"Breakwater" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages; there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the Lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... hand, how General Dumouriez has quitted Normandy and the Cherbourg Breakwater, to come—whither we may guess. It is his second or even third trial at Paris, since this New Era began; but now it is in right earnest, for he has quitted all else. Wiry, elastic unwearied man; whose life ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was, surely enough, hidden from them as they came south, but plain to view now at the back of a huge mass of rock which acted as a breakwater; and there, in quite a recess, was a patch of yellow sand, over which the sea glided gently, while behind the rock the water seemed to be deep ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... outside. More than once it drowned the voices of the people at the table, roaring like a wild beast in the great throat of the wide chimney, swirling about the lantern light, licking and lashing and leaping at the outsides of the walls like lofty waves breaking against a breakwater, and sending up a thunderous noise from the sea itself, where the big bell of St. Mary's Rock was still ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... resources which are likely to be called upon in the future, and a survey was made ten years ago with a view of supplying Liverpool, Manchester, Blackburn, Birkenhead, etc. with water whenever a fresh demand for it should arise. This would imply the building of a breakwater at the narrow outlet of the lake, the damming up of a few mountain passes, and the "impounding" of a tributary of the Dee below the lake—the Tryweryn, which has an extensive drainage-area; but these works are still ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Rochester. Miss Anthony may be wrong in attempting to vote; of that we are not certain. But of the greater question back of it, of Miss Anthony's inherent right to vote we have no question, and that after all is the more important matter. This Rochester breakwater may damn back the stream for a while, but it is bound to come, sweeping away all barriers. The opposition to extending the suffrage to the other sex is founded alone on prejudice arising from social custom. Reason and logic are both against it. Women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... stronghold of those who exchange cash for artists' dreams. He ransacked the studio and set out on his mission in a cab bulging with large, small, and medium-sized canvases. Like a wave receding from a breakwater he returned late in ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... in "The Gold-Mines of Midian,"[EN113] can hardly be called safe; on the other hand, its floor has not been surveyed, and a single brise-lame seawards would convert it into a dock. I should propose a gallegiante, a floating breakwater, tree-trunks in bundles strongly bound together with iron cramps and bands, connected by stout rings and staples and made fast by anchors to the bottom. And, at any rate, on the Sinaitic shore opposite, at the distance of thirteen knots, there is, as will appear, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... on the bay I took passage in a small steam-launch to visit the Olympia, where the Admiral's flag floated, to call on him. There was plenty of steam, and it was pleasant to get out a good way behind the breakwater, for the waves beyond were white with anger, and the boat, when departing from partial shelter, had proceeded but two or three hundred yards when it made a supreme effort in two motions—the first, to roll over; the second, to stand on its head. I was glad both struggles were unsuccessful, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... expanse about seventy miles across from Sivan Island to Roanoke. On the seaward side stretches a chain of long and narrow islands, forming a natural breakwater north and south from Cape Lookout to Cape Hatteras and from the latter to Cape Henry, ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... to repair the damaged work, though it involved a heavy additional cost, one-half of which was borne by the Forfeited Estates Fund and the remainder by the inhabitants. Increased strength was also given to the more exposed parts of the pierwork, and the slope at the sea side of the breakwater was considerably extended.*[2] Those alterations in the design were carried out, together with a spacious graving-dock, as shown in the preceding plan, and they proved completely successful, enabling Peterhead to offer an amount of accommodation ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... to the breakwater!' exclaimed Father Boyle, as the boat pitched finally outside the harbour fence, where a soft calm swell received them with the greeting of civilised sea-nymphs. 'The captain'll have a quieter passage across. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... front by waves, and covered at the rear by the dunes. Some of the stones along the water front were rolled by tides and wave-currents from the debris carried down by the creek from the mountains. At high tides waves surmount this natural breakwater, but spread out over the level pavement and sink between the stones, so that dwellers upon the site were not disturbed by ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... house, with its doors wide open, and the great boat, spick and span in the glory of new paint, standing ready on its rollers, and the record of splendid rescues in past years inscribed upon the walls. There was the circular basin-harbour, with the workmen slowly repairing the breakwater, and a couple of ancient looking schooners reposing on their sides in the mud at low tide. And there, back on the hill, looking down over the town and far away across the yellow waters of the Bristol Channel, was the high tower of St. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... harbour of refuge is one of God's many providential dealings with this Mission. It is defended from the storms and heavy rolling swell of the Pacific Ocean by large and lofty islands, forming a breakwater across its entrance, extending as far out to sea as twenty miles, inside of which smaller islands, numbering nearly a hundred, form channels leading up to the foot of the snow-capped mountains, 15 or 18 miles distant, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... a human cough, on the sands of the Lido. It had spoilt the sublimity of that barren stretch of sand and sea, and the curious charm of the white sails that seemed to glide along the very stones of the great breakwater. His soul demanded justice for the uncouth cuttle-fish. He did not understand how people could live in a self-centred spiritual world that shut out the larger part of creation. If suffering purified, what purification did overdriven horses undergo, or starved cats? The miracle ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... but it no longer ran in crested ridges and a vague dark line crossed the foam ahead. Sometimes part of the line vanished and reappeared like a row of dots with broad gaps between. Lister knew it was breakwater. On the other side anchor-lights tossed, and in the background a dull, reflected illumination indicated a town. Then the gong rang and Lister went back to the platform. In a few minutes he would get the signal to stop his engines. The ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the summer twilights are very long and lovely, and down on the breakwater our friends enjoyed this one to the full. One might look over the blue expanse of bay and see the faint outlines of the coast of Wales, and then turn and gaze at the picturesque harbor and the quaint, hanging village, in the houses of which, lights were slowly beginning ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... shouldn't I? Too many of the Manx ones are giving the fishing the goby. There's life in the ould dog yet, though. Would be, anyway, if them rusty Kays would be doing anything for the industry. They're building piers enough for the trippers, but never a breakwater the size of a tooth-brush for the fishermen. That's reminding me, Phil—the boys are at me to get you to petition the Tynwald Court for better harbours. They're losing many a pound by not getting out all ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... when she plunged the whiteness of the water creaming upon the surges on either hand threw out a phantom light of sufficient power to enable me to see that the forward part of the brig was littered with wreckage, which served to a certain extent as a breakwater by preventing the seas, which washed on to the forecastle, from cascading with their former violence aft; also that the whole length of the main and top masts lay upon the larboard rail and over the side, held in that position by the gear, attached to them. This was ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... and lower'd to the hold; Slack'd the retaining shrouds, and quickly struck And stow'd away the mast; then with their sweeps Pull'd for the beach, and cast their anchors out, And made her fast with cables to the shore. Then on the shingly breakwater themselves They landed, and the sacred hecatomb To great Apollo; and Chryseis last. Her to the altar straight Ulysses led, The wise in counsel; in her father's hand He plac'd the maiden, and address'd him thus: "Chryses, from Agamemnon, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... very prettily arranged, various little knicknacks and curiosities, which Elizabeth always laughed at, such as a glass ship, which was surrounded with miniature watering-pots, humming-tops, knives and forks, a Tonbridge-ware box, a gold-studded horn bonbonniere, a Breakwater-marble ruler, several varieties of pincushions, a pen-wiper with a doll in the middle of it, a little dish of money-cowries, and another of Indian shot, the seed of the mahogany tree, some sea-eggs, a false book made of the wreck of the Royal George, and some pieces of spar and petrifactions ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rode out the gale,—now blowing out of the north,—hanging to the tangle of spar and cordage which had once been the foremast and its gear. It made a fairly good sea-anchor, with the forestay—strong as any chain—for a cable, and she lay snug under the haphazard breakwater and benefited by the protection, as the seas must first break their heads over the wreckage before reaching her. The mainmast was far away, with all that pertained to it; but the solid, hard-pine jib-boom was still intact, and not one of the sixteen dories piled spoon-fashion in the four nests ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... pilot outside the Lewes breakwater a man of few words. I told him only the outlines of our story, and I believe he half discredited me at first. God knows, I was not a creditable object. When I took him aft and showed him the jolly-boat, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mooring place in Buffalo Creek, which can be navigated for about one mile, we sailed to the breakwater, a solid wall several feet high, having a length of 4,000 feet, which was erected at the expense of some millions of dollars for the protection of the city from being flooded by the unruly ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... mysterious movements along the shore of the island settlement. The prison boats, which had put off every morning at sunrise to the foot of the timbered ranges on the other side of the harbour, had not appeared for some days. The building of a pier, or breakwater, running from the western point of the settlement, was discontinued; and all hands appeared to be occupied with the newly-built Osprey, which was lying on the slips. Parties of soldiers also daily left the Ladybird, and assisted at the mysterious ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 12-pounder gun, steering wheel, compass, and engine-room telegraphs, was placed on the top of the turtle-back and about 25 feet from the bows. It acted as a most excellent breakwater and took the brunt of the heavier seas, and how often the Rapier came back into harbour with her bridge rails flattened down and her deck fittings washed overboard, I really do not know. It was a fairly frequent occurrence, for war is war, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... back upon the actual physical environment to get started, as this recent introduction: "To-day I am sitting on the end of a breakwater, listening to the peaceful noise the Lake makes as it slaps up against the heavy old rocks. The sun is pouring down hot rays upon my arms, bare feet and legs, turning them from ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares, oldest of all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... exports. The harbour, with wet and slip dock, occupies both sides of the river from the New Bridge to the sea, and is protected on the south by a pier projecting some distance into the sea, and on the north by a breakwater with a commodious dry dock. There are esplanades to the south and north of the harbour. The town is governed by a provost and council, and unites with Irvine, Inveraray, Campbeltown and Oban in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... self-surrender, with a mighty, almost invincible Germany.... The Pan-Germans are right, the Czechs are an arrow in the side of Germany, and such they wish to and must and will remain. Their firm and unchangeable hope is that they will succeed in making of themselves an impenetrable breakwater. They hope for no foreign help; they neither wish for it nor ask for it. They have only one desire, namely, that non-German Europe may also at last show that it understands the ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... extent) Tennant's vernacular poem ANST'ER FAIR; and I have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was when I came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know; but indeed I had already my own private determination to be an author; I loved the art of words and the appearances of life; and TRAVELLERS, and HEADERS, and RUBBLE, and POLISHED ASHLAR, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head toward the pier. Would Sylvia be there, he had wondered, as he watched the cluster of atoms on the quay, and in a little while he had seen her, standing quite alone, at the very end of the breakwater that she might catch the first glimpse of her lover. Others had traveled with them in the carriage to London and there had been no opportunity of speech. All that he knew was that she had been alone now for some weeks in the little house ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... launch out, too, patrolling the riverside from here to Tilbury. Another lies at the breakwater." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Should you care to take a run down and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... off our course. As long as we remain behind the wreck we'll be safe. But beyond her we may be in danger. She's firmly held in the sand, or, at best, is drifting only slightly. She'll be a sort of undersea breakwater for us. And now to see if we ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... new breakwater which government is constructing here at great expense. When finished it is proposed that the Indian steamers shall call here instead of at Galle, the harbor of which is dangerous. This may be a decided improvement ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... fair for Cornelia. Indeed, she had no right—from one way of thinking—not to enjoy herself, unless it be that she had no congenial companions. The villa of the Lentuli was one of the newest and finest at Baiae. It rested on a sort of breakwater built out into the sea, so that the waves actually beat against the embankment at the foot of Cornelia's chamber. The building rose in several stories, each smaller than the one below it, an ornamental cupola highest of all. On the successive ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... The little waves lapped coolly along the breakwaters. They continued their stroll, walking easily on the hard sand, each unwilling to break the moment of perfect adjustment. Finally the girl confessed her fatigue, and sat down beside a breakwater, throwing off her hat, and pushing her hair away from her temples. She looked up at the man and smiled. 'You see,' she seemed to say, 'I can meet you on your own ground, and the world is very beautiful when one gets away, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... islands which forms a natural breakwater to the coast of Dalmatia is broken into two groups by the Punta Planka, the ancient Promontorium Syrtis, south of Sebenico. To the northern group belong Veglia, Cherso, Ossero, Arbe, Pago, and a number of smaller and less important islands, including Ugljan, opposite Zara, and Pasman, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... was in Carlisle Avenue, just off the Hoe, and on that spacious front Paul spent many happy hours as a small boy. His young eyes gazed with fascination on the warships passing in and out of Plymouth Sound, on the great passenger steamers lying at anchor inside the Breakwater, or steaming up or down the Channel; on the fishing fleet, with its brown sails, setting out to reap the harvest of the sea; and when daylight faded in the short winter days he would watch the Eddystone light—that diamond set in the forehead of England—flashing its warning and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... protect men or their possessions from violence of any kind, whether of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke, breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... cataract section, at Jucz, a channel two hundred feet wide, and more than half a mile long, is to be blasted out of the rock, and a breakwater built, to moderate the suddenness of the fall. This breakwater is to be about two miles long, and ten feet thick at the top, increasing in thickness toward the bottom. The rock in which the channel must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... hurricanes which sometimes occur during July, August, and September, blow the strongest from the southeast, so that vessels will not venture in the bay during the hurricane season. I have landed twice at the Cape in a small boat, and I think a breakwater can be built, at small cost, so as to make a safe harbour at all seasons. Stone can be obtained with great ease from three cones of rocks rising from the sea, and forming the extreme southerly point of the Cape, called the Frayles. ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... would cover the rocks in the channel and probably leave an eddying slack along the bank. He agreed with the Indian, because the rock to which they had moored the canoe was getting smaller. It made a kind of breakwater, but it would be covered soon and the craft would feel the force of the current. Still they ought to ride safely, and an angry wash now beat against the bank of gravel where they had landed. There was no other landing, for, below the camp, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... shore. It varies in width from thirty to sixty yards, and its surface is level and smooth; it is composed of obscurely stratified hard sandstone. At high water the waves break over it; at low water its summit is left dry, and it might then be mistaken for a breakwater erected by Cyclopean workmen. On this coast the currents of the sea tend to throw up in front of the land, long spits and bars of loose sand, and on one of these, part of the town of Pernambuco stands. In ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... rock cut by old Helier de Carteret nearly three hundred years ago. Standing in the tunnel, you see on one side the shingle of the beach where the boats lie but poorly sheltered from the winter storms, though we are hoping before long to have a breakwater capable of affording better shelter than the present one. You see also the row of great capstans at the foot of the cliff by which the boats are hauled as far out of reach of the waves as possible, though sometimes not far enough. Through the other end of the ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... procession through the water, retaining only perception enough to be conscious of the singular illusions of the mist that alternately thickened and lightened before their bow. At times it seemed as if they were driving full upon a vast pier or breakwater of cold gray granite, that, opening to let the foremost boat pass, closed again before them; at times it seemed as if they had diverged from their course, and were once more upon the open sea, the horizon a far-off ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... that the admission from the Atlantic into the Chagre of a larger class of vessels than those drawing twelve feet might be thus facilitated, according to Mr Lloyd's own avowal a breakwater would still be necessary at the entrance of Limon Bay, which is situated round Point Brujas, about eight geographical miles higher up towards Porto Bello than the mouth of that river, as the heavy sea setting into the bay would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... given to those on board that the trial trip had commenced. At a quarter to four the "way" on the vessel was rapid; her head went round like turning a pleasure-boat; and so little sign was given of the ship being under steam, that it seemed rather as if the breakwater had got adrift and was slowly floating past, than that the monster vessel was really cleaving the blue waves with a force which, as yet, we have seen no wind or sea to resist or check. Directly ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... half timber buildings have a general air of dilapidation and unfinish which is depressing. The somewhat picturesque principal bazaar street is soon exhausted, and excepting for the imposing offices of the Suez Canal Company, and the fine statue to De Lesseps, recently erected on the breakwater, Port Said has little else to excite the curiosity of the visitors; built upon a mud-bank formed of Suez Canal dredgings, its existence is its most interesting feature, and the white breakers of the Mediterranean, above which it is so little raised, seem ever ready to engulf it as they ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody. At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to the rhythmic ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... spoke into the turmoil of roaring spray. In ten seconds she was through the passage, and there was a sudden and almost total cessation of heaving motion. The line of islands formed a perfect breakwater, and not a wave was formed, even by the roaring gale, bigger than those we find on such occasions in an ordinary harbour. As isle after isle was passed the sea became more and more smooth, and, although the surface was torn ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... took in; with the stately merchantmen riding beyond the throng, and the low breakwater three miles away, and the blue horizon beyond all. Out of that blue from time to time came the low, jarring vibration which told of an unseen gunboat at practice; and from time to time a puff of white smoke from the Picklecombe battery held him listening ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the soup bowl, and cleared the fish. As he ate, the room slowly darkened. A faint wind sprang up and beat the tree branches against the window. The dining-room looked over the breakwater of the harbour, and the sea swung heavily in rolling waves. Wind crept round ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... above our starting-point, we were obliged to run into a sheltered bay, where part of the load was put ashore, and with the canoes thus lightened we crossed to a long, narrow point which reached half-way across from the other side, making an excellent breakwater between the upper and lower parts of the lake. The crossing was accomplished in safety, though it was rough enough to be interesting, and Job and Joe went back for what had ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... He built a mosque and converted many of his subjects, so that from his reign Bruni may be considered a Mohammedan town. To defend the capital he sank forty junks filled with stone in the river, and thus formed the breakwater which still bars the entrance to large ships. This work rose above the water level, and in former times bristled with cannon. Sultan Berkat was succeeded by his son Suleiman, whose reign was ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of the rolls and coffee, he rose reluctantly, stepped out upon the beach, and filled and lighted his pipe—with a grimace at the first puff, for French tobacco is the worst in the world, outside of Germany. Before him lay the mighty breakwater which guards the harbour, with its lighthouse in the middle and its fort at either end, while to his left were the great naval basins, hewn from the solid rock. To the right, below the high sea-wall, the narrow beach stretched away, empty ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Nebraskan, Captain Greene, from Liverpool May 24 for Delaware Breakwater, was torpedoed yesterday evening by a submarine at a point forty miles west-southwest of Fastnet, off the south coast of Ireland. [Captain Greene's report, given below, says the Nebraskan was "struck by either ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... enthusiasm the few miles to the sea. She reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore. The furthest breakwater had seaweed like hair waving on the water. At intervals it would seem to be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for deliverance from the grip of some monster. And then the sea's lips would close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were beaten into submission. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... utter a word. McIntosh, the pilot from Burghead, expired from sheer cold and exhaustion. None who saw him perish soon forgot the fearful agony of his daughter as she bade her father farewell from the parapet of the breakwater. After renewed efforts a boat was got over the breakwater, and at great risk succeeded in saving the other men, who were in a ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... felt the anomalous impulse for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it be relied on as an ordinary breakwater to their habitual temptations! Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from thorns ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... he went through the shed he saw his line and picked it up. He'd go out on the breakwater—maybe he'd get some fish, at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the breakwater and dropped anchor in the harbor of Stourwich just as the rising sun was glowing red on the steeple of the town church. The narrow, fishy little streets leading from the quay were deserted, except for one lane, down which sleepy passengers ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... that they had been driven to the landward shore of a long island, which formed a natural breakwater to a spacious bay, with a narrow entrance at either end. The island was thickly covered with woods, giving shelter to a multitude of wild goats, its only inhabitants. For the Cyclopes have no ships, so that the goats were left in undisturbed possession, though the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... appointed for life has acted as a breakwater of adamant and reinforced concrete against all labor or capital legislation that has arisen from the passions of the moment. More than once when labor or capital, holding the whip handle in the Commons, would ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... exciting—exhilarating even—in the duel between herself and Winnington, which was implied in the conversation. His journey up to town, the look in his grey eyes meant—"I shall prevent you from doing what you are intending to do." But he could not prevent it. If he was the breakwater, she was the storm-wave, driven by the gale—by the wind from afar, of which she felt herself the sport, and sometimes the victim—without its changing her ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aground in the harbor channels, blown up, and abandoned by their crews. The ships were loaded with concrete. An old submarine, loaded with explosives, was also run under a bridge connecting the mole, or breakwater, at Zeebrugge with the shore, and there blown up, so as to prevent interruption of the raiders while they were doing their work ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the Establishment is very remarkable. In a letter to his friend Isaac Williams he says: 'Everything I hear makes me fear that latitudinarian opinions are spreading furiously in the Church of England. I grieve deeply at it. The Anglican Church has been a most useful breakwater against Scepticism. The time might come when you, as well as I, might expect that it would be said above, "Why cumbereth it the ground?" but at present it upholds far more truth in England than any other form of religion would, and than the Catholic Roman Church could. But what ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "Those girls from the Breakwater seem to have spite against us," remarked Jack. "That is the second time they have stepped on ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... the roadstead is unsafe. Larger vessels are then obliged to seek protection in the port of Cavite, seven miles further down the coast; but during the north-east monsoons they can safely anchor half a league from the coast. All ships under three hundred tons burden pass the breakwater and enter the Pasig, where, as far as the bridge, they lie in serried rows, extending from the shore to the middle of the stream, and bear witness by their numbers, as well as by the bustle and stir going on amongst them, to the activity ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... she could not cut the ropes and run away, Tom seriously considered the proposal. The next day a snug little dock was built, in which she seemed quite contented, and from which she could not escape without climbing over a stone breakwater—a feat of which there was no reason to believe that ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... only in the North of Ireland, within the confines of the province of Ulster, and there only in the extreme north-east corner, within the counties of Londonderry, Antrim, and Down, that the settlers have formed a distinct and definite racial breakwater against purely Irish influences. The plantation of Ulster in the reign of James I. took into Ireland some of the most dogged members of the Scotch race, men filled with the new fire of the Reformation, ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... Alfred, who, some time before, had been appointed to the Euryalus, in the course of the summer visited South Africa. After making a tour through Kaffraria, Natal, and the Orange Free State, he returned to Cape Town, where, in September, he laid the foundation stone of the breakwater in Table Bay. In a letter written by the Prince Consort a few weeks earlier to Baron Stockmar, he remarks upon the noteworthy coincidence that almost in the same week in which the elder brother would open the great bridge across the St ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... course not to be thought of. San Pedro Bay was too open to be approached in winter. The Santa Barbara Channel was liable to the same objection, not to mention the trouble often caused by kelp and wintry fogs. The bay of San Luis Obispo was still worse in every respect; having no islands to act as a breakwater, landing there in winter was often impossible. The harbor of the picturesque old town of Monterey was safe enough, but some uncertainty regarding sure telegraphic communications with San Francisco, decided the council not to venture it. Half Moon Bay, a little to the north, would be just as risky, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... elephant hunt and of killing some of those colossal creatures of the jungle. Colombo was reached again, three days later, and another state banquet attended in the evening. On the following day the new Breakwater was inaugurated by the Prince and in the evening a farewell banquet received and the city left amid scenes of brilliant illumination and ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... clear of the ships at anchor outside the breakwater when four bells—six o'clock—struck, and Harris came up and went on the bridge, passing without apparently seeing me. He growled something to Petrak, and the red-headed man went toward ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... saw many of the sights in the neighbourhood. After visiting Penzance on the conclusion of our work we saw Cape Cornwall (where Whewell overturned me in a gig), and returned homewards by way of Truro, Plymouth (where we saw the watering-place and breakwater: also the Dockyard, and descended in one of the working diving-bells), Exeter, Salisbury, and Portsmouth. In returning from Camborne in 1826 I lost the principal of our papers. It was an odd thing that, in ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... in the darkness, and held out his hand without speaking. The boatmen were by now below, holding the boat, which was beating against the piles, though the breakwater screened it from the breakers. Von Koren went down the ladder, jumped into the boat, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... from the larboard quarter. Daybreak found the boat off the north-eastern extremity of the Isle of Pines, and about five miles distant from that curious chain of islets called by the Spaniards the Islas de Mangles, which curves out like a breakwater across the northern face of the island. Their hunger, which had to some extent been appeased by their last plentiful meal of wild raspberries, and which had been altogether forgotten in the excitement of their subsequent flight now returned to ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... also seen the ship out, and, perched on the extreme end of the breakwater, he remained watching until she was hull down on the horizon. Then he made his way back to the town and the nearest confectioner, and started for home just as Miss Nugent, who was about to pay a call with her aunt, waited, beautifully dressed, in the front garden while that lady completed ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... pact. Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... grow seriously anxious, but the distance was diminishing; Harry was almost at the steps with the child, and the boy had rowed his skiff round the breakwater out of sight; a young fisherman leaned over the railing with his back to her, watching the lobster-catchers on the other side. She was almost in; it was only a slight dizziness, yet she could not see the light-house. Concentrating all her efforts, she shut her eyes and swam on, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the necessary arrangements and after dinner we went down to the water front. The ship's boat was waiting for us and we rowed out. The schooner was anchored some way across the harbour, not far from the breakwater. We came alongside, and I heard the sound of a ukalele. We ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... wise provision is that a generous portion of the amounts received from early sales of lots is being devoted to general improvements that are for mutual benefit; such as the extension of roads, paths, trails and water-pipes, a substantial breakwater for better protection of launches and boats, larger dancing-pavilion or platform, automobile garage, more dressing ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... last decade might have been lost, had not the First Consul, to use his own expressive phrase, "thrown in some blocks of granite." We may intensify his metaphor and assert that out of the shifting shingle of French life he constructed a concrete breakwater, in which his own will acted as the binding cement, defying the storms of revolutionary or royalist passion which had swept the incoherent atoms to and fro, and had carried desolation far inland. Thenceforth ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the islanders—the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to select certain articles they required from her stores and arrange for the barter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange—Fritz observed that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort of natural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant species of seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended to the depth of fifteen fathoms. This, old Green pointed out, prevented the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... party having been detained. Reached Boulogne in safety, and in high spirits made our way on board the steamer, deposited our traps below, came on deck, and prepared for the ordeal. A high north-wester had been blowing all day, and as we ran along behind the breakwater, I could see over it the white and green waves fiendishly running, and showing their malign eyes sparkling with hungry expectation. "Come out, come out!" they seemed to say; "come out, you little black imp ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sure ... and he could see them stumbling up the gangways of the transport, each man heavily accoutred; and sometimes a man would laugh, and sometimes a man would swear ... and then the ship sailed out of the harbour, rounding the pier and the breakwater, churning the sea into a long white trail of foam as she set her course past the South Stack.... They could see the lights on her masthead diminishing as she went further away, and then, as the cold sea ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... watch from inside the conning tower; it is, at all events, dry, but as to seeing anything one might as well be looking out through a small glass window from inside a breakwater! To ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... saints they trusted. The men at home, pale and frowning, bit nervously at the ends of their cigars, and, from the lee of the boats drawn up on the sand, studied the lowering horizon with the tense penetrating gaze of sailormen, or nervously watched the harbor entrance beyond the Breakwater on whose red rocks the first storm waves were breaking. What was happening to so many husbands and fathers caught with their nets down off shore? Each succeeding squall, as it sent the terrified watchers staggering ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bawled. "What are you doing, Rolling? Are you coming to an anchor already? Have I been asleep six months, and is this the Breakwater ahead? No? Well, do you expect to get to port without canvas on the ship? Split me, but I thought you knew how to sail a boat when you signed on as mate. Don't come any of these grandmother tricks on me, hey? I won't have ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, like waves over a breakwater!" ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... ship Alexandros left the harbor of Piraeus in the forenoon of Lord's day, September eighteenth, and anchored outside the breakwater at Smyrna, in Asia Minor, the next morning. The landing in Turkish territory was easily accomplished, and I was soon beyond the custom house, where my baggage and passport were examined, and settled down at the "Hotel d'Egypte," on the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... to believe," whined Anson; "but he's got hold of two diamonds, and he's going to charge me with buying them, and he'll get me sent to Cape Town breakwater." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... engineer and architect, who built Waterloo and Southwark Bridges, Plymouth Breakwater, &c., was for a short time in the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and massive promontories of land, but without particularly discerning one feature of the varied perspective. He still saw that inner prospect—the event he hoped for in yonder church. The wide Sound, the Breakwater, the light-house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, brigs, barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with tiniest motion, were as the dream, then; the dreamed-of event was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... turn now revealed its true shape, which was that of a crescent, the horns of which overlapped the two projecting reefs forming the eastern and western sides of the harbour-entrance, and acted as a perfect natural breakwater, effectually protecting the harbour ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... early noontide of Mahometan vigor—and that assault, also, in the presence of the caliph and the crescent, was gloriously discomfited. Now if, in the moment of triumph, some voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out, 'How long shall this great Christian breakwater, against which are shattered into surge and foam all the mountainous billows of idolators and misbelievers, stand up on behalf of infant Christendom?' and if from the clouds some trumpet of prophecy ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... backed away from him the better to take in this new and strange creature in overalls. Thorpe and his grizzled host had just come down from the woods with a load of pine logs, and had found the trim, immaculate little New Yorker waiting for them at the breakwater, directed thither by the housewife in the winding lane that was called High Street. "By the way, is your name ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... organola; and they lived in it, with the climate of perdition and all the accessories of a suburb of Berlin, and called it a seaport. It is not a seaport; in a fair gale you can't land a barrel of corks at the pier. But given time and they would have built in the face of nature a two million pounds breakwater and everything complete. Yes, they are a thorough people; they are human ants as regards work. Nevertheless, it is not colonising. ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... seen in various points in front, and with the greatest difficulty the vessel was steered through an opening between them; but in another few minutes she struck heavily, one of her masts went over the side, and she lay fast and immovable. Fortunately, the outside bank of sand acted as a sort of breakwater; had she struck upon this, the good ship would have gone to pieces instantly; but although the waves still struck her with considerable force, the captain had good hope that she would not break up. Darkness came on; the tempest ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... coal, provisions, and stores to the Eastern Gulf squadron, was the bearer of Paul's appointment to the St. Regis, and Mr. Bolter's commission as chief engineer of the Bellevite. Your friend was ordered to report at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at once. The steamer in which he came put in at Delaware Breakwater, short of coal. He will be here by to-morrow ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... succeeded, diving and careening like sharks of the sky, the ships and coasters felt no serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island. There, clustering about as thickly in that olden time as they now seek from all the ocean round the costly shelter of Henlopen breakwater, coaster and pirate, fisherman and slaver, sent up the prayer a beneficent ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and sail acted not only as a floating anchor, but as a breakwater, and the white crested waves, which came on as if they would break upon the boat, seemed robbed of half their violence by the obstruction to their course, and passed under the felucca without breaking. For forty-eight ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... in their hamlets or communicate by giddy footpaths in the cliff. Upon the side of Kona, the table-like margin of the lava affords almost everywhere a passage by land; and the waves, reduced by the vast breakwater of the island, allow an almost continual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... six months after the rescue of the men of the Zeitgeist, the Fledgling, as though sentient with the instinct of self-preservation, was struggling through the riot of wind and waves, seeking the security of the Delaware Breakwater, while ten miles back, somewhere in the wild half gloom off Hog Island, three loaded coal barges which she had been towing from Norfolk were rolling, twisting, careening helplessly to destruction—if, indeed, the seas had not already ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... end of —— outer breakwater to beyond the —— there was a line of mines which left between the land and them a channel less than half a mile wide. A gunboat with torpedo pilots aboard was moored at the south end, and vessels prior to the war and during the armistice were compelled to take a ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... spent so many happy hours. There was the rustic seat we had made ourselves, which faced the lake, and on which we had sat and seen the storms gather on Blueberry Island. It was a comfortable seat with the right slant in its back, and I am still proud of having helped to make it. There was the breakwater of logs which were placed with such feats of strength, to prevent the erosion of the waves, and which withstood the big storm of September, 1912, when so many breakwaters were smashed to kindling-wood. We always had intended to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... dressed in our best, we would take our walk along the breakwater. My father, in a frock coat, high hat and kid gloves, would offer his arm to my mother, decked out and beribboned like a ship on a holiday. My sisters, who were always ready first, would await the signal for leaving; but at the last minute some one always found ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... legislative intervention. The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls a spacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands and jutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright and various breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and then exquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population,—is for me a reminder of narrow, foetid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitary tenement-houses ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... through the breakwater of Alexandria. Hundreds awaited her coming—nurses, doctors, and friends. Bill and Claud could not get up to view the scene. But Paddy watched it all. His eyes scanned the faces on shore. At last they rested on a familiar figure—a girl with a beautiful form, a charming but an anxious face. Yes, ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... me a pretty penny, that's what!" exploded Jarrow, turning back from the door. "I never said I'd take ye, and ye can git that out of yer fool head! Here I am, kickin' my heels around port and my schooner feedin' barnacles off the breakwater, all 'cause ye've got somethin' chafin' yer top-hamper. I won't ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... half speed through the narrow channel in the coral reef which makes the natural breakwater of the harbor. This channel is carefully buoyed on either side, and at night safety-lamps are placed upon each of these little floating beacons, so that a steamship can find her way in even after nightfall. Though the volcanic origin of the land is plain, it is not the sole cause ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... declined and became unprofitable. Mills' party in the 'Thistle' schooner, of which Davy was mate and navigator, or nurse to Mills, who was not a trained seaman, had their station at Single Corner; Kelly's party was stationed at the neck of land where the breakwater has been constructed. Then there were Dutton's party, with the barque 'African'; Nicholson's, with the barque 'Cheviot', from Hobarton; Chamberlain's, with the barque 'William the Fourth', of Hobarton; the 'Hope' barque, and a brig, both from Sydney. The Hentys also had a whaling station ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... you please," said Edward sternly, as he pulled the little boat up to the edge of the breakwater. A vision of Mrs. Thomas shot into Owen's mind. If the boatman did not believe in him, what chance had he with the housekeeper? He wished he had brought the lawyer down with him, and then he wished that he was back in the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... was it purple that day? Randal Courteney stretched his lazy length on the shady side of the great natural breakwater that protected Hurley Bay from the Atlantic rollers, and wondered. It was a day in late September, but the warmth of it was as a dream of summer returned. The season was nearly over, or he had not betaken himself thither, but ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the two cruisers were descried coming in past the breakwater, so it became a question of getting to the Keyham dockyard where they were to fetch up. Ever keen for exercise in any form, Lord Jellicoe decided to walk, and the commander-in-chief went with him. Knowing the distance and the somewhat unattractive approaches leading to the Keyham naval ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... less than a mile in length, though local in its construction, would yet be national in its purpose and its benefits, as it would remove the only obstruction to a navigation of more than 1,000 miles, affecting several States, as well as our commercial relations with Canada. So, too, the breakwater at the mouth of the Delaware is erected, not for the exclusive benefit of the States bordering on the bay and river of that name, but for that of the whole coastwise navigation of the United States and, to a considerable extent, also of foreign commerce. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... herself was not behind-hand in improving the occasion; for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toad-stools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan; who, such was her sense of duty, even under the humanizing influence of shrimps, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the historic harbor of Plymouth; arrived here about two hours ago. We're surrounded by fast little torpedo-boat destroyers, which are chasing round us all the time like dogs loosened from a chain. The breakwater has searchlights mounted on each end and fixed lights are playing from the shore. As the lights occasionally flash up the ships in the bay, it is as bright as day. Nobody is allowed ashore, not even the officers. We may go on to Southampton, only we must get there ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... P.M. the sky was very clear to the southward, and the land could be traced to a great distance until it faded in the south-west. But the ship had come up with the solid floe-ice once more, and had to give way and steam along its edge. This floating breakwater held us off and frustrated all attempts to reach the goal which ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... am ready to fight you to-morrow. Meet me three miles beyond the breakwater and may the best man ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... point of brown, rugged rocks which form a natural breakwater to this tiny boat harbour, the water is deep, showing a pale transparent green at their base, and deep inpenetrable blue ten fathoms beyond. To-day, because it is mid-winter, and the wind blows from the west, the sea is clearer ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... rather furiously, and my companion said nothing until we came in sight of the inn. As the canoe glided into the smooth surface behind the breakwater, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Inside the breakwater the sea was almost as smooth as a mirror. The water was wonderfully transparent, and they could see hundreds of tropical fish swimming lazily at a great depth. On the beach the waves lapped in musical ripples, in striking contrast to the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... it, in a way; installed the telephone to the house, connected it with my electric plant, and I come down here when I want to be quite alone, and paint. I watch the sea—such a sea sometimes, such storms, such colour! You notice that ridge of sand out yonder? It forms a sort of natural breakwater. Even on the calmest day you can trace that ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reached the end of the great breakwater, terminating in a lighthouse, the limit, on one side, of the inner harbor. The sun ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... though explaining his principles in the matter, "since your spread when we opened the railroad—that's six months ago; and the time before that I wore one at MacGolderick's funeral. MacGolderick blew himself up at Puerto Truxillo, shooting rocks for the breakwater. We never found all of him, but we gave what we could get together as fine a funeral as those natives ever saw. The boys, they wanted to make him look respectable, so they asked me to lend them my dress-suit, but I told them I meant to wear it ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, his hand clasping hers—the tiller, that is—hour by hour, and the small waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away from the saucy north wind. In ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... upon them in going in. The above information is from a plan drawn by Lieutenant Jeffreys, in the Hydrographical Office at the Admiralty: it was drawn in the year 1816; since which a portion of the labour of the convicts has been employed in building a breakwater, or pier, from the south entrance to the Nobby Rock, which will tend to direct the stream of tide through the channel, and also protect it from the surf and swell, which, during a south-east gale, must render the harbour of dangerous access. The town was formerly called ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... and O. stood out firmly before him against the pitiless blue of sea and sky. He wandered over the hot stone causeway, but found no one. The revenue officers were away, and not a labourer, not a sailor, was visible. Beyond the breakwater little tufts of silvery foam flashed on the rollers, and a solitary steamer steered steadily for the horizon. He could see the Greek flag at her stern, and his eyes filled with tears. Ah, how little his ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... speak of Tangier and the mole again. I spent many years upon the devising and construction of that great breakwater. It could have sheltered every ship of his Majesty's navy. It was wife and children to me. My heart lay very close to it. I fancied indeed my heart was disrupted with the disruption of the mole, and it has at all events, lain ever since as heavy ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... great discoverer, only twenty-five years after the great event of his life. The buildings are about the same as you will observe in all British colonial towns, and I need not mention them. You will ride out to Lake Colombo, and visit the cinnamon gardens there. The breakwater, which has been the making of the city, cost L600,000; for it is an entirely safe harbor, with every facility for landing and embarking passengers and goods. I believe nothing is left to you but to see what his lordship ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... sea, and when it is open, and sometimes when it is shut, "the rush and thunder of the surge" on Berwick bar or Spittal sands can be distinctly heard. In front, the Tweed pours its waters into the North Sea under the lee of the long pier, which acts as a breakwater and shelters the entrance to the harbour. Far away to the right, Holy Island, with the castle-crowned rock of Bamborough beyond it, are prominent objects; and at night, the Longstone light on the Outer Farne recalls the heroic rescue ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... through an extraordinary natural fortification of rocks; and if we ascend the heights of Le Roule, we shall obtain, what a Frenchman calls, a vue feerique du Cherbourg. We shall look down upon the magnificent harbour with its breakwater and surrounding forts, and see a fleet of iron-clads at anchor, surrounded by smaller vessels of all nations; gun-boats, turret-ships and every modern invention in the art of maritime war, but scarcely any ships of commerce. The whole energy and interest of ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... the arc of a circle on its north-western side, and uniting again with the island at its south-western extremity, forming a lagoon of the same length as the island, and about three-quarters of a mile wide at its widest point. The barrier reef, in fact, constituted a magnificent natural breakwater, upon which the surf eternally broke in a loud, sullen roar of everlasting thunder, while inside it the water was smooth as a mill pond, shoaling very gradually from the reef to the shore of the island, which consisted ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... make an unprecedented leap in prosperity. The two great engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous for the Caledonian canal and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie (1761-1821), drainer of Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo bridge and the Plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of Eskdale borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be made famous by Scott: Rennie was the son of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the great hotels—is its Digue, or Dyke, a great longdrawn-out breakwater against whose cemented walls pound the furies of the North Sea with such a virulence and force as to make one seasick even on land. "See our Digue and die," say the fisherfolk of Ostende,—those that ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the port of Cherbourg, England trembled more than if he had launched fifty frigates. And well she might. For what is Cherbourg? Nothing less than an immense permanent addition to the French power of naval production. Here, protected from the sea by a breakwater miles in extent, and which might have been the work of the Titans, and girdled by almost impregnable fortifications, is more than a safe harbor for all the fleets of the world. For here are docks for the repairs I dare not say of how many vessels, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... two men with them. When they got beyond the breakwater the sail was set, the Marchesino took the helm, and the boat slipped through the smooth sea, rounded the rocks on which the old fort stands to stare at Capri, radiant now as a magic isle in the curiously ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... board knew what headland this might be; but Thorbeorn knew it was not Ericsfrith, which he had intended to make. They rounded it, however, without mishap, and had a fair wind when they were beyond it. At last they could see a shore with a rough breakwater of stones; and presently upon that shore some men standing together. They cast anchor and let down their sails, and before all was shipshape a boat came rowing out to them, with a man in the stern in a blue cloak. The boat came alongside, and ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... up his map, put it in his pocket, passed Evans carefully, and began to paddle. His movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted. Evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep nearer and nearer. The sky was like a furnace now, for the sun was near the zenith. Though they were so near the Treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. The intense excitement of the struggle ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the school-house for Dunure. And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a babble of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep road leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and a score or so of fishers' houses. Hard by, a few shards of ruined castle overhang the sea, a few vaults, and one tall gable honeycombed with windows. The snow lay on the beach to the tidemark. It was daubed ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to have taken place in the depth of water in Cleveland Bay. The damage to the eastern breakwater caused by the cyclone of last year has been repaired, and the structure has been greatly strengthened. At its outer extremity a massive concrete foundation has been embedded in the masonry, upon which the lighthouse has been strongly secured. The light ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... Swampy meadows sloped gradually toward the sea. In some places were high, steep banks, in others drift-sand fields, where the sand lay heaped in banks and hills. Fishing hamlets stood all along the coast, with long rows of low, uniform brick houses, with a lighthouse at the edge of the breakwater, and brown fishing nets hanging ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... manned, and worked to a merry tune that struck chill to the bereaved; yards were braced for casting, anchor hove, catted, and fished, sail was spread with amazing swiftness, the ship's head dipped, and slowly and gracefully paid off towards the breakwater, and she stood out to sea under swiftly-swelling canvas and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... and dropped anchor inside the Breakwater. Sweeping toward her, pushing the white foam in long lines from her bow, her flag of black smoke trailing behind, came the company's tender—out from Cherbourg ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick's indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the breakwater. "Got it at last!" he exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Huntingdon house with its gray gables and stone chimneys, stood on the beach near the breakwater, just beyond the place where everything seemed to come to an end. The house itself marked the end of the town. Back of it the dreary dunes stretched away toward the Atlantic, and in front the Cape ran out in a long, thin tongue of sand between the bay and the harbor, with a lighthouse ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... enough, it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook—in modern parlance, contracted—to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at Salerno on the strange condition that all cocks in the neighbourhood should first be killed; for the wizard, so the story runs, had a special aversion to Chanticleer on account of his having caused the repentance of St Peter by his crowing. In any case, the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Harbour Act of 1868, the Dee near the harbour was diverted from the south at a cost of L. 80,000, and 90 acres of new ground (in addition to 25 acres formerly made up) were provided on the north side of the river for the Albert Basin (with a graving dock), quays and warehouses. A breakwater of concrete, 1050 ft. long, was constructed on the south side of the stream as a protection against south-easterly gales. On Girdleness, the southern point of the bay, a lighthouse was built in 1833. Near ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... seaward side, and prevented it from having any rest or relaxation. Now, one night, when the bombardment was more violent than usual, the commander-in-chief was warned that the light of Bengal flares burning on the beach had disclosed numerous boat loads of English soldiers heading for the harbour breakwater. Massna, his staff, and the squadron of guides which went everywhere with him, immediately mounted their horses. We were about a hundred and fifty to two hundred horsemen when, passing through a little square called Campetto, the general stopped to speak to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... nearing the Irish coast and the barometer is as low down as I have seen it for many a year and there is every indication of a gale. The coast you intend to land on acts as a breakwater for all northern Europe and the waves that pile up on it during a storm are something astounding. The cliffs that resist them are from one hundred and eighty to three hundred feet high and they are as straight up and down as a mainmast in ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... And there was certainly some excuse for his caution. Cadiz stands on a precipitous rock at the end of a low and narrow neck of land, some five miles in length, running parallel to the coast. Within this natural breakwater are enclosed an outer and an inner port; and so cumbered with shoals and rocks was the entrance from the sea that no ship could get in without passing under the guns of the town batteries, while access from the outer to the inner port was only to be gained by the Puntal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of the first time of asking. Old Mattsson, still pursued by talk and wonderings, went out on the long breakwater as far as the whitewashed lighthouse, in order to be alone. He found his betrothed there. She sat ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof |
