"Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rise, and below the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... drifting through the surf, beside Its rocks of gray upon the coming tide; And lightly is it stranded on the shore Of pure and silver shells, that lie before, Glittering in the glory of the sun; And Julio hath landed him, like one That aileth of some wild and weary pest; And Agathe is folded on his breast,— ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... corps d'armee, which was the first to perform this difficult operation. It was necessary to provide Sir John Hope with a number of small boats; these were accordingly brought on the backs of mules from various Spanish ports, it being impossible, on account of the surf at the entrance of the Adour, as well as the command which the French held of that river, for Lord Wellington to avail himself of water carriage. Soult had given orders for the forces under General ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the vessel within the surf, but a few yards distant from the outer rocks, thrown on her beam-ends, with both foresail and mainsail blown clear out of their bolt-ropes. The cry for succour was raised in vain; the wail of despair ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... couldn't, for while Newman was speaking, a wonderful thing happened. He suddenly dwindled in size until he was no larger than a manikin, going through the motion of drinking from a tiny bottle; while in contrast, his voice increased so tremendously in volume it broke upon my ears like a surf upon a beach. I couldn't grasp ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... hypocrisy, of men of this kind,—and they belong to both parties. I heard a story of one who used, when Long Branch was more popular than it is now, to go down there for a summer outing. One day he went out in the surf to bathe. He was strong and vigorous and bold, and he swam out beyond the breakers; he was heading strongly and fearlessly for the European shore. All at once, a shark, a man-eater, was coming the other way, and swam up squarely ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Regent lay in the Pentland Firth in a fog and a violent and windless swell. It was still dark, when they were alarmed by the sound of breakers, and an anchor was immediately let go. The peep of dawn discovered them swinging in desperate proximity to the Isle of Swona {54a} and the surf bursting close under their stern. There was in this place a hamlet of the inhabitants, fisher-folk and wreckers; their huts stood close about the head of the beach. All slept; the doors were closed, and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clean, fresh quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did not appear till he was past sixty. After that, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in the costume you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he was there before ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grounded upon the sand, the impatient rabble rushed into the surf to capture and make spoil; but were awed into admiration and respect by the appearance of the illustrious company on board. There were Moors of both sexes sumptuously arrayed, and adorned with precious jewels, bearing the demeanor of persons of lofty rank. Among them shone conspicuous ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... trail to mark their bitter passing. In the first days of cold and calm that came after, the ranch was resonant day and night with that monotonous, indescribable sound, like nothing else on earth unless it be the beating of surf against a rocky shore—the bawling of nine hundred calves penned in corrals, their uproar but the nucleus for the protesting clamor of nine hundred cows circling outside or standing with noses pressed close against the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... the forms of islands appeared, flat, bluish-grey lines, crowned with rounded hills. Slowly finer points appeared, the ridge of mountains showed details and we could recognize the tops of the giant banyan trees, towering above the forest as a cathedral does over the houses of a city. We saw the surf, breaking in the coral cliffs of flat shores, found the entrance to the wide bay, noticed the palms with elegantly curved trunks bending over the beach, and unexpectedly entered the lagoon, that shone in the bright sun ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... pillow and turned to restore some quiet to the ward, a Norther came sweeping down the Gulf like a rush of mad spirits; tore up the white crests of the sea and flung them on the beach in thundering surf; burst through the heavy fog that had trailed upon the moon's track and smothered the island in its soft pestilent brooding; and in one mighty pouring out of cold pure ether changed earth and sky from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... help was made by those who had watched with feverish anxiety the passage through the broken water, lest the frail craft should be overturned and all aboard drowned. A rope was bent on to the stern, and the crowd quickly hauled the coble away from the heavy surf into safety. At this point, an elderly gentleman, tall, with a long, shaggy beard and bushy grey hair, which might have been a wig, rode up on a brown mare. His appearance and demeanour stamped him with the characteristics of a ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... came in view of Suakim, the city of white coral, with her surf-beaten opalesque reefs stretching as far as the eye could follow. It seemed strange to me to be peacefully moving toward her outlying forts, for when I was last in her vicinity one could not go twenty yards outside the town without being shot at or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... and waited until the tide was at flood, and then, on the 29th of September, with a banner displaying the Virgin and Child above the arms of Spain in one hand and with drawn sword in the other, Balboa marched solemnly into the rolling surf that broke about his waist and took formal possession of the ocean, and all the shores, wheresoever they might be, which were washed by its waters, for Ferdinand of Aragon, and his daughter Joanna of Castile, and their successors in Spain. Truly a prodigious claim, but one which ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the descent, quickly followed by the division of United States volunteers under Major-General Patterson, and Brigadier-General Twiggs' reserve brigade of regulars. The three lines successively landed in sixty-seven surf-boats, each boat conducted by a naval officer, and rowed by sailors from Commodore Conner's squadron, whose lighter vessels flanked the boats so as to be ready to protect the operation by their cross-fire. The whole army reached ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... through perpetual elementary warfare which hardens the fibre, and strengthens the hold; as in those invincible algx towering in the stormy straits of Tierra del Fuego, swept from Antartic homes toward the equator,—defying the fierce flail of surf that pulverizes rock, "Breed is stronger than pasture; and no matter how savage a stepmother the circumstances of life may prove, the inherited psychological strain will sometimes dominate, and triumph." According to the Talmud: "A myrtle, even in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... touched bottom there; but once more, after a glance at Vane's face, he kept silent. After all, Vane was leader; and when he looked as he did then, he usually resented advice. The mouth of the bay grew wider, until Carroll could see most of the forest-girt shore on one side of it; but the surf upon the point was growing unpleasantly near. Wisps of spray whirled away from it and vanished among the scrubby firs clinging to the fissured crags behind. The sloop, however, was going to windward, for Vane was handling her with nerve and skill. She had almost cleared ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... starboard bow. He could not tell where he wag got to, or what land that might be, but was sure it was not Greenland. The land lay low, and was dark with woods. The shore was sandy, with hummocks of blown sand upon it, covered with grass; the surf very heavy. He coasted that country for two days and nights with a good wind off-shore, but would not try for a landing anywhere, being set upon Greenland and sure that he was not there. Other lands he saw, and a great island covered with snow, and ice-mountains rising sheer ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... bathing, and this was a great delight to Patty. The summer before, at her uncle's home on Long Island, she had learned to swim, and though it was more difficult to swim in the surf, yet it was also more fun. Nan was an expert swimmer, and Marian knew nothing of the art, but the three girls enjoyed splashing about in the water, and were never quite ready to come out when Aunt Alice or Mrs. Allen called to them ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... transparent ice, and icicles hanging from boughs and crackling in the wind ... and sides and peaks of mountains ... and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... with the garnered youth of many Springs, They laugh like happy bathers, while the seas Break in their open arms, And the slow-moving breeze Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. Even the surly ocean knows their charms, And under the shrill laughter of the surf, He booms ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region, crossed with foot-paths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and washed by the surf,—a most kindly office on the part of the sea, you will allow, when once you have scented the fish-offal perpetually dropping from the evergreen fish-house above. These little buildings on the flakes are conspicuous features, and look as fresh and wild as if they had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... often came there and brought upon the Romans irreparable calamity. This same people also assailed the wall of the Chersonesus, where they overpowered those who were defending themselves from the wall, and approaching through the surf of the sea, scaled the fortifications on the so-called Black Gulf; thus they got within the long wall, and falling unexpectedly upon the Romans in the Chersonesus they slew many of them and made prisoners ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... novel pleasures in which most travelers indulge while in Honolulu is surf-riding at Waikiki, near Diamond Head. The sea, with a floor of lava and coral, is here shallow for a long distance out, and the surf comes in at intervals like a line of steeds cantering over a plain. We went ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... ocean burst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a very great and glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I suspected a sort of beach, there was the silver tremble of surf; but in the main, the heave coming out of the north-east, the folds swept the base of the ice ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... storm is raging here to-day. It is a gale from the south-east, with an extraordinary surf which is making a complete break of the new Harbour Works, where a number of large stones have been dislodged and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to hear it? On, then, with my tale! When after sacking Eurytus' great city He marched in triumph with first-fruits of war,— There is a headland, last of long Euboea, Surf-beat Cenaeum,—where to his father Zeus He dedicates high altars and a grove. There first I saw him, gladdened from desire. And when he now addressed him to the work Of various sacrifice, the herald Lichas Arrived from ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the basaltic lump Loo (Ilheu) Fort with the Pontinha, the curved scorpion's tail of rock and masonry, Messieurs Blandy's coal stores, to the west. Big ships must still roll at anchor in a dangerous open roadstead far off shore; and, during wet weather, ladies, well drenched by the surf, must be landed with the aid of a crane in what should be the inner harbour. The broken-down circus near Reid's is to become a theatre, but whence the money is to come no one knows. The leper hospital cannot afford to make up more than nine or ten beds. The jail is in its old disgraceful state, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... fine voyage; lost less than fifty animals, six or eight to-day; lost more putting them through the surf to land, than ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... on the silent beach. The waves rolled languidly to his feet and receded, leaving scattered half-wreaths of opalescent foam on the snowy sands. The wind that fanned his face was filled with the spicy odors of the sea. Seized by a capricious impulse, he threw off his clothes and dashed into the surf. The undulating billows closed around him; a singular lassitude passed into his limbs as he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his head; ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... clouds, like the spray that beats against the chalk cliffs on the shore of the mighty Atlantic; and amid the last plunges of the doomed vessel the spray is tinged redder and redder, ere with her human cargo she disappears amid the surf. But no sooner has she sunk into the abyss than the foam and the fierce breakers die away, and a wondrous calm broods over all things. In twenty minutes' time nothing is left in the western sky but a tiny bar of golden cloud that cannot yet quite die away, reminding me, as I still thought ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... May 15, the Bishop and Mr. Patteson rowed into Cascade Bay, Norfolk Island, amid a heavy surf, but they saw no cascade, as there had been no rain for a long time; and there were only rocks surmounted by pine trees, no living creature, no landing- place, as they coasted along. At last they saw a smooth-looking ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in tattered raiment, and the other, even more battered, but with no "look of the sea" about him—stood on a sand-drift gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the beatings of the surf. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... itself, joining, I suppose, the great herd of similar hills that occupies the centre of the Lowlands. Towards the sea, it swells out the coast-line into a protuberance, like a bay window in a plan, and is fortified against the surf behind bold crags. This hill is known as the Brown Hill of Carrick, or, more shortly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... habitation, a delight of living quite unknown, but hers infallibly. In her transport she lifted her face suddenly to him, and he touched it with his lips. So cold, so fresh, so sea-clear her face was, it was like kissing a flower that grows near the surf. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... tasting the salt, which could not proceed from a common spray, he kept quiet till the same dropping became more frequently repeated. Just as he was about to give the alarm, on a sudden a tremendous surf broke close to the house, discharging a quantity of water into it; a second soon followed, and earned away the slab of snow placed as a door before the entrance. The missionaries immediately called aloud to the sleeping Esquimaux to rise and quit the place. They jumped up in an instant. One of ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... captain and crew—great ships run ashore—the waves breaking them up—the rigging black with the despairing crew, eying the watery death that tumbled and gaped and roared for them below; and then little shore boats, manned by daring hearts, launched into the surf, and going out to the great ship and her peril, risking more life for the chance of saving life. And he did not present the bare skeletons of daring acts; those grand morgues, the journals, do that. There lie the dry bones of giant epics waiting Genius's ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... deck, together with a few of the least skilful of the negroes, who composed the crew, and the hatches closed upon us, to prevent the sea from coming in between decks, while the dangers occasioned by the surf running over the bar, was passed. The wretched condition to which we were reduced, was such as to awaken a feeling of sympathy, even among the blacks, who shed tears of compassion for our misfortunes; during this time, the most profound ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... near the island we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung round toward the shore. Some people came down to the water edge and hallooed to us, as we did to them; but the wind was so high and the surf so loud that we could not hear so as to understand each ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... coast has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... welcome rude to me; The eye withdraws in horror from yon mountains rude and bare, Where flag of green nor tree displays, nor blushes flow'ret fair. And how shall bark so frail as mine that beetling beach come near, Where rages betwixt cliff and surf the battle-din of fear? It seems as, like a rocking hull, that Island of the main Were shaken from its basement, and creaking with the strain! But the siege of waters nought prevails 'gainst giant Hirt the grim, Save his face to furrow with some scars, or his brow with mist to dim. Oh, needs ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the north side of the chain, some of them active; many of the islands, however, are not wholly volcanic, but contain crystalline or sedimentary rocks, and also amber and beds of lignite. The coasts are rocky and surf-worn and the approaches are exceedingly dangerous, the land rising immediately from the coasts to steep, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... altogether behind the curling crests of the waves. He fancied, however, he could hear some indistinct words of encouragement borne back by the wind. After that, the only sounds that reached his ear were the hoarse moanings of the surf, and the ominous plashing of the waves against the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... that the surf had driven the ship over the bar, and she was now in the mouth of the river, and aground near the end of the village. Everything being now out of her, about ten o'clock in the morning they set fire to her; after which they all ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Ailsa became aware of a steady, sustained sound audible above the tumult around them; a sound like surf washing ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... quiescent now, with her trimly furled and lifeless sails—was towed slowly to her anchorage. The different bays—Watson's, Mossman's, Neutral, and the rest—had not so many villas then as now. Manly was there, in little; but surf-bathing, like some other less healthful 'notions' from America, was still to come. From the North Shore landing-stage one strolled up the hill, and, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and the weather did not keep truce very long. A wailing blast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voices of half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans not only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must have long since covered the beach over which they had come and was now trying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They could not talk to each other over that din, although ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... it. And a beautiful beach, and surf bathing, and a boardwalk miles long, and piers, and merry-go-rounds, and shops, and hot sausages, and moving-pictures, and rolling-chairs, and lovely music, and ice-cream waffles, and orangeade, and popcorn. Your mother will see it all, but you will have to be careful at ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... in her hand. Between his fairness, and Sir Joshua's May-fairness, there is a strange, impassable limit—as of the white reef that in Pacific isles encircles their inner lakelets, and shuts them from the surf and sound of sea. Clear and calm they rest, reflecting fringed shadows of the palm-trees, and the passing of fretted clouds across their own sweet circle of blue sky. But beyond, and round and round their coral bar, lies the blue of sea and ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... with abating rage the blast subside: But if, determined by the will of Heaven, Our helpless bark at last ashore is driven, These councils, follow'd, from a watery grave Our crew perhaps amid the surf may save:— "And first, let all our axes be secured, To cut the masts and rigging from aboard; Then to the quarters bind each plank and oar, 810 To float between the vessel and the shore: The longest cordage too must be convey'd On deck, and to the weather-rails ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... agonizing; Lanyard's breath was almost completely shut off; he gasped vainly, with a rattling noise in his gullet; his eyeballs started; a myriad coruscant lights danced and interlaced blindingly before them; in his ears there rang a roaring like the voice of heavy surf ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... they found their position to be in Encounter Bay, east of Spencer's Gulf, and from what they saw it was evident that no ship could enter it during the prevalence of the S.W. winds. All hope of a safe return centred in themselves. The thunder of the surf, that they had so longed for, brought no message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back, while yet some strength remained to them; and above all they were surrounded by hostile blacks. Sturt had now a terrible task before him. His men were weakened ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, hurled it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the surf-white strand Chants of deep peal the sea-waves raise, Like voices from a viewless land Hymning a ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Long Island, where the ocean heaves in its wildest and most crystalline surf, a small cove had broken itself into the slopes of an irregular hill, after generations of beating storms and crumbling earth, taking a crescent shape, and forming one of the most picturesque bits of landscape to be found along the coast. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and soon birch woods would receive him, extending far over the rolling country. He would sit down in the moss and lean against a tree from which he could see a patch of ocean between the trunks. At times the wind would carry to him the noise of the surf, like distant boards falling on each other. The caw of crows above the treetops, hoarse, desolate, forlorn ... He had a book on his knees, but he read not a line in it. He was enjoying a deep oblivion, a floating in perfect freedom over space and time; and only occasionally did ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... like cutlasses, with which he armed his followers, rose upon the guard and overpowered them; he then seized the boat, and with his Caffres made for the mainland. Unfortunately, in attempting to disembark upon the rocks of the mainland, the boat was upset in the surf, which was very violent; Mokanna clung some time to a rock, but at last was washed off, and thus perished the unfortunate leader of ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... it makes the vessel roll? What sounds are these I hear? It seems as if the rising waves were beating on my ear!' 'Oh, it is the breaking of the surf—just that, and nothing more, My Captain Don Alonzo ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight. Harvey swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind fog, till it ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... extremely bright and pleasant; but the wind rose during the night, and the waves began to break heavily on the shore, making our island tremble. I had not expected in our inland journey to hear the roar of an ocean surf; and the strangeness of our situation, and the excitement we felt in the associated interests of the place, made this one of the most interesting nights I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... round the head of the bay, but could find no place to land on account of the Great Surf which beat everywhere upon the Shore. Seeing 2 Boats or Canoes coming in from Sea I rowed to one of them, in order to Seize upon the People; and came so near before they took notice of us that Tupia called ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... of suffering and of peril was before them. As the day advanced, the wind increased to almost a gale. The waves frequently broke into the boat, drenching them to the skin, and glazing the boat, ropes, and clothing with a coat of ice. The surf, dashing upon the shore, rendered landing impossible, and they sought in vain for any creek or cove where they could find shelter. The short afternoon was fast passing away, and a terrible night was before them. A huge billow, which seemed to chase them with gigantic ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... An old toper who is always soaked, has many a hard night along the coast, floats many a schooner, lashes himself into a fury because so frequently crossed, and has his barks in every port. At sea, the king of the elements; on shore, a mere surf. ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... them then started on a brisk trot and in a short time they heard the roar of the surf on the sand. But about a quarter of a mile from the beach they came to a halt, for a high fence barred ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... wild scream of the sea-fowl, and the thunder of the surf, were such common things to the little Darlings that they took but small notice of them. Grace, indeed, having them mingled with her mother's cradle-song, would scarcely like to have missed the familiar sounds, since they ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch of brown plain, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... sea saturated the night with wild fragrance; dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the cliffs' edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the stunning crash ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... land, mighty in arms and foison of the clod; Oenotrian men dwelt therein; now rumour is that a younger race from their captain's name have called it Italy. Thither lay our course . . . when Orion rising on us through the cloudrack with sudden surf bore us on blind shoals, and scattered us afar with his boisterous gales and whelming brine over waves and trackless reefs. To these your coasts we a scanty remnant floated up. What race of men, what land how barbarous soever, allows such a custom for its own? We are debarred the shelter ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... defied him, but deep in her heart she had feared—how she had feared!—that Saltash would fail to hold her against him. Again, a deep compassion came over Jake, stirring the very depths of him. Poor little girl, flung to and fro as flotsam in the cruel surf of life's breakers! He had done his best to deliver her, but Fate had been against him. Fate had ordained that she should be the victim of this man's caprice, the slave of impulses which might or might not be her destruction. It was as if he ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... between crest and trough, the swimmer's glance caught the shattered form of a breaker at the end of the bar. He liked things to be the biggest of their sort. If there was to be surf, he wanted it to be like that beyond, with a fierce song in its breaking and the foam of the sea's endless sweat ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... dotted here and there among the light timber, and everywhere sunflecked, warm, dry shade. Nowhere is there a hint of that sinister suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints—a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves within a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a great surf on the shore I bargained for everything I wanted to be brought off by the shore boats, and agreed to give five shillings per ton for water. Very good wine was bought at ten pounds per pipe, the contract price; but the superior quality was fifteen pounds; and some ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... before a light breeze the ships were wafted towards the blue cloud, it was proved beyond a doubt to be land, for some palm-trees and tall pines became distinguishable, and above all other sounds came, faint but distinct, the heavy, regular boom of surf. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... there was a single bit of bow-plating sticking up out of the surf, and a bunch of miscellaneous floating wreckage drifting sluggishly toward the beach. And there was a solid, rounded, metallic shape apparently quite as long as the original tramp had been. There was a huge armored tube across its upper part, with vision-slits ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... corpses. She makes ointments out of them, or perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf, where it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that she sits and searches for shipwrecked children's fingers ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... patriarchs; cheer loud, I say; 'Tis the race of a century witnessed to-day! Though ye live twice the space that's allotted to men Ye never will see such a grand race again. Let the shouts of the populace roar like the surf, For Salvator, Salvator, king of the turf, He has rivaled the record of thirteen long years; He has won the first place in the vast line of peers. 'Twas a neck-to-neck contest, a grand, honest race, And even his enemies ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... seldom seen in the village, but on the other hand he often walked and rode along the sea-beach; and people claimed to have heard him from a distance, talking to the waves and listening to the rolling and hissing of the surf, as though he could hear the answering voice of the spirit of the sea. Upon the topmost summit of the watch-tower he had a sort of study fitted up and supplied with telescopes—with a complete set of astronomical apparatus, in ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she opened her eyes and found herself ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the moon in heaven's dome. Sultry the night, tempests foretelling: For the last time before I roam I see the surf in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... and the life of Hector were put an end to, and my father's mansions razed to the ground, and himself falls at the altar built by the God, slain by the blood-polluted son of Achilles, the friend of my father slays me, wretched man, for the sake of my gold, and having slain me threw me into the surf of the sea, that he might possess the gold himself in his palace. But I am exposed on the shore, at another time on the ocean's surge, borne about by many ebbings and flowings of the waves, unwept, unburied; but at present I am hastening on my dear mother's account, having ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Lieutenant Talbot and three others, had volunteered to make the trip from Ocean Island to Honolulu, a distance of 1,500 miles, in an open boat. After thirty-one days of great danger and hardship, they arrived off one of the Hawaiian group of islands. In attempting to land, the boat was upset in the surf, and all but Halford ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Panton. "You can see the ocean, though, and the surf on the barrier reef. But I don't see ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... of the reef showed above water, but its extent and limits were very clearly defined by the ripples and agitation—gentle though this last was—of the surface of the water above it. The surf was breaking heavily on its outer margin in clouds of gleaming white that flashed and glittered in the brilliant sunshine; and an occasional undulation of swell came sweeping in across the reef, causing a thousand swirls and eddies to appear as it traversed the vast barrier of submerged rock— ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... out in his boat on the sea, Just as the rest of us fishermen did, An' when he come back at night thar'd be, Up to his knees in the surf, each kid, A beck'nin' and cheer-in' to fisherman Jim; He'd hear 'em, you bet, above the roar Of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... through tree-tops and into the earners stall, to thrust His shoulder under our burdens and take the lances of pain through His vitals, and wrapped himself in all the agonies which we deserve for our misdoings, and stood on the splitting decks of a foundering vessel, amid the drenching surf of the sea, and passed midnights on the mountains amid wild beasts of prey, and stood at the point where all earthly and infernal hostilities charged on Him at once ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... be omitted of this noble breed of water-dogs. A vessel was driven on the beach of Lydd, in Kent. The surf was rolling furiously. Eight poor fellows were crying for help, but not a boat could be got off to their assistance. At length a gentleman came on the beach accompanied by his Newfoundland dog: he ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... appearance; the different offices have, to the beholder, the appearance of stone, and they are formed along the beach in a beautiful manner; they are built with piazzas and verandahs, and they extend about one mile along a sandy beach, while the natives parading along the shore, and the surf spraying upon the beach, gave the scene a very picturesque appearance. The surf beats here with so much violence that it is impossible for any ship's boats to land without being ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... obedient to a knotted tangle of flags at the yardarm of their leader, altered course a little; they were making for an opening in the wall of rock, on either side of which gaunt promontories thrust their naked shoulders into the surf. The long black, viperish hulls passed through under the ever-watchful eyes of the shore batteries, and the hooded figures on the Destroyer bridges threw back their duffle cowls and wiped the night's ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the deck of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... passage of time, that I had forgotten the Samurai. Nor did I remember him until the chart-house door swung open and I caught him by the arm. He steadied and swayed beside me, while he watched that cruel picture of rock and snow and spouting surf. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... into promontories that encroach upon the terrace beneath,—at another receding into picturesque, bay-like recesses; and where composed, as in many localities, of rock of an enduring quality, we find it worn, as if by the action of the surf,—in some parts relieved into insulated stacks, in others hollowed into deep caverns,—in short, presenting all the appearance of a precipitous coast-line, subjected to the action of the waves. Now, no geologist can or does doubt ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... honour. Mr. Walter has been asking us; but there's no boat could get through that surf, not if all ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... the plains with cities, and compelled the homage of Europe to secure our scholars, our wheat and our iron. The soldier has controlled the finances of banking systems and revolutionized labor, society, and arts with his inventions. They saw poor Cuba, beautiful as her surf and femininely sweet as her luscious fruits, tortured in chains. They saw her lovely form through the blood that covered her, and Dewey, Sampson, Schley, Miles, Merritt, Sigsbee, Evans, Philip, Alger, and McKinley of the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... course. The swell broke angrily ahead, but in one place, some distance to one side, the wall of forest looked less solid than the rest. A roar came out of the mist and Kit knew it was the beat of surf on a hidden beach. This told him where he was, because a sandy key protected the mouth of the lagoon; but he doubted if Mayne could get round the point. The tide was carrying the vessel on and there was broken ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the top, hardly distinguishable from the blackness of the sky, the sentinel was leaning against the parapet, looking out to sea. Many a night had he held that post, and seen the stars, and listened to the rustle of the surf; many a night he had heard the call of the sentry next below, and passed it to the man on the bastion beyond; but never a night had he seen anything but the stars and the dim forms of vessels in the harbor, heard anything but the hourly call of his mates and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... which was the green-covered tableland fronting Santiago. The spots were tossing idly upon a restless sea, and, as the sun rose higher, each gradually assumed the shape of a marine engine of war. Beyond them was a stretch of sandy, surf-beaten coast, and directly fronting the centre ship could be seen a narrow cleft in the hill—the gateway leading to the ancient city of ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... darkies when they die go to Guinea, and one of these was very touching and strange. He had been brought as a slave-child to South Carolina, but was always haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms by a place where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the shore—a rock, sunshine, and sand. There he declared his soul would go. He was a Voodoo, and a man of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance. But she noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their garden patch, and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would like to have some one to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she would ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges. Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... congregate; so that in a few weeks he found himself in the centre of a brilliant company, and for the first time in his life tasted what it was to have free intercourse with his fellow-creatures of both sews. The son of a System was, therefore, launched; not only through the surf, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... through the spray straight to the body that was tossed upon the surf. As her wings touched the wet shoulders, and as her horny beak sought the dumb lips in an attempt to kiss what was once so dear, the body of Ceyx began to receive new life. The limbs stirred, a faint color returned to the cheeks. At the same moment ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... rough. slow, not fast. rood, fourth of an acre. sloe, a kind of fruit. serf, a slave; servant. sun, the source of light. surf, a swell of the sea. son, a male child. serge, a kind of cloth. steel, refined iron. surge, to rise; to swell. steal, to rob; to pilfer. sheer, pure; clear. stile, steps over a fence. shear, to cut or clip. style, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and descended in the same fashion to its base. That miraculously light, yet perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days of toil. A little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy all trace of it forever in a single night. A betrayal of the secret was impossible; and all search for the violators of the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... too quickly, and before we have become accustomed to the level expanses of the sea a strip of land appears to starboard. This is Ruegen, the largest island of Germany, lifting its white chalk cliffs steeply from the sea, like surf congealed into stone. The ferry-boat swings round in a beautiful curve towards the land, and in the harbour of Sassnitz its rails are fitted in exactly to the railway track on German soil. We hasten to take our seats in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... intersected by the strait closes, the traffic and gossip; or to the forsaken royal palace, and the cowslips of the King's Park—could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving heather, and the full moon hanging above the restless tide. She could listen to the surf in the storm, and the ripple in the calm, to the cry of the gull and the wh-r-r of the moorcock; pull wild thyme, and pick up rose-tinted shells and perforated stones; and watch shyly her hardy cottar servants cutting ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... five hundred miles northeast of Cuddalore, whence he would have a fair wind to proceed when he wished. It was his purpose to attack not only the coasting vessels but the English factories on shore as well, the surf being now often moderate; but learning on the 12th, from an English prize, the important and discouraging news of Hyder Ali's death, he gave up all minor operations, and sailed at once for Cuddalore, hoping to secure by his presence the continuance of the alliance as ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell, The far-off sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round, Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold |
