"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea 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 through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance, 5 With the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... with which he misled those the most who watched him the keenest. If he possessed news calculated to make the funds rise, he would commission the broker who acted on his behalf to sell half a million. The shoal of men who usually follow the movements of others, sold with him. The news soon passed through Capel Court that Rothschild was bearing the market, and the funds fell. Men looked doubtingly at one another; a general ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... went on again, but in half an hour after passing more shoal water, saw another rapid, not steep, but too shallow to float the canoe, even with both men wading. Here Quonab made what the Frenchmen call a demi-charge. He carried half the stuff to the bank; then, wading, one at each end, they hauled the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the legions of human thought across dry shod? He could,—and he did. We all remember it well. A range of submarine mountains was discovered, stretching from America to Europe. Their top formed a plateau, which, lying within two miles of the surface, offered an undulating shoal within human reach. A fleet of steamers, wary of storms, one day cautiously assembled midway over it. They caught the monster asleep, safely uncoiled the wire, and laid it from shore to shore. The treacherous, dreadful, omnipotent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... far into the sea, and forming this whole space of interval into a deep and dangerous gulf. A current setting in strong, with a N.W. gale, a vessel embayed here was in a most perilous situation; and consequently wrecks were numerous: the water is likewise very shoal, and the breakers extend a long way from the shore. In the centre of this bay my friends were wrecked, and their bodies tossed about—Captain Williams seven, and Mr. Shelley nine days, e'er they were found. Before us was a most extensive view of the Mediterranean, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... be seen for a great way but the backs of fishes. The fish throw themselves upon the shore, and for the space of three days allow the people to take up as many of them as they please. At the end of these three days this shoal returns again to sea, and a different kind comes to the shore in the same manner, and remains for a similar period. And in the same way, all other kinds of fish in these seas come to the shore in succession, each kind by itself. This strange phenomenon happens once ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... really at Moulton House," she exclaimed penitently. "I am so sorry. I had a perfect shoal of callers. People who would not go. I only arrived when everybody was ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 Prince of Orange were quartered during ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passed the winter again. Another spring came in the tender green of the young leafage, and again they put to sea. So far fortune had steadily befriended them. Now the reign of misfortune began. Not far had they gone before the vessel was driven ashore by a storm, and broke her keel on a protruding shoal. This was not a serious disaster. A new keel was made, and the old one planted upright in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... boat, and found it impossible to row back against the tide with the fyke. I then untied it, and it went downstream, stake and all. I got it into the boat, rowed up, and set the stake again. Then I tied one end to the stake and got out of the boat myself in shoal water. Then the boat got away in deep water; then I had to swim for the boat. Then I rowed back and untied the fyke. Then the fyke got away. Then I jumped out of the boat to save the fyke, and the ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... by 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 ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... wings, and divers other Fowles and Birds of divers and sundrie colours of crimson, watchet, Yellow, Greene, Murry, and of divers other hewes naturally without any art using... store of Turkie nests and many Egges." They liked this place, but for shoal water the ships could not come near to land. So on they went, eight miles ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... but the realm of Thought, the sphere of the spirit's unhampered powers? There are often vouchsafed to us here hours of outsoaring emotion and conception which make the enclosures in which the astronomer loiters seem narrow. "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 launches itself to where distance fails to follow, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the noses of the boats up on the shore side of a big shoal, and all hands, with sacks, spread out and began picking. Every now and again the clouds thinned before the face of the moon, and we could see the big oysters quite distinctly. In almost no time sacks were filled and ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... superintend the deepening and cleansing of the river; they have power to receive donations for charitable purposes, and annually relieve great numbers of poor seamen and seamen's widows and orphans; and as they alone supply outward-bound ships with ballast, on notice of any shoal or obstruction arising in the river Thames, they immediately direct their men and lighters to work on it till it is removed. The profits arising to the Corporation by this useful ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... thus committed did not long remain unpunished, for Gilling's brother, Suttung, quickly went in search of the dwarfs, determined to avenge him. Seizing them in his mighty grasp, the giant conveyed them to a shoal far out at sea, where they would surely have perished at the next high tide had they not succeeded in redeeming their lives by promising to deliver to the giant their recently brewed mead. As soon as Suttung set them ashore, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... their return, when Tollman entered with a face full of apprehension. He had just suffered a fright which had made his heart miss a beat or two and had set his brain swirling with a fevered vision of all future happiness wrecked on a shoal of damnable folly. When he had presented his wife with the keys of his house he had not laid upon her any Bluebeard injunction that one door she must never open. Bluebeard lived in a more rudimentary age, and his needs included a secret ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... was one that transmuted words to deeds. He drove the skiff onward with a powerful sweep that discovered an unexpected shoal. There might have been some danger of an upset if the oars were in less skillful hands. As it was, they were back in deep water within a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... continued sailing along the southern coast of Cuba towards the east, always through narrow channels full of shoals, and with a scanty wind. On the 30th of June the admiral's ship stuck fast on a shoal, and could not be hauled astern by all their anchors and cables; but at length, by his ingenuity, she was forced a-head right over the shoal. Proceeding continually on in no regular course, just as was permitted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... to buy; but I am not so sure that we can get through as shoal a place as that seems to be, for it is only the spreading out of the river. The greater the expanse, the less the depth. How is ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... learn that Pharaoh and his hosts met their Waterloo (with the accent on the water) in the pursuit of the children of Israel. But here we find conflicting opinions. Some say that Pharaoh, arriving at the bank and seeing the impossibility of overtaking them, turned and retired; others, that there were shoal places in those far-away days where any one could cross; others, that they crossed on flats very like the ordinary modern mortal. But I do not accept this attempt to question the orthodox version, but will verify it as far as my observation will admit. The sea was likely ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... posts were established about this period, such as Fort Calgary, Fort Saskatchewan, Battleford, Carlton, in what is now Northern Saskatchewan, Qu'Appelle in Saskatchewan and Swan River, an early post, Shoal Lake and Beautiful Plains in the northern section of Manitoba. All of these had their influence on the progress of the West, but none had in the pathfinding days the halo of romance that centred around ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... on Shoal Creek "3 or 4 miles above its mouth." No one could be found who knew its location more definitely or was able to give ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... land and water. The whole surface of the globe is supposed to have an area of about two hundred million square miles. Of these only about fifty millions are dry land. Within the harbor of Nassau the divisions of shoal and deep water presented most singular and clearly defined lines of color, azure, purple, and orange-leaf green,—so marked as to be visible half a mile away. All was beneath a sky so deeply and serenely blue as constantly to recall the arching ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... said. "There's a cruiser been up and down a matter of ten miles out. Me and my mates will put out at daybreak and see if we can get within hail of her. There's the light-ship, too, off Morden's Shoal. 'Tain't likely as a boat could have slipped between 'em without being seen. For if she was just drifting, you know, sir, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... The ship had been forced much further up the beach than before, and she had now in her bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly visible, we found that she had pushed the stones at the bottom up before her, and that the broken keel, stern-post, and deadwood had, by the recent pressure, been more damaged and turned up than before. She appeared principally to ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... 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, only ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... have no more of that horrid sea-sickness. Hard biscuit and water are just as good as any thing else, if you only get used to it, and the fish which we caught this morning are delicious. We came upon a fine shoal of them, and for several hours had nothing to do but pull them in, one after another, as fast as we could put our hooks down. I got hold of a very big fellow, myself, but he was nearer drawing me out of the schooner than I him into it, till David Cobb came to the rescue, and gave such ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... parley ensued. The leader's thoughts were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the Aimable, and to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground." Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the village whither the captive ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen—his contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... As far as I myself was concerned, it was enough for him to know that I belonged to a family which he knew and liked, and hearing, moreover, of my fervent devotion to modern Italian and French music in particular, he decided that I was the very man for him. He had the whole shoal of Bellini's, Donizetti's, Adam's, and Auber's operatic scores copied out, and I was to give the good people of Riga the benefit of them with ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald shoal, the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of sea—the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with the more majestic heave ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that journey, implored His blessing on men's toil 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
... between us and the white beach, evidently in shoal and dangerous waters. She too had encountered a hurricane, and had not come forth victorious. Foremast and forecastle were gone, and her bowsprit was broken. She lay heavily, her ports but a few inches above the water. Though we did not know it then, most of her ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... to the fishermen that an immense shoal was upon the coast; and, regardless of its being Sabbath morning, they began to prepare their thousand boats, and to go out to set their nets. The Rev. Andrew Simpson, a man possessed of the piety and boldness of an apostle, was then minister of Dunbar; and, as he went forth to the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... But, unluckily, the commander of the "Delaware," Capt. Alexander, had failed to reckon on the swift outflowing of the tide; and just as the sailors on that ship were becoming jubilant over the prospect of a victory, a mighty quiver throughout the ship told that she had been left on a shoal by the ebb tide. The enemy was not long in discovering the helpless condition of the "Delaware;" and field-pieces and siege-guns were brought down to the river-bank, until the luckless Americans saw themselves commanded by ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Black Shoal, to a certainty," the old sailor said; "and then, may God have mercy on ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... we found shoal water, where we smelled so sweet and so strong a smell as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers, by which we were assured that the land could not be far distant."—First voyage ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... beacon stands High above Pendower sands; Where, about the windy Nare, Foxes breed and falcons pair; Where the gannet dries a wing Wet with fishy harvesting, And the cormorants resort, Flapping slowly from their sport With the fat Atlantic shoal, Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole— Walking there, the other day, In a bight within a bay, I espied amid the rocks, Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box, That the waves had flung and left High upon an ivied cleft. Striped it was with white and red, Satin-lined and carpeted, Hung with bells, and shaped ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... larger vessels from entering the fishing preserves and injuring the nets,) and remarked our boatmen uncovering to a small Madonna railed in alongside. We were just in time on this occasion to see the water enclosed in the camera della morte, already all alive with fish; for a shoal of palamide, and of immense pesce di moro, filled the reticulated chamber. They darted here and there as the net was raising, and splashed so furiously about, that the whole water became one lather; meanwhile, the men who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 packet. So he got across all right in the end and he flashed up to town, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... them. I thought that Pat had lost his way, but he kept on without stopping or turning to one side or the other. The water got deeper and deeper, indeed there seemed to be nothing but water around; then once more it began to shoal, and at last I found that we were walking on dry ground, but still of a very boggy nature. At last we were in something like a path, with peat-holes on either side. It was quite dark before we reached the heath or dry ground I ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... savage weather and age, and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless—as is often the case—some navigator of real estate had thought he descried a port, where was only a shoal that left his venture high and dry among newer and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... end of the island at sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile from the shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... 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 watcher drew a ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... creature, for it not only told of its own ways, but at the same time afforded a glimpse into the countless ages of the past, when these crinoids, so rare and so rarely seen nowadays, formed a prominent feature of the animal kingdom. I could see, without great effort of the imagination, the shoal of Lockport teeming with the many genera of crinoids which the geologists of New York have rescued from that prolific Silurian deposit, or recall the formations of my native country, in the hill-sides of which also, among fossils indicating ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 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 are ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... but did not select the best landing-place. For the Britons, having ascertained in advance that he as sailing against them, had secured all the landings on the main coast. Accordingly, he sailed around a kind of projecting headland and coasted along on the other side of it. There he disembarked in shoal water, conquered those who joined battle with him and got a footing on dry land before more numerous assistance could come, after which he repulsed their attack also. Not many of the barbarians ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Joel's broad white sail had not brought pleasant thoughts to his mind. For Joel had hailed him, off the Shoal, the afternoon before, and had obligingly offered to buy his fish, right there, and so let him go directly home, omitting to mention that sudden jump of price ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... Battery.[287] Blunt's first thought was to have Daubleday[288] lead the Indian Expedition, the auxiliary white force of which was to be selected from the regiments at Fort Scott. Doubleday accordingly made his plans, rendezvoused his men, and arranged that the mouth of Shoal Creek should be a rallying point and temporary headquarters;[289] but events were already ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the note Rings as for death oracular to thy sons That goes before him on the sea-wind blown Full of this charge laid on me, to put out The brief light kindled of mine own child's life, Or with this helmsman hand that steers the state Run right on the under shoal and ridge of death 60 The populous ship with all its fraughtage gone And sails that were to take the wind of time Rent, and the tackling that should hold out fast In confluent surge of loud calamities Broken, with spars ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. The state legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... 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 ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... only half on the feed, a fresh 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 them ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... been 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 ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly journal Household Words, 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, and possessing much more merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... ever forgit 'er?" granted Stump, "I wish them Romans had looted her. W'en I was goin' down the Hooghly, she was comin' up, in tow. Her rope snapped at the wrong moment, an' she ran me on top of the James an' Mary shoal. Remember 'er, damn 'er!" ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under way, and in this instant she ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... on the second of July they found shoal water, where they say[K]: 'We smelled so sweet and strange a smell, as if we had been in the midst of a delicate garden, abounding with all kinds of odoriferous herbs and flowers, so we were assured ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Samoyed village the course is shaped right to the south-east headland of Vaygats Island (Suchoi Nos), which ought to be passed at the distance of half an English mile. Immediately south-west of this headland lies a very long shoal, which one ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... disappeared. With a cheer the British troops leaped from their boats into the shoal water and splashed their way ashore. While many of them were still in their boats, however, the Turks opened fired. The whole ground had been carefully prepared and from every cover on the shore and the cliffs beyond a deadly fire was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... in my cabin, and seem very happy. Poor Mr. Porter is very sick, and so are the two or three coloured passengers, who won't 'make an effort' at all. Mrs. H- (the captain's wife), a young Cape lady, and I are the only 'female ladies' of the party. The other day we saw a shoal of porpoises, amounting to many hundreds, if not some thousands, who came frisking round the ship. When we first saw them they looked like a line of breakers; they made such a splash, and they jumped right out of the water ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Ruthyn, under the circumstances, ought to exhibit. I told him what he ought to do, and offered to open my purse for the purpose; but he would not, or did not; indeed, he never took my advice; he followed his own, and a foul and dismal shoal he has drifted on. It is not for his sake—why should I?-that I have longed and laboured to remove the disgraceful slur under which his ill-fortune has thrown us. He troubles himself little about it, I believe—he's meek, meeker than ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... to wait to do this till the major arrived. For a young widow the lace cap is what the orange-blossoms are to a girl. But the major was late because the white-rose bouquet was late in arriving from Vienna: this was the second fete-day bouquet in one year. A whole shoal of letters and notes of congratulation had arrived for Timea, who had many acquaintances far and near. Timea had not opened a single one; they lay in a heap in a silver basket on the table, many of them directed by children, for Timea had a hundred and forty god-children ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the ship shook again, this time strongly. It was something more than a shudder; the sensation was for all the world as though she had scraped over a shoal of rock or shingle. There was a little clatter below, a noise of broken glass. The watch, who had been dozing on deck, sprang to their feet, and their ejaculations of surprise and fear rolled in a growl among them. The captain ran out of the companionway ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... in smooth water, for but a small stream is discharged by this channel. On our right was a sandy beach, on our left great beds of grass growing out of the shoal water—weedy banks filled up the once spacious harbour, and cattle waded amongst the long grass, where within the last twenty years a frigate has lain at anchor. Wading and aquatic birds were abundant in the marshes, amongst which white cranes and a chocolate-brown jacana, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... a little ways, and then come about, and back he comes again, never slacking speed a mite, and running close to the shoal as he could shave, and all the time going through the bloodiest kind of pantomimes. And past he goes, to wheel 'round and ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... any of these heads; as between 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... has nothing but conjecture for its basis; but if an opinion may be permitted to be hazarded from actual appearances, mine is decidedly in favour of our being in the vicinity of an inland sea or lake, most probably a shoal one, and gradually filling up by immense depositions from the higher lands, left by the waters which flow into it. It is most singular that the high lands on this continent seem to be confined to the sea coast or not to extend to any distance ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... days of 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
... 'Look what a splendid shoal!' and had no idea that they were hastening to the queen's palace; but, then, dwellers on land have so little notion of what goes on in the bottom of the sea! Certainly the little new fish had none. She had watched jelly-fish and nautilus swimming a little way below the ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... purposes that dignify or delight our nature. I have ever said, 'Reverence the rulers.' Let, then, his image stand; but stand apart from Pindar's. Pallas and Jove! defend me from being carried down the stream of time among a shoal of royalets, and the rootless weeds they ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... hour; To crown my rose-wreath with a greener flower' To do my master's bidding, that's to give Life to yourself, who only think you live. But listen! Have you seen the nine waves roll Monotonous upon the shoal, Rising and falling like a maiden asleep; Then with a lift and a leap The ninth wave curls, and breaks upon the beach, And rushes up it, swallowing the sand? I am ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... were sailing forward with a strong gale, they were, at the beginning of the night, surprised in their course by a sudden shock, of which the cause was easily discovered, for they were thrown upon a shoal, and, by the speed of their course, fixed too fast for any hope of escaping. Here even the intrepidity of Drake was shaken, and his dexterity baffled; but his piety, however, remained still the same, and what he could not now promise himself ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... and I liked him. And he liked me, too ... I think he did. He'd heard of me, he said, and would I examine his yacht—the Rameses that was—to see if any damage had been done—she'd grounded comin' in by Romer Shoal the day before. There'd be too much delay to put her in dry dock, and he wanted to sail soon's could be—if she was sound—on her regular winter West India cruise. 'Twas in January, a fine clear day, and I said, all right, I'd send my oldest boy down and ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... bent grass, seemed almost within catapult shot. I heard the wash of the sea upon the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank, stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger would lie there, high and dry, as ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... by, and rubbed his nose against the canoe, and nibbled a lily root before he noticed me. A shoal of minnows were playing among the grasses near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a reed—a most difficult feat, I should think. He was trying some contortion that I couldn't make out, when a deer stepped down the bank and never saw me. Doing nothing pays one under such circumstances, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... water before they could fully see the burning roundhouse. A moment later, chilled to the bone but with his mind cleared by the sharp plunge, Bucks felt his companion's arm drawing him toward the farther shore where, in the slack water of an elbow of the stream, Dancing led the way across a shoal of gravel and Bucks waded after him up ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... where there is life, movement, humanity, there is sure to be character and interest. Groups of children playing will give us plenty of suggestions for figure composition. Workpeople going to and from their work, the common works going on in the street, the waggons and horses, the shoal of faces, the ceaseless stream of life—all these things, whether we are able to reproduce them as direct illustrations of the life of our time, or are moved only to select from them vivid suggestions to ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... stream, where the country was so lonely, that in summer time the wild ducks used to bring their young ones to feed on the bog, within a hundred yards of our door; and you could not stoop over the bank to raise a pitcher full of water, without frightening a shoal of beautiful speckled trout. Well, 'tis long ago since my brother Richard, that's now grown a fine, clever man, God bless him! and myself, used to set off together up the mountain to pick bunches of the cotton plant and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... India forces and arrived off Porto Rico in March, 1823. He was provided, in addition to his warships, with a number of barges, furnished with twenty oars apiece, and which were indispensable in following the pirates up the shallow creeks and into the shoal waters where the vessels ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... and Amik examined carefully from the river bank, and decided that 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 were ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Gordon, who was to command the yacht, there was Captain Briskett, who had for many years been the master of a coasting vessel, and knew every rock and shoal between Boston and Eastport. Dick, the colored steward, was to retain his place during the cruise. Captain Littleton was to go as a passenger. John Duncan was nominally ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... moving thing upon the shoal—there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing—against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or it may be bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... the brig safely brought to an anchor," he observed after a long silence. "It is a nasty coast at best. With a breeze we could work off it, but while this calm lasts we cannot help ourselves from being carried wherever the current takes us, till we get into water shoal enough for anchoring. I shall be happier when once we can bring up, for if we do not, we may, when we little expect it, be driven on shore; and let me tell you, Andrew, what with the surf and the sharks, few of us are likely to escape with our ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... storm breaks above them, the thunders roll, The ship gets aground on the hidden shoal, And the turbulent waters dash over the barque, And cries from the doomed ship come. Till nothing is left the tale to tell, But the angry roar of the surging swell; So the grand old vessel goes down in the dark— Wrecked in sight ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the world exists in my fancy in a most vivid and accurate manner. Repeated meditation on displays of shoal, sand-bank, and water, has created a sort of attachment to geography for its own sake. I have often reflected on the innumerable links in the chain of my ideas between my first eager examination of the route by sea ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... for about an hour kept his soldiers ready in momentary expectation of attack by De Salaberry, and of hearing of Purdy's success. When he heard that the latter had failed, however, he sent him word to withdraw his column to a shoal four or five miles above and cross over, and ordered General Izard to retire his brigade to a position about three miles in the rear, to which place the baggage had been ordered forward. Hampton thus retired, leaving De Salaberry master ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... lead the way shedding forth their milt as they go, while the females, coming after and swallowing it up, from it become impregnated: and when they have become full of young in the sea they swim up back again, each shoal to its own haunts. The same however no longer lead the way as before, but the lead comes now to the females, and they leading the way in shoals do just as the males did, that is to say they shed forth their eggs by a few grains at a time, 79 and the males coming after swallow them up. Now these ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... shrunk, so that it should receive The ocean flood; nor firm enough to stand Against its buffets — all the pathless coast Lies in uncertain shape; the land by earth Is parted from the deep; on sandy banks The seas are broken, and from shoal to shoal The waves advance to sound upon the shore. Nature, in spite, thus left her work undone, Unfashioned to men's use — Or else of old A foaming ocean filled the wide expanse, But Titan feeding from the briny depths His burning fires (near to ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... The act of forcing a ship violently over a shoal, by the effort of a great quantity of sail, steam, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... as to the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flittered into the water ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... submerged land, or land over which the high tides flow considerably. It refers to a long stretch of shore at the entrance to King Sounds, where the tides cover immense tracts of country, and which has, in consequence, been called Shoal Bay. ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... beside him. Morning had come, the mists had rolled away, and the dots scattered along the horizon—schooners, tugs, and coal barges, for the most part—no longer needed the glare of Eastboro Twin-Lights to warn them against close proximity to the dangerous, shoal-bordered coast. Incidentally, it was no longer necessary for Mr. Atkins to remain on watch. He drew the curtains over the polished glass and brass of the lantern, yawned again, and descended the winding iron stairs to the door at the foot of the tower, opened it ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... such as flowers and fishes, and thrust them, not into a world where they could live out a peaceful and innocent life, but into the midst of dangers and miseries. Sometimes, beneath his windows, he could see a shoal of little fish flick from the water in all directions at the rush of a pike, one of them no doubt horribly ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... was up at seven this morning, and will continue the practice, but the shoal of proofs took up all my leisure. I will not, I think, go after these second-rate pictures again to-day. If I could get a quiet day or two I would make a deep dint in the third volume; but hashed and smashed ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... difficult to guess the class of trade carried on by Monsieur Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected his shop windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped in brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as herrings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primitive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores were always the best provided, whose connections were ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... about a quarter of a mile ahead, rolling lazily in the trough of the sea. Towards this the starboard boat now pulled with incredible speed, leaving the other two gradually astern. A number of whales rose in various directions. They had got into the midst of a shoal, or school of them, as the whale-men term it; and as several of these were nearer the other boats than the first whale was, they ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... without going into an unnecessary tantrum over it. If another member of the club snatches a fish first, the pelican doesn't bother, but devotes his attention to the next that Church throws; a fish in the pouch is worth a shoal in somebody else's. Now and again Peter loses his temper for a moment if the others catch the first snack, and lays about him with his bill—but then, when a fellow's chairman, and a lot of other fellows ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Over life's tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; Chart and compass came from Thee; Jesus, ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... saw an enormous shoal of grampuses, large black fish, about 25 feet in length, something between a dolphin and a whale, with the very ugliest jaws, or rather snouts, imaginable. They are of a predatory and ferocious disposition, attacking not only sharks, dolphins, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... "Petite Jeanne" was drawing six feet; the dinghy could sail across a shoal covered by eighteen inches of water. But such a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the water. Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer than the Goodwins. Barebone pressed out seaward. He knew every channel and every bank between the Thames and Thorpeness. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and "upending," and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance always looks ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... 48 years of age, a seafaring man, a southerner by birth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. light ship Long Shoal, station'd at Long Shoal point, Pamlico sound—though a southerner, a firm Union man—was captur'd Feb. 17, 1863, and has been nearly two years in the Confederate prisons; was at one time order'd releas'd by Governor Vance, but a rebel officer ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... so few minutes that all his calculations as to his location were upset—the Montana plowed herself to a shuddering halt on a shoal, her bow lifting slightly. And when the engines were stopped she rested there, sturdily upright, steady as an island. But in her saloon the men and women who fought and screamed and cursed, beating to and fro ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... 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, as with other nations, it is but the spice ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... this bank there was a shoal a half mile down, and I made shift to fetch it and draw breath there ere going forward; for I felt the hands of the river heavy upon my heels. Yet what will a young man not do for Love's sake? There was but little light from the stars, and midway to the shoal a branch ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the waves so swell'd and steep, Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells, Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells: But nearer land you may the billows trace, As if contending in their watery chase; May watch the mightiest till the shoal they reach, Then break and hurry to their utmost stretch; Curl'd as they come, they strike with furious force, And then re-flowing, take their grating course, Raking the rounded flints, which ages past Roll'd by their rage, and shall to ages last. Far off the Petrel in the troubled way ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... It is a curious coincidence, that as the bird of Nazareth has been found in books only, so the island of Nazareth has been found only on paper. At first, it appeared quite a respectable island; as maritime discovery progressed, it degenerated to a reef, and from that to a shoal; till at last, expunged from the more correct charts of modern hydrographers, it no longer can boast of a local ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... organs were such that it must of necessity have required to obtain air frequently, we may conclude "that it swam upon or near the surface, arching back its long neck like a swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach. It may perhaps have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed amongst the sea-weed; and raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of powerful enemies; while the length and flexibility ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole. See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... upon a shoal, during the tempest and the obscurity of the night, and the pilot knew not where they were. His reckoning was lost—his calculations had all been set at naught by the confusion produced by the fearful storm which had assailed the ship and driven her from her ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... them. In 1875 Johnson & Young, of Boston, established an inclosure or pound near Vinal Haven, on one of the Fox Islands. A cove covering about 500 acres, with an average depth of about 90 feet, was selected. A section of about 9 acres, separated from the main portion of the cove by a natural shoal and with a bottom of soft grayish mud, was selected for the pound. In order to make it proof against the efforts of the lobsters to escape and as a protection from enemies without, a wire fence was built over ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... they steered along this island to the southwest, and fell in with two islands at its extremity, and passed between them; that on the north side is named Bolyna, and that on the south Bamdym. Sailing to the west-southwest a matter of fourteen leagues, they fell in with a white bottom, which was a shoal below the water; and the black men they carried with them told them to draw near to the coast of the island, as it was deeper there, and that was more in the direction of Borneo, for from that neighborhood the island of Borneo could ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... appear to cease even when the young are fully developed, but he allows them to swim in and out, and try their powers, if not to search for food; and when danger appears, opens his mouth, when they all swim back again in a shoal, for safety. The natives assert that some species, at all events, are not actually developed in the parent's head, but are laid and hatched in the sand, the male and female watching carefully over them; and that ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... clergyman from 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, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... a grand fight! The unlucky monster had got thoroughly embayed, and was evidently in a state of consternation, for in its efforts to regain deep water it rushed hither and thither, thrusting its blunt snout continually on some shoal, and wriggling off again with difficulty and enormous splutter. The shouts of men, shrieks of women, and yells of children ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... in those lovely days at Kilkhaven,—merely because no one can build upon it. Ocean and sky remain as God made them. He must love space for us, though it be needless for himself; seeing that in all the magnificent notions of creation afforded us by astronomers,—shoal upon shoal of suns, each the centre of complicated and infinitely varied systems,—the spaces between are yet more overwhelming in their vast inconceivableness. I thank God for the room he thus gives us, and hence can endure ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... lay-over at Ilwaco all night, and returning to Portland next day, and sleeping on board the boat. A railway runs from the town to the outside beach, a mile and a half distant. There is a drive twenty-five miles long up this long beach to Shoal Water Bay, which is beautiful beyond description. This district is the great supply point for oysters, heavy shipments being made as far south as San Francisco. Sea bathing, both here and at ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... returns the notes; While overhead a flock of new-sprung fowl Hangs in the air, and does the sun control, Dark'ning the sky; they hover o'er, and shroud 29 The wanton sailors with a feather'd cloud. Beneath, a shoal of silver fishes glides, And plays about the gilded barges' sides; The ladies, angling in the crystal lake, Feast on the waters with the prey they take; At once victorious with their lines, and eyes, They make the fishes, and the men, their prize. A thousand Cupids on the billows ride, And sea-nymphs ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... It is probable that the freshets form banks inside the mouth, which are washed out into the deep bay, and this periodical formation probably has prevented the Arabs from using the Rovuma as a port of shipment. It is not likely that Mr. May[4] would have made a mistake if the middle were as shoal as now: he found soundings of three ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... still descend nearly to the 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
... say there is," Connie answered gravely. "In a storm especially. You see, the water is very shallow around here and if a big ship runs in too close to shore she's apt to get on a shoal. That isn't so bad in clear weather—although a ship did get stuck on the shoal here not so very long ago and she was pretty much damaged when they got her ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... the Cumberland, the Merrimac next turned her attention to the Congress, which had meanwhile run into shoal water and grounded where the rebel vessel could not follow. But the Merrimac, being herself apparently proof against shot and shell by her iron plating, took up a raking position two cables' length away, and during an hour's ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... sharp rogues about him. If they once made good their landing here, it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done from the land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely come near enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the skulks—and that has enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that they would conquer the country—all brag—but still it would be a nasty predicament, and scare the poor cockneys like ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... night, when through the mooring-chains The wide-eyed corpse rolled free, To blunder down by Garden Reach And rot at Kedgeree, The tale the Hughli told the shoal The lean shoal told ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... coralline rocks, veins of white petrosilex resembling broken columels, streaks of magnetic black sand, and scatters of grit and harder stones, we reached the summit of the little ridge. It afforded a fine bird's-eye view of the splendid middle port; of the false harbour; of the real shoal to its south-east, and of the basin which ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... used to bathe by diving off the forecastle deck when the steamer was going at full speed, and catching a rope which was let down from the stern. Once while he was doing this he saw a shark and a shoal of pilot fish close to him in the water, as he ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Templar, "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 in pursuing them. Such must I remain—proud, inflexible, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... 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
... see such as are generally made use of as mantel-piece ornaments, teeming with life, and running about in every direction. A few fish were caught in nets outside the Runnymede, quantities of small ones being driven into shoal water by the large ones, which prey ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... a weary 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
... Winnipeg has not always been happy in the matter of its water supply, and the day and the Prince came together to inaugurate a new era. It was accomplished in the modern manner. The Prince pressed a button on the platform and water-gates on Shoal Lake outside the city swung open. In a minute or two a dry fountain in the gardens before the Prince threw up a jet of water. The new water had ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... gave up, and were borne along. [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. ...
— The New Testament • Various
... clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... handed the letter over to Henty. A. P. blushed as he read it. His red corpuscles had a habit of rushing to the surface, like a shoal of small sea-fish, at the slightest disturbance of ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... sore, lay panting on the rock. For a long while he could do nothing. The owl went off in search of food, promising to return at nightfall. The day wore on. Arthur, weak with hunger, tried to devour some of the sea-weed. It was too bitter and salty. Leaning over the edge of the rock, he saw a shoal of tiny fishes playing hide-and-seek in the eddies of the stream. He clutched at one of them and devoured it. Never had he tasted a sweeter morsel. He caught another, and another, until his hunger was fully appeased. Evening came again; the moon shone early; ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... two runaways were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off—in preparation for deep water—sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... the host of which we spoke, sailed towards Ireland; and it was not far across the sea, and he came to shoal water. Now the swine-herds of Matholch were upon the sea-shore, and they came to Matholch. "Lord," said they, "greeting be unto thee." "Heaven protect you!" said he; "have you any news?" "Lord," said they, "we have marvellous news. A wood have we seen upon the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... made much of him had he permitted it. But he was there for work and quiet. A shoal of invitations were fired at him and refused; he preferred to lapse into obscurity. A few of the more obtrusive attempted to force their society on him: to these he was frankly rude. The more tactful fell in with his humour, and were content to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... of May we had again sight of the land, which made ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a large sound that appeared westward between it and the main, for coming to the west end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, we called it Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, and called it Cape Cod.[2] Here we saw sculls of herring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... the latitude of 19 deg. 32' 25" 1/2 S., and in the longitude of 169 deg. 44' 35" E. It is no more than a little creek running in S. by W. 1/2 W. three quarters of a mile, and is about half that in breadth. A shoal of sand and rocks, lying on the east side, makes it still narrower. The depth of water in the harbour is from six to three fathoms, and the bottom is sand and mud. No place can be more convenient for taking in wood and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... not well her soul. Discouraged, on disaster's changing shoal Stranding, he waited; starved on selfish pride, Long years; nor would obey love's homeward tide. And the moon ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... seashore, the trawlers lay before thee these gifts by the grace of thine aid from the promontory, having imprisoned a tunny shoal in their nets of spun hemp in the green sea-entrances: a beechen cup and a rude stool of heath and a glass cup holding wine, that thou mayest rest thy foot weary and cramped with dancing while thou chasest away ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... craft just below the water line and worked by an odd but not complicated system of ropes, valves, and pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or obstruction these bellows are to be filled with air, and thus buoyed up the ship is expected to float lightly and gayly over the shoal which would otherwise have proved a serious interruption to her voyage. The model, which is about eighteen or twenty inches long and has the appearance of having been whittled with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar-box, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... evening we approached the Baltic, which has the same character as the Scheren of the North Sea. The ship threads its way through a shoal of islands and islets, of rocks and cliffs; and it is as difficult to imagine here as there how it is possible to avoid all the projecting cliffs, and guide the ship so safely through them. The sea divides itself into innumerable arms and bays, into small and large lakes, which are ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... made acquainted with the strange history of Captain Nemo and the colonists of Lincoln Island. Then, observation being taken of what remained of this shoal, which must henceforward figure on the charts of the Pacific, the order was given ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Gordon, "together with the constant protection given their small cruisers, particularly in the night, rendered any offensive operations on our part impracticable."[154] In the Delaware, a British corvette, running upon a shoal with a falling tide, was attacked in this situation by a division of ten gunboats which was at hand. Such conditions were unusually favorable to them, and, though a frigate was within plain sight, she could not get within range ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... friends. The governor gave me an ample letter, saying many flattering things of me to my father, and strongly recommending the project of my setting up at Philadelphia as a thing that must make my fortune. We struck on a shoal in going down the bay, and sprung a leak; we had a blustering time at sea, and were oblig'd to pump almost continually, at which I took my turn. We arriv'd safe, however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I had been absent seven months, and my friends had heard nothing of me; for my ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... have room for all the fleets of Europe besides. About seven miles in depth, and varying in width from two to three and a half, it is fissured on every side by beautiful little bays, with deep water everywhere, and not a sunk rock, or shoal, or a bar, throughout the whole extent. Even the sea-opening of the Gulf has its protection by the long coast-line of Tuscany, stretching away to the southward and eastward, so that the security is perfect, and a vessel once anchored within the headlands between Lerici and Palmaria ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... steering S.W. by S. by the compass, and soon 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of fishes possible, miraculous enough in any pilchard or herring shoal, gathered into companionable catchableness;—which makes, in fine, so many Nations possible, and Saxon and Norman ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and many other customs which the various nations of Europe received from the classical times, and which it is not our object to investigate, they derived from thence a shoal of superstitious beliefs, which, blended and mingled with those which they brought with them out of their own country, fostered and formed the materials of a demonological creed which has descended down almost to our own times. Nixas, or Nicksa, a river or ocean god, worshipped on the shores of the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... vulgar and undignified a manner of leaving their native element. We got as beautiful a string in this way as one would wish to see, albeit they laughed at our best skill with fly and bait; and the cream of the matter was, that we had our pick of the shoal. ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... flats are formed by the St. Clair River, which empties into the lake of that name by several mouths, and which forms a bar or shoal on which in its natural state there is not more than 6 or 7 feet of water. This shoal is interposed between the mouth of the river and the deep water of the lake, a distance of 6,000 feet, and in its natural condition was a serious obstruction to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... 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 ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... cleanings 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
... 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 ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... of lance and arm beyond The crupper, and so left him stunn'd or dead, And overthrew the next that follow'd him, And blindly rush'd on all the rout behind. But at the flash and motion of the man They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, But if a man who stands upon the brink But lift a shining hand against the sun, There is not left the twinkle of a fin ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Avignon. 2. The sailors were of Naples and the Isle of naria less skilful than those of Sicily and Genoa. 3. The navigation from Marseilles was a coasting voyage to the mouth of the Tyber, where they took shelter in a storm; but, instead of finding the current, unfortunately ran on a shoal: the vessel was stranded, the mariners escaped. 4. The cargo, which was pillaged, consisted of the revenue of Provence for the royal treasury, many bags of pepper and cinnamon, and bales of French cloth, to the value of 20,000 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... moving before, stopped dead, its bluff nose turned 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 ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman |
