"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Arabia and Africa. The weather now suddenly changed; the sun became intensely hot, and though forty miles from the shore, they were visited by numerous butterflies, dragon-flies, and moths. In two days after, they sailed through an orange-coloured sea, filled with a shoal of animalculae fifteen miles long. On the next day they came in sight of the harbour of Aden. This whole track was the voyage from which the Arabian story-tellers have fabricated such wonders. One of the voyages of the celebrated Sinbad the sailor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Nantucket as a whaling port were passed before the Revolution wiped out her ships and killed or scattered her sailors. It was later discovered that larger ships were more economical, and Nantucket harbor bar was too shoal to admit their passage. For this reason New Bedford became the scene of the foremost activity, and Nantucket thereafter played a minor part, although her barks went cruising on to the end of the chapter and her old whaling families were true to strain. As explorers ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... eternal friendship. This day was fine; our minds, longing for more agreeable sensations, were harmonized by the soothing aspect of nature, and admitted a ray of hope. About four in the afternoon a circumstance occurred which afforded us some consolation: a shoal of flying fish passed under the raft, and as the extremities left an infinite number of vacancies between the pieces which composed it, the fish got entangled in great numbers. We threw ourselves upon them, and caught a considerable quantity: ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... kept along the edge of the ice; but meeting with no success, we turned towards the land to look for any pools which might exist in the ice. After looking about for some time, we came to one nearly the eighth of a mile across. In it were a shoal of narwhals or sea-unicorns, every now and then rising above the water to breathe, and then diving down again in search of prey. Could we have brought the boat so far, we should have had no difficulty in killing them, but now it depended how near they would rise to the edge. It was tantalising ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Providence. This channel is a continuation of what is called "The Tongue of the Ocean," which extends over a hundred miles south of New Providence, a hundred and fifty fathoms in depth, and bordered by innumerable cays, reefs, and very shoal water. ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... bass must have their beds on this shoal here," said Tom, when they paddled back over the place at which success had come to them. "It's early in the season as yet, and a lot of them are still around here. They haven't gone out into deep water ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... near Myconos, and while every one else perished, Coiranus alone was saved by a dolphin. And when at last he died of old age in his native country, as it so happened that his funeral procession passed along the seashore close to Miletus, a great shoal of dolphins appeared on that day in the harbor, keeping only a very little distance from those who were attending the funeral of Coiranus, as if they also were joining in the procession and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... chevaliers. An envious public sentiment might prevent the wearing of all the ribbons and crosses that a liberal man of means could buy; but decorations, like doorplates, are "so handy to have in the house." The centennial year, by bringing to our shores a shoal of titled personages, has presumably whetted the appetite of our people for heraldic distinctions. But for years before we had even the village tailor appearing occasionally in the local newspaper as Sir Knight Shears, and the apothecary as Most Worthy Grand Commander and Puissant Potentate ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... about the first part of our voyage. We had the usual amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange fish rolling in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by seeing a shoal of flying-fish dart out of the water and skim through the air about a foot above the surface. They were pursued by dolphins, which feed on them; and one flying-fish, in its terror, flew over the ship, struck on the rigging, and fell upon the deck. Its wings were just fins elongated; and we found ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... be built that the boats might be floated across. Frost set in heavily, and the ice cut the men as they worked in the water to haul the boats over shoals or rocks. The bateaux often needed to be beached and caulked, while both whites and Indians had to help carry the loads round the shoal places. At every Indian village it was necessary to stop, hold a conference, and give presents. At last the Wea village—or Ouiatanon, as Hamilton called it—was reached. Here the Wabash chiefs, who had made peace with the Americans, promptly came in and tendered their allegiance to the British, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... sea-level, though their fronts are back in narrow fiords, eight or ten miles from the sound. A similar point juts out into the sound five or six miles to the south, while the missing portion is submerged and forms a shoal. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... boats belonging to the ship 'Baffin' went in pursuit of a whale. John Carr was harpooner and commander of them. The whale they pursued led them into a vast shoal of his own species. They were so numerous that their blowing was incessant, and they believed that they did not see fewer than a hundred. Fearful of alarming them without striking any, they remained a while motionless. At last one rose near Carr's boat, and he approached and, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... originated. Once more may we perceive that surrounding natural objects supplied the needful lessons. From the beginning there must have been a constant experience of like things placed side by side—men standing and walking together; animals from the same herd; fish from the same shoal. And the ceaseless repetition of these experiences could not fail to suggest the observation, that the nearer together any objects were, the more visible became any inequality between them. Hence the obvious device of putting in apposition things of which it was desired to ascertain the relative ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... works; and their memorials might be removed to some cloister without loss of respect for the dead, perhaps even with the silent approval of their own day and generation could it awake from its endless sleep and review the strange and eventful course of human life since they left "this bank and shoal of time." But may it not be safely prophesied that of all the names on the starry scroll of national fame that of Charles Darwin will, surely, remain unquestioned? And entwined with his enduring memory, by right of worth and work, and we know with Darwin's fullest approval, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... dragging huge fish, many pounds in weight, by the gills; several received severe bites from the sharp teeth of the fish, into whose mouths they had incautiously thrust their hands. Not a few scampered out, declaring that there were sharks or other monsters among the shoal, which had attacked their legs. Among the most eager were Gilbert, Fenton, and Oliver Dane. The three youths on all occasions bore each other company, and after each of them had secured a fish large enough to feed a dozen hungry men or more, Fenton and Oliver were seen coming out with an enormous ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The Olaf was anchored at the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon now. Only the three-legged ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... river at Koptos that I might see what would become of him. And he said, 'Workmen, work for me, even at the place where the book is.' And they toiled by night and by day; and when they had reached it in three days, he threw the sand out, and made a shoal in the river. And then he found on it entwined serpents and scorpions and all kinds of crawling things around the box in which the book was; and by it he found a deathless snake around the box. And he laid the spell upon ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... A shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of Gulf-weed swam in close squadron on the emerald sea; and on the western horizon screw-pile lighthouses stood up out of the water, marking ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... traffic from Gadeira, concealing the passage from every one; and when the Romans followed a certain ship-master, that they also might find the mart, the ship-master, out of jealousy, purposely ran his vessel upon a shoal, and leading on those who followed him into the same destructive disaster, he himself escaped by means of a fragment of the ship, and received from the State the value of the cargo he had lost. But the Romans, nevertheless, making frequent efforts, discovered the passage; ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... mean time daylight began to appear. The position of the ship could be seen more distinctly. She lay upon a shoal, held partly by her anchor, which the crew had let go before she struck. Thus confined she had been knocked down by the seas, and now lay thumping violently at every rising and falling of the surge, and in danger every moment of going to pieces. She was covered with human beings, who were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... sailed on till he fell in with two islands to the southwards, in lat. 27 deg. N. At one of these, which he named Santa Martha, about a league in circumference, he watered. On Friday the 13th of May, he sailed along a shoal with a chain of islands, to one called Pola, in 26 deg. 30' N. Between these islands and the continent is a spacious sea like a bay. On the 15th of May he proceeded ten leagues along the chain of small islands, to two white ones ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Mesmerism, and Spirit- rapping. We might go on in our elucidation; but what we have said will probably be sufficient for present purposes. There are some deep-swimming fish in the "waters of Mormon;" but the piscatorial shoal is sincere enough, though mortally odd-brained and dreamy. On the 22nd of September, 1827, a rough-spun American, named Joseph Smith, belonging to a family reputed to be fond of laziness, drink, and untruthfulness, and suspected of being somewhat disposed to sheep-stealing, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... above cracking! There was a hullabaloo for a few minutes, now I tell you. Shouts, commands, the grinding of the schooner's keel, the slatting of sails. The Sea Spell had driven so hard and fast upon the shoal that she canted neither to port, or starboard. And although the sea was still so that she would not be beaten by the waves, it looked much to me as though she were piled up on this unfriendly coast ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... two youngest, were as usual pulling away to one of the small quiet bays, and Rob was idly looking around him, when he saw something on the surface of the sea at some distance off that excited a sudden interest. It was what the fishermen call 'broken water'—a seething produced by a shoal of fish. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... improve on the sharpie resulted in the construction of boats that had neither the beauty nor the other advantages of the original type. This was particularly true of sharpies built as yachts with large cabins and heavy rigs. Because the stability of the sharpie's shoal hull was limited, the added weight of high, long cabin trunks and attendant furniture reduced the boat's safety potential. Windage of the topside structures necessary on sharpie yachts also affected speed, particularly in sailing to windward. Hence, there ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... Melita,[47] which mark the boundary between the Adriatic and Tuscan Seas. There a strong east wind arose for them, and on the following day it carried the ships to the point of Libya, at the place which the Romans call in their own tongue "Shoal's Head." For its name is "Caputvada," and it is five days' journey from ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... survey of the Premier Shoal, as it is now named, and then steered for the island of Maratua, which the sultan of Gonong Tabor had by his treaty made over to the English, representing it as having an excellent harbour and good water; but on our arrival we were much disappointed to find an ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... come below and put my feet on the table after we pass the Shoal of Seals," he explained. "That is the time I take my 'watch below,' as we call it, when we come down for a rest or a sleep. But you are eager to hear the story. Very good. Here goes. A good many years ago an expedition came up to this part of the world ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... entirely undismayed by the odds against them, and at seven o'clock Decatur went into the harbor between the reef and shoal which formed its mouth. He steered on steadily toward the Philadelphia, the breeze getting constantly lighter, and by half-past nine was within two hundred yards of the frigate. As they approached Decatur stood at the helm with the pilot, only two or three ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... made in water so shoal, that the boat had barely escaped being dashed to pieces on the coral. Had it not been so suddenly relieved from the pressure of near a thousand pounds in weight, it is probable that this calamity would have befallen it, the water received on board contributing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... "I am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed—and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the preeminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... tempestuous wind which made the waves run mountains high and parted the two carracks one from the other. Moreover, from stress of wind it befell that that wherein was the wretched and unfortunate Landolfo smote with great violence upon a shoal over against the island of Cephalonia and parting amidships, broke all in sunder no otherwise than a glass dashed against a wall. The sea was in a moment all full of bales of merchandise and chests and planks, that floated on the surface, as is wont to happen in such cases, and the poor ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... living inhabitants of the waters. It is not a week yet since the fearful tenth signal rung from the deep; and, upon the machine being raised in great alarm by the workers of the crane, it was ascertained that a shoal of finners (some of them fourteen feet long) had passed close by the mouth of the bell, with a noise like the rushing of a mighty army. But the alarm was greater on the side of the creatures themselves: on observing the bell with the men in it, they lashed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... potash, but was partly taken up by pyrogallic acid, that is to say, that little or no carbonic acid was present, but that a fair amount of oxygen was present, diluted of course by nitrogen. The exposure of a shoal of the beautiful blue pelagic Siphonophore, Velella, for a few hours, enabled me to collect a large quantity of gas, which yielded from 24 to 25 per cent. of oxygen, that subsequently squeezed out from the interior of the chambered cartilaginous float, giving only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... you so because otherwise you would not understand. He would not express himself to me in that way. The Mahdi is worse than a whole shoal of crocodiles. Do you understand? That is a nice expression for me. 'Naughty!' They ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "Proceed, false slave, and slight their empty words: What! hopes the fool to please so many lords? Young as I am, thy prince's vengeful hand Stretch'd forth in wrath shall drive thee from the land. Oh! could the vigour of this arm as well The oppressive suitors from my walls expel! Then what a shoal of lawless men should go To fill with tumult ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... one of the polite towns, went into the country, and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and maidens lying together on a bed. He was no sooner out of the church, then attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, 'Sir, do you think we and our daughters are naughty, because we allow bundling?' 'You lead yourselves into temptation by it.' They all replied at once, 'Sir, have you been told thus, or has experience taught it you?' The ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, deg. deg.5 With the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... favourite ejaculation, 'Lord!' occurs," he declares, "but once that I have observed in 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63; after which the 'Lords' may be said to pullulate like herrings, with here and there a solitary 'damned,' as it were a whale among the shoal." As a matter of fact, Mr. Pepys's use of the expression "Lord!" has been greatly exaggerated, especially by the parodists. His primness, if that is the right word, never altogether deserted him. We discover this even in the story of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... westward we passed a shoal and open bay, immediately adjacent to the harbour which we were now about to examine, and soon after came to a reef of rocks, in some parts nearly dry, extending, about three quarters of a mile to ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Lake Bennet at the south-west corner is also very dirty, and has shoaled quite a large portion of the lake at its mouth. The beach at the lower end of this lake is comparatively flat and the water shoal. A deep, wide valley extends northwards from the north end of the lake, apparently reaching to the canon, or a short distance above it. This may have been originally a course for the waters of the river. The bottom of the valley is wide and ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... commotion among the children in the block, and the Chief of Police looked out of his window across the street, his attention arrested by the noise. He saw a little pine coffin carried into the alley under the arm of the driver, a shoal of ragged children trailing behind. After a while the driver carried it out again, shoved it in the wagon, where there were other boxes like it, and, slamming the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... warm, indeed, were the praises he sung that his statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation. But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters like these." And again, quoting from the United States Coast ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... it could be ascended by poling. So from green wood we cut suitable poles of about two inches in diameter and from seven to nine feet in length and knifed them carefully to rid them of bark and knots. Then, for this was a shoal rapids, both bowman and sternman stood up, the better to put the full force of their strength and weight into the work; the children, however, merely knelt to the work of wielding their slender poles; but in deep water, or where there ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... flat round blades tied to their ends. They come stem on through the low surf on the harbour strand, then just as they are touching the shore, are swung broadside on, the natives spring out into the shoal water, and out comes the lading, piece by piece, on their shoulders sacks, bales, boxes, etc., and all the time the boat is bumping up the sloping sand sideways and unharmed apparently by the seas bursting ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... though he was as familiar with the bay as he was with the apartments in his own house. He knew every island and head land, every rock and shoal, and the situation of every light-house; but the barometer had warned him of nothing less than a hurricane. The Waldo was an old vessel, and barely sea-worthy, even for a summer voyage, to the region of hurricanes. He had, therefore, many misgivings, ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... crowd the shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast, during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent. Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of hungry sea-fowl hovering and flittering ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... lask is better than any other bait, better than an equally brilliant salted lask. It is the shine of the bait at which the fish bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves behind it in the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which keeps the shoal together and makes ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... I bore away for Truxillo, on the Spanish main. At 10 a.m., being close in-shore, the wind shifted, and blew a heavy gale with very thick weather, which obliged me to stand to the eastward. At noon, though we lost sight of the land, I found that we were in very shoal water, and as may be supposed I became very anxious when I found that there was no one on board who had ever been there before, or was at all acquainted with the coast. All we knew was that it was considered a very dangerous and difficult one. Since we left ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Stood to the North-East. Extream of the Land to the southward, which we took for Cape St. Thomas, South-West 1/2 South; distance 5 or 6 leagues; Depth of Water 13 fathoms, Grey sand. At 11 a.m. tack'd in 14 fathoms and Stood to the South-South-East, and at 3 a.m. Stood over a Shoal or Bank of 6 fathoms, afterwards the Depth increased to 30 fathoms, at Noon in 36 fathoms. Latitude Observed 22 degrees 37 minutes South, which is 10 miles to the Southward of the Log. No Land in sight. Wind South-East to East; course ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all—here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... land had owned it for mercy knows how long and had done nothin' but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for somethin' down to bind what Raish and Jethro called 'options.' Anyhow, when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into workin', they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that's the way father used to tell about it. They found that all that Skoonic Creek land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap'n Jeth Hallett; those two either owned it outright or had options where they ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lo! behind him, gaining fast, Cloanthus. On the leeward side he stole A narrower compass, grazing as he passed His rival's vessel and the sounding shoal, Then gained safe water, as he turned the goal. Grief fired young Gyas at the sight, and drew Tears from his eyes and anger from his soul. Careless alike of honour and his crew, Down from the lofty stern his timorous ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... from the fact that they are all of one mind. In plain fact the virtues of a mob cannot be found in a herd of bulls or a pack of wolves, any more than the crimes of a mob can be committed by a flock of sheep or a shoal of herrings. Birds have never been known to besiege and capture an empty cage of an aviary, on a point of principle, merely because it had kept a few other birds in captivity, as the mob besieged and captured ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... elevation of the land, at different heights. The origin of the argillaceous flats, which separate the parallel ranges of sand-dunes, seems due to the tides here having a tendency (as I believe they have on most shoal, protected coasts) to throw up a bar parallel to the shore, and at some distance from it; this bar gradually becomes larger, affording a base for the accumulation of sand- dunes, and the shallow space within then becomes silted up with mud. The repetition of this process, without ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... fish, game, and fruits. This was, it is supposed, the place where Jimenez, the discoverer of California, lost his life in 1533, and where Cortez planted his ill-fated colony two years later. In entering the bay, the flagship ran on a shoal, and they were obliged to cut away her masts and lighten her of her cargo of provisions, a great part of which was wet and lost. Here Vizcaino landed and built a stockade fort, and leaving the dismantled flagship ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... have 'em high-water than shoal in the middle of the channel. You'll have to average up somehow. I ought to have known better than to trust you to buy ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at 4; the wind and tide were now adverse, and we therefore anchored in two fathoms. There is two fathoms in the channel past Sandy Island, but a reef of rocks extend from the left bank of the river, which renders it necessary to keep close to the edge of the shoal off the island. ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... Jean de Luz, eight miles from Biarritz. One of their uses is to drive the fish into the nets, and for this purpose one is taken in every boat that puts to sea. The method is extremely simple. As soon as the net surrounds a shoal, the dog is put in the centre, and by beating the water with his paws he effectually drives the finny creatures into the meshes. It was one of this same species of dogs that attracted so much attention at the Port Vieux by leaping after a stick from the mound—a distance of ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... pilot me Over life's tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; Chart and compass came from Thee; Jesus, Saviour, ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... power of offense nearly equal to your protection. Loosely speaking, a modern gun-projectile will, at short range, pierce steel equal to itself in cross-section, and from an elevated muzzle will travel as many miles as this cross-section measures in inches. Placed upon an outlying shoal, this box with its guns would make an efficient fortress, but would lack the advantage of being able to move and ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... eastern coast in such profusion that on one instance in 1839 a gentleman, who was present, saw upwards of four hundred thousand taken in a haul of the nets in the little bay of Goyapanna, east of Point-de-Galle. As this vast shoal approached the shore the broken water became as smooth as if a sheet of ice had ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Brachiano be my precedent. We lay our souls to pawn to the devil for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale. That ever man should marry! For one Hypermnestra that saved her lord and husband, forty-nine of her sisters cut their husbands' throats all in one night. There was a shoal of virtuous horse leeches! Here ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... since first the hallowed tree Was launched by the lone mariner on some primeval sea, No stouter stuff than the heart of oak, or tough elastic pine, Had floated beyond the shallow shoal ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... large for comfort," said the captain. "They've sounded it, an found the whole shoal about three an a half mile long, an a half a mile broad. It's all kivered over with water at high tide, but at half tide it begins to show its nose, an at low tide you see as pooty a shoal for shipwrecking as you may want; rayther low with pleasant jagged rocks at the nothe-east side, an ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... as has been asserted, was a counterpart, a sort of miserable imitation, of the revolution which was then convulsing England? Not the least in the world. That other error, still stranger than the preceding, rests upon a false and deceitful analogy—that common shoal of historical considerations and comparisons. At bottom, the earlier part of the English revolution was almost entirely of a religious character, whilst in the Fronde the religious element did not intervene at all, thanks to the enlightened protection enjoyed ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... went into the cabin again, without any conversation with the subject of his severe but just comments. Lawry was on the point of leaving the hurricane-deck, where he had talked with his adviser, when he noticed that the boat was headed toward the shore, and in a moment more would be aground in the shoal water off Barber's Point. He rushed into the wheel-house, and found that Ben had abandoned the helm. Grasping the wheel, the pilot brought her up to her course, and then turned ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... the river on the second day to be even worse than our worst fears had pictured it, and it kept growing worse as we ascended. The water was so swift and shoal that we could take only a part of the outfit in the canoe, which meant that we had to return at intervals for the rest and track all the way, Hubbard pulling on the line while George and I waded and pushed. Sometimes we were scarcely knee deep in the water, and at other times we ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... that day full of the plan for his great scheme—just a quibble of the law and the thing was done. We were all to be made rich and successful by it, he explained. There is no use in describing to you the intricacies of his idea; it was one of those shoal waters in which the honesty of young lawyers can sometimes come to grief. The pursuit of law will winnow out the true from the false; it makes an upright man a hundred times more certain and more proud of his honor: it searches ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... moments they stuck fast on a shoal or submerged reef, and then Ned had to feel his way to the front with his paddle, and dislodge them by main force. The water was of variable depth, and half a dozen times the boys suddenly plunged breast deep into a hole, but fortunately did not let ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... York packet, making the round voyage every week. Her captain, one Jonah Balchen, was much esteemed by the people of Nyack for his skill in navigation; and it was said of him that he knew every rock and shoal in the Tappan Zee, and no man ever lost his life who sailed with him. The arrival of the good sloop Heinrich then was quite an event, and whenever it occurred the neighbors round about would gather into Hanz's little veranda to hear what news she brought from the city, and arrange with Captain ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... live together, not like accidental waifs that haply meet to part again upon the waves of time, but rather like two happy children playing King and Queen, drifting in a golden boat along the crystal stream of life, never so much as touching on a shoal, but gliding on, sometimes plying silver oars, and sometimes spreading a purple sail to catch the sandal-scented breeze that blows from Malaya loaded with the lazy odour of the South, letting all the hours slip past us unperceived, till we float away together into ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... the smooth waters of the Solent, where one or two yachts and a heavy black schooner were creeping up on the tide before the morning breeze. She drummed reflectively with her fingers on the low stone wall. Beneath them a few gulls whirled and screamed over a shoal of little fish. One of the birds had a singular cry, as if it were laughing ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... this way and that. Tiny sea-horses, yet more fantastic, slipped shyly from one weed-covert to another, aware of a possible peril in every gay but menacing bloom. And just above this eccentric life of the shoal sea-floor small fishes of curious form shot hither and thither, live, darting gleams of gold and azure and amethyst. Now and again a long, black shadow would sail slowly over the scene of freakish life—the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... at length—as it inevitably must—to women, and the unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... which came this year from Nueva Hespana arrived in sight of these islands on the tenth of last month, and the captain made the port of Cavite on St. John's day. The Almiranta, not being so good a ship, could not follow him, and remained on the shoal of Mindoro until the fifth of the present month, which caused great loss. The viceroy of Nueva Hespana writes me that the cause of these ships leaving Acapulco so late was because they had met this despatch ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... the astronomer loiter! His skies are shoal, and imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants to be through their desert. The roving mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... enough to accommodate a cousin a full third of his own size, if swallowed properly, head first. His speed was so great that any smaller fish which he pursued was doomed, unless fortunate enough to be within instant reach of shoal water. Of course, it must not be imagined that the great trout was able to keep his domain quite inviolate. When he was full fed, or sulking, then the finny wanderers passed up and down freely,—always, however, giving wide berth to the lair under the bank. In the bright shallows ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Ruins of a Spanish Fort. The Westermost point of Mindanao. Two Proes of the Sologues laden from Manila. An Isle to the West of Sebo. Walking Canes. Isle of Batts, very large; and numerous Turtles and Manatee. A dangerous Shoal. They sail by Panay belonging to the Spaniards, and others of the Philippine Islands. Isle of Mindora. Two Barks taken. A further account of the Isle Luconia, and the City and Harbour of Manila. They go off Pulo Condore to lye there. The Shoals of Pracel, &c. Pulo Condore. The Tar-tree. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... for the General to devote his whole energies against the little city of Alkmaar. On that bank and shoal, the extreme verge of habitable earth, the spirit of Holland's Freedom stood at bay. The grey towers of Egmont Castle and of Egmont Abbey rose between the city and the sea, and there the troops sent by the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... interesting experiences in the eastern archipelago, but no mishaps except that the ship grounded on a rocky shoal near one of the islands. Fortunately there was no leak, and after throwing overboard eight of their cannon, three tons of cloves they had gathered in their voyage through the isles of spices, and many bags ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the vale spreads out, quickly where the hills close in; black and mysterious in the deep places, frank and golden in the shoal. In one romantic open, where the stream flows thinly over a long stretch of sand, the bed is of an almost luminous amber, as if its particles had imprisoned a little of the sunlight that had fallen on them ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the ocean from Liverpool to New York. On the deck the passengers walked about, looking at the sea and sky. Occasionally they saw a flock of gulls circling about overhead, or a shoal of dolphins leaping up in the blue waves. Among these passengers was the shy gentleman. Now the shy gentleman was tall and large, with a full brown beard, which should have made him quite bold, but he was not. If a stranger spoke to him, he blushed, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Godiva, as the feathers fluttered down into the boat and rested on the dead boy's pall. "War among man and beast, war on earth, war in air, war in the water beneath," as a great pike rolled at his bait, sending a shoal of white fish flying along the surface. "And war, says holy writ, in heaven above. O Thou who didst die to destroy death, when will it ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... were caught up in the toils of a net constructed of towels knotted together, stretching across the path, and held at each end by two swift runners who swept them along at a headlong pace, catching up a shoal of stray fish on the way until even the stalwart dredgers were compelled, from the very weight of their "take," ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... days, after which there arose a furious storm. The vessel was driven out of her course, so that neither Behram nor his pilot knew where they were. They were afraid of being wrecked on the rocks, for in the violence of the storm they discovered land, and a dangerous shoal before them. Behram perceived that he was driven into the port and capital of queen Margiana, which occasioned him ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... journey inland from the sea, over shoal, against white rapid, and over spouting fall, toward the hidden valleys among the glaciers—and most of them die, don't they, when they get there? There's a symbol of life for you, but I sometimes think that, whether it's men or salmon, the fighters ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of the fish," said Will; "intestines, don't you call 'em? That's a shoal of small fish come into the harbour, only they're so clear you can't make 'em out; and first one lays hold of one end and runs off with it, and then another. Looks just like little ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... her reverie as the bottom of the dory struck the sand. The shoal water stretched twenty feet beyond. He pulled in the oars and rose desperately. "It's of no use: I shall have to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fleet was anchored in line on the western side of the bay, with wide shoals between it and the shore. It was sheltered by Abukir (now Nelson's) island and its rocks, and its leading ship was pretty close to the shoal off the island. It was composed of thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, and was much superior to Nelson's in the size of the ships and weight of metal. Some of the ships, however, were worn out, and many of their crews ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... a soft grating sound, as though a boat had just touched in shoal water. The Jackal spun round quickly and faced (it is always best to face) the creature he had been talking about. It was a twenty-four-foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble-riveted boiler-plate, studded and keeled and crested; the yellow points of his upper teeth ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... in the mind of cent. per cent., which rises above the constrained mirth of the assembly, will hold the guests so anchored to the consideration of profit and loss, that in vain they spread a free sail—the tide of gayety refuses to float their barks from the shoal beside which they are moored. In their seasons of gayety the French are philosophers, for while they imbibe the mirth they discard the wassail, and wine instead of being the body of their feasts, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Jersey was that its seacoast was a monotonous line of breakers with dangerous shoal inlets, few harbors, and vast mosquito infested salt marshes and sandy thickets. In the interior it was for the most part a level, heavily forested, sandy, swampy country in its southern portions, and rough and mountainous in the northern portions. Even the entrance by Delaware Bay was ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... this here world, and considering what there could be in that 'ere, his head struck against something hard. Smallbones immediately turned round in the water to see what it was, and found that it was one of the large corks which supported a heavy net laid out across the tide for the taking of shoal-fish. The cork was barely sufficient to support his weight, but it gave him a certain relief, and time to look about him, as the saying is. The lad ran under the net and cork with his hands until he arrived at the nearest shoal, for it was three or four ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... beaver lodge was discovered, the trap was set at the edge of the dam, at a point where the animal passed from deep to shoal water, and always under the surface. Early in the morning, the hunter mounted his mule and examined ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... swimmer, the Matutina crossed the dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre—a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves—an arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and lurch, the sleigh left the grade, and took the white snow edging the shoal water that led out to the deep green of the middle ice. The ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... world, while yet the name of the writer was unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verse of Adelaide Procter. "In the spring of the year 1853 I observed a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical."[296] The contributions had been large and frequent under an assumed name, when at Christmas 1854 he discovered that Miss Mary Berwick was the daughter of his old and dear friend ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.' No; that new life in its feeblest infancy, and before it speaks, if I may so say, is, by its very existence, a prophet, and declares that there must be, beyond this 'bank and shoal of time,' a region to which it is native, and in which it may grow to maturity. You will find in your greenhouses exotics that stand there, after all your pains and coals, stunted, and seeming to sigh for the tropical heat which is their home. The earnest of our inheritance, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... whalers upon the coast, in which they could all be conveyed to Europe. As for wintering where they were, that dreadful experiment had been already tried too often. No time was to be lost; the ships had driven into shoal water, having but fourteen fathoms. Should they, or the ice to which they were fast, take the ground, they must inevitably be lost; and at this time they were driving fast toward some rocks on the N.E. Captain Phipps sent for the officers of both ships, and told them ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not—a great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... The news spread rapidly. It generally does on the death of a peer, if he has been of note, whether good or bad, in the world, and was known in London before the day was over—the consequence of which was, that by Saturday morning, early, a shoal of what the late peer would have called harpies, had arrived, to surround East Lynne. There were creditors of all sorts; for small sums and for great, for five or ten pounds up to five or ten thousand. Some were civil, some impatient, some loud and rough and angry; some came to put ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the years that followed I have seen him run risks that I would never dream of taking. What I mean is that while he was no fighter, and while he always avoided precipitating a row, he never ran away from trouble when it started. And it was "'Ware shoal!" when once Otoo went into action. I shall never forget what he did to Bill King. It occurred in German Samoa. Bill King was hailed the champion heavyweight of the American Navy. He was a big brute of ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... up the shore a ways." Already Quain was moving off in search of it. "Noticed her this morning. Daresay she leaks like a sieve, but at worst the water's pretty shoal inshore, hereabouts." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... ceased on the 14th, and the waters of the Shire fell, even more rapidly than they had risen. A shoal, twenty miles below Chibisa's, checked our further progress, and we lay there five weary weeks, till the permanent rise of the river took place. During this detention, with a large marsh on each side, the first death occurred in the Expedition which had now been ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... person, temperament, and mind slip like sand through the grasp of an infirm purpose; Othello, that the perpetual silt of some one weakness, the eddies of a suspicious temper depositing their one impalpable layer after another, may build up a shoal on which an heroic life and an otherwise magnanimous nature may bilge and go to pieces. All this we may learn, and much more, and Shakespeare was no doubt well aware of all this and more; but I do not believe that he wrote his plays with any ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... cockswain with undisturbed composure; "here is his spout not half a mile to seaward; the easterly gale has driven the creatur to leeward, and he begins to find himself in shoal water. He's been sleeping, while he should have been ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... [27:16]And running a little under the island called Clauda, we with difficulty became masters of the boat, [27:17]and taking it out they used helps, under-girding the ship; and fearing lest they should fall on the shoal, letting down the mast they were driven in that condition. [27:18]And we being exceedingly pressed with the storm, on the next day they cast the cargo overboard, [27:19]and on the third day with our own hands we cast overboard the furniture of the ship. [27:20]And neither sun ...
— The New Testament • Various
... see the sea on the opposite side, and a kind of sound is formed by some islands to the North East and some islands of considerable size to the South West, and in the intermediate space there are several small islands and rocks. On the larboard hand of the North entrance there is a shoal, on which the sea appears to break although there is from ten to twelve fathoms of water upon it. In the other part of the entrance there is forty fathoms of water or more. Our boat had only time to examine the entrance and ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... rum, half a goat, two great coats, one of which was to lie on, and one to put on at night. I set sail in the sixth year of my reign. On the East side of the isle, there was a large ridge of rocks, which lay two miles from the shore; and a shoal of sand lay for half a mile from the rocks to the beach. To get round to this point, I had to sail a great way out to sea; and here I ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... patch and tree-covered shoal in the China Sea was an impossible task. All the Orient could do was to visit the principal islands and institute inquiries among the fishermen and small traders. At last, the previous night, a Malay, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they answered was, "Hush, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... narrated in the last chapter, I was standing on the quarter-deck of the schooner watching the gambols of a shoal of porpoises that swam round us. It was a dead calm. One of those still, hot, sweltering days, so common in the Pacific, when Nature seems to have gone to sleep, and the only thing in water or in air that proves her still alive, is her ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... off to the eastward, it became pretty evident to all who understood the subject, that the two little lug-sails that were "eating into the wind," as the sailors express it, would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other shoal. Even the landsmen had some feverish suspicions of the truth, and the steerage passengers were already holding a secret conference on the possibility of hiding the pursued in some of the recesses of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... perceived the sea to break right a-head of us; we immediately sounded, and shoaled our water from thirteen to seven fathom, soon after deepening it again from seventeen to forty-two; so that we went over the end of a shoal, which a little farther to the northward might have been fatal to us. Cape Blanco at this time bore W.S.W. 1/2 S. distant four leagues: But we were still at a loss for Port Desire, it being impossible that any description should be more confused than that which Sir John Narborough has given ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... sail or so from the Cape de Verd Islands, when one day, as I was looking out, I saw on the starboard-bow what I was certain was a shoal of great extent covered with sea-weed. "Land on the starboard-bow!" I sung out, thinking there could be no mistake about the matter. I heard a loud laugh at my shoulder. Old Ben Yool ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... have a firm foundation, a safe refuge, inexhaustible refreshment and untroubled rest. Lives founded on aught beside are built on sand and will be full of tremors and unsettlements, and at last the despairing builder and his ruined house will be washed away with the dissolving 'sandbank and shoal of time' on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which "Grandpere" had up his sleeve. The Silent Navy, it is hardly necessary to say, fairly rose to the occasion, for the Admiral was off under forced draught in the dog-watch. Chancing things, however, when weathering a promontory off Montreuil, he contrived to pile up his craft on a shoal in a bad position, and he would have missed trans-shipment at Boulogne altogether had he not got himself taken off in a passing craft which was under charge of soldier-officers who were likewise making for the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... ship went aground on a shoal on the island of Jolos, near these Philipinas Islands. Being seen by the Indians and natives of that land, the latter attacked them, and put them all to the sword, leaving only the captain alive for the ransom that they can get for him. For two years there have been such droughts in the Malucas ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... shoal work of those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find a ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... trip, she was probably the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat. You see they were all of them experienced men. They had years of practice behind them. They knew their ship, and they knew the ocean. There wasn't a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn't know. Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where neither his father nor grand-father had ever been ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... cannonade from the shore. Lieutenant Smith, who commanded the "Congress," had realized that collision with the enemy meant destruction, rapid and inevitable, and decided that his best chance was to get into shoal water under the batteries. He had slipped his cable, shaken out some of his sails, and signalled to the tug-boat "Zouave" to come to his help. The "Zouave" made fast to the "Congress" on the land side, but she had not moved far when the ship ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... place and manner; and that it was not our design and expectation to have done this, but only to have landed on the Fly and burned some of their stores; but being come in, we spied those ships, and with our long boats, one by one, fired them, our ships running all a-ground, it being so shoal water. We were led to this by it seems, a renegado captain of the Hollanders, who found himself ill used by De Ruyter for his good service, and so come over to us, and hath done us good service; so that now ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it rose; or a pachgutchea, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the dead-reckoning we ought to be a little to the southward of French Shoal. While I was satisfying myself in regard to our position, another gun sounded ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... Pines was broad on their starboard quarter, the last Cay on the "Jardines" shoal had been passed, and they were fairly at sea and in deep water. They might now reasonably look out for a frigate at any moment; but, as it would not do to depend upon this source of rescue alone, George ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... to an anchor, for the place being shoal, and the channel intricate, there was no getting in where Teach lay that night; but in the morning he weighed, and sent his boat ahead of the sloops to sound, and coming within gun-shot of the pirate, received his fire; whereupon Maynard ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various |
