasn't a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn't know. Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where neither his father nor grand-father ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out confidently to swim the remaining ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... good that our own National Lifeboat Institution would do well to study the model for use in places where a sandy beach and shoal water make it sometimes impossible to launch the type of lifeboat now ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... but, having no Theseus amongst them, consoled herself, as it is said, like Ariadne, with Bacchus.(675) This might be a fable, like that of her Cretan Highness—no matter; the fry of little anecdotes are so numerous now, that throwing one more into the shoal is of no consequence, if it entertains you for a Moment; nor need you believe what I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the steamer against the Hudson River Railroad, crossing the Peekskill River. It is said that an old skipper, Jans Peek, ran up this stream, years before the railroad was built, and did not know that he had left the Hudson, or rather that the Hudson was "left" until he ran aground in the shoal water of the bay. The next morning he discovered that it was a goodly land, and the place bears ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... frigate, too, seemed to be aware that it was the moment for the siesta of vessels as well as of men; for she clewed up her royals and topgallant-sails, brailed her jib and spanker, hauled up her courses, and lay on the water as motionless as if sticking on a shoal. The two vessels were barely long gunshot apart, and, under ordinary circumstances, the larger might have seen fit to attack the smaller in boats; but the lesson just given was a sufficient pledge to the French against the renewal of any such attempt, and they scarcely paid ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we found ourselves nearing the land on the eastern shore of the bay, where we observe the railway comes out to meet us. The water on this side is so shoal for a distance from the shore that no ships of any considerable burden can float in it, so that the railway is carried out on piles into the deep water for a distance of nearly a mile. Here we land, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... ago—in 1878, to speak precisely—a ship laden with fragrant cedar logs from the valley of the Daintree River—140 miles to the north— touched on Kennedy Shoal, 20 miles to the south-east of Dunk Island. Crippled though she was she managed to make Cardwell, where she was temporarily patched up, and whence she set sail for Melbourne. It was the critical month of March, and the MERCHANT—clumsy and cumbersome, but a good and safe ship given ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... shores, were studded not only with canoes, but at the period of our visit the skulls and skeletons were strewed about in all directions.' This method generally prevailed on the neighboring coasts, as at Shoal Water Bay, etc. Farther up the Columbia, as at the Cascades, a different form was adopted, which is ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... with the salt. Down to the outer tip of the wharf ran a narrow-gauge track of rusted iron rails, and over the track on occasion plied little straddlebug handcars. Because the water offshore was shoal ships could not come in very close but must lie well out in the lagoon and their unloadings and their reloadings were carried on by means of whale-boats ferrying back and forth between ship side and dock side with the push cars to facilitate the freight movement ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... as he told me, and as I looked down into the clear, deep water, that looked almost black from its depth, I could see quite a shoal of fish, with their sides barred with dark stripes, sailing slowly about between me and the dead leaves and rotten branches which strewed the bottom ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... of ropes, valves, and pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or obstruction these bellows are to be filled with air, and thus buoyed up the ship is expected to float lightly and gayly over the shoal which would otherwise have proved a serious interruption to her voyage. The model, which is about eighteen or twenty inches long and has the appearance of having been whittled with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar-box, is built without any elaboration or ornament or any extra apparatus ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... could enquire as to the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flittered into the water with ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice, To our own lips. He's here in ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... ago, presented an extensive surface of land covered with wood: there is not now a vestige of land to be seen; the spot where it existed being only known to voyagers by a shoal which is visible at low water. But not only have the islands been swept away, but the mainland along the west end of the lake seems gradually being encroached upon and engulphed by the waves; an undeniable proof of which is, that the old post of Norway House, which formerly ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Sunday clothes, scampered by to places of refuge in the wide doorways of the big square; the coaches rumbled hurriedly on amidst the downpour; umbrellas came and went and their black tops, glistening with rain, collided and intertwined like a shoal of tortoises. Presently it cleared up and Manuel left the cafe; it was still too early to return to the house; he crossed the Plaza de Oriente and stopped on the Viaduct, watching from that point the people strolling along ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... out over the smooth waters of the Solent, where one or two yachts and a heavy black schooner were creeping up on the tide before the morning breeze. She drummed reflectively with her fingers on the low stone wall. Beneath them a few gulls whirled and screamed over a shoal of little fish. One of the birds had a singular cry, as if it ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we knew not; the only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation was, if we might happen into some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... say, fairly rose to the occasion, for the Admiral was off under forced draught in the dog-watch. Chancing things, however, when weathering a promontory off Montreuil, he contrived to pile up his craft on a shoal in a bad position, and he would have missed trans-shipment at Boulogne altogether had he not got himself taken off in a passing craft which was under charge of soldier-officers who were likewise making for the packet. So he ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... characteristic of this lower part of the Tocantins. Flocks of them were seen the last two or three days of our journey, hovering above at an immense height. Towards night, we were obliged to cast anchor over a shoal in the middle of the river to await the ebb tide. The wind blew very strongly, and this, together with the incoming flow, caused such a heavy sea that it was impossible to sleep. The vessel rolled and pitched until every bone in our bodies ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... to stave in, utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has done it. First: In the year the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the ship. dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in less than ten minutes she settled down and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... coming seldom to Papeete, on the produce of the land. There was a little stream that ran not far away, in which he bathed, and down this on occasion would come a shoal of fish. Then the natives would assemble with spears, and with much shouting would transfix the great startled things as they hurried down to the sea. Sometimes Strickland would go down to the reef, and come back with a basket of small, coloured ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... and put my feet on the table after we pass the Shoal of Seals," he explained. "That is the time I take my 'watch below,' as we call it, when we come down for a rest or a sleep. But you are eager to hear the story. Very good. Here goes. A good many years ago an expedition ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... became pretty evident to all who understood the subject, that the two little lug-sails that were "eating into the wind," as the sailors express it, would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other shoal. Even the landsmen had some feverish suspicions of the truth, and the steerage passengers were already holding a secret conference on the possibility of hiding the pursued in some of the recesses of the ship. "Such things were often done," one ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald shoal the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of sea—the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with the more majestic heave of the Pacific. The Casco scarce avowed a shock; but there are times ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mound, pile, ridge, dike, heap, drift, embankment, brink, shore, rivage, rim, brim, marge, strand; shallow, shoal, bar; levee; terreplein. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the fisher draws it up the rivulets, and every now and then pulls it up to look for his success. Sometimes he nets a great many at a time, and especially if he wait the arrival of the flood, because a large shoal mostly comes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... might, when the Willi-Waw struck. At the same instant her mainmast crashed over the bow. Five wild minutes followed. All hands held on while the hull upheaved and smashed down on the brittle coral and the warm seas swept over them. Grinding and crunching, the Willi-Waw worked itself clear over the shoal patch and came solidly to rest in the comparatively smooth ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... purposes of the city of New Orleans; some were held by religious corporations or persons, others seem to have been reserved for future disposition. To these must be added a parcel called the Batture, which requires more particular description. It is understood to have been a shoal or elevation of the bottom of the river adjacent to the bank of the suburbs of St. Mary, produced by the successive depositions of mud during the annual inundations of the river, and covered with water only during those inundations. At all other seasons it has been used by the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... July morning, under an awning at the end of a rickety pier, waiting for the excursion-steamer which was to convey us to the distant sand-banks over which the clear waters lap, away down below the green-sloped highlands of Neversink,—sea-shoal banks, from which silvery fishes were warning us off with their ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... nervous, though he was as familiar with the bay as he was with the apartments in his own house. He knew every island and head land, every rock and shoal, and the situation of every light-house; but the barometer had warned him of nothing less than a hurricane. The Waldo was an old vessel, and barely sea-worthy, even for a summer voyage, to the region of hurricanes. He had, therefore, many misgivings, as he paced the quarter-deck, watching the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the writer was unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verse of Adelaide Procter. "In the spring of the year 1853 I observed a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical."[296] The contributions had been large and frequent under an assumed name, when at Christmas 1854 he discovered that Miss Mary Berwick was the daughter of his old and dear ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and shoal obscurely mapped, And hauntings of the gray sea-wolf, The palmy Western Key lay lapped In the warm washing ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... accompanied us to the steamer, also Webster and R. Wood, and J. and T. Dean, and Abraham Taylor came with us in the steamer. Lunched, left us at one. Left New York at 11. The day truly delightful; only 7 passengers, dined at 4, but little wind and that not favourable; a shoal of porpoises, 6 and 8 close together. Gave T. D.'s servants two dollars. Am much pleased with the Captain, mate and crew, and also the passengers. The steamer left us at 1 and the pilot at half past ten. Paid for washing ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... along in these dusky passages, where, from time to time, they were like to be choked by the dust which their acts of violence excited, the soldiers were obliged to be relieved oftener than once, and the bulky Corporal Grace-be-here himself puffed and blew like a grampus that has got into shoal water. Cromwell alone continued, with unabated zeal, to push on his researches—to encourage the soldiers, by the exhortations which they best understood, against fainting for lack of faith—and to secure, by sentinels at ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... bore away under her lofty and spreading canvas, cleaving the billows before her, manned by an able crew, and under the guidance of experienced officers; the finger of science to point the course of her progress, the faithful chart to warn of the hidden rock and the shoal, the long line and the quadrant to measure her march and prove her position. The poor little hooker cleft not the billows, each wave lifted her on its crest like a sea-bird; but the three inexperienced fishermen to ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... they put to sea. So far fortune had steadily befriended them. Now the reign of misfortune began. Not far had they gone before the vessel was driven ashore by a storm, and broke her keel on a protruding shoal. This was not a serious disaster. A new keel was made, and the old one planted upright in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... lake shores, on the margin of which may exist a commercial city or town engaged in foreign or domestic trade, but is made to embrace waters, where there is not only no such city or town, but no commerce of any kind. By it a bay or sheet of shoal water is called a harbor, and appropriations demanded from Congress to deepen it with a View to draw commerce to it or to enable individuals to build up a town or city on its margin upon speculation and for their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... a clergyman from one of the polite towns, went into the country, and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and maidens lying together on a bed. He was no sooner out of the church, then attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, 'Sir, do you think we and our daughters are naughty, because we allow bundling?' 'You lead yourselves into temptation by it.' They all replied at once, 'Sir, have you been told thus, or has experience taught it you?' The Levite began to lift up his eyes, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... and veered; the flood sinks slowly back to its abysses—abandoning its plunder,—scattering its piteous waifs over bar and dune, over shoal and marsh, among the silences of the mango-swamps, over the long low reaches of sand-grasses and drowned weeds, for more than a hundred miles. From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift;—from their cypress groves the vultures ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... as though some of the ships were sailing. It was true. Slowly they drew away from the others, and presently I thought they had stopped again. Surely two of them were stuck together, then three were fast on a shoal. Boats, like black bugs in the water, came and went between them and the others. After a long time the two that were together got apart and away. But the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ourselves to be in an open sea, we shaped our course north-by-east. At noon we were in 29 deg. 32' S. Lat.; at night about three hours before daybreak, we again unexpectedly came upon a low-lying coast, a level, broken country with reefs all round it. We saw no high land or mainland, so that this shoal is to be carefully avoided as very dangerous to ships that wish to touch at this coast. It is fully ten miles in length, lying in ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... canoeing which rewarded the white men for their faith in their disreputable henchman. Charley played with the light craft in the great volume of stream as a feather might yield to a gentle breeze. The canoe sidled in to the shore through a threatening shoal of rocky outcrop, and the first stage ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... a vessel hurled, A dismal wreck, upon the rockbound shoal, Around its hulk th' encircling billows curled, Now thro' its splintered deck the wavelet stole, Then, issuing forth, it gurgled through a hole Staved by the tempest's fury in its side, Afar off did its shattered timbers roll, Its treasures all were scattered in the tide. The headland ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they actually included 'poor White' and his family, Gillian was angered and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... water in front of us, from being smooth and oily, suddenly became agitated, and I saw that we had startled and were driving before us a shoal of good-sized fish, some of which, in their eagerness to escape, sprang out of the water and fell back with ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... myself," the manuscript goes on, "I was lying in a pebbly shoal. The moon was aloft in heaven. I was cold to the heart, cold to the marrow of my bones. I could move neither hand nor foot, and thought I was dead. By slow degrees a little power came back, and I managed at length, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... Again, when a shoal of fish has made its appearance on the reef, a number of superstitious ceremonies have to be performed before the people may go and spear them in the water. On the eve of the fishing-day the medicine-man of the tribe causes a quantity ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... symptoms of a cough or influenza. The degree to which this system of advertising has since been carried has rendered it a bore and a nuisance. The usual result of almost any great and original achievement is, the production of a shoal of brainless imitators, who are "neither ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the elder replied positively. "There isn't a better master afloat. He can smell shoal water. I was certain we'd hear from him when the Sorsogon was back from Calcutta. Do you suppose, William, that he took the Nautilus about the Horn and—?" Laurel wondered at the unmannerly way in which he gulped his coffee. "He might have driven into the Antarctic winter," he ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pumps. They were relieved every quarter of an hour, and by dint of the greatest exertions barely succeeded in keeping down the water. So heavily did the vessel labour that Munro bore away for Dantzig; but when night came on the storm increased in fury. They were now in shoal water, and the vessel, already half waterlogged, became quite unmanageable in the furious waves. Beyond the fact that they were fast driving on to the Pomeranian coast, they were ignorant of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... aside. They then speedily transferred their contents in lots to huge wickerwork trays, arranging them with a turn of the hand so that they might show to the best advantage. And when the large tray-like baskets were all set out, Florent could almost fancy that a whole shoal of fish had got stranded there, still quivering with life, and gleaming with rosy nacre, scarlet coral, and milky pearl, all the soft, pale, sheeny hues ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... difficulty awaited us. We fired two guns, but no person came off, and not a single boat could anywhere be seen. The whole shore seemed deserted. Nevertheless, we discerned houses in the harbour, and stood towards the entrance; but finding the water shoal suddenly, the captain let go the anchor, and sent a boat in, with the mate and three of my companions. They brought word, to my great mortification, that nearly all the inhabitants had gone to fish in other parts of the bay, and that but one old man, with the females and children of three ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... next moment they were caught up in the toils of a net constructed of towels knotted together, stretching across the path, and held at each end by two swift runners who swept them along at a headlong pace, catching up a shoal of stray fish on the way until even the stalwart dredgers were compelled, from the very weight of their "take," to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... time afforded a glimpse into the countless ages of the past, when these crinoids, so rare and so rarely seen nowadays, formed a prominent feature of the animal kingdom. I could see, without great effort of the imagination, the shoal of Lockport teeming with the many genera of crinoids which the geologists of New York have rescued from that prolific Silurian deposit, or recall the formations of my native country, in the hill-sides of which also, among fossils ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... him. Noblesse oblige. On the river Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They say that ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... land army. Ships cannot possibly put in to shore there because the sea itself prevents them by forming shoals for not less than thirty stades; consequently the beach at Ravenna, although to the eye of mariners it is very near at hand, is in reality very far away by reason of the great extent of the shoal-water. And a land army cannot approach it at all; for the river Po, also called the Eridanus, which flows past Ravenna, coming from the boundaries of Celtica, and other navigable rivers together with some marshes, ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... he used to bathe by diving off the forecastle deck when the steamer was going at full speed, and catching a rope which was let down from the stern. Once while he was doing this he saw a shark and a shoal of pilot fish close to him in the water, as he ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... leisure for the General to devote his whole energies against the little city of Alkmaar. On that bank and shoal, the extreme verge of habitable earth, the spirit of Holland's Freedom stood at bay. The grey towers of Egmont Castle and of Egmont Abbey rose between the city and the sea, and there the troops sent by the Prince of Orange were quartered during the very brief period in which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... of which was to lie on, and one to put on at night. I set sail in the sixth year of my reign. On the East side of the isle, there was a large ridge of rocks, which lay two miles from the shore; and a shoal of sand lay for half a mile from the rocks to the beach. To get round to this point, I had to sail a great way out to sea; and here I all ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... the second day to be even worse than our worst fears had pictured it, and it kept growing worse as we ascended. The water was so swift and shoal that we could take only a part of the outfit in the canoe, which meant that we had to return at intervals for the rest and track all the way, Hubbard pulling on the line while George and I waded and pushed. Sometimes we were scarcely knee deep in the water, and at other ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... bags of corn, and spoiled some of our clothes: about one o'clock an Indian came running to the shore with a turkey on his back: several others soon joined him, but we had no intercourse with them. We then went on for three miles, but the ascent soon became so obstructed by sandbars and shoal water, that after attempting in vain several channels, we determined to rest for the night under some high bluffs on the south, and send out to examine the best channel. We had made eight miles along high bluffs on each side. The birds we saw were the white gulls and the brant which were ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the distant profile of the prairie. The Canadians, however, began to apprehend an ambush in every thicket, and to regard the broad, tranquil plain as a sailor eyes some shallow and perfidious sea, which, though smooth and safe to the eye, conceals the lurking rock or treacherous shoal. The very name of a Sioux became a watchword of terror. Not an elk, a wolf, or any other animal, could appear on the hills, but the boats resounded with exclamations from stem to stern, "voila les Sioux! voila les Sioux!" (there ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast, during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent. Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of hungry sea-fowl hovering and flittering above them; the white plumage of the restless birds glints and flashes in the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to satisfy myself that the gas was not absorbed by caustic potash, but was partly taken up by pyrogallic acid, that is to say, that little or no carbonic acid was present, but that a fair amount of oxygen was present, diluted of course by nitrogen. The exposure of a shoal of the beautiful blue pelagic Siphonophore, Velella, for a few hours, enabled me to collect a large quantity of gas, which yielded from 24 to 25 per cent. of oxygen, that subsequently squeezed out from the interior of the chambered cartilaginous float, giving only 5 per cent. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... of all, the hunter's plan of operations was immediately adopted. And, accordingly, the designated numbers were told off to man the river, and at once set in motion to perform the duty; while the rest retraced their way to the village, except the hunter, who, seeking a shoal place, waded the river, and was soon out of sight among the thickets ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... roofs A sound of pattering hoofs And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd: Scared by the piteous droves, A shoal of skurrying doves, Veering, around the island of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... impossible to row back against the tide with the fyke. I then untied it, and it went downstream, stake and all. I got it into the boat, rowed up, and set the stake again. Then I tied one end to the stake and got out of the boat myself in shoal water. Then the boat got away in deep water; then I had to swim for the boat. Then I rowed back and untied the fyke. Then the fyke got away. Then I jumped out of the boat to save the fyke, and the boat got away. Then I had to swim again after the boat and row ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... at New York the question was at its height. The theory of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank, supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned. And, indeed, unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... came the fourth hook with its livid worm! He held the rope in his hand without drawing it in for a few moments, but could see no reasonable objection to that last worm. His heart sank a little, but pshaw! only four hooks out of forty were up yet! wait till the eddy behind the shoal was reached, then great things would be seen. Maybe the fish had not been lying in that ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... there with the white spray of breakers on a rocky shoal, and a beach beyond. And beyond that, in hard outline against a golden sky, was a gigantic tube that stood vertically in air to reach beyond the upper limits of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... seizing the conversation and shoving it out of shoal water. "Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... turkey-cock and his harem of four wives; laughs at the 'black sluts' seeing their faces for the first time in the mirror. With him he trembles for the fate of the 'poor little beast,' the Husseinyeh, when she drifts stern foremost on the shoal, 'a penny steamer under cannon fire'; day after day he gazes through the General's powerful telescope from the palace roof down the long brown reaches of the river towards the rocks of the Shabluka Gorge, and longs for ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... who was to command the yacht, there was Captain Briskett, who had for many years been the master of a coasting vessel, and knew every rock and shoal between Boston and Eastport. Dick, the colored steward, was to retain his place during the cruise. Captain Littleton was to go as a passenger. John Duncan was nominally appointed ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... "he've been fattened like a goose in a cage. They've made a sad fool of un these last few years. What boastin'! 'Tis stupid. He've growed old enough t' know better, Tumm. 'Tis jus' disgustin' t' hear a big boy like he mouth such a shoal o' foolish yarns. An' he've not the least notion that they're not as true as ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... wind and tide were now adverse, and we therefore anchored in two fathoms. There is two fathoms in the channel past Sandy Island, but a reef of rocks extend from the left bank of the river, which renders it necessary to keep close to the edge of the shoal off the island. ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... only genius could hit upon either. That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore, But I fear he will never be anything more; The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him, The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o'er him. He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart, He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart, Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable, In learning to swim on his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... see displayed among an eager few, Who in the field of contest persevered, Passions unworthy of youth's generous heart And mounting spirit, pitiably repaid, When so disturbed, whatever palms are won. 505 From these I turned to travel with the shoal Of more unthinking natures, easy minds And pillowy; yet not wanting love that makes The day pass lightly on, when foresight sleeps, And wisdom and the pledges interchanged 510 With our ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... there forever, after the threescore and ten years of its residence in the body are over, yet it shrinks back from an entrance into this untried world, and clings with the desperate force of a drowning man to this "bank and shoal of time." There are moments in the life of a guilty man when the very idea of eternal existence exerts a preternatural power, and fills him with a dread that paralyzes him. Never is the human being stirred to so great depths, and roused to such ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... wholly shrunk, so that it should receive The ocean flood; nor firm enough to stand Against its buffets — all the pathless coast Lies in uncertain shape; the land by earth Is parted from the deep; on sandy banks The seas are broken, and from shoal to shoal The waves advance to sound upon the shore. Nature, in spite, thus left her work undone, Unfashioned to men's use — Or else of old A foaming ocean filled the wide expanse, But Titan feeding from the briny depths ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... shoal of barramundi had been bombed with dynamite. Immediately after the explosion the white onlookers as well as the blacks dived off-hand into the stream to secure the helpless fish. One of the party seized a weighty and unconscious victim of the outrage, and to retain it thrust ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the circumstances attending the attack and defence of Copenhagen itself. The only side of the town exposed to the attack of heavy shipping is the northern, where there lies a shoal extending out a considerable distance, leaving only a very narrow approach to the heart of the city, (Fig. 35) On the most advanced part of this shoal are the Crown-batteries, carrying in all eighty-eight guns.[21] ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... large sheet of water was to be seen; and toward this the gig was headed, the sounding-line being kept busy during the whole progress. As the gig advanced beyond the centre of the first basin, the water was found to shoal gradually, until exactly midway between the two bluffs, a depth of four and a half fathoms only was given by the sounding-line. The bluffs passed, the explorers found themselves in a second and much larger basin, also ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... be complete, and the right time would arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the fish on which they and all their countrymen on the coast depend ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... now followed blindfold, down to the edge of the sea. Then he saw that the waves that beat against the rock were all luminous, as though lit with an inner light; suddenly, far below, how deep he knew not, he saw a great shoal of fish, some of them very large, coming softly round the rocks; the water, as it touched their blunt snouts, burst as it were into soft flame, and showed every twinkle of their fins and every beat of their tails. The shoal came swiftly ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he knelt down, and drowned the following hours in thought and prayer; till that deep lake of meditation was divided by the sound of singing, as though a shoal of silver fishes swam and leaped upon its surface, putting all quietness to flight, and troubling its waters with a million lovelinesses. For now it was as though the bird's enchanting song came partly from within and partly ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. The state legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment, and the non-complying may be ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman |
