"Reef" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... banks. A few moments' tough pulling brought me through, and, once outside Deer Island, nothing lay between me and Nahant. The well-known beach and the sandy headland called "Grover" stood out at the edge of Lynn Bay, and the rise and fall of the white surf, too distant to be heard, marked the long reef stretching seaward. After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... had thought in his inmost heart. So 'every one of us shall give an account of himself to God'; and like a man in the bankruptcy court, we shall have to explain our books, and go into all our transactions. We are working in the dark today. Our work will be seen as it is, in the light. The coral reef rises in the ocean, and the creatures that made it do not see it. The ocean will be drained away, and the reef will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the cocoa-nut tree, and enable them to see the fish, which they take with hand-nets. It is by these lights that the fish are attracted, but not so in the opinion of the natives, who say, "they come to the reef at night to eat, then sleep, and leave again in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... course lay is now dotted with mining-fields and townships, and fertile spaces of tilled tropical plantations. The coast-line rich in harbours is the busy haunt of steamers, and the narrow waterway between the mainland and the great barrier reef the home of many lightships. But when Kennedy and his party made their pioneer journey, the great desolation of the wilderness beset them on every side from the land, whilst the sea ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... easy to run upon the reef, but to get off was another matter, especially with a falling tide. The motor churned the water, but at first seemed to make no impression. Even when all the boys went aft, so as to lighten the ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... ones about the West India Islands, within the reefs of which there are large swamps. All the reefs I have myself seen could be associated only with nearly pure calcareous rocks. I have received a description of a reef lying some way off the coast near Belize (terra firma), where a thick bed of mud seems to have invaded and covered a coral reef, leaving but very few islets yet free from it. But I can give you no precise information without my notes (even if ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... kept a little south of the usual route, fell in with some of the Paumotu Group, and finally discovered Tahiti, where she anchored at Royal Bay, after grounding on a reef at its entrance, with her people, as usual, decimated by scurvy. They were almost immediately attacked by the natives, who, however, received such a reception that they speedily made friends, and fast friends too. The remainder of the month of the Dolphin stay was ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... to an opposite conclusion, he stood out with his fleet into the open lake and fell in with the Governor Simcoe. A chase was commenced, and the Governor Simcoe narrowly escaped by running over a reef of rocks, and making for Kingston, which, like the Royal George, she reached more hotly pursued than she had bargained for. It was late in the season, and the weather becoming more and more boisterous, the Americans bore away for Sackett's Harbour, in making for which ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... was not a very auspicious one, for on leaving the harbor of St. John (or "havre de Menuagoesche," as Villebon calls it) at 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the 2nd of August, d'Iberville ran the Envieux upon a reef; however, the damage was not serious as the ship floated when the tide rose. At Penobscot Baron St. Castin joined the expedition with 130 Indians. The French priests Simon and Thury, as the event proved, were no mere figure heads; they actively assisted in the operations of the siege and ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... battling ship. All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night? Not the prow that labours, helpless as a storm-blown leaf, Where the rocks and waters, darkling depth and beetling height, Rage with wave on shattering wave and thundering reef on reef. Death is fallen upon the prisoners there of darkness, bound Like as thralls with links of iron fast in bonds of doom; How shall any way to break the bands of death be found, Any hand avail to pluck them from that raging ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a mop or a poodle's coat. Leonard Harper and I returned in this boat, Tahitian steering, Samoan, Futuman, and Anaiteans making one motley crew. The brisk trade soon carried us to the beach in front of Mr. Inglis's house, and arrived at the reef I rode out pick-a-back on the Samoan, Leonard following on a half-naked Anaitean. We soon found ourselves in the midst of a number of men, women and children, standing round Mr. Inglis at the entrance of his garden. I explained to him the reason of the Bishop's being unable to land, that ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the American catboat. The cat can sail into the very eye of the wind, while before the wind she is a flier, and yet she is not the best sail boat for a beginner. Let me tell you why: First, the sail is heavy and so it is hard to hoist and reef. Second, in going before the wind there is constant danger of jibing with serious results. Third, the catboat has a very bad habit of rolling when sailing before the wind, and each time the boat ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... uncle who had also been a sea-captain, and who, in rescuing a wrecked crew from an Australian reef, was himself capsized, and after a long swim finally eaten by a shark,—said shark being captured next day, and found to contain his head entire, two gold rings still in his ears, which he wore for near-sightedness, after the manner of common sailors, and one of which, after ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... islands, between which and the island to the N E, 4 leagues apart, I directed my course; but a lee current very unexpectedly set us very near to the shore, and I could only get clear of it by rowing, passing close to the reef that surrounded the rocky isles. We now observed two large sailing canoes coming swiftly after us along shore, and, being apprehensive of their intentions, we rowed with some anxiety, being sensible ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... my stormy shriek! Toilers upon the sea, the Whistling-buoy would speak! List to my sobbing shout! list, for my word is brief: Death is beneath me here! death on the sunken reef Where the jagged ledge is hid and the slimy seaweeds grow, And the long kelp streamers wave in the dark green depths below, Where, under the shell-clad hulk, the gaunt shark makes his lair,— Toilers upon the sea, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... only penniless, his clothes had begun to fall in tatters; he had begun to have the look of a street Arab; and captains will have nothing to say to a ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in all others, it is the coat that depicts the man. You may hand, reef, and steer like an angel, but if you have a hole in your trousers, it is like a millstone round your neck. The Devonian lost heart at so many refusals. He had not the impudence to beg; although, as he said, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... day after leaving Ulietea, at eleven o'clock a.m., we saw land bearing N.W., which, upon a nearer approach, we found to be a low reef island about four leagues in compass, and of a circular form. It is composed of several small patches connected together by breakers, the largest lying on the N.E. part. This is Howe Island, discovered by Captain Wallis, who, I think, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... 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 ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... inland sea than vegetation of the land. Once the dog's tracks led aside to a scummy puddle, saucered by alkali, dotted with the spoor of desert animals that drank the bitter water in extremity. Then it ran straight to a wide reef of lava. Sandy set down the collie. Grit ran fast across the pitted surface, ahead of the horses, waiting for them to cross the lava. They had hard work to get him to come to hand again, but he gave in at last to the knowledge that they would not go ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... 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 ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... succor where there seemed to be none, he remembered the One Hundred and Seventh Psalm: "He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder." And the morning dawned clear, the ice was moving and their prison widening. On July 3, Haabet cleared the last ice-reef, and the shore ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... "Because I am God, and not man, therefore the children of men are not consumed"—just as it is because the ship rides by a cable, and not a cobweb, that, when sails are rent, and yards are gone, and breakers are foaming on the reef, she mounts the billows and survives the storm. That we are not suffering the pains of hell, that we have hopes of heaven and ever shall be there, we owe not to our good works, but to God's good will; to that only. Till converted, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... bird trims her to the gale I trim myself to the storm of time; I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime; "Lowly faithful banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sort of a boat he had; she cleared the waves like a sea-bird, without so much as a drop coming in, and he therefore judged that he did not need to take in a reef, which in an ordinary ten-oared boat he would be obliged to do in ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... enough to send the boat over, and she had already a dangerous lot of water surging among the ballast; while, when they were forced to put her head to the wind, she drifted with a heavily running tide, and right to leeward was a long reef of rocks that would inevitably crunch her into matchwood. The younger brothers said not a word, but looked at Rob, ready to obey his slightest gesture, and Rob stood by the mast calling out from ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... helmsman answers, when he knows he has a mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is one of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and mathematics, demonstrate the harmony of the physical creation. In the microscopic animalculae; in the gigantic remains, whether vegetable or animal, of other ages and conditions of life; in the coral reef and the mountain range; in the hill-side rivulet that makes "the meadows green;" in the ocean current that bathes and vivifies a continent; in the setting of the leaf upon its stem, and the moving of Uranus in its orbit, they trace a law whose harmony is its glory, and whose mystery ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... a reef in when you round the corner," he said, brushing the snow from his clothes. "Don't run your city editor down again." And he ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Faint and fading shadows here; Never a tear, but only Grief; Dance, but not the limbs that move; Songs in Song shall disappear; Instead of lovers, Love shall be; For hearts, Immutability; And there, on the Ideal Reef, Thunders ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... came a set expression of determination that, even though the countenances wearing it were youthful, boded no good to the treacherous enemies of freedom whose trail they were that very moment following. Then they flashed past Robbin's Reef light and snuggled into their slip at ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... extremely important to ascertain what they are and how formed. One account treats them as growing corals, another as masses of something resembling oolite, piled together, barrier-wise. You see that this lies at the root of the progress of the reef, so important to navigation, of the use to be made of it in placing our signals, of the use as a foundation for light-houses, and of many other questions practically important and of high scientific interest. I would place a vessel at your disposal ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... past his usual anchorage, making all speed. You will know the reason for it at sundown today. Tell Captain Blizzard to go around the point—he will know—and continue for twelve leagues farther on. This must be done by night, for he must not slacken. Then he will see by moonlight a reef. The water is phosphorescent, and when it breaks over the reef it will shine in the night. Then must he heave to, and you will go over the side, and as a fish, find out the channel, for the coral is dangerous and ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... I take it," Frank surmised. "The two bumps the Sea Lion got from the Shark must have given him the impression that we had collided with a rock or reef." ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... shouts. No one needed to tell us what it meant, and down came the call, 'Don't wait to save your things, only wraps, ladies! Up on deck! Life- belts if you can!' I remember Bernard standing at the top of the ladder, helping us up, and somehow, I understand from him, that we were on a reef, and might either remain there, and sink, or be washed off. The fog was clearing, and there was a dim light up high, somewhere, one of the lighthouses, I believe. I don't quite know how it all went; I think we kept in the background, round the Bishop, and that a boat full of emigrant women ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... low tone from the darkness above, calling for a volunteer boat's crew to reconnoiter and to look for an opening through the reef. Before the words were out of his mouth O'Reilly ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I've said, how'd you reef the foresail, ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... stern protesting Of winds, when the tide runs high; And vainly the deep-sea waters Call out, as the waves speed by; For, deaf to the claim of the ocean, To the threat of the loud winds dumb, Past reef and bar, to shores afar, They rush when the hour ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... said. "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 try it ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... place, she was intoxicated with the delights of the ocean. Perhaps I should say rather, of the ocean and the rocks and the air and the sky, and of everything at Appledore, Where she sat, she had a low brown reef in sight, jutting out into the sea just below her; and upon this reef the billows were rolling and breaking in a way utterly and wholly entrancing. There was no wind, to speak of, yet there was much more motion in the sea than yesterday; which often happens from the effect of winds that have been ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... entering upon an unknown coast in the dark, we stood off all night, which was well for us, as we found ourselves at day-break next morning, 7th May, within a ship's length of a great reef of rocks, which extended from one island to the other, and thinking to have gone between the islands, we had nearly run upon this dangerous ledge. Having a small breeze from shore we were fortunately able to stand off, and went to the westermost island, because we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... and slack each reef an' tack, Gae her sail, boys, while it may sit; She has roar'd through a heavier sea afore, An' she'll roar through a heavier yet. When landsmen sleep, or wake an' creep, In the tempest's angry moan, We dash through the drift, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of 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 night garments, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the eminent geologist and authority on volcanology, declares there is danger that all the West Indian reef islands will collapse and sink into the sea from the effects of the volcanic disturbances now in progress. More than that, he says, the Nicaraguan canal route is in danger because it ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... bravely has she sailed o'er every sea, Withstood the storm-rack, spurned the sullen reef; Cherished her strength; and held her guerdon fief To him who saith, "My ship ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with him as geologist a Mr. Taylor, and as botanist, Dr. Tate, a survivor of the melancholy New Guinea expedition that left Sydney in the brig MARIA, only to suffer wreck on the Barrier Reef, where, in the sea and amongst the cannibals north of Rockingham Bay, most of the unfortunates left their bones. Apparently, his ardour for exploration had not been damped by ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... problems required of a thorough sailing master. On the deck of a vessel he was in his element, and there was not a point in navigation or seamanship with which he was not familiar. He could not only hand, reef, and steer, but he could knot and splice, parcel and serve, as neatly and as skilfully as a veteran man-of-war's man. He was interested in such matters, and had spent hours and hours in making short and long splices, eye splices, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... of the fellows only spurred Judd to shake forth another reef, so that without knowing it he ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... Bayrose!" she murmured. "They had put her and the maids into one of the boats—there at the first, when the ship crashed on the reef. They ran back to fetch me, but before they could rush me across, a wave more terrible than all the others swept the ship. It tore loose the boat and whirled them ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... of 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,— Take ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... outstretched and her head flung back, in an attitude of utter abandonment. Harber felt his heart stir swiftly. He knew what she was feeling, as she looked out over the shimmering half-moon of harbour, across the moaning white feather of reef, out to the illimitable sea, and drank in the essence of the beauty of the night. Just so, at first, had it clutched him with the pain of ecstasy, and he had never forgotten it. There would be no voicing ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... "that Mrs. William had rather have you come safe than unexpected. Be modest, Skipper Bill, and reef the Venture ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... only seven men to work that ship, and after all these years I marvel at our temerity. Time and again the cry "All hands" would come down the hatch and summon the three of us from below to make sail, or reef, or furl, or man the braces. Weary and almost blind with sleep, we would stagger on deck and pull and haul, or would swarm aloft and strive to cope with the sails. The cook, and even Roger, served tricks at the wheel, turn and turn ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... that he had not only never executed so delicate a piece of workmanship, but he had never seen its equal. Every curve of the exquisite-hued waves was studied from the swell that sometimes swept grandly in from the lake on the long reef of rocks a few miles above St. Ignace. The form of the goddess was modelled from his remembrance of the Greek antique. It was a gem worthy of an emperor. What should he ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... from you: For what man ever yet had grace Ne'er to abuse his power and place? No magic of her voice or smile Suddenly raised a fairy isle, But fondness for her underwent An unregarded increment, Like that which lifts, through centuries, The coral-reef within the seas, Till, lo! the land where was the wave. Alas! 'tis everywhere ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... were removed by the Athenians. But the most awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some of the piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon them, just as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers went down and sawed off even these for reward; although the Syracusans drove in others. Indeed there was no end to the contrivances to which they resorted against each other, as might be expected ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... one. The Endeavour, raised by a wave over the ridge of a reef, had fallen again into a hollow in the rock, and by the moonlight, portions of the false keel and the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... through which the Sabine finds an outlet to the Gulf, the shore lies low and barren. The fort or sand battery was placed at the turn about one half mile below the hamlet called Sabine City, opposite the upper end of the oyster reef that for nearly a mile divides the channel into two parts, each narrow and neither straight. The Sachem, followed by the Arizona, took the eastern or Louisiana channel, and was hardly under fire before a shot struck her steampipe ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept T'wards the reef of Norman's Woe. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... sails were now bulging out and shaking in the wind. Out flew the active topmen to the yard-arms. Jack, as he had often before done, ran out to get hold of the weather earing. He was hauling away on it while the men hauled the reef over to him. He had already taken two outer turns with it, when, as he leaned back, he felt himself suddenly thrown from his hold. In vain he tried to clutch the earing; it slipped through his fingers. Headlong he came down, striking the leech of the sail. Mechanically he clutched ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... from Seaborn & Company. If he had been this story would never have been written. He was down at Hunter's Point drydock, superintending the repairs to the steam schooner Amelia Ricks, which recently on a voyage to Seattle had essayed the overland route via Duxbury Reef. When Matt reached home that night he found his ingenious father-in-law fairly purring ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... fissured. Vast masses of it have toppled into the sea; and the black ruins project from the deep in a hundred shapes of menace. Sometimes our boat glides between a double line of these; or takes a zigzag course through labyrinths of reef-channels. So swiftly and deftly is the little craft impelled to right and left, that one could almost believe it sees its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... blackbird village right under Hakatuea. No matter which way you approach, you can't miss it. Hakatuea's a dead volcano, with ashes on top and just enough fire inside to cast a glow against the sky at night. There's a fair anchorage inside the reef, but it takes a good man to land through the surf at high tide in a whaleboat. I used to do it regular. Aranuka was a nice place, with plenty of fresh water, and some of the Island schooners, and once in a while a British gunboat would stop there. Gawd, McGuffey, but when ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig's weather board that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a dim mass which rose into dizzy pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground on those crags, were wrecked and burst, their contents streaming from them and hiding the aerial reef on which they had struck. The land vanished, till only Bougie and its quay and the Celestine remained, with one last detached fragment of mountain high over us. That, too, dissolved. There was only our steamer and the quay ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the low comedy Shoes with the swollen Promontories and the Trousers with the double Reef and the folding Cuffs and the Hair with the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... for? Why, just to find out what was the matter with his trial balance, that's all. When one of Labe's trial balances starts out for snug harbor and ends up on a reef with six foot of water in her hold, naturally Labe wants to get her afloat and pumped dry as quick as possible. He ain't used to it, for one thing, and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... ornaments, and the bearers stagger with her into the 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 roasted claws. After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... and the Sphinx, the graphic representation is intellectually perfect. The objects live again in all their external surroundings. I feel the Khamsinn, the desert wind that scorched me at the foot of Pompey's Column; I hear the sea breaking into foam on the barrier reef of Tahiti. But the image does not lead to evocation ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... i.e., triangular, like the sail of a galley. The Saracens, or Moors, were the great galley sailors of the Mediterranean, and mizen comes from Arab., miezen, balance. The mizen is, even now, a sail that 'balances,' and the reef in a mizen is ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... believed, like most miners, that this fine gold is carried along the beds of the larger rivers and distributed by the action of the sea along the different beaches where it is found. His theory was that if the drift of the gold sands could be traced to their source, a great quartz reef would be found which would make the discoverers wealthy men. But he and his mates knew nothing about geology, and they wanted somebody to go with them who could chart the course, and lead them to the launching point ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... back in the cruiser to the Colonies, and then again sailed for Eastern Polynesia, trading in the Gambiers, Paumotus, and Easter and Pitcairn Islands. In this part of the ocean he picked up an abandoned French barque on a reef, floated her, and loaded her with coconuts, intending to sail her to New Zealand with a native crew, but they went ashore in a hurricane and lost everything. Meeting with Mr Tom de Wolf, the managing partner of a Liverpool firm, he took service with him as a trader in the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Worship's Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a 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 crossed Salt-water; but I was taken by one George Bradley (the name of the Judge) a notorious Pirate, and a sad rogue as ever was hanged, and he forced me, an't please ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... Tusitala! Sleep peacefully! on thy mountain-top, alone in Nature's sanctity, where the wooddove's note, the moaning of the waves as they break unceasingly on the distant reef, and the sighing of the winds in the distant ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... said, with a yawn. "Brace, who's got geology on the brain ever since he struck cinnabar ore, says he isn't sure the Injins ain't right when they believe that the Pacific Ocean used to roll straight up to the Presidio, and there wasn't any channel—and that reef of rocks was upheaved in their time. But what's the use of it? it never really waked them up." "Perhaps they're waiting for another kind of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... parted very good friends when he took me back to the cabin on the termination of our inspection of the ship—he promising to teach me how to make a reef-knot and a running-bowline the next time I came on board, and I shaking hands with him as a right good fellow whom I would only be too glad to meet again under ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... or ten tons of marmalade on board. We went to the Isle of Aves, where the Count d'Estrees's whole squadron, sent to take Curacoa for the French, had been wrecked. Coming in from the eastward, the count fell in on the back of the reef, and fired guns to give warning to the rest. But they, supposing their admiral was engaged with enemies, crowded all sail and ran ashore after him, for his light in the maintop was an unhappy beacon. The men had time enough to get ashore, yet many perished. There were about forty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... with legs quivering uneasily; when I took no notice, he lay down between my feet and stared out to sea as I was doing. And never a cry, never a word of human voice to be heard anywhere; nothing; only the heavy rush of the wind about my head. There was a reef of rocks far out, lying all apart; when the sea raged up over it the water towered like a crazy screw; nay, like a sea-god rising wet in the air, and snorting, till hair and beard stood out like a wheel about his head. Then he plunged down into the breakers ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... stealthiness in approaching to bite his enemy, but this designation, together with his "missionary" name "Ebenezer," did not survive the test of usage. Miss Gordon Cumming gives an interesting list of Fijian names translated into English. For women they were such as Spray of the Coral Reef, Queen of Parrot's Land, Queen of Strangers, Smooth Water, Wife of the Morning Star, Mother of Her Grandchildren, Ten Whale's Teeth, Mother of Cockroaches, Lady Nettle, Drinker of Blood, Waited For, Rose of Rewa, Lady Thakombau, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... 1769, he left England for ever. The Aurora was never heard of more! Some vague rumours, indeed, prevailed of a contradictory character—that she had been burned—that she had foundered in the Mozambique Channel—that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks near Macao—that five persons had been saved from her wreck, but nothing certain transpired, except that she was lost; and this fine singer of the sea along with her. Unfortunate Aurora! dawn soon overcast! Unfortunate ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... tormentors, and obtain a night's sleep. At last they entered a fishing canoe, paddled some distance from shore, and dropped the native anchor, a stone secured to a rope. They were awakened in the morning by the motion of their boat. Zeke was wading in the shallow water, and towing them from a reef towards which they had drifted. "The water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away." This was a narrow escape, but nevertheless they stuck to their floating bedstead as the only possible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... went into his mouth—open, as he panted with the exertion of keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief—the one with the bacon-fat and marmalade on it—to the bolt, and Robert's handkerchief to that, in a reef knot, which cannot come undone however much you pull, and, indeed, gets tighter and tighter the more you pull it. This must not be confused with a granny knot, which comes undone if you look at it. And then he and Robert pulled, and the girls put their ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird which flies before ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... of the above authorities, for differences between them were frequent and sometimes considerable, and in one instance alone a reduction of 12' in the chart was obtained. It is said in Hawkesworth (III, 202), "As soon as we got within side the reef (through Providential Channel) we anchored in nineteen fathom;" and afterwards (p. 204), that the channel, "bore E. N. E. distant ten or twelve miles." In the first chart the distance is 141/2 miles, and nearly the same in that which accompanies ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... fringe of trees, I caught sight of a thin line across the water, slanting from shore to shore—not a ripple, but as though the edge of an invisible reef slightly affected the smooth-flowing, glassy surface ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... necessarily funereal. A garden should be got ready for winter as well as for summer. When one goes into winter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim. Expecting high winds, we bring everything into close reef. Some men there are who never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one who does n't shave) to satisfy his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... work of 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 on the shores of South ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... gray, but with clearing skies. The force of the wind increased, becoming unsteady, and causing a choppy sea, so that I felt impelled to lower the topsails and take a reef in the larger canvas. Nothing was reported in sight, but to reassure myself, I climbed into the main crosstrees, and swept the horizon with a glass. Not so much as a speck rewarded my efforts, and I descended the ratlines, shouting to ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... As these forces would be raised chiefly in New England, they could be employed first to protect Springfield. Any open avowal of this plan was avoided, however, lest the insurgents should take alarm and immediately attack the arsenal. But these plans were wrecked on the reef of financial bankruptcy. Congress could only supplicate the States for money and borrow what it might on its expectations. Recruiting went on so slowly that the rebellion was practically over when two companies of artillery, numbering seventy-three men each, which ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... information of our readers, we must state that the Esquerques, or Shirki, are a reef of sunken rocks lying about eighty miles west from Sicily, and about forty-eight from Cape Bon, on the coast of Africa. In 1806, the charts were not as accurate as they are in the present day, and the reef was not laid ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Maister Welsh a wee. Lads will be lads, ye ken. But Maister Ralph's soond on the fundamentals—I learned him the Shorter Questions mysel', sae I should ken—forbye the hunner an' nineteenth Psalm that he learned on my knee, and how to mak' a Fifer's knot, an' the double reef, an' a heap o' usefu' knowledge forbye; an' noo to tak' it into your heid that yer ain son's no soond in the faith, a' because he has fa'en oot wi' a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... day ashore, 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 in ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... most southern of the Bahama group, because he erroneously assumed that Columbus always shaped a westerly course in sailing from island to island; and Turk Island, being farthest east, would give most room for such a course. This island has large lagoons, and is surrounded by a reef. So far it resembles Guanahani. But the second island, according to Navarrete, is Caicos, bearing W. N. W., while the second island of Columbus bore S. W. from the first. The third island of Columbus was in sight from the second. Inagua Chica (Little Inagua), Navarrete's third ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and the staple export consists of maize in some quantities; of cantaria, a grey trachyte which works more freely than the brown or black basalt, and of an impure limestone from Ilheu Baixo, the only calcaire used in Funchal. This rock is apparently an elevated coral-reef: it also produces moulds of sea-shells, delicately traced and embedded in blocks of apparently unbroken limestone. Of late a fine vein of manganese has been found in the northern or mountainous part of the island: specimens shown to me by Mr. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... maple-boughs, I know by heart each burning leaf, Yet would that like a barren reef Stripped to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... entirely on cisterns and casks in which they preserve the rain; neither has it any lake, but several salt ponds, which furnish the sole production of the island. Turk's Island cannot be approached on the east or northeast side, in consequence of the reef that surrounds it. It has no harbor, but has an open road on the west side, which vessels at anchor there have to leave and put to sea whenever the wind comes from any other quarter than that of ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... finish, making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights, fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labour—you'd have thought Australia was one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... island of Pamban at the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson, Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch., vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims have ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... they enjoyed it. Jenieve could see their night fires begin to twinkle on Round Island and Bois Blanc, and the rising hubbub of their carnival came to her like echoes across the strait. There was one growing star on the long hooked reef which reached out from Round Island, and figures of Indians were silhouetted against the lake, running back and forth along that high stone ridge. Evening coolness stole up to Jenieve, for the whole water world was purpling; and sweet pine and cedar ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... with Glory by his side. He was outwardly calm, but with a proud flush under his pallor; she was visibly excited, and could not stand on the same spot for many seconds together. By this time the noise made by the bookmakers in the inclosure below was like that of ten thousand sea fowl on a reef of rock, and Glory was trying to speak above ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... pretty deep," commented Amos Henderson. "Luckily it was soft mud instead of a rocky reef or we'd have damaged the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Comfort Island!" sputtered Andy through the spray, as he and Jamie sprang for the mainsail to reef it. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... reef which lies in its way, and on which too often it founders, is habit; habit would be a better and more powerful means of action if it remained free, but in so far as it congeals and becomes materialised, is a hindrance and an obstacle. First of all we have the average types round which fluctuates ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... for ridge or reef. Toward the middle of the eighties the first mine was discovered on what is the present site of Johannesburg. The original excavation was on the historic place known as Witwatersrand, which means White Water Reef. Kimberley history ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... along a pebbled coast, Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met, And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath: The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, Came booming thus, while still upon his arm He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt. "Or shall we listen to the over-wise, Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods? 310 Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all That ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... anchorage at No. 2. Boat excursions. Remarks on the Percy Isles; with nautical observations. Coral reefs: courses amongst them during eleven days search for a passage through, to sea. Description of a reef. Anchorage at an eastern Cumberland Isle. The Lady Nelson sent back to Port Jackson. Continuation of coral reefs; and courses amongst them during three other days. Cape Gloucester. An opening discovered, and the reefs quitted. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... sources, chiefly feminine, enough finely-adjusted advice to have established him in life as an embodiment of the proprieties, and he received it, as he afterwards listened to criticisms on his statues, with unfaltering candor and good-humor. Here and there, doubtless, as he went, he took in a reef in his sail; but he was too adventurous a spirit to be successfully tamed, and he remained at most points the florid, rather strident young Virginian whose serene inflexibility had been the despair ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... location in the North Pacific Ocean; Johnston Island and Sand Island are natural islands, which have been expanded by coral dredging; North Island (Akau) and East Island (Hikina) are manmade islands formed from coral dredging; the egg-shaped reef is 34 km in circumference; closed to the public; a former US nuclear weapons test site; site of now-closed Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS); most facilities dismantled and cleanup complete in 2004; ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... coast before a place could be found at which it was possible to land the stores and provisions. So completely do the rocks surround the island, that it was not easy to find a place even to land a man. At length, however, they succeeded, having discovered at the south-west end, a small opening in a reef that runs across a bay. Here the people, provisions and stores were all put on shore in perfect safety. The Commandant wrote in high spirits at the promising appearance of his new territory; and subsequent accounts have proved, that the opinion ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over one another's shoulders, millions deep. Next morning, we cast anchor off the Island. There was a snug harbour within a little reef; there was a sandy beach; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent green feathers; there were all the objects that are usually seen in those ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands 14 US - American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Newton for security during the night—his nervous anxiety during the day—became a source of laughter and ridicule to Captain Oughton; who once observed to him,—"Newton, my boy, I see how the land lies, but depend upon it the old ship won't tumble overboard a bit sooner than before; so one reef in the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... mulberry-leaf To shining silk; the lapidary's skill Makes the rough diamond sparkle at his will, And cuts a gem from quartz or coral-reef. Better a skillful cobbler at his last Than unlearned poet twangling on the lyre; Who sails on land and gallops on the blast, And mounts the welkin on a braying ass, Clattering a shattered cymbal bright with brass, And slips his girth and tumbles in the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Through tingling silence of the frosty night— Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep; So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, With heart that kindled ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... nothing there, and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did 'ee set your ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds |
