"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Joseph and Helena, making from Havana to Cadiz in 1753 was carried from her course by adverse winds and tossed against a reef, near New London, Connecticut, receiving injuries that compelled her to run into that port for repairs. To reach her broken ribs more easily her freight was put on shore in charge of the collector of the port, but when it was desired to ship ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... dust, and I thought: so will the unborn philosophers of the next century fold me up and put me away beside the other mouldy ones—curious but no longer useful. My book will be but an empty shell on the reef of human history. Of such cruelty are the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... removed. Mr. Hume with his usual perseverance, walked out when the camp was formed; and, at a little distance from it, ascended a ridge of pure sand, crowned with cypresses. From this, he descended to the westward, and, at length, struck upon the river, where a reef of rocks creased its channel, and formed a dry passage from one side to the other; but the bend, which the river must have taken, appeared to him so singular, that he doubted whether it was the same beside which we had been travelling during the day. Curiosity led him to cross it, when ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... happen), and are fast asleep in a minute. But we have not been an hour in the Land of Nod, ere three heavy blows from a handspike are struck on the forecastle hatch, which is then slid back, and a hoarse voice bawls: 'All ha-ands a-ho-oy! tumble up to reef tops'ls!' Out we bundle, and grope for our clothes (the forecastle being as dark as a dog's mouth), get them on somehow, and hurry-scurry on deck. We find the weather and sea altered much for the worse, and the Old Man (captain) ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... from the capital in time, well and good. If no more than time to replenish stores was allowed, good enough, despite the loss of sales. But what if the Spanish fleet arrived? The 'King's Island' was a low little reef right in the mouth of the harbor, which it all but barred. Moreover, no vessel could live through a northerly gale inside the harbor—the only one on that coast—unless securely moored to the island itself. Consequently whoever held the island ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... great favourite among the crew, and ran no slight chance of being spoilt. I could dance a hornpipe with any man on board; and as for singing a rollicking sea-song, there were few who could match me. I soon learned to hand reef, steer, and heave the lead, as well as any man on board. My mother was proud of me, and so was my father; and they had reason to be, and ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... understood that I express no opinion on the controverted points. I doubt if there are ten living men who, having a practical knowledge of what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master the very difficult biological and geological problems involved in their study. I happen to have spent the best part of three years among coral-reefs and to have made that attempt; and, when Mr. Murray's work appeared, I said to myself that until ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Redouble duobligi. Redoubt (fortification) reduto. Redoubtable timinda. Redress (amend) rebonigi, ripari. Reduce (to powder) pisti. Reduce (dissolve) solvi. Reduce malpliigi. Redundance suficxego. Redundant suficxega. Reed kano. Reef (rocks) rifo. Reel (stagger) sxanceligxi. Re-enter reeniri. Re-establish reigi. Refection mangxeto. Refectory mangxejo. Refer to turni sin. Referring to rilate al. Refine rafini. Refined (manners) bonmaniera, gxentila. Refiner rafinisto. Refinery ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... these and more surged through the brain of the captain, while he slowly paced back and forth, with eyes and ears wide open. Inez still slumbered, and all was silent, excepting the boom of the ocean against the coral-reef; while, as the night wore on, the captain maintained his ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... the cabin boy—and went to sleep. The rest of the crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite big to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship, was a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven the Santa Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the masts fell out and the Santa Maria ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... Mississippi arrived out, and before the city and castle were taken, a terrible 'norther' sprung up, and destroyed much shipping in the harbor. One vessel, on which were a number of passengers, was thrown high upon a reef, and when morning broke, the heavy sea was making a clear breach through her. She lay about a mile from the Mississippi, and it soon became known on board the steamer, that a mother and her infant were in the wreck, and that unless succor came ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by birth a salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the fishes and oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. He learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could hold his breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through thirty feet of water. And at ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the shore, a land-floe, of some thirty miles in width, followed the sinuosities of the coast-line. Bergs here and there strewed its surface; but the major part of them formed what is called a "reef," in the neighbourhood of Devil's Thumb, denoting either a bank or shoal ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... lightened ship, you choose to make all sorts of nasty insinuations about us wanting to knock you out! Shows where your mind is. Another fellow wouldn't ever let such a fool notion get a grip on him. And you'd better put a reef in that tongue of yours, my boy, unless you want to have it ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... blow a gale. The master gave the word to take in sail, but the storm forbade obedience, for such is the roar of the winds and waves his orders are unheard. The men, of their own accord, busy themselves to secure the oars, to strengthen the ship, to reef the sail. While they thus do what to each one seems best, the storm increases. The shouting of the men, the rattling of the shrouds, and the dashing of the waves, mingle with the roar of the thunder. The swelling sea seems lifted up ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... sq km land area: 5 sq km comparative area: about eight times the size of The Mall in Washington, DC note: includes Ashmore Reef (West, Middle, and East ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... on a dangerous reef which is never above water, though some small round black rocks are seen at low tide awash. They look like the kettles in which cooks get up a boiled dinner; and for this reason the Arabs call the reef Abu Kizan, which ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... hops and morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,—these were the features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... name, I dinna ken. Well, if you mind, she struck on the reef there, and the skipper dropped all his treasure chests overboard, in mortal fear that the Orkney wreckers would rob him of them. I suppose he took his bearings, but for many a day the wreckers searched the waters, and never a thing did they find. Well, years and years after that ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... was supposed that the reef-builders inhabited very deep waters; for they were sometimes brought up upon sounding-lines from a depth of many hundreds or even thousands of feet, and it was taken for granted that they must have had their home where they were found: but the facts recently ascertained respecting the subsidence ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... second," chimed in Teddy. "Wow!" he cried, as a giant breaker thundered down on the reef, "that must have been the daddy of them all, I guess. Let's go up to the lookout room as soon as we're through and watch ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... to keep quiet, and the ladies and children to dress and sit at the doors of their state-rooms, there to await the advice and action of the officers of the ship, who were perfectly cool and self-possessed. Meantime the ship was working over a reef-for a time I feared she would break in two; but, as the water gradually rose inside to a level with the sea outside, the ship swung broadside to the swell, and all her keel seemed to rest on the rock or sand. At no time did the sea ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... its somewhat intricate manipulation has been mastered. My husband's directions for the arrangement of a hunting-tie are as follows:—"The centre of the stock is placed on the front of the neck, the ends are passed in opposite directions round the back of the neck, brought in front, tied in a reef knot, crossed in front of this knot, and finally secured, as a rule, by means of a pin or brooch of the safety or horse-shoe or fox pattern. A gold safety pin is often used. A brooch pin is naturally safer than an ordinary pin. Nowadays, hunting ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... and the captain had gone over to the cable office. The boys, after dinner, had wandered around through the crowds, avidly watching everything, from the Portuguese women selling fruit, to the phosphorescent surf rolling in across the reef ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... that walks the deck, How does it happen you're not a wreck? One and another have come to grief, How have you dodged by rock and reef?" ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with spindrift, and the weed is on our knees; Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas; From reef and rock and skerry, over headland, ness, and voe, The coastguard lights of England watch the ships ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... and the snowwhite roaring surf on our left. By the time I speak of, the swell had been lashed up into breaking waves, and after shipping more salt water than I had bargained for, we were obliged, about four PM, to shove into a cove within the reef, called Naranja. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the expense of the Consolidated Press. Why, he ought to pay them to let him go. Can't you see him, confound him, sitting under a palm-tree in white flannels, with a glass of Jamaica rum in his fist, while we're dodging yellow fever on this coral-reef, and losing our salaries ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Uncle William—"like enough. Easy there!" He seized the stern of the Andrew Halloran and sprang on board. They worked in swift silence, hoisting the anchor, letting out the sail,—a single reef,—making it fast. "All she'll stan'," said Uncle William. He turned ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... and the flat congewoi-covered ledges of reef on the southern side of the bar lie bare and exposed to the sun. Here and there in the crystal pools among the rocks, fish have been left by the tide, and as you step over the congewoi, whose teats spurt out jets of water to the pressure of your foot, large silvery bream and gaily-hued ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... a shred, sir," said Philip; "the scissors shall only be used to cut the threads, with which the ladies take in a reef here and there, when ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... absorbed moisture and now drying again, opens its joints; the rough-cast coquettes with the frost and opens chinks and crannies for the humbler creation. I fail to see the necessity of (and, accordingly, I resent bitterly) all these coral-reef methods. Better walls than this, and better and less life-wasting ways of making them, are surely possible. In the wall in question, concrete would have been cheaper and better than bricks if only "the men" had understood it. But I can ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... vacuum where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its shrill and desolate wail, then dying ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... last. In eighteen months he had packed away in his head all the multitude of volatile statistics and acquired that confidence and courage which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign. He knew every snag and bank and dead tree and reef in all those endless miles between St. Louis and New Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of water—the whole story—by night and by day. He could smell danger in the dark; he could read the surface ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Tunis broke in sharply. "Just keep your mind on what you are doing now, Horry. You're supposed to be steering the Seamew into Big Wreck Cove. Don't undertake to shave a piece off the Lighthouse Point reef." ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... side, and the land trends away northerly to the north shore, then turns about again to the westward, making the south side of the bay. About three leagues and a half from the bottom of the bay on this side there is a small island about a musket-shot from the shore; and a reef of rocks that runs from it to the eastward about a mile. On the west side of the island is a channel of three fathom at low-water, of which depth it is also within, where ships may haul in and careen. West from ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... preceded the event which is regarded as its effect. Thus, if one man's death is ascribed to another's desire of revenge, this desire may have been entertained for years before the assassination occurred: similarly, if a shipwreck is ascribed to a sunken reef, the rock was waiting for ages before the ship sailed that way. But, of course, neither the desire of revenge nor the sunken rock was 'the sum of the conditions' on which the one or the other event depended: as soon as this is complete the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... “there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the break of the reef. That’s Falesá, where your station is, the last village to the east; nobody lives to windward—I don’t know why. Take my glass, and you ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... living waves that roll On golden sands, Or break on tragic reef and shoal 'Mid fatal lands; O forest wrought of living leaves, Some filled with Spring, Where joy life's festal raiment weaves And all birds sing,— Some trampled in the miry ways, Or whirled along By fury of tempestuous days,— ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... tides. Beside this lies a cask ripped from the deck of a Gloucester fishing schooner that sought the halibut even on the chill banks that lie just south of the point of Greenland. And so they come, chips from a Maine shipyard, wreckage from a Bermuda reef, and a thousand tiny things picked up at ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... were on deck. "Breakers starboard! breakers larboard! breakers all around!" was the ominous cry a moment afterward, and all was confusion. The words were scarcely uttered, when, and before the helm was up, the ill-fated ship struck, and, after a few tremendous shocks against the sunken reef, she parted about midship. Ropes and stays were cut away—all rushed forward, as if instinctively, and had barely reached the forecastle, when the stern and quarter-deck broke asunder with a violent crash, and sunk to rise no more. Two of the seamen miserably ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... ease the strain on their anchors. Early on Monday morning we beheld with consternation that the tide did not reach our boat, and by dint of hard labor we constructed a railroad from a neighboring fence, and moved the Mayeta on rollers upon it over the mud and the projecting reef of rocks some five hundred feet to the water, then embarking, rowed close along the shore to avoid the current. A deep fog settled down upon us, and we were driven to camp again on the left bank, where a cataract tumbled over the rocks fifty or more feet. Tuesday was a sunny ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... eight rocks, near the surface, which captain Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of Bosc with eight tentacula (Pelagia denticulata, Peron), a third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and which Vandelli found at the mouth of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... shear clear through some of the larger seas, and you didn't need watch her long to make you reckon you'd seen the last of her. Then Mr. Robinson, talking like a man half in a rage, half in a fright, orders me to pack sail on the schooner; but it was already blowing a single-reef breeze, and I had no idea of losing our spars, and so I told him very firmly that the yacht had all she needed, and that more would only stop her by burying her: and I had my way. But we were foaming through it, too; we wanted no more pressure; the freshening wind had worked the ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... with a fork like a sparrow-beak during the monologue that would have been so dreary to her but for her appreciation of the wholesome effect of the letting off of steam, and her admiration of the fire of his eyes. After finishing his plate he had less the look of a ship driving on to reef—some of his images of the country. He called for claret and water, sighing as he munched bread in vast portions, evidently conceiving that to eat unbuttered bread was to abstain from luxury. He praised passingly the quality of the bread. It came from Steynham, and so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... signal of distress!" cried the woman. "Oh! the ship, the ship! The wind is dead upon the shore, and the long reef, out by the Battery Point, has seen many a vessel wrecked between ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... savages dropped flat with terror. A different fear seized La Salle, for he knew that the shot was a signal of disaster. Looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails, and his heart sank with the conviction that she had struck upon the reef. Smothering his distress,— she was laden with all the stores of the colony,—he pressed forward among the filthy wigwams, whose astonished inmates swarmed about the band of armed strangers, staring between curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with whom he was dealing, and, without ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... be in the stream waiting for a fair breeze-then the Maggy 'll play her part. Bless yer soul! the little craft and me's coasted down the coast nobody knows how many years; and she knows every nook, creek, reef, and point, just as well as I does. Just give her a double-reefed mainsail, and the lug of a standing jib, and in my soul I believe she'd make the passage without compass, chart, or a hand aboard. By the word of an old sailor, such a craft is the Maggy ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... slowly downwards. Before them surged the foaming waters, the waves white-crested. A gust of wind struck the boat; the water began to beat heavily against it, so that it was tossed about like a piece of cork. Since Simon had not put up the sail there was now no need to reef it. Flakes of foam flew over the spars, the beams groaned. The clouds rushed on, driving the heaving, thundering waves before them. Soon the little boat was overtaken by darkness, which was only relieved by flashes of lightning. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... first practice game staged for Merriwell. The first one had degenerated into a farce, for the spirit of fun had taken untimely grip of the players and a promising exhibition had gone to pieces on a reef of horseplay. Spink and Handy, for the club, had waited upon Merry and tendered apologies, and a second game had been arranged. Circumstances over which Merry had had little control had kept him away from that second game; and now, four days later, the Ophir eleven were ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... always good at getting out of scrapes) at that very moment he contracted a suspicion that something moist was getting up into his own big hazel eyes; and so he began to whistle briskly, and then to cry out, loud enough to call all hands to close reef the topsails in a gale of wind: "Port and Starboard! Port and Starboard! come here, old curs and landlubbers that you are,—come, bear a hand and be lively there, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... as on the opposite side; not a thing to be seen but the boundless ocean with not a speck of a sail or a bit of land within sight. It was a little kingdom all of its own. A quarter of a mile from shore the low rollers broke ceaselessly on a coral reef, while overhead, the gulls swept around and around, their plaintive whistle ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this, for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of South America, before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the rein Lest that fiery soul of thine Whirl thee out of the listed plain, Past the olives, and o'er the line. Dire and grievous the charge he brings. See thou answer him, noble heart, Not with passionate bickerings. Shape thy course with a sailor's art, Reef the canvas, shorten the sails, Shift them edgewise to shun the gales. When the breezes are soft and low, Then, well under control, you'll go Quick and quicker to strike the foe. O first of all the Hellenic bards high loftily-towering verse to rear, And tragic ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... trade wind. This necessitated frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across from port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises like the swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudly crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips writhed clear of the clean puppy teeth that shone in the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... "I dare not do it; it would be risking too much. Ha! look there; here it comes! Fore and main-topsail halliards let go, and man your reef-tackles!" he shouted, as a long line of white foam appeared on the western horizon, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... The dam of brush and uncemented smooth brown stones, stretching across the Pinas, was gradually rising. The hillside section of ditch through the fields was finished and only the miners continued at the granite reef, the ring of their hammers on drills going steadily and the roar of the shots now and again booming out at nightfall. Excavation went forward in the spaces between the drops on the ridge leading forth upon the mesa. The carpenters had finished and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... was being sought by the Exchange. So this mighty tempest in a tea pot resulted from the excessive zeal of an outsider who while trying to pilot the Committee into safe waters succeeded in running it on a reef of his ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... please your Worship's Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a poor Fellow as ever went between Stem and Stern of a Ship, and can hand, reef, steer, and clap two Ends of a Rope together, as well as e'er a He that ever cross'd salt Water; but I was taken by one George Bradley' (the Name of him that sat as Judge,) 'a notorious Pyrate, a sad Rogue as ever was unhang'd, and he forc'd ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Captain Riggs at me. "She's gone smash flat into a bed of coral! See that green streak running away from us to seaward? That's a reef running out from the mainland and we've piled up on it, and if we don't slip off we're safe until it comes on ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... day we left Kuchin, we had upwards of seventy men on the sick report. The same day, at noon, the anchor was weighed, and we dropped down the river with the ebb tide. Strange to say, in spite of all our precautions, we struck on the same reef of rocks again; fortunately, however, the ship turned with the tide and grounded in the mud close to the bushes, from whence there was no extricating her till the flood tide had made. In the afternoon, when it was low ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... or Bell Rock, is a dangerous reef in the North Sea, east of the Firth of Tay, in Scotland, and twelve miles from all land. The story of the forethought of the abbot of Aberbrothok in placing the bell on the buoy as a warning to sailors is an ancient one, and one old writer ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... parallel. It was longer ere we spied the native village, standing (in the universal fashion) close upon a curve of beach, close under a grove of palms; the sea in front growling and whitening on a concave arc of reef. For the cocoa-tree and the island man are both lovers and neighbours of the surf. 'The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs,' says the sad Tahitian proverb; but they are all three, so long as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. The mark of anchorage was a blow-hole in the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mouth of a river, called Ruim, a bowshot across at the mouth. And when we sighted this river, which was sixty miles beyond C. Verde, we cast anchor at sunset in ten or twelve paces of water, four or five miles from the shore, but when it was day, as the look-out saw there was a reef of rocks on which the sea broke itself, we sailed on and came to the mouth of another river as large as the Senegal, with trees growing down to the water's edge and promising a most fertile country." Cadamosto determined to land a scout here, and caused ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the uncontradicted statements of seamen of all classes, that the bell-buoy, fixed to one of the outer Manacles, is utterly inadequate to warn vessels of their nearness to danger. And when the sounds of that bell came in the landward breeze to where I stood looking across the reef, they seemed, not a message of warning to those who cross the deep, but as the death-knell of the hundreds of men, women, and children who have breathed their last in the sea around ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... fall of 1803, the frigate Philadelphia, one of the best ships of our little navy, while chasing a piratical craft, ran upon a sunken reef near the harbor of Tripoli. The good ship was helpless either to fight ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... March 1770, the frigate, after a tempestuous cruise, came to anchor at Marseilles. An equinoctial gale came on, and after two days of desperate exertion, and throwing many of the guns overboard, the frigate was driven from her anchors, stranded on a reef of rocks, and the crew in such peril that they were saved only by the most extraordinary exertions, and the assistance of the people on shore. The port officer, M. de Peltier, exhibited great kindness and activity, and the ship was rapidly repaired, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... on his way, than the mother's heart enters upon a period of increasing perturbation. Suppose something should happen to the steamer—that it should break down, or catch fire, or run on a reef—or that there should be a railroad accident—or that George should lose his ticket, or be robbed of his money and find himself in some far-away spot, not knowing what to do with no one to go to? Then that long motor ride through deserted country—suppose ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the Alma, a P. and O. vessel which had struck on a coral reef not far from Mocha. The wreck had happened in the dead of night, and there had been only time to get the passengers into the boats, in which they were rowed to another reef near at hand; there they had remained for eighty hours in their scanty ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Harry Shafto's morning watch; he had just relieved the second-lieutenant. Willy was for'ard. It was blowing somewhat fresh, and the ship had a reef in her topsails and her courses set. The night was very dark. Willy having just been aroused from a midshipman's sound sleep, was rubbing his eyes to get them clear. Now he peered out ahead into the darkness, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... man, Spaniard or Portuguese, who was said to know where the ship lay, and "by the policy of his address" wormed from him some further information about the treasure-ship. The old man told him that it had been wrecked on a reef of shoals a few leagues from Hispaniola, and just north of Port de la Plata, which place got its name from the landing there of a boat-load of sailors with plate saved from the sinking vessel. Phips proceeded thither and searched narrowly, but ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at a reach of the river where the big steamer might sit down on another reef, and the men were kept on guard at the bow, with hardly an intermission, gauging the depth of the water with their striped poles, to guide the helmsman by their monotonous calls: "Vosim!" "Schest-s-polovino-o-o-iu!" ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... realized in a few places, yet on the whole the agreement was very good. The borings revealed two depressions or channels where the rock surface passed below the grade of the projected tunnels, these depressions being separated by a rock reef which extends down stream from Blackwell's Island. In 32d and 33d Streets in Manhattan, borings were made from the river to the station site at intervals of about 100 ft., wash-borings and core-borings alternating. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Alfred Noble
... craze for the place. Now it was gold; now it was land; now it was union or no union; now it was annexation and "twenty pieces of silver"; such a lot of fuss about some square miles of wilderness, containing odd outcrops of gold-bearing reef. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... later, Jim had landed his boat on a tiny sand reef a half-mile off the coast of Florida with a tent and complete outfit for camping. Like two romping children, they tied the boat to a stake and rushed over the sand-dunes to the beach. They explored their domain from end to end within an hour. Not a tree obscured the endless panorama of sea and ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of San Juan de Ulloa lies half a mile east and to seaward of the city of Vera Cruz, which it commands, and from which it is separated by water averaging from fifteen to twenty feet deep. It is built on the inner extremity of a reef that extends from it a little over a mile to the eastward, in the general prolongation of the line connecting the castle and the town. This shoal being covered by a foot or two of water, the builders ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... had been wrecked three years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from land, or I'd stayed to ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was to the Bahamas,—it was one Sunday morning in June, the first Sunday in the month,—we cast anchor pretty nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist a-sittin' down to read my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of the ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see, with cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and his clothes were ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the storm has kept the people away from the appointment. But the next night they make it up, and the preacher tries to make it up, too. When Mr. Thompson brought me down, six years ago, we came straight through by fording, belly-deep to the horses, across the reef, three miles long, that forms the nexus between the Nueces Bay and the Corpus Christi Bay. On either side was deep water or miring sand. Once, since that, he has had to tote his passengers out on his back. The reef has been washed out in spots. Lo! this time we go up ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... whole mine—only a vein or two. Yes, this is very interesting," I went on, as I got among the West Africans. "The scoring seems to be pretty low; I suppose it must have been a wet wicket. 'H.E. Reef, 1-3/4, 2'—he did a little better in the second innings. '1/2, Boffin River, 5/16, 7/16'—they followed on, you see, but they saved the innings defeat. By the way, which figure do I really keep my eye on when I want to watch ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... about ten o'clock; but, though it might have been prudent to take in a reef, the pilot, after carefully examining the heavens, let the craft remain rigged as before. The Tankadere bore sail admirably, as she drew a great deal of water, and everything was prepared for high speed in ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... veerin' t' the s'uth'ard," said the skipper, anxiously, while they put a double reef in the mainsail. "'Twill be a rough ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... when we saw at the top of the fore-mast a large white flag, and we cried, "It is then to Frenchmen we will owe our deliverance." We instantly recognised the brig to be the Argus; it was then about two gun-shots from us. We were terribly impatient to see her reef her sails, which at last she did, and fresh cries of joy arose from our raft. The Argus came and lay-to on our starboard, about half a pistol-shot from us. The crew, ranged upon the deck and on the shrouds, announced to us, by the waving of their hands and hats, the pleasure ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... stretched away landward its plush of green at an appraisement of two hundred dollars a front foot to a bungalow equally dignified, noble, and costly. Seaward, glimpsed through a fringe of hundred-foot coconut palms, was the ocean; beyond the reef a dark blue that grew indigo blue to the horizon, within the reef all the silken gamut of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... another. It is about two or three leagues long, and at the south-west point there is another small, low, woody island, about a mile round, and about a mile from the other. Between them there runs a reef of rocks which joins them. (The biggest ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... glamour of romance about him when he was at sea, and "JACK ashore" was for ages held up as the presentment of all that was happy, and contented, and free from care. His hardest duty was supposed to be shinning up the ratlin to "reef," or "brail up," or "splice the mainbrace," or do some other of those mysterious things that caused him to look so mythical to the minds of land-lubbers and the simple-hearted kind of women that used to be, but now no longer are. His ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... stone building, with a spacious veranda in front, covered by plaited matting and canvas curtains triced up all around. The back and one side of the building rested against a craggy eminence which overlooked the sea on both sides of the island, and commanded a wide sweep of reef and blue water beyond. A few clumps of cocoa-nut-trees and dwarf palms, with bare gaunt stems and tufted tops, stood out here and there along the rocky slopes, while lesser vegetation of cactus and mangrove bushes were scattered thickly over ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Newfoundland, in February, 1901. The steamer took fire during a heavy winter gale, and the captain ran her ashore, at the nearest point of land, with the hope of saving the lives of the crew. She struck on a submerged reef in a little cove, about an eighth of a mile from a coast which was three or four hundred feet high and as precipitous as a wall. When she was first seen by a few fishermen at daylight, her boats were gone, and all of her crew had apparently perished except three men. Two were standing on the bridge, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... devilry I put in with Nelson. He COULD sail, even if he did frighten every man that sailed with him. To steer to miss destruction by an inch or an instant was his joy. To do what everybody else did not dare attempt to do, was his pride. Never to reef down was his mania, and in all the time I spent with him, blow high or low, the Reindeer was never reefed. Nor was she ever dry. We strained her open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually. And we abandoned the Oakland ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Recour John Red James Redfield Edward Redick Benjamin Redman Andre Read Barnard Reed Christian Reed Curtis Reed Eliphaz Reed George Reed Jeremiah Reed Job Reed John Reed (2) Jonathan Reed Joseph Reed Levi Reed Thomas Reed (2) William Reed (2) John Reef Nicholas Reen Thomas Reeves Jacques Refitter Julian Regan Hugh Reid Jacob Reiton Jean Remong Jean Nosta Renan Louis Renand John Renean Pierre Renear Thomas Renee Thomas Rennick Frederick Reno Jean Renovil Michael Renow ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... by now was coming inboard regularly, and Bess knew she should be carrying less sail; but it would mean a lot of time to reef the mainsail, and if she was to get on there was small time for reefing, 'specially as the wind was hauling to the east. A beat home now, as Captain Leary warned her, 'twould be. Surely she would never ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Hutted Knoll, one of his beautiful romances of the woods, and in 1844 two more of his sea-stories, Afloat and Ashore and Miles Wallingfordits sequel. The long series of his nautical tales was closed by Jack Tier or the Florida Reef, published in 1848, when Cooper was in his sixtieth year, and it is as full of spirit, energy, invention, life-like presentation ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... 159 degrees 50 minutes East, and named Sir Charles Middleton Island: his other discoveries, not being so immediately in the vicinity of this territory, were not likely to be of any advantage to the settlement; but it was of some importance to it to learn that an extensive reef was so near, and to find its situation ascertained to be in the track of ships bound from hence to the northward; for if Sir Charles Middleton Island should hereafter be found to possess a safe and convenient harbour, it might prove ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... was given for the sambuks to keep near together because the pilot of the first one was sailing less skillfully than the other. Suddenly, in the twilight the men in the second sambuk felt a shock, then another, and a third. The water poured into it rapidly. It had run upon the reef of a small island, where the smaller sambuk had been able to pass on account of its lighter draft. Soon the stranded boat began to list over, and the twenty-eight men aboard had to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... once bought a mine from that man. His name was Algernon Maddox Cholmondely then, and he was homeward bound to assume the ancestral acres in Flint. He escorted me down the hole and displayed visible gold sparkling all along the reef. A week after he had gone I found that he had put it there with a shot-gun—an old "salter's" trick, but new to me at the time. You are not likely to be seeing Patrick Algernon Terence Maddox O'Ryan-Cholmondely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... but a low sandy reef, on which a few straggling fruit trees try to keep the remembrance of its bygone beauty. It is as bare and desolate as the bones of those who filled its halls in the cataclysm of that dreadful night—bones which now waste to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... gradually drawing toward land. Suddenly, she swerved and headed straight for a huge reef that could be seen protruding above the surface of the water. A cry of dismay went up from ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... developed to the highest pitch? Is a native of the Andaman Islands the superior of Socrates? If you admit that Socrates is superior to the savage, where do you draw the line between the natural and the artificial? If a coral reef is natural and beautiful because it is the work of insects, and a town artificial and ugly because made by man, we must reject as unnatural all the best products of the human race. If you distinguish between different works of man, the distinction ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... they wouldn't, you scoundrel!" stormed the first-mate. "Can you reef and splice and take your turn ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... The floor of the cabin was littered with portions of the cargo, which the murderous savages had plundered. Taking all that remained of value upon his own craft, Gallop cut loose the pinnace; and she drifted away, to go to pieces on a reef ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... social call, eh? Well, that's good. I don't get much company these days. Sit down, have a reef." ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... were going to Hopedale, went on board and they set sail; but the same evening it came on to blow exceedingly hard, with an immense fall of snow and very thick weather, so that they could not see the length of the ship, and being within half a mile of a dangerous reef of rocks, the captain was obliged to carry a press of sail to clear them, which he did but just accomplish, for after that the gale increased to such a degree, the wind being right on shore, that he could not carry sail any longer, and was obliged ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... now she was vigilant even when she seemed asleep, and anything the least bit out of the ordinary was enough to make her take alarm. As she lay sluggishly rocking, the great blackish round of her head and back now all awash, now rising like a reef above the waves, she suddenly caught sight of a white furry head with a black tip to its nose, swiftly cleaving the water. She knew it was only a white bear swimming, and she knew also that it was not big enough to dare attack her calf. But with her foolish mother fears ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... kneeling upon the bench, looking intently through his telescope at some object at sea. My eyes followed the direction of the glass, and I saw distinctly, about two miles beyond the east cliff, a vessel lying dismasted upon the reef, with the sea ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... toes. We have got her head to the southward and westward again; another reef in the topsails," (which word Mr. Truck pronounced tawsails, with great unction,) "England well under our lee, and the Atlantic ocean right before us. Six hours on this course, and we make ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Yorker. At dusk our boats entered a little sound, and by nine o'clock in the evening we arrived at the Gulf of Mexico, in a region of shoal water, much cut up by oyster reefs. The tide being very low, the boats were anchored inside of an oyster reef, which afforded protection from the inflowing swell of the sea. We shaped our course next day for St. Marks, along a low, marshy coast, where oyster reefs, in shoal water, frequently barred our progress. From South Cape to St. Marks the coast, broken by the mouths of several ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... greatest risk of damage, blame, inroad, and confiscation. The only course on which he could determine, was to stand by the helm like a resolute pilot, watch every contingence, do his best to weather each reef and shoal, and commit the rest ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... while she laughed, the Sun himself Leapt laughing through the rain And struck his harper hand along The ringing coast; and that wind-song Whose joy is mixed with pain Forgot the undertone of grief And joined the jocund strain, And over every hidden reef Whereon the waves broke merrily Rose jets and sprays of melody ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... to the S.E., but chiefly under water. It consists of large blocks of a volcanic conglomerate, some of which measure nineteen feet by six or eight, and ten feet in thickness; whilst a little farther north another wall extends E.N.E. to a natural reef of rocks." (Hamilton, Researches in Asia ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... had been despatched to Tripoli to demand satisfaction for losses suffered by our merchant marine at the hands of Algerian pirates, who had been preying upon the commerce of the world for years. Arriving on the Algerian coast, she was led upon a reef by pirates whom she was chasing, her officers and crew were taken prisoners, her guns were thrown overboard, and she was taken into the harbor by her captors, and there remanned, regunned and made ready to defend the city against ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... hours, and were in the act of eating a lobster for the first time in our lives, when the captain and the sailors began to swear violently at the pilot, whom I could see at the helm, rigid with fear, striving to avoid a reef—barely visible above the water—towards which our ship was being driven. Great was our terror at this violent tumult, for we naturally thought ourselves in the most extreme danger. The vessel did actually receive a severe shock, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... me. He had been a quarter-master in the Essex and was the melancholy possessor of a cancelled master's certificate. He owed this to drink, of course, as most men do who pile their ships up on the first reef that comes handy. But when he was sober he was a good old fellow. He took me round to the Sailors' Home in Salthouse Lane, and introduced me to the man who ran it. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... boys," said Considine, "and let her head lie up the river; and be alive, for I see they're bailing a boat below the little reef there, and will be after us in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly, like ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... a large rock, about a mile to the left of the town of D——, which was surrounded by numerous small ones. This place was called the wrecker's reef, and was covered at high water, but when the tide was low, Isabel and the others often went there to get shells. They had to be careful to watch the rise of the tide, as, long before the rock was covered the retreat ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... ship passes on and after adventures and tempests in many seas at last reaches the far Pacific. There the torch-bearers pass from island to island and the light flames like a beacon fire across many a blue lagoon and coral reef. ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... cell; One after one the stars begin to shine In drifted beds, like pearls through shallow brine; And lo! through clouds that part before the chase Of silent winds—a belt of milky white, The Galaxy, a crested surge of light, A reef of worlds along the sea of Space: I hear my sweet musicians far withdrawn, Below my wreathed lattice, on the lawn, With harp, and lute, and lyre, And passionate voices full of tears and fire; And envious nightingales with rich disdain Filling the pauses of the languid strain; My soul ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... events, the glimpses must be partial, and only to be obtained on a fine day. The Cevennes mountains rise, however, to a tolerable height in the distance to the west; and to the south-east, the remains of the old town and cathedral of Maguelone, form a striking distant group, projecting like a low reef of rocks into the sea at the distance of three or four miles. To judge from the site of this ancient town, which tradition describes as the original nucleus of Montpelier, the sea must have made great ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... pedantic mode of saying that the best pipe of all is the last one smoked at night. It is the penultimate moment that is always the happiest. The sweetest pipe ever enjoyed by the skipper of the Hesperus was the one he whiffed just before he was tirpitzed by the poet on that angry reef. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... "Laiacio has a haven, and a shoal in front of it that we might rather call a reef, and to this shoal the hawsers of vessels are moored whilst the anchors are laid out towards the land." (II. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... us to make sail. But the weather looking somewhat wild in the west with the red light of the sun among the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then thanking them, advised them to be off. Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the spritsail lying furled), which would be ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... On the other hand, I partly expected this. There's better stuff in the reef. We're a little too high, for one thing; I look for more encouraging results when we start the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss |
