"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and spurs, and Yeomanry dinners, were quite over; and with that incredible softness of the Jenkin nature, he settled down for the rest of a long life, into something not far removed above a peasant. The mill farm at Stowting had been saved out of the wreck; and here he built himself a house on the Mexican model, and made the two ends meet with rustic thrift, gathering dung with his own hands upon the road and not at all abashed at his employment. In dress, voice, and manner, he fell into mere country plainness; lived without ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Holly Court still smoked sulkily, and here and there in its black ruins some special object flamed brightly: Nancy's linen chest and the pineapple bed went on burning when the other things were done. It was nearly sunset when the Bradleys walked slowly about the wreck, and laughed or bemoaned themselves as they recognized what was ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... shall be glad to set my foot on shore again. There must be people on the island; I wonder none of them have come to the aid of those poor fellows. I suppose the villages are on the other side of the island, and they have not yet heard of the wreck." ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... of the narrative I have thus briefly given had just reached Stanley, and were the subject of conversation among all those who had any idea above that of the price of seal-skins and the profits of the last wreck on ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... patient? Were my heart Not closed to thee e'en now, as e'er it was, Then couldst thou see the bitter, smarting pain Which, ever swelling like an angry sea, Tosses, now here, now there, the laboring wreck That is my grief, and, veiling it from sight In awful desolation, sweeps it forth O'er boundless ocean-wastes! I sorrow not Because the babes are dead; my only grief Is that they ever lived, that thou and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to her, that she left country and family to follow her here. In a few years her mistress died; she married; and since that time she has been tossed from trouble to trouble; a perfect sea of troubles;—till now she is left like a wreck upon this mountain top. A fine wreck she is! I go to see her very often, and next time I will call for you, and we will propose our French plan; nothing will please her better, I know. By the way, Ellen, are you as well versed in the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Columbus to Pedro Acevedo all left the Santa Maria and were received by the Nina. Crowded, crowded was the Nina! Down voyaged the moon, up came with freshness the rose-chapleted dawn. A wreck lay the Santa Maria, painted against the east, about her a low thunder of breakers. Where was the Pinta no man knew! Perhaps halfway back to Spain or perhaps wrecked and drowned like the flagship. The Nina, a ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... most pitiful apology for a father that I ever saw,—a mere wreck of a man! Spends his time in a sort of weak drinking, if I may coin a phrase to describe him; he actually uses no energy even in that business. Just staggers around and bemoans his lot; a most unfortunate man, in his own estimation, with ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... blooming years given to one who could not understand one of her lofty dreams or soaring aspirations. A falcon with sun-daring eyes tied to a grovelling buzzard! Was't not a hard fate, reader? Pity her, all ye who can,—pity her a great deal; mourn over her cruel wreck of happiness; and if in future years the warm, impassioned nature, goaded by its own unuttered pangs, driven wild by its rayless, hopeless desolation, is guilty of some irregularities, some acts which virtue and propriety can ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and that she carried a thoroughly well-disciplined crew was evident; for by the time that we had paid off on the other tack and had swung our foreyard, her mizen rigging was full of men busy upon the task of clearing away the wreck of the topmast, while others were equally busy in clewing-up and furling the fore-topgallantsail and hauling down and stowing her flying-jib, to enable her to maintain as good a luff as possible. But desperate as were their efforts they could do nothing ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... delicate, womanish complexion. His mother dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful, but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The announcement of the death gave a stroke as the cause; but the truth was that rumors had begun to circulate of a scandal in which he was implicated together with some persons of high standing. It was at the end of the seventies, at the time when the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... him a leather purse full of silver: You will not be altogether penniless, said he, even if you wreck your ship, so long as you can hold on to this. But yet it may be, said the King, that you will lose this money, and then it will be of little use to you that you have been to see King Sveinn and given ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... astrologer, in thrilling tones. "Ah! what is this? a piece of wreck-age with a monkey clinging to it? No, no-o. The ill-shaped man again. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... "like a dying lady, lean and pale," shining cold and drear, but very clearly upon the swollen waters, showing us dim outlines of half-submerged trees, cottages and hedges—showing us that we were in midstream, and that other pieces of wreck were floating down the river with us, hurrying rapidly with the current—showing me, too, in a ghostly whiteness, the face of my companion turned toward me, and his elbow rested on his knee and his ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... more shew Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise, Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd; Or that which only seems to satisfy Lawful desires of Nature, not ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... require a strong intellect to carry them, as more sail requires more ballast: and when, from neglect, or bad education, that strength is wanting, no wonder if the grandest and swiftest vessels make the most utter wreck. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... within himself. What cared he for the thunder of the sea, the wind's screaming, and the terror of death which they boded? His treasure was safe, safe!—torn from the very yawning mouth of the deep, and what were wreck and disaster of others to him? He came to the little kitchen, presently, the light from its one window toward the shore beaming cheerily upon him, and threw open the door and entered so suddenly that ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... some other moveable, with a daughter on each side, whom he alternately pressed to his affectionate breast. The rest of the melancholy assembly were seated on the deck, which was strewed with musical instruments, and the wreck of furniture ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... down; the storm has come up; the sea tyrant has got hold of the solitary passenger and dandles her very roughly, singing "The Wreck of the 'Hesperus'" in a loud bass to some grand deep tune, alternating with the one hundred and third Psalm in Gaelic. The passenger holds on for dear life and wonders why the winds sing those ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Who he was no one knows, but he was evidently the first Christian boy to pass a Christmas Eve on this continent,—and a sad one it was for him. The ship struck a sand-bank and settled, a complete wreck, in the waters of the New World. Fortunately no lives were lost, and the wreckage furnished material for the building of a fortress which occupied the men's time during the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... returned in face of a real one, which they were ready to brave in order to save their fellow-creatures. The tempest did not deter them. As heroic as they had before been credulous, fastening ropes round their waists, they rushed into the waves to the aid of those on the wreck. ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... told him that she would not marry him until the mystery of her father's murder was cleared up and the guilty parties brought to justice, and he was becoming more and more afraid that she would keep her word. In vain he implored her to consider the living rather than the dead, and not to wreck his life and her own for what, after ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... loved, and the affecting scene through which she had just passed, all helped to break her down. Running downstairs into the dining-room, she threw herself on a sofa, and gave full passage to her grief. Presently she became aware that she was not alone. Philip stood before her, or, rather, the wreck of him whom she knew as Philip. Indeed, it was hard to recognize in this scared man, with dishevelled hair, white and trembling lips, and eyes ringed round with black, the bold, handsome youth whom she had loved. The sight of him stayed ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... miss you dreadfully, Jack! You know I am frightfully unhappy; what will it be when you go? Marsh has made a perfect wreck of ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... uncouth; to several, harsh and distasteful; to the relics of the last Parliament it is a matter of fear and apprehension. It is natural for those who have seen their friends sink in the tornado which raged during the late shift of the monsoon, and have hardly escaped on the planks of the general wreck, it is but too natural for them, as soon as they make the rocks and quicksands of their former disasters, to put about their new-built barks, and, as much as possible, to keep aloof from this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ceased as Trent crossed the Boulevard St. Germain, but the entrance to the rue de Seine was blocked by a heap of smoking bricks. Everywhere the shells had torn great holes in the pavement. The cafe was a wreck of splinters and glass, the book-store tottered, ripped from roof to basement, and the little bakery, long since closed, bulged outward above a mass ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... a man who was in a railroad wreck—the sleeping-car in which he rode left the track and rolled down an embankment. There was a black interval of horror, and then this man found himself, clad in his underclothes, standing on the upturned car, looking up at the Pleiades and this thought in his mind, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... and the attacks of four little ladies in white muslin and pink sashes. The tanks of sherry and port were distributed by the young gentlemen into the glasses and over the dresses of the young ladies. The tipsy-cake, like the wreck of the Royal George, was rescued from the foaming ocean in which it had been imbedded. The diffident young gentlemen grew very red about the eyes, and very loquacious about the "next set after supper;" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... tiredly on the wet sand and was digging his stockinged heels into it, sneered at Mr. Crusoe. "He'd have made a trip on his raft," he said, "and fetched ashore a bundle of kindling. If it hadn't been for that wreck to draw on Robinson Crusoe would have starved ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... than before the scientists Content: not wanting that we can get Excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquency Frivolous old woman fighting to keep the skin-deep beauty Granted that woman is the superior being Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization Insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own local It is not enough to tell the truth (that has been told before) Knows more than he will ever ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... awkward girl, scarcely past childhood, to now, when a grown woman,—past childhood—almost, from the very character of my illness, past youth,—I was looking forward to leaving my lady's house (as a residence) for ever. As it has turned out, I never saw either her or it again. Like a piece of sea-wreck, I have drifted away from those days: quiet, happy, eventless ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the sensation of it all. He recalled the picture of his father as he stood calm and unmoved amid the wreck of his fortune and faced unflinchingly the hard, dark future. It was an inspiring picture: the picture of a gentleman, far past the age when men can start afresh and achieve success, despoiled by another ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... came into that cleft or defile, 'twixt bush-girt, steepy cliffs, called Skeleton Cove, where I had builded me a forge with bellows of goatskin. Here, too, I had set up an anvil (the which had come ashore in a wreck, together with divers other tools) and a bench for my carpentry. The roof of this smithy backed upon a cavern wherein I stored my tools, timber and various ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the worst on his father's farm, she would lend him the amount he wished. Before the appointed time the work was done, and well done. On his seventeenth birthday he bought the boat, but on his way home it struck a sunken wreck and sank just as he reached ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... swept along in near peril of wreck, through flying sea-smoke and plagues of hail, they heard a strange unearthly music rising and falling in the blast. Some said it was Angels sent to strengthen them; others said it was wild birds which they had ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... dead; That smiles at all that's coarse and rash, Yet wins the trophies of the fight, Unscathed, in honour's wreck and crash, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the mountain's side:— There, Scotland! lay thy bravest pride, Chiefs, knights, and nobles, many a one: The sad survivors all are gone. View not that corpse mistrustfully, Defaced and mangled-though it be; He saw the wreck his rashness wrought; Reckless of life, he desperate fought, And fell on Flodden plain: And well in death his trusty brand, Firm clench'd within his kingly hand, Beseem'd ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... men are slain by the poison of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. Nor is the crafty old subterfuge lacking here. There are lost ones in this town who say, 'It is by our means that virtue is preserved to the rich: it is we who appease the wicked rage which would otherwise wreck society.' There are men who boast that they have brought their sins only to the houses of shame, and that they have respected purity in the midst of their foulness. 'Such things must be,' they say: 'let us alone, lest a worse thing ensue.' When they are filled full with ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Sweet wreck of loveliness! alas, how soon The sad brief summer of thy joys hath fled: How sorrows Friendship for thy hapless doom, Thy beauty faded, and thy hopes all dead. Oh! 'twas that beauty's power which first destroy'd Thy mind's serenity; its ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... fathers thought of chiefly as a kind of far-off rubbish-heap where they could fling out the human garbage of England, to rot or redeem itself as it might, well out of the way of society's fastidious nostril, and which to our childhood was chiefly associated with the wild gold-fever and the wreck and ruin which that fever too often wrought. The transportation system, so far as Australia was concerned, came virtually to an end with the discovery of gold in the region to which we had been shipping off our criminals. The colonists had long been complaining of this ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... continent of Europe, demolished, a conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction, a pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean. Indeed, my friend, ours is a bed of roses. And the system of government which shall keep us afloat amidst this wreck of the world, will be immortalized in history. We have, to be sure, our petty squabbles and heart-burnings, and we have something of the blue devils at times, as to these raw heads and bloody bones who ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... eloped! Yet all the same I felt quite sure you were his victim, When back a sorry wreck you came, I very nearly went and kicked him! Did Love take wings, and fly away? Grew my affection less? No, never! To tell the truth, I'm bound to say I fondly loved you more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... closed in upon them the ship was fast aground upon a sandbank, off the Hujamree branch of the Indus, scarcely within sight of land. Everything was thrown overboard to lighten the ship, but in vain; she became a total wreck, and settled down to her main deck in the water. She fortunately, however, held together long enough to allow all the men to be taken on shore, which occupied three days, but with the loss of everything they ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... is why you make me furious. You don't know the origin or meaning of this Socialistic dream and yet you are preaching it every Sunday, inflaming the minds of that crowd. I don't blame your wife. She sees in her soul the rock on which you must wreck your ship sooner or later. The herd and the mating pair cannot co-exist as dominant forces. This is why Socialism never converts a woman except through some—individual man. Woman's maternal instinct ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... to Little Choyeuse Creek they were welcomed in person by Victor Gagnon. He awaited them at his threshold. The clumsy stockade of lateral pine logs, a relic of the old Indian days when it was necessary for every fur store to be a fortress, was now a wreck. A few upright posts were standing, but the rest had long since been used to bank ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... outburst of thine, thou reachedst a higher level than all the rest; and thou art not the last man, who has seemed a hopeless and helpless wreck, unable to exercise the faith that seemed so natural to others; but who, after a time, under the teaching of Jesus, has been enabled to assume a position to which none of his associates ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... have served meritoriously on the fleet, for after the wreck he was offered the command of a man-of-war; but he asked for a commission to New France. From this request there arose complications. His wife's family, the Kirkes, had held claims against New France from the days when the Kirkes of Boston had captured Quebec. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... close in with this coast, the wind fell, and left her to the mercy of a great westerly swell, which set right upon the shore. A line of two hundred fathoms found no bottom. The weather became hazy; the coast could not be seen. A most fearful wreck now seemed inevitable, when the fog cleared away, and a point (Cape Bristol) appeared, bearing east-south-east, beyond which no land could be seen. This discovery relieved the explorers from the dread of being carried by the swell on to one of the most horrible coasts in the world. After undergoing ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... lines just in time to repulse a heavy attack of the enemy, and immediately assuming the offensive, he attacked in turn with great vigor. The enemy was defeated with great slaughter, and the loss of most of his artillery and trains, and the trophies he had captured in the morning. The wreck of his army escaped during the night, and fled in the direction of Staunton and Lynchburg. Pursuit was made to Mount Jackson. Thus ended this, the enemy's last attempt to invade the North via the Shenandoah Valley. I was now enabled to return the 6th corps to the Army ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... attempting to reconcile the terrible earthquake at Lisbon with the idea of infinite goodness? 'God knows very well that an immortal soul cannot suffer from mortal accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wreck. I can't think what's the matter with me, and I've lost all my hair. You've no idea, Mrs. White, of the beautiful hair I used to have; it used to fall in armfuls over my shoulders; now, it's no more than ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... level ground between the cliff and the river stood two or three other cottages. One, the largest of them, appeared to be built almost entirely of wreck wood, from the uneven appearance presented by the walls and roof, the architect having apparently adapted such pieces of timber as came to hand without employing the saw to bring them into more fitting shape; the chimney, however, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... one cable. The wave flung the Solon and the pinnace asunder. With stolid resignation the Orientals retreated to the poop. The people in the pinnace rowed desperately to keep her out of the deadly trough of the billows, but Glaucon stood erect on the drifting wreck and his voice rang through ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... But the Gauls left wreck and ruin and scarcely one stone upon another in the great desolation; they swept away all records of history, then and there, and the general destruction was absolute, so that the Rome of the Republic and of the Empire, the centre and capital of the world, began to exist ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... interesting for the youngest readers are Paul Revere's Ride and The Wreck of the Hesperus; The Children's Hour, in which the poet tells of the daily play-time with his little girls; and The Village Blacksmith, together with the verses From My Arm-Chair, written when the children gave the chair made from the chestnut tree ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... danger of perishing entirely. What we can judge of in Fanny are one or two graceful lyrics interspersed in it, though even these are marred by untimely comicality and local allusions. The nominal hero, while wandering about at night after the wreck of his fortunes, hears a band playing outside a public place of entertainment. It must have been a better band than that which now, from the Museum opposite the Astor House, drives to frenzy the hapless stranger.... ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock and in an instant to hear the billows roar, 'A sunken ship;' for whether in mid-sea or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each and all, and every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love, and every moment jeweled with a joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... built, when the plague broke out with terrible violence, and ravaged every class and every district as it had not since the days of the Black Death. The King, seized by it in his misery and weakness and bitter disappointment, fell a victim. The wreck of all his hopes left him with hardly a wish to live, and on September 9, 1438, at the age of forty-seven, and after a reign of five years, he died at Thomar, in the act of breaking open a letter, but not before Henry ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... in the evening, my officers gathered around me to bear me company, and to devise measures for procuring necessaries out of the wreck; and having lighted a fire, wrapped themselves up in what they could get, and slept very soundly, notwithstanding the coldness of the weather, and our hopeless situation. I would have set the people to work that very night, in endeavouring to save what we could from the wreck, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... upon the stage, the great monarchies of Europe had just arisen upon the ruins of those Feudal states which survived the wreck of Charlemagne's empire. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... everywhere in distress: some on the point of foundering, others being dashed to pieces on the rocks. The great waves, as they raged past in fearful haste, bore upon their foaming crests great masses of wreck, the dread vestiges of terrible disasters. Amongst the floating timbers and spars, encumbered with tangles of cordage, floated great bundles of hay, the lost cargo of heavily-laden ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... amid the fast rising seas, when I saw an object in the water, still at a considerable distance ahead. Now it appeared on the summit of a sea, now it sank into a hollow. It looked so much like the wreck of a vessel that I reported ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... how much I like De Quincey's new volumes. The "Wreck of a Household" shows great power of narrative, if he would but take the trouble to be right as to details; the least and lowest part of the art, that of interesting you in his people, he has. And those "Last Days of Kant," how affecting they are, and how thoroughly in every line ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the doctor still in bed; in fact, a wreck as the result of his adventure. He had little to correct in the facts of the story which had been published so far. But there were many other details of the poisoning he was quite ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... yield; and so, presently, they could hardly tell how, for they were aghast at it all, Isabel was alone in her room amidst the ruins of her life, and Basil alone in the one-horse carriage, trying to drive away from the wreck of his happiness. All was over; the dream was past; the charm was broken. The sweetness of their love was turned to gall; whatever had pleased them in their loving moods was loathsome now, and the things they had praised a moment before were hateful. In that baleful light, which seemed to dwell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... explaining, 'Tat Tella's boat—tat Tedo's—tat brothers—tat Angel,' and so on, the word foolish was not directed to the little one, but to the gray eyes heavy with unshed tears, that rested wistfully upon a wreck that had caught upon a nail and lay rent ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... call her "wrong," she held him up to public disgrace and worked her own inexorable damnation by taking her miserable life. Well hath the Preacher warned us against the woman whose "heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands." (Eccl. VII, 26.) Well do we know the wreck and ruin that such agents of destruction can work upon the innocent and trusting. (Revelations XXI, 8; I Corinthians VI, 18; Job XXXI, 12; Hosea IV, 11: ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... this battery stood out of reach of harm, with the compensating disadvantage of being able to inflict none. The reef below would infallibly wreck any ship that tried to approach within the point-blank range of some 270 yards, and its extreme range of ten times that distance was no protection to the haven, which lay round a sharp corner of ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with reminiscences of that evening's entertainment—with wonderful accounts of railway accidents— and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the dying and the dead, while the air was filled with horrid shrieks ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the first time. It was a huge tree which had been undermined by the water during the past few hours and fallen right out into the stream, its top being over a hundred feet from the shore and showing quite a dense tangle of branches level with the water, to have entered which must have meant wreck. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... some months of every year with them. For himself, he had rooms at Highgate Grove, not unpleasant lodgings in a picturesque old house, where he kept the books which were indispensable to him, and a few pictures which he had loved from boyhood. All else that remained from the slow Dymchurch wreck was down in Somerset. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... a washerwoman as our authoress doubtless knew that by this time the web must have become such a wreck that it would have gone to pieces ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... (for I am lame) with any blue And redolent remain that dares aspire To wreck the Grand Old Grandson's cabinet. Here's ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... channel leading without a break into clear water, was the wind sufficiently free to enable us to lay our course along it without breaking tacks? I doubted it very much; and if not, or if at a critical moment the wind should shift a point or two, the ship must inevitably go ashore and become a wreck; for I could nowhere see a channel wide enough to allow the ship to work in. Arguing thus, I soon came to the conclusion that I must look to leeward for the channel that must conduct us to ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... gloomy was the house, so subdued his sister's greeting, and so worn and sad his father's face. The trouble, however, was what he had guessed, and he had accepted it with quiet resignation. The financial wreck seemed complete; but one resource, however, was left. Just after the war Clayton's father had purchased mineral lands in the South, and it was with the idea of developing these that he had encouraged the marked scientific tastes of his son, and had sent him to a German university. ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... right, Mr. Dunkin; 'f I had a beast I'd go with ye. There'll be no Apaches round these parts agin for a considerable spell," and his eyes ran sadly over the ruins of his home, the wreck of his property, resting finally on the grave ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... face. It was a relief when Mrs. Watson tapped at the door and brought me some tea and toast. The cook was in bed, completely demoralized, she reported, and Liddy, brave with the daylight, was looking for footprints around the house. Mrs. Watson herself was a wreck; she was blue-white around the lips, and she had one hand ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was alone and would receive him if he demanded admittance. He had put the temptation aside, as he had put aside many others; and it had been in her mind, was in her mind still, to make the temptation irresistible. And if he felt a failure to-night, she had it in her power to wreck ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... head boring through the sodden atmosphere over the sea and its body flying shrieking from the drum and riding out with deep humming tones to cut its way far out through the storm. The rocket had cleared the distance capitally; it was a good way beyond the wreck, but too far to leeward. It had run itself out and now stood wavering in the air like the restless head of a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... being the scene of a terrible orgie, it was sacked and burnt down by the conquerors in the glorious fight of February 1848. Not a stone of it remains. All the works of art within it were destroyed But I know of one stray bit saved from the wreck. The traveller who goes to see the museum at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, may observe, alongside of the picture which represents M. de Montmolin, an officer of the Swiss Guard, allowing himself to be murdered on the 10th of August, sooner than give up the flag which was intrusted ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... poison had already begun its work. The third warning came to you last night, the message that you should get your affairs in order and be prepared for the inevitable. The Dutchman is no more, his foul wretch of a wife died, a poor wreck of a woman, bereft of ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the morning, the wind having abated during the night, I went down to the shore hoping to find a typewriter and other useful things washed up from the wreck of the ship; but all that fell in my way was a piece of timber with many holes in it. My man Friday had many times said that we stood sadly in need of a square table for our afternoon tea, and I bethought me how this piece of wood might be used for that purpose. And since during ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with broken glass and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashed hanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters from the mast—which had broken in falling, and along the ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... libraries of these records since the Revolution, and it is notorious that Louis XV. left Secret Memoirs, written by his own hand, of what passed before this convulsion; and had not the papers of the Tuileries shared in the wreck of royalty, it would have been seen that Louis XVI. had made some progress in the memoirs of his time; and even his beautiful and unfortunate Queen had herself made extensive notes and collections for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at the top of his voice, for the wind rattled and tore at the old building with the noise of a cannonade, as if determined to wreck even this shelter. It was not possible to see one's hand in the darkness, for when the door had been pulled shut after the young couple, the last ray of light was shut out. Besides, night had fallen now, and the darkness outside ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... weather side, was free from the wreck. Without even stopping to turn, he dove backward from the cockpit. Under the cold, green water he went. He struck out, blindly, frenziedly. His hand felt something that was not canvas and yet was cloth—struck, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... William was practically a wreck before the inquisition came to an end. He had not even sufficient spirit left to fly at me for entering his distinguishing marks as "a general air of honesty, tempered by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... before a fire in a house, or before the wreck of a ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way into another place. And Anna Markovna was directed by the same rat-like, animal, prophetic intuition. And she was right: immediately right after the death of Jennka some fearful curse seemed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... await us in our journey together, even to the wreck of all earthly hopes, I know that he will rise superior to them—and oh! to think that I may be by his side to support him in adversity as well as to share in his prosperity and glorious fate, for which God enable me to be ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... worth acceptance at your hands,— 25 Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment. even as my Master did, Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth, Or earth be like a shadow in the light Of Heaven absorbed—some few tumultuous years 30 Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes His will whose will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... There were millions of dollars involved, the control of several large companies, and more than that; for Mr. Griffin and his associates were fighting a group of financial thieves who were trying to wreck excellent properties for the sake of making a gain. It was a fight for more than money—it was a fight to keep big business honest, to drive off the wolves and make finance solid. ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... is the sea's, that smiles to-night A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light; The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails, Forgetful of the fury of her gales; To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars, And o'er his hapless wreck the flood ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... true, could retain any kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or any tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once had loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her, still have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity. While she stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry which defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her mind often went back mournfully, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Land area: 5 km2; includes Ile Glorieuse, Ile du Lys, Verte Rocks, Wreck Rock, and South Rock Comparative area: about 8.5 times the size of the Mall in Washington, DC Land boundaries: none Coastline: 35.2 km Maritime claims: Contiguous zone: 12 nm Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm Territorial sea: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... except the wreck of the milk-saucer of the household cat, which sagacious creature had wisely taken to flight at ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... quantity of wholesome nourishment had been consumed, someone said, 'Let's sing!' and a tuneful hour followed. Nat fiddled, Demi piped, Dan strummed the old banjo, and Emil warbled a doleful ballad about the wreck of the Bounding Betsey; then everybody joined in the old songs till there was very decidedly 'music in the air'; and passers-by said, as they listened smiling: ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... deliberately to the fireplace, and laid the spotted paper upon the burning coals. It writhed and curled, blackened, flamed, and in a moment was a cinder dropping into ashes. He folded his arms, and stood looking at the wreck of Myrtle's future, the work of his cruel hand. Strangely enough, Myrtle herself was fascinated, as it were, by the apparent solemnity of this mysterious sacrifice. She had kept her eyes steadily on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... namely, after he had been put to bed, and was staring up at the darkening ceiling previous to falling asleep. This, by itself, was nothing very remarkable; the puzzle was, how could he do it now? Out of all the wreck of his small memory, why was this song, the meaning of which he had never understood, the sole survivor? Was it that his affection for Mr. Pennroyal had kept it alive? So might a sentimentalist have concluded; but the ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... contradictions of all his proposals, the absolute antithesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties. He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least something to show as ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... where they were obliged to leave part of their company through fatigue, and the rest, to the number of about eighty, arrived at the town. They were supplied with every necessary, and sent back to the wreck, with proper assistance, for recovering what could be fished up: They fortunately got up all their bullion, which was in chests, and several of their guns, which were very large. They then returned to the town, but their companions who had been left upon the road were missing, having, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... education just sufficiently prolonged to unfit him for the tasks of an underling, yet not thorough enough to qualify him for professional life. In boyhood he aspired to the career of an artist, but his father, himself the wreck of a would-be painter, rudely discouraged this ambition; by way of compromise between the money-earning craft and the beggarly art, he became a mechanical-draughtsman. Of late years he had developed a strong taste for the study ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... the remains of the Palace of Pericles, of the temple of Jupiter Olympus (an unaccountable blunder), the Painted Portico, the Forum of the inner Ceremeicus, the magnificent wreck of which the following engraving may convey a general idea, has been finally decided to have formed a portion of the Pantheon of Hadrian. For some time after this opinion had been started by Mr. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... large hearts of heroes, The courage of present times and all times, How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm, How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... myself, the relief was so great. There we stood—he, Henry Lawrence, taller and handsomer and prouder-looking than any man in the room, looking down upon me and offering me his arm! I think I felt as I should if a lifeboat came to take me off a wreck—in a modified degree, I mean. I took his arm with a few rather inarticulate words of thanks, and we strolled through the other rooms, he listening to me with such earnest attentiveness, bending his head at every word, seeming so absorbed in me, so forgetful of the women who gazed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... until my dress had been completely ruined that I succeeded in wresting myself from him. Upon two other occasions he seized me and ran with me under the cataract, and held me there until I was thoroughly baptized and my bonnets a wreck of lace ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Vansittart, I was informed had just finished a survey of those Straits and was hoisting his boat in when the ship struck. Immediately on receiving the intelligence Captain Lloyd, in the General Elliot and another ship in company called the Nonsuch, sailed for the wreck. They found the ship had been burnt down to the water's edge by the Malays. They however saved 40 chests of treasure out of 55 which were said to have been on board. Most of the ship's company were ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... over any more thoughts of the ship, or of any thing out of her, except what might drive on shore from her wreck, as indeed divers pieces of her afterwards did; but those things were of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... was more to come invaded the spirits of Lady Nottingham's guests. She herself was a little distraite, Daisy's headache had left her rather white and tired, Gladys lamented the wreck of the garden, and there was not much life about. Then after dinner it clouded over again, the clouds regathered, lightning began to wink remotely and thunder to grumble, and even Mrs. Halton, whom the sultry ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... evidently in the regenerative throes of a new birth, with its Gothic Arcade opposite the railway station, and the new circus at the foot of the hill, where for so many long years there has been nothing but a wreck and a ruin. In close neighbourhood, Constitution Hill, Hampton Street, and at the junction of Summer Lane, a number of handsome houses and shops have lately been erected by Mr. Cornelius Ede, in the early Gothic style, from designs by Mr. J.S. Davis, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... ourselves; and as for gossip, heaven help ye, gentles! I suppose the Christmas numbers are out already, with the usual richly-coloured supplements of the cheerful order, such as a blood-stained khaki wreck saying good-bye to his pard, or the troop Christmas pudding (I s'pose I ought to say duff) dropped on the ground. But a truce to all such thoughts, perhaps we shall get home after all, and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... The spirit breaks; The fountain soon must dry. If not, good God! The temple shakes; It totters! What am I? A wreck of hope!—An aimless thing! A helmless ship at sea To whose last spar love still ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy, Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour? All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome nor Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the Wreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor. Whither depart the brave?—God ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... the incursions of banditti into our territory. In her fate and in her fortune, in her power to establish and maintain a settled government, we have a far deeper interest, socially, commercially, and politically, than any other nation. She is now a wreck upon the ocean, drifting about as she is impelled by different factions. As a good neighbor, shall we not extend to her a helping hand to save her? If we do not, it would not be surprising should some other nation undertake the task, and thus force us to interfere ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his two uncles, asking their advice as to saving the wreck, if anything might be saved. Sir Gregory had written back to say that he was an old man, that he was greatly grieved at the misunderstanding, and that Messrs. Block and Curling were the family lawyers. Parson John ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... for the statement that Borrow was wrecked, instead of nearly wrecked, off Cape Finisterre. As the Marques was a passenger on the boat, the mistake must be ascribed to Mr Webster. The further statement that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona by Quesada is scarcely more credible than that about the wreck. His imprisonment could not very well have taken place, as stated, in 1837-9, because General Quesada was killed in 1836. Mention is made of this foreign correspondent rumour only because it has been printed and reprinted. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... man saturating his lungs with pure air after long confinement in a foul atmosphere. Then it almost seemed as if his great frame shrank in stature, and became suddenly a wreck of itself. As if age and decay had suddenly come upon him. As if the weight of his body had become too heavy for him, and set his great limbs tottering under it as ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... had been speaking to him just now with no personal sentiment. She was only the lover of honest things, the friend, the good ally, obliged to flee a cause for its terrible unsoundness, yet trying to prevent wreck and ruin. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... got out of it alive. The Book is very dull, but it is actually legible: all the ingenious faculty I had, and ten times as much would have been useful there, has been employed in elucidation; in saying, and chiefly in forbearing to say,—in annihilating continents of brutal wreck and dung: Ach Gott!—But in fact you will see it by and by; and then form your own conclusions about it. They are going to publish it in October, I find: I tried hard to get you a complete copy of the sheets by this Steamer; ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... should ill act up to that fearless line of duty my sacred calling prescribes, were I not, as a friend, to urge you to reflect on your present line of conduct, and ask you to pause on it, ere you wreck, not only the happiness of others but your own, at the shrine of inordinate vanity. Shall I honestly own, that mine has narrowly escaped being wrecked; and that, from your own lips, I learnt such was the case. Believing ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... whereby the truth will appear—especially the information which was drawn by the alcalde-mayor of the province of Valayan (on whose coast and in whose district the ship was lost), the very next day, and obtained from the men who were saved from the wreck. By this may be seen what passed in this region, and the guilt of the said factor, and that of the admiral, as has ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various |
