"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, encircle it on ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... large fleet of transports and ships of war in the St. Lawrence supplied the British with adequate resources, which were utilized judiciously and energetically by Captain Douglas; but to get these to the Lake was a long and arduous task. A great part of the Richelieu River was shoal, and obstructed by rapids. The point where lake navigation began was at St. John's, to which the nearest approach, by a hundred-ton schooner, from the St. Lawrence, was Chambly, ten miles below. Flat-boats and long-boats could be dragged up stream, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... the Newfoundland and the French poodle—is bred at St. Jean de Luz, eight miles from Biarritz. One of their uses is to drive the fish into the nets, and for this purpose one is taken in every boat that puts to sea. The method is extremely simple. As soon as the net surrounds a shoal, the dog is put in the centre, and by beating the water with his paws he effectually drives the finny creatures into the meshes. It was one of this same species of dogs that attracted so much attention at the Port Vieux by leaping after a stick from the mound—a distance of some fifty feet—into ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Island, Gulf, the minuter belong to the Northern races, who are closer observers of Nature's nice differences, and who take more delight in a frank, fearless acquaintance and fellowship with out-door objects. Beach, sand, headland, foreland, shelf, reef, breaker, bar, bank, ledge, shoal, spit, sound, race, reach, are words of Northern origin. So, too, the host of local names by which every peculiar feature of shore-scenery is individualized,—as, for instance, the Needles, the Eddystone, the Three Chimneys, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... took leave of Keimer as going to see my friends. The governor gave me an ample letter, saying many flattering things of me to my father, and strongly recommending the project of my setting up at Philadelphia as a thing that must make my fortune. We struck on a shoal in going down the bay, and sprung a leak; we had a blustering time at sea, and were oblig'd to pump almost continually, at which I took my turn. We arriv'd safe, however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I had been absent seven months, and my friends had heard nothing of me; ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... 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
... A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, A trip of dottrell, A swarm of bees, A school of whales, A shoal of herrings, A herd of swine, A skulk of foxes, A pack of wolves, A drove of oxen, A sounder of hogs, A troop of monkeys, A pride of lions, A sleuth of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... would be the height of folly. I would divide our forces into small, swift-sailing squadrons, of strength sufficient to repel his cruisers. And I would carry the war straight into his unprotected ports of trade. I can name a score of such defenceless places, and I know every shoal of their harbours. For example, Whitehaven might be entered. That is a town of fifty thousand inhabitants. The fleet of merchantmen might with the greatest ease be destroyed, a contribution levied, and Ireland's coal cut off for a winter. The whole of the shipping might be swept out of the Clyde. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all day long in the quiet bay The eddying amber depths retard, And hold, as in a ring, at play, The heavy saw-logs notched and scarred; And yonder between cape and shoal, Where the long currents swing and shift, An aged punt-man with his pole Is searching in ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... travellers. I have heard that what is called a "shoal" of herrings consists of millions of fish, and takes up a place in the sea larger than the area of London. This fish takes its name from an old word which means an army; and the herring-army has to come ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... and brought part of them on deck, but it was of no use, they died like rotten sheep, and we tossed overboard about thirty a day. Many others, who were alive, jumped overboard, and we were followed by a shoal of sharks, splashing, and darting, and diving, and tearing the bodies, yet warm, and revelling in the hot and bloody water. At last they were all gone, and we turned back to the coast to get a fresh supply. We were within a day's ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... praises he sung that his statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation. But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters like these." ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... Louise appeared as a yellow-red rent in the curtain of night. Red, too, was the flat, calm sea, save northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around the Marie had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor burning on the flat, black belt ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... are dissolved, or uncrystallized, they are really separated from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea;—generally at about equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of them as equidistant, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... of the Senate, the House of Representatives concurring, I return herewith the bill (S. 3811) entitled "An act to amend an act entitled 'An act to grant to the Mobile and Dauphin Island Railroad and Harbor Company the right to trestle across the shoal water between Cedar Point and Dauphin Island,' approved ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... bait, better than an equally brilliant salted lask. It is the shine of the bait at which the fish bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves behind it in the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which keeps the shoal together and makes them follow ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to be built that the boats might be floated across. Frost set in heavily, and the ice cut the men as they worked in the water to haul the boats over shoals or rocks. The bateaux often needed to be beached and caulked, while both whites and Indians had to help carry the loads round the shoal places. At every Indian village it was necessary to stop, hold a conference, and give presents. At last the Wea village—or Ouiatanon, as Hamilton called it—was reached. Here the Wabash chiefs, who had made peace with the Americans, promptly ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... deepening and cleansing of the river; they have power to 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 useful ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... awkwardly but nimbly this way and that. Tiny sea-horses, yet more fantastic, slipped shyly from one weed-covert to another, aware of a possible peril in every gay but menacing bloom. And just above this eccentric life of the shoal sea-floor small fishes of curious form shot hither and thither, live, darting gleams of gold and azure and amethyst. Now and again a long, black shadow would sail slowly over the scene of freakish life—the shadow of a passing albacore or barracouta. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... as we drew up in shoal water under lee of the rock, and I noted his short legs and stocky chest, "no doubt you are well water-logged, and a little healthful exercise will help to warm your blood, especially as we dare not light a fire for such purpose. So bend that broad back of yours, and aid us in ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Thermopylae was not a ravine among mountains, but a narrow space between mountains and the sea. The mountains landward were steep and inaccessible; the sea was shoal. The passage between them was narrow for many miles along the shore, being narrowest at the ingress and egress. In the middle the space was broader. The place was celebrated for certain warm springs which here issued from the rocks, and which had been used in former ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... kind of platform overhanging the stern; here they sit and make a splashing with their paddles, at the same time using some little fish, which they catch and breed in tanks, for bait. The noise attracts the large fish, who think there is a shoal of the small fry about, and they jump at the bait and are caught. The catch is often very good, and the boats come back to the huts laden with the ogre fish, destined to be eaten ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... This meant good fortune if we wished escape, bad luck if we would rather fight. But I had no time to think of that, for up comes Shoreham, my lieutenant, with a face all white. 'For God's sake, sir,' says he, 'shoal water-shoal water! We're ashore.' So much, monsieur le prince, for Admiralty charts and soundings! It's a hateful thing to see—the light green water, the deadly sissing of the straight narrow ripple like the grooves of a wash- board: and a ship's length ahead the water breaking over ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... toward the shoal. Again and again the fish broke for the deeper water and Lew had to give him line. But each time he stopped the rush and patiently worked the fish back toward the shoal. At last the trout was fairly on the edge of it. Lew began to pull steadily on his line and slid the tired fish into shallow ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... actually claim him as author, also found their way to Germany, and there by a less discriminating public were joined in a general way to the mass of Yorick production, and the might of Yorick influence. These works represent almost exclusively the Sterne of the Sentimental Journey; for the shoal of petty imitations, explanations and protests which appeared in England when Shandy was first issued[85] had gone their own petty way to oblivion before Germany awakened to ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... spoke they ran the boat out into the water and jumped in, each with an oar. Then they pulled for the Turtle-back Shoal. ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... nearer, but is now almost abandoned for the drift-net; we shall find seines still common further west. The seine may be described as a wall of netting, buoyed at the surface and weighted below; this is dipped in the thick of the shoal, its ends drawn together, and the fish taken out with a tuck-net. The leaded bottom of the net must touch the ground or the fish will escape; thus seine-fishing is only practicable in shallow waters. With it is associated the occupation of the "huers," who are stationed ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... first the hallowed tree Was launched by the lone mariner on some primeval sea, No stouter stuff than the heart of oak, or tough elastic pine, Had floated beyond the shallow shoal to ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... answered I. "I took a good look round while we were coming in, and I noticed a distinct discoloration of the water about a mile out, as dead to leeward of the island as it can possibly be. I have no doubt we shall find that to be the shoal of which your friend spoke. And there was another thing I noticed while I was aloft, and which I will take this opportunity of mentioning. The island is literally covered with birds, sir, and, unfortunate as is the necessity, I am afraid that our very first task must be to kill every ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... keel nears the shoal; From the slime and the mud Crawl the newt and the adder, The spawn the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... after divesting himself of some of his clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to stand, and carried ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... its depths. The American flag on the fort rippled, a thing of living light, the stripes transparent. High pink clouds were riding down from the north, their flush dying as they piled aloft. There were shadings of peacock colors in the shoal water. Jenieve enjoyed this sunset beauty of the island, as she ran over the rolling pebbles, carrying some leather shoes by their leather strings. Her face was eager. She lifted the shoes to show them to three little boys playing on the edge ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... one that had received the name of Providence. This channel is a continuation of what is called "The Tongue of the Ocean," which extends over a hundred miles south of New Providence, a hundred and fifty fathoms in depth, and bordered by innumerable cays, reefs, and very shoal water. ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... eastern coast in such profusion that in one instance in 1839, a gentleman who was present saw upwards of four hundred thousand taken in a haul of the nets in the little bay of Goyapanna, east of Point-de-Galle. As this vast shoal approached the shore the broken water became as smooth as if a sheet of ice had been floating below ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... sand, were the red light-houses, and the castle, and newly erected batteries of Hurst, such as no hostile fleet would dare to encounter; outside of which could be distinguished, by the broken water, the dangerous shoal of the Shingles, well marked also by its huge ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the country that lies between them must labour under the inconvenience of absolute seclusion, for many months every year, until bridges and ferries are established. Having made his way through this wildest of wildernesses to the Skillet Fork, Mr. Birkbeck crossed that river at a shoal. The country, on each side of it, is flat and swampy; so that the water, in many places, even at this season, rendered travelling disagreeable; yet here and there, at ten miles' distance, perhaps, the very solitude tempts persons to pitch their tents ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... a 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
... when there are floods; 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 down ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... to the present General Assembly that the Government of the United States is solicitous that certain lands at Old Point Comfort, and at the shoal called the Rip Raps, should be, with the right of property and entire jurisdiction thereon, vested in the said United States for the purpose of fortification and other ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... over still more considerably. The ship had been forced much further up the beach than before, and she had now in her bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly visible, we found that she had pushed the stones at the bottom up before her, and that the broken keel, stern-post, and deadwood had, by the recent pressure, been more damaged and turned up than before. She appeared principally to hang upon the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... Indians had taken. The savages were overtaken and a parley ensued. The leader's thoughts were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the Aimable, and to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground." Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the village whither the captive had been taken. Just as they ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the fort could be raked from end to end. As good fortune would have it, two of these vessels, in attempting to carry out their orders, ran afoul of each other, and all three stuck fast on the shoal on which is now ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... feelings wrought up over the poor miserable little children swarming below, I found a nice quiet nook on the shelter deck where I snuggled down and amused myself watching the native boys swim. The water on their bronze bodies made them shine in the sunlight, and they played about like a shoal of young porpoises. I must have stayed there an hour, for when I came down there was considerable stir on board. A passenger was missing and we were being held while a search of the ship was made. I was getting most excited when the purser, who is the sternest and best looking ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... street boy, "do you think anybody's going to pay a boy ten dollars a week, when there's hundreds ready to work for three or four? Why, a man in Pearl Street advertised last week for a boy at three dollars, and there was a whole shoal of boys went for it. I was ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... eastward, it 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 whispered to another, "and it was as easy to perform ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men's toil and 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 ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... (with the accent on the water) in the pursuit of the children of Israel. But here we find conflicting opinions. Some say that Pharaoh, arriving at the bank and seeing the impossibility of overtaking them, turned and retired; others, that there were shoal places in those far-away days where any one could cross; others, that they crossed on flats very like the ordinary modern mortal. But I do not accept this attempt to question the orthodox version, but will verify it as far as my observation will admit. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... will run us right into the Long Shoal!" exclaimed Manton, anxiously, as the squall which had been approaching struck the schooner and laid her almost on ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... but the pilot assured him that the accident would not subject the vessel to half an hour's delay, for the tide was rising very rapidly. He had run her a little too near a shoal, while the Young America, by keeping in mid channel, had gone clear. There was nothing for the captain to do on deck, and he returned to his class. The Josephine came off the ground within the half ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... "I am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed—and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the preeminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. Such must I remain—proud, inflexible, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... bad enough when there were only two or three stars, but now the managers have starred a whole shoal of mediocre players and sacrificed plays and dramatist to them. That there seems to be a dearth of good plays is in part because of the fact that some good ones are ruined by changes made in them, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... 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, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... telegraphing to the steersman. This is a very close and complicated piece of navigation, I should think, this running up the Mersey, for every moment we are passing some kind of a signal token, which warns off from some shoal. Here is a bell buoy, where the waves keep the bell always tolling; here, a buoyant lighthouse; and "See there, those shoals, how pokerish they look!" says one of the passengers, pointing to the foam on our starboard bow. All is bustle, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 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 ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... 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, and get ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Manaar. On this voyage ships are sometimes lost, but they are empty, as ships going this way discharge their cargoes at Periapatam into small flat-bottomed boats named Tane, which can run over any shoal without danger, as they always wait at Periapatam for fine weather. On departing from Periapatam, the small ships and flat-bottomed boats go always together, and on arriving at the shoals about thirty-six miles from that place, they are forced through by the winds, which always blow so forcibly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... for a row," an excursion concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... near the Cape. Here we had calms again, and the grass and barnacles grew very fast. Indeed, the ship's bottom was like a half-tide rock, and when the water washed up the sides, as she rolled, the noise made by the barnacles was like the surf on a sea-beach. We were followed for several days by a shoal of dolphins, which we caught in great numbers night and morning. Finally we got round the Cape, and to St. Helena, where we stayed four days, and employed men to assist us in chopping off grass and barnacles as far as we could ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... stood in the center of the room. The walls were papered in bright colors, and the floor was covered with an Uxbridge carpet, the colors of which were green and red, and made fresh by the glare of a spirit lamp that burned upon the table. A chart of the South Shoal, a map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and sundry rude drawings in crayon and water colors, hung suspended from the walls. The air of quiet cheerfulness that pervaded the sitting room, bespoke the care Bessie had bestowed upon it, and the active part she took in the management of the household. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... years of age, a seafaring man, a southerner by birth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. light ship Long Shoal, station'd at Long Shoal point, Pamlico sound—though a southerner, a firm Union man—was captur'd Feb. 17, 1863, and has been nearly two years in the Confederate prisons; was at one time order'd releas'd by Governor ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of fishes possible, miraculous enough in any pilchard or herring shoal, gathered into companionable catchableness;—which makes, in fine, so many Nations possible, and Saxon and Norman ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Accompanied by my men and several Indians, we threw ourselves into a narrow path along the river, till we reached the frozen bed of the St. Charles, which we crossed with the greatest difficulty. We had to run two miles over shoal ice formed by the high tides, and encountering numerous air-holes hidden from us by the darkness and the falling snow. After countless hardships and dangers, we succeeded in reaching the opposite bank, whence we could hear the last sounds ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... had 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
... undergoing execution. Two men perch themselves up on posts, some distance apart, and let down by ropes a net into the river. Waiting patiently—and Brunais can sit still contentedly doing nothing for hours—they remain motionless until a shoal of fish passes over the net, when it is partially raised and the fish taken out by a third ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Gordon, 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
... please so many lords? Young as I am, thy prince's vengeful hand Stretch'd forth in wrath shall drive thee from the land. Oh! could the vigour of this arm as well The oppressive suitors from my walls expel! Then what a shoal of lawless men should go To fill with ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... secret to tell you about it (which must go no further on any account). On landing last autumn I fell in with a young woman, and we got rather warm as folks do; in short, we liked one another well enough for a while. But I have got into shoal water with her, and have found her to be a terrible take-in. Nothing in her at all—no sense, no niceness, all tantrums and empty noise, John, though she seemed monstrous clever at first. So my heart comes back ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... made in water so shoal, that the boat had barely escaped being dashed to pieces on the coral. Had it not been so suddenly relieved from the pressure of near a thousand pounds in weight, it is probable that this calamity would have befallen it, the water received on board contributing so much to weigh ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... carried on by Monsieur Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected his shop windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped in brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as herrings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primitive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores were always the best provided, whose connections were the most extensive, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... vast flock of sea birds, and, opening her eyes, she saw that the canoe was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of bonita that leaped and sported and splashed about almost within arm's length of her. They were pursuing a shoal of small fish called atuli, and these every now and then darted under the canoe for protection. Sometimes, as the hungry bonita pressed them hard, they would leap out of the water, hundreds together, and then ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... met by a shoal of the fish called harbour pilots. Seeing the dark body the fish stopped as though petrified, and suddenly turned round and disappeared. In less than a minute they flew back swift as an arrow to Gusev, and began zig-zagging round him ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mile from the point of his first descent, the sergeant found a shoal. It was a flat space of shallow water—discoverable by the color of the bottom. The water was not over four feet deep. It was ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... contain all the harbours of France and England, and have room for all the fleets of Europe besides. About seven miles in depth, and varying in width from two to three and a half, it is fissured on every side by beautiful little bays, with deep water everywhere, and not a sunk rock, or shoal, or a bar, throughout the whole extent. Even the sea-opening of the Gulf has its protection by the long coast-line of Tuscany, stretching away to the southward and eastward, so that the security is perfect, and a vessel once anchored within ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... third of those bodies whose history I had to tell you. Professor H.A. Newton, of America, by examining ancient records arrived at the conclusion that the earth passed through a certain definite meteor shoal every thirty-three years. He found, in fact, that every thirty-three years an unusual flight of shooting-stars was witnessed in November, the earliest record being 599 A.D. Their last appearance had been in 1833, and ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels were iced like ghost ships. Tack back and forward as they might, no passage opened through the ice. Suddenly Cook found himself in shoal water, on a lee shore, long and low and shelving, with the ice drifting on his ships. He called the place Icy Cape. It was their farthest point north; and the third week of August they were compelled ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... while the northern shore, a low, brown bank, crept out toward them, like a long, merciful arm. In another minute Peter's bare feet came in contact with slimy, yielding mud. They were in shoal water! ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... whose intellect and consciousness are served by senses unable to perceive things otherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it were not. Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of a shipwreck. The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; the rock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath the waves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month is slumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies. Normally, were nothing written, had the catastrophe[3] not already taken place ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... this and that—it is this doctrine, that tradition.' Well, that sort of religion IS a very special accomplishment—ecclesiastical religion. I don't deny that it has artistic qualities, but it is a poor narrow product; and then the technically religious make such a fuss if they see the shoal of fish escaping the net, and beat the water so vehemently that the fish think it safer to stay where they are, and so you get sardines in tins!" said Mrs. Graves with a smile—"by which ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as it went, but it soon disappeared in the darkness, when the ear was her only guide to its evolutions. There was great affectation of stillness during all these manoeuvers, in order, as Richard assured them, not to frighten the bass, who were running into the shoal waters, and who would approach the light if not disturbed by the sounds from ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... in, for their time could not be lost in chatting; they had an immense quantity of fish in a traveling shoal, which had not ceased passing for the last ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... to the river, and Chippy pointed to a shallow where a great shoal of the tiny fish were glancing to and fro, their sides glittering as they turned in the light of the setting sun. Chippy throw himself flat on the bank, and very slowly and cautiously slipped his hand into the water. The minnows darted away, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... sentence to explain the commencement. The instance quoted from the Quarterly Review is so gross an abuse of language, that little apprehension need be entertained of its repetition. The passage stands like the topmast of a ship-wrecked vessel, to warn others of the shoal on which she was stranded. All the other instances used as illustrations in W. N.'s paper are examples of the evil attendant upon a departure from one principle, viz.: That a simile should never be explained. Of course, this principle ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... right entrance of the Sarawak river and the next hill a-head, and as you approach the river's mouth, steer for a small island close to the shore, called Pulo Karra, or Monkey Island. These marks will conduct you over a shoal with 1/4 three, the least depth at high water; you will then deepen your water, and keep away for the low green point on the far side of the river, edging gradually in; and when you are some distance from the opposite low point on the port hand, cross the bar in three fathom (high water) ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... sharp, indeed, but weakening, and, though I am well now, and have corrected the proofs of a very thin and wicked 'brochure' on Italian affairs (in verse, of course), yet still I am not too strong for cod-liver oil and the affectionateness of such friends as you (I speak as if I had a shoal of such friends—povera mi!). Write to me, therefore. Especially as the English critics will worry me alive for my book and you will have to say, 'Well done, critics!' so write before you read it, to say, 'Ba, I love you.' That makes up for everything. Oh, I know you did write ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the Mortimers featured him between two fashionable bishops at a dinner. Mrs. Vendenning, who adored bishops, immediately remembered him among those asked to her famous annual bal poudre; a celebrated yacht club admitted him to membership; a whole shoal of excellent minor clubs which really needed new members followed suit, and even the rock-ribbed Lenox, wearied of its own time-honoured immobility, displayed the preliminary fidgets which boded well for the stolid candidate. The Mountain was preparing to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... perceived the sea to break right a-head of us; we immediately sounded, and shoaled our water from thirteen to seven fathom, soon after deepening it again from seventeen to forty-two; so that we went over the end of a shoal, which a little farther to the northward might have been fatal to us. Cape Blanco at this time bore W.S.W. 1/2 S. distant four leagues: But we were still at a loss for Port Desire, it being impossible that any description should be more confused than that which Sir John Narborough ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... capital, was taken, with their State papers and treasure. Viljoen, with a number of followers, slipped through between the columns, but the greater part of the burghers, dashing furiously about like a shoal of fish when they become conscious of the net, were taken by one or other of the columns. A hundred of the Boksburg commando surrendered en masse, fifty more were taken at Roos-Senekal; forty-one of the formidable Zarps with Schroeder, their leader, were captured in the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'er?" granted Stump, "I wish them Romans had looted her. W'en I was goin' down the Hooghly, she was comin' up, in tow. Her rope snapped at the wrong moment, an' she ran me on top of the James an' Mary shoal. Remember 'er, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the straits, about twenty miles distant from Mackinaw, is Fox Point. A light-house has been erected on a shoal extending out two miles into the lake. Moneto-pa-maw is a high bluff still further west, on the shore of Michigan, where there are fine fisheries, and is a place of considerable resort. Further ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... the skipper; "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 Gospel an' twice ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... 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 as circumstances might require. At a short ...
— 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
... the call, around the goddess roll Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal: 190 Thick and more thick the black blockade extends, A hundred head of Aristotle's friends. Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day, Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away. Each stanch polemic, stubborn as a rock, Each fierce logician, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... we saw an 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 not only sharks, dolphins, and porpoises, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... farther to the west he discovered four other islands; afterwards fell in with Maitea, Otaheite, isles of Navigators, and Forlorn Hope, which to him were new discoveries. He then passed through between the Hebrides, discovered the Shoal of Diana, and some others, the land of Cape Deliverance, several islands more to the north, passed the north of New Ireland, touched at Batavia, and arrived in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... between us and the white beach, evidently in shoal and dangerous waters. She too had encountered a hurricane, and had not come forth victorious. Foremast and forecastle were gone, and her bowsprit was broken. She lay heavily, her ports but a few inches above the water. Though we did ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... can blame a young girl if she listens and believes, when listening and believing mean to her perfect happiness? Not women who have ever stood, trembling with love and joy, close to the dear one's heart. If they be gray-haired, and on the very shoal of life, they must remember still those moments of delight,—the little lane, the fire-lit room, the drifting boat, that is linked with them. If they be young and lovely, and have but to say, "It was yesterday," or, "It was last week," still better ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... John and a William, but which of them was the ancestor of our grandfather is not known. William Gaston, my grandfather, lived at Caranleigh Clough Water. He married Miss Lemmon and had four sons and as many daughters: John Gaston (King's Justice) died on Fishing Creek, near Cedar Shoal, Chester District, South Carolina; Rev. Hugh Gaston, author of 'Concordance and Collections'; Dr. Alexander Gaston, killed by the British at Newbern, South Carolina (father of Judge William Gaston); Robert Gaston, and ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 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 ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sandy shoal of the Dogger, in twenty fathoms of water, and overhead I could see great black ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Dominican Republic. His two armies were at first successful and captured several border towns, but that which entered in the south was repulsed at Estrelleta, while that which invaded the north was defeated at Beler. A small Haitian fleet which set out to attack Puerto Plata blundered on a shoal where it was left high and dry ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... sorts of sea crabs. One our people call a king crab and they are taken in shoal waters from off the shore a dozen at a time hanging one upon another's tail; they are of a foot in length and half a foot in breadth, having legs and a long tail. The Indians seldom eat of this kind. There is a shellfish of the ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... storm breaks above them, the thunders roll, The ship gets aground on the hidden shoal, And the turbulent waters dash over the barque, And cries from the doomed ship come. Till nothing is left the tale to tell, But the angry roar of the surging swell; So the grand old vessel goes down in the dark— ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a buried treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek, about a mile west ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the boats, And the loud echo which returns the notes; While overhead a flock of new-sprung fowl Hangs in the air, and does the sun control, Dark'ning the sky; they hover o'er, and shroud 29 The wanton sailors with a feather'd cloud. Beneath, a shoal of silver fishes glides, And plays about the gilded barges' sides; The ladies, angling in the crystal lake, Feast on the waters with the prey they take; At once victorious with their lines, and eyes, They make the fishes, and the men, their prize. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of Mrs. O'Flynn's), "How queerly my shower bath feels! It shocks like a posse of needles and pins, Or a shoal of electrical eels." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... knows how long and had done nothin' but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for somethin' down to bind what Raish and Jethro called 'options.' Anyhow, when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into workin', they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that's the way father used to tell about it. They found that all that Skoonic Creek land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap'n Jeth Hallett; those two either owned it outright or had ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flittered into the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... born on de upper edge of Hart County, near Shoal Crick. Sarah Anne Garey was my Ma and I was one of dem shady babies. Dere was plenty of dat kind in dem times. My own sister was Rachel, and I had a half sister named Sallie what was white as anybody. John, Lindsay, David, and Joseph ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the incalculable danger of meddling with evil, the impossibility of forecasting the tragedy that might thereby result, the certainty that retribution would follow, either here or beyond "this bank and shoal ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... 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, &c. Farther up the Columbia, as at the Cascades, a different form was adopted, which is thus described ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... charms upon the silver shoal; And I have ta'en the lute, my only friend: The vibrant chords beneath my fingers blend; They sob awhile, then ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... leagues to the northward, when the sea suddenly became rough, which not having experienced since we were within the reefs, I concluded to be occasioned by an open channel to the ocean. Soon afterwards we met with a large shoal, on which were two sandy keys; between these and two others, four miles to the west, I passed on to the northward, the sea still continuing to ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... the Cimaroons after that went away from us, swearing revenge (for which we cared little enough), and we rowed up the river to a place where three streams met, and then up the least of the three, some four days' journey, till it grew all shoal and swift; and there we hauled the pinnace upon the sands, and Mr. Oxenham asked the men whether they were willing to carry the gold and silver over the mountains to the North Sea. Some of them at first were loath to do it, and I and others advised that we should leave the plate behind, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... cross the torrent by means of a few bits of gravel projecting above the water; then, failing to find bottom, the more reckless of the Ants are swept off their feet and, without loosing hold of their prizes, drift away, land on some shoal, regain the bank and renew their search for a ford. A few straws borne on the waters stop and become so many shaky bridges on which the Ants climb. Dry olive-leaves are converted into rafts, each with its load of passengers. The more venturesome, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... copious rainfall, their sufferings that afternoon and night were pitiable. There were some families with women and children, and such shelter as a canvas awning could afford was kindly arranged for them. When we anchored in shoal water off the coast next morning, and the big flat-boats came to take them ashore, they had hardly strength and spirit sufficient to tumble into these craft, no doubt promising themselves, as usual, never, never again to quit ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... We stood in E. by S. with the wind at N. by E. and at noon sent our skiff in search of a convenient place for anchoring; but the current set so strong to the eastwards, that we were unable to stem it, and could merely see at a distance a very large bay, having a great shoal off its northern point half a league out to sea, while we had sixty fathoms water off the shore upon a bottom of sand. As night approached, we stood off till morning; and next day, about sun-set, we came to anchor in the large bay, having on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... friendship. This day was beautiful. Our souls, anxious for more delightful sensations, were in harmony with the aspect of the heavens, and got again a new ray of hope. Towards four in the afternoon, an unlooked for event happened which gave us some consolation. A shoal of flying fish passed under our raft, and as there were an infinite number of openings between the pieces which composed it, the fish were entangled in great quantities. We threw ourselves upon them, and captured a considerable number. We took about ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... 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 judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. He's here ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for men, whose joys were not fed by earthly possessions or delights. How should they have a sense of community of aims with grovelling hearts that cling to wealth or ambition, that are not at peace with God, and have no holdfasts beyond this 'bank and shoal of time'? A man who has drunk into the spirit of Christ's life is thereby necessarily thrown out of gear ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... August it had attained to a circumference of three miles, and to a height of two hundred feet; and yet in less than three months from that time the waves had washed its immense mass down to the sea level; and in a few weeks more it existed but as a dangerous shoal. And such inevitably would have been the fate of the equally incoherent cone-like craters of Aetna and Auvergne during the seven and a half months that intervened between the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep and the reappearance of the mountain-tops, had they been included within ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... nothing can be seen for a great way but the backs of fishes. The fish throw themselves upon the shore, and for the space of three days allow the people to take up as many of them as they please. At the end of these three days this shoal returns again to sea, and a different kind comes to the shore in the same manner, and remains for a similar period. And in the same way, all other kinds of fish in these seas come to the shore in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... clumsily climbing the ladder and when he helped him to the bridge Mayne remarked: "She's on the tongue shoal. Don't know if I can back her off and steam out to deep water, but, if you consent, I want ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... governor's letter to his father and read it. He found that it was very complimentary to himself, fully as much so as he had expected; and the prospects of a new printing house, under his care, were set forth strongly. He had scarcely finished reading the letter, when the vessel struck on a shoal; for they were not out of the bay yet. She sprung a leak, and there was considerable excitement on board before the ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... 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 Ongentheow all in his burgs there, The ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... power to do so, without asking leave of any body. She was a free woman; and when my children were purchased, Mr. Sands preferred to have the bill of sale drawn up in her name. It was conjectured that he advanced the money, but it was not known. At the south, a gentleman may have a shoal of colored children without any disgrace; but if he is known to purchase them, with the view of setting them free, the example is thought to be dangerous to their "peculiar institution," and ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... they grow in height about an inch and a quarter yearly. Means have also been taken to decide this question. When the American Exploring Expedition lay at Tahiti, Captain Wilkes had a stone-slab fixed on Point Venus, and the distance from it to the Dolphin Shoal below carefully ascertained, so that future ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... represented by the Stork or 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
... seaward. The contrast between the immense and tumultuous masses of breakers over these sands, particularly if the wind is fresh, and the calmness of the narrow channel you are securely traversing, is very impressive. These sands, and another large shoal called the Skerweathers, nearer Swansea, have been fatal to many vessels. In rough weather, however, the steamers go outside, which lengthens the passage considerably. A large West Indiaman, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... kinds of social engagements for her and that involved the description of new gowns and a list of the guests of each entertainment. Oh, it was dreadful. Fortunately Clara had a good reputation with her mother, and was able to carry conviction, whereas I had a very hard time. I kept getting into shoal water." ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... poetic glooms, only served to heighten the lustre of the fairy fete; and as I receded through the wood, the little shoal of light gleamed and twinkled through "branches overgrown," and the distant sounds began to fall into solitary silence—even saddening to meditation—so fast do the dying glories of festive mirth sink into melancholy—till at once, with the last gleam and echo, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... In the shoal waters along the coast south of Cape Henlopen, terrapin are caught in various ways. Dredges dragged along in the wake of a sailing vessel pick them up. Nets stretched across some narrow arm of river or bay entangle the feet of any stray terrapin ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... sea voyager taking his first lesson astride of a log with one foot on the bottom, and thus proceeding by sure stages till he had built his coracle and learned to paddle it in shoal water. But the case was wholly different when the first frail air ship stood at her moorings with straining gear and fiercely burning furnace, and when the sky sailor knew that no course was left him but to dive boldly up into an element whence there ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... "swimming hole" was near half a mile; there was a pretty bit of white, sandy shore, shelving off from shoal into deep water. In a few minutes, twenty or thirty were splashing, wading and swimming out, some boldly, as good swimmers will, others timidly, or feigning to swim and taking good care not to get ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... was paternostering with worm and minnow, came down to inform S. that he had already landed four perch, and that the shoal was still unfrightened. With a recommendation to his friend to do likewise, he returned to his station, and his basketed perch might soon have recited, "Master, we are seven." Thereabouts a shout from S. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... to reckon on the swift outflowing of the tide; and just as the sailors on that ship were becoming jubilant over the prospect of a victory, a mighty quiver throughout the ship told that she had been left on a shoal by the ebb tide. The enemy was not long in discovering the helpless condition of the "Delaware;" and field-pieces and siege-guns were brought down to the river-bank, until the luckless Americans saw themselves commanded by a heavy battery. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Silent Navy, it is hardly necessary to 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 ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... so 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 ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... bay all shining the fishers set the seine; The fishers cast the seine, and 'tis "Heva!" in the town, And from the watch-rock on the hill the huers are shouting down; And ye hoist the mainsail brown, As over the deep-sea roll The lurker follows the shoal; To follow and to follow, in the moonshine silver-clear, When the halyards creek to thy ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... sea 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 St. Malo on the Rance, With the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the dead-reckoning we ought to be a little to the southward of French Shoal. While I was satisfying myself in regard to our position, another gun sounded ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... A shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of Gulf-weed swam in close squadron on the emerald sea; and on the western horizon screw-pile lighthouses stood up out of the water, marking the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... 23rd.—A shoal of porpoises passed us. A sailor struck one with a harpoon, but it got off again. They are of a salmon colour, no more like pigs than horses, just the shape of salmon, only much larger. In swimming they turn on ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... immense size. By the bank the 'wild willow,' or water-betony, with its woody stem, willow-shaped leaves, and pale red flowers, grows thickly. Across where there is a mud-bank the stout stems of the willow herb are already tall. They quite cover the shoal, and line the brook like shrubs. They are the strongest and the most prominent of all the brook plants. At the end of March or beginning of April the stalks appear a few inches high, and they gradually increase in size, until in July they reach above the waist, and form a thicket by the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The Olaf was anchored at the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... he, "will run you on a shoal, and there will he be overhauled by the janizaries, and you be carried prisoners back to Alger. Your freedom will be forfeited, and you will be sold for slaves. And that's not all," adds he; "the lass you have with you will be taken from you and given to Mohand ou Mohand, who has laid ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... hopeless; but the crew were kept constantly busy until nightfall, pulling and hauling. Some were sent ashore in a skiff, with a big hawser, which was made fast to a tree, and then all the power of the boat, men and steam, was put upon it to twist her nose off from the shoal into which it was stuck. All sorts of devices were resorted to, and a small gain was made once in a while; but it looked very much as if the calculation of Charlie, five feet in an hour, was too liberal an allowance for ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... seashore, the trawlers lay before thee these gifts by the grace of thine aid from the promontory, having imprisoned a tunny shoal in their nets of spun hemp in the green sea-entrances: a beechen cup and a rude stool of heath and a glass cup holding wine, that thou mayest rest thy foot weary and cramped with dancing while thou chasest away the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... cadence, or even as a question of logic and thought-sequence, is a highly abstract study; for although, as has been said, you can do almost anything with words, with words alone you can do next to nothing. The realm where speech holds sway is a narrow shoal or reef, shaken, contorted, and upheaved by volcanic action, beaten upon, bounded, and invaded by the ocean of silence: whoso would be lord of the earth must first tame the fire and the sea. Dramatic and narrative writing are happy in this, that action and silence are ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Well, and of course, dear little father, you know, what sort of times those were; what the master took a notion to do, that he did. Once in a while, some one, even one of the gentry, would take it into his head to thwart him; but no sooner did he look at him, than he would say: 'You're sailing in shoal water'—that was his favourite expression. And he lived, your great-grandfather of blessed memory, in a tiny wooden mansion; but what property he left behind him, what silver, and all sorts of supplies,—all the cellars were filled to the brim! He was a master. That little carafe, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... from the shore or from my canoe at twilight. Just outside the lily pads a shoal of minnows would be playing at the surface, or small trout would be rising freely for the night insects. Then, if you watched sharply, you would see gleaming points of light, the eyes of Chigwooltz, stealing out, with barely ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... water became too shoal for further exploration and Hudson returned downstream. It was time to conclude his voyage and he consulted his men. They were greatly averse to returning to Holland, fearing without doubt that he would report their open mutiny and rebellious conduct as soon as ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... at three in the afternoon, and continued without intermission through the whole night. The vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called the Nek, near Wydeness. In the heat of the action the occurrence was hardly heeded. In the morning twilight, John Haring, of Hoorn, the hero who had kept one thousand soldiers at bay upon the Diemer dyke, clambered on board the 'Inquisition,' and hauled her colors down. The gallant ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... attention to the law of mind expressed in the last sentence, and which is the source of the perplexity so often experienced in detecting these transitions of meaning. Ignorance of that law is the shoal on which some of the most powerful intellects which have adorned the human race have been stranded. The inquiries of Plato into the definitions of some of the most general terms of moral speculation are characterized by ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... nearer in the heat. But at noon it seemed to me 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 |
