"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at noon we anchored off Passourwang, a Dutch settlement on the coast of Java, in two fathoms, distant from the shore half a league, the entrance of the river bearing south-west. The coast hereabouts so is shoal that large ships are obliged to anchor three or four miles from the land. As soon as we were at anchor I got in my boat and went on shore. The banks of the river near the entrance were mud, on which grew a few mangrove bushes. Among them we saw hogs running and many ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... 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 shoal part. This section had a depth of from 15 to 60 ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... flowing on for ever through the fair pastures of peace and among the mountain roots of everlasting righteousness, thy downward course is shattery, headlong, turbulent, and destructive; black-throated whirlpools here, miasmatic marshes there, a cataract, a shoal, a rapid; until the remorseless stream, lashing among rocks which its own riot rendered sterile, pours its unresting waters into the thirsty ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... received in England with a good deal of hesitation. But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... the 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, and unchanging; and of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... might render her more unwieldy and less manageable,—a weight of water being thus admitted which would bring down the ship so as to endanger her lower ports and prevent the use of them in action. He might thus also prevent her approach to shoal water. The Warrior and her companions are, however, formidable ships, and in deep water, with ample sea-room, must be most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... 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
... and veered; the flood sinks slowly back to its abysses—abandoning its plunder,—scattering its piteous waifs over bar and dune, over shoal and marsh, among the silences of the mango-swamps, over the long low reaches of sand-grasses and drowned weeds, for more than a hundred miles. From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift;—from ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... destruction. She took no notice of the harmless cannonade from the shore. Lieutenant Smith, who commanded the "Congress," had realized that collision with the enemy meant destruction, rapid and inevitable, and decided that his best chance was to get into shoal water under the batteries. He had slipped his cable, shaken out some of his sails, and signalled to the tug-boat "Zouave" to come to his help. The "Zouave" made fast to the "Congress" on the land side, but she had not moved far when the ship ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and Sicily the ocean floor was considerably elevated, having on its back an aquatic layer that in some points was only twelve yards thick. It was the great shoal called the Aventura, a volcanic swelling, a double submerged island, the submarine pedestal ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... perceive things otherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it were not. Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of a shipwreck. The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; the rock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath the waves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month is slumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies. Normally, were nothing written, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... case of emergency, the whole crew; and there were Dutch whalers upon the coast, in which they could all be conveyed to Europe. As for wintering where they were, that dreadful experiment had been already tried too often. No time was to be lost; the ships had driven into shoal water, having but fourteen fathoms. Should they, or the ice to which they were fast, take the ground, they must inevitably be lost; and at this time they were driving fast toward some rocks on the N.E. Captain Phipps sent for the officers of both ships, and told them his intention ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... So far back as the 9th of May 1836, our observer noticed salmon fry descending seawards, and he took occasion to capture a considerable number by admitting them into the salmon cruive. On examination, he found about one-fifth of each shoal to be what he considered sea-trout. Wisely regarding this as a favourable opportunity of ascertaining to what extent they would afterwards "suffer a sea change," he marked all the smolts of that species (about ninety in number) by cutting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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 the most extensive, and whose commercial honesty never lay under the slightest ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... and makes it applicable to the 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 ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... enquire as to the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flittered into the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... in the introduction to this work, that the general impression on the minds of those best qualified to judge was, that the western streams discharged themselves into a central shoal sea. Mr. Oxley thus expresses himself ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... or sand, whether steep or shoal—we knew not; the only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation, was, if we might happen into some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... sailed on her next trip, she was probably the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat. You see they were all of them experienced men. They had years of practice behind them. They knew their ship, and they knew the ocean. There wasn't a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn't know. Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where neither his father nor grand-father had ever been heard of. They would have been proud indeed, if they could have seen their ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... shivered, hung a moment, then backed clear of the Cumberland, in whose side there was now a ragged and a gaping hole. The pilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head upstream. The water was shoal; she had to run up the James some way before she could turn and come back to attack the Congress. Her keel was in the mud; she was creeping now like a land turtle, and all the iron shore was firing at her.... ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... if the life of Burnes terminated upon "this bank and shoal of time," if no morning is to dawn upon the night in which he sleeps, then sorrow has no consolation, and this impressive and solemn ceremony which we observe to-day has no more significance than the painted pageant of the stage. If the existence of Burnes was ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... other papers of good morals, stood in the center of the room. The walls were papered in bright colors, and the floor was covered with an Uxbridge carpet, the colors of which were green and red, and made fresh by the glare of a spirit lamp that burned upon the table. A chart of the South Shoal, a map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and sundry rude drawings in crayon and water colors, hung suspended from the walls. The air of quiet cheerfulness that pervaded the sitting room, bespoke the care Bessie had bestowed upon it, and the active part she took in the management ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... United States forts, of the money in the custom-house, of the custom-house itself, and of other national property in Charleston. He had closed the harbor, by destroying the costly prismatic lenses in the light-houses, and by withdrawing the warning light-ship from Rattlesnake Shoal. He had cut off all communication between us and the city, and had seized the United States mails. His steamboats, laden with war material to be used in erecting batteries against us, were allowed to pass and repass Fort Sumter, not only without ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they actually included 'poor White' and his family, Gillian was angered and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be delighted to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the silver shoal; And I have ta'en the lute, my only friend: The vibrant chords beneath my fingers blend; They sob awhile, then as ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... comfort. Her length was immense, and her draught necessarily very light—not four feet when full loaded; for the Alabama is subject to many vagaries and what was a clear channel yesterday may be only a two-foot shoal to-day. Of course, with solidity and strength sacrificed to this extreme lightness, when the powerful engines are put to any strain, the high, thin fabric thrills from stem to stern with their every puff, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 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
... discovered the enemy in Abukir bay. The French fleet was anchored in line on the western side of the bay, with wide shoals between it and the shore. It was sheltered by Abukir (now Nelson's) island and its rocks, and its leading ship was pretty close to the shoal off the island. It was composed of thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, and was much superior to Nelson's in the size of the ships and weight of metal. Some of the ships, however, were worn out, and many of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... as near shore as you think," said the captain, "I know what you say must be true, for in shoal water such a wave will surely carry all before it. But are you certain there will ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with red spawn in his belly. They were a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took them by thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh. One thing the trollers did know,—where the small feed swarmed, in shoal water or deep, those myriads of tiny fish, herring and nameless smaller ones, there the blueback would appear, and when he did so appear he could be taken by a ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... know what inventions are in the brain of the future; I don't know what garments may be woven, with the years to come; but I do know, coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a greater blessing, a grander glory, than liberty for man, woman ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... proceed to consider the circumstances attending the attack and defence of Copenhagen itself. The only side of the town exposed to the attack of heavy shipping is the northern, where there lies a shoal extending out a considerable distance, leaving only a very narrow approach to the heart of the city, (Fig. 35) On the most advanced part of this shoal are the Crown-batteries, carrying in all eighty-eight ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... was made by Christie, but the baddish boy insisted that he had an equal right in all her nets, and, setting his sail, he ran into shoal water. ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... take us and our baggage ashore. We were cast adrift in the open sea on account of a doubtful shoal. We had eight miles to row before we could reach Goa. Fortunately there was no storm. We rowed a mile and a half of open sea, five miles of bay, and one and a half of winding river, and at last landed on a little stone pier jutting a few yards into the water. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... important the ghost the more incumbent is this duty upon him. Noblesse oblige. On the river Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a wonderful fact that they never pass by ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... which came this year from Nueva Hespana arrived in sight of these islands on the tenth of last month, and the captain made the port of Cavite on St. John's day. The Almiranta, not being so good a ship, could not follow him, and remained on the shoal of Mindoro until the fifth of the present month, which caused great loss. The viceroy of Nueva Hespana writes me that the cause of these ships leaving Acapulco so late was because they had met this despatch and that of the Conde de Monterey for Peru, and that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... with its tender thrilling compass inside, well protected by thick plate glass, and the lamp, which is always ready to be lighted up should darkness need it; for experience has showed me only too plainly that it will not do to postpone any preparation for night, or wind, or hunger, or shoal water, but that you should be always ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... adopted. And, accordingly, the designated numbers were told off to man the river, and at once set in motion to perform the duty; while the rest retraced their way to the village, except the hunter, who, seeking a shoal place, waded the river, and was soon out of sight among the thickets of ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... lurch, the sleigh left the grade, and took the white snow edging the shoal water that led out to the deep green of the middle ice. The watcher drew ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... their empty words: What! hopes the fool to please so many lords? Young as I am, thy prince's vengeful hand Stretch'd forth in wrath shall drive thee from the land. Oh! could the vigour of this arm as well The oppressive suitors from my walls expel! Then what a shoal of lawless men should go To fill with tumult the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... criminals undergoing execution. Two men perch themselves up on posts, some distance apart, and let down by ropes a net into the river. Waiting patiently—and Brunais can sit still contentedly doing nothing for hours—they remain motionless until a shoal of fish passes over the net, when it is partially raised and the fish taken out by a third man, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... the Spaniard, Dutch, and Dane; In short, an universal shoal of shades From Otaheite's isle to Salisbury Plain, Of all climes and professions, years and trades, Ready to swear against the good king's reign,[hd] Bitter as clubs in cards are against spades:[530] All summoned by this grand "subpoena," to Try if kings ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... as though this desolate rock were really a land of miracles, a man came running up to the encampment with the unexpected and joyful tidings that "millions of sea-cows had come on shore." The crew climbed over the ledge of rocks that flanked their tents, and the sight of a shoal of manatees immediately beneath them gladdened their hearts. These came in with the flood, and were left in the puddles between the broken rocks of the cove. This supply continued for two or three weeks. The flesh was mere blubber, and quite unfit for food, ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... supply. Hartog, as much to give the crew some novel occupation as from any other motive, set the men to work salting and drying the fish, so that we secured three barrels full, as an addition to our ordinary fare, which was very acceptable. The flying fish were pursued by a shoal of dolphins, which continued to play round our ship for several days, and some of these we captured with the line and converted ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, deg. deg.5 With the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... trusting to the schooner, one that could go over banks where we would strike, what did the scamp do but shave close to a dangerous spot, my pilot following faithfully in his wake. Then, jumping upon the taffrail of his craft, as we came abreast the shoal, he yelled, like a Comanche, to my pilot to: "Port the helm!" and what does my mutton-headed jackass do but port hard over! The bark, of course, brought up immediately on the ground, as the other had planned, seeing which his whole pirate crew—they could have been little less than pirates—joined ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... water, would enable us to reach the island, if necessity required. But there the reef ended; beyond it the sea again resumed its somber hue, betokening deep water. In all probability, then, this was a solitary shoal, unattached to a shore, and the gloom of a bitter disappoint- ment began to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... admiral, after sweeping the eastern Mediterranean, at last found the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, about ten miles from the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It was anchored under the lee of a shoal which would have prevented any ordinary admiral from attacking, especially at sundown. But Nelson, knowing that the head ship of the French was free to swing at anchor, rightly concluded that there must be room for British ships to sail between Brueys' stationary line and the shallows. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... all too long, through seas unknown and dark, (With Spenser's parable I close my tale,) By shoal and rock hath steered my venturous bark, And landward now I drive before the gale. And now the blue and distant shore I hail, And nearer now I see the port expand, And now I gladly furl my weary sail, And, as the prow light ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... taken. The savages were overtaken and a 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 had been ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... is here worth a passing notice. During periods of elevation the area of the land and of the {293} adjoining shoal parts of the sea will be increased, and new stations will often be formed;—all circumstances most favourable, as previously explained, for the formation of new varieties and species; but during such periods there will ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... a young girl if she listens and believes, when listening and believing mean to her perfect happiness? Not women who have ever stood, trembling with love and joy, close to the dear one's heart. If they be gray-haired, and on the very shoal of life, they must remember still those moments of delight,—the little lane, the fire-lit room, the drifting boat, that is linked with them. If they be young and lovely, and have but to say, "It was yesterday," ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... the hosts of which we spoke, sailed towards Ireland, and it was not far across the sea, and he came to shoal water. It was but by two rivers; the Lli and the Archan were they called; and the nations covered the sea. {50b} Then he proceeded with what provisions he had on his own back, and approached ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... 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 ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Paris, to say nothing of Boston and London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 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 ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... always failed. After some weeks of weary cruising, Piet Hein, when off the coast of Cuba, was rewarded (September 8) by the sight of the Spanish fleet approaching, and at once bore down upon them. After a sharp conflict, the Spaniards took refuge in the bay of Matanzas and, running the galleons into shoal-water, tried to convey the rich cargoes on shore. It was in vain. The Dutch sailors, taking to their boats, boarded the galleons and compelled them to surrender. The spoil was of enormous value, comprising 177,537 lbs. of silver, 135 lbs. of gold, 37,375 ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... about the planks, and all bubbling over with excitement, as they tried to get a peep at you. And when—oh, my!—we did at last come up to you, a nice pretty respectable lot you looked, lying about in the boat, with no more discipline than you'd see in a shoal of seals on a rock. You looked as if you had all been pitched in ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... stuck on was a puzzle indeed! As I said before, our captain knew all about that part of the sea, and, although he knew we were in shallow soundings, he was certain that there wasn't any shoal or rock thereabout that we ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... the sea to break right a-head of us; we immediately sounded, and shoaled our water from thirteen to seven fathom, soon after deepening it again from seventeen to forty-two; so that we went over the end of a shoal, which a little farther to the northward might have been fatal to us. Cape Blanco at this time bore W.S.W. 1/2 S. distant four leagues: But we were still at a loss for Port Desire, it being impossible that any description should be more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice, To our own lips. He's here in double ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... crowd the shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast, during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent. Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of hungry sea-fowl hovering and flittering above them; the white plumage of the restless birds glints and flashes ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... unabated, she was ploughing headlong through that dense obscurity using the utmost power of her engines. From time to time, when the whistle was still, the calls of seamen operating the sounding machine could be heard; but their reports were monotonously uniform, the waters were not yet shoal enough for the lead to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... mystification would probably be complete, and the right time would arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the fish on which they and all their countrymen on the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... the terrible desire to yield and be swept away waned. Now we had reached the foot of the cyclopean stairs, now we were half up them—and now as we struggled out upon the ledge on which the watching fortress stood, the clutching stream shoaled swiftly, the shoal became safe, dry land and the cheated, unseen maelstrom swirled ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... on with the tide which drifts inland up the estuary, and, farther than vision can really follow, track the march of its glancing ripples, as they swim on past shoal and sand-dune and morass up to the dewy gates of the Spring, in among green-clad river meadows and crisp close-skirted woodlands which the salt breath of sea-winds restrains from a richer luxuriance, on past springing knolls plumed with dark firs, and dimpling valleys mellow with ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the mails and a considerable amount of specie, had her progress obstructed by two junks that wilfully forced her into shoal water. In the confusion that followed the grounding, a score of coolies, who up to that moment had been regarded as honest deck passengers, rushed to the pilot-house and engine-room and murdered every white man on board. Practically everything of value was then ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... of a shark is an everyday occurrence in some latitudes. Nothing is thought of it, and sometimes much sport is derived in attempting a capture. But should a vessel be dogged for a succession of days by a shark, or (as very frequently happens) by a shoal of them, gloom begins to spread, imaginations begin to widen; whisperings and close consultations for evil purposes take place; and soon there has developed an epidemic of melancholia. Conjecture is rife. The explanation of it all is that ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... splendour. Indeed, the Pandavas afflicted with fear, timidly gazed at Bhishma who was then achieving super-human feats in that battle. And the Pandava troops, thus fleeing away, O Bharata, failed to find a protector, like a herd of kine sunk in a shoal of ants while being trod down by a strong person. Indeed, the Pandavas could not, O Bharata, look at that mighty car-warrior incapable of being shaken, who, furnished with a profusion of shafts, was scorching ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... islands of the Preparis group in succession, and were able to congratulate ourselves on having made a good landfall. At noon we had sailed 120 miles, and were in lat. 14 deg. 5' N. and long. 93 deg. 29' E., the Krisha Shoal ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... islands in any part of our course, and we found but a single shoal marked on the chart. We passed far to the north of the newly discovered Brooks Island, and kept southward of the Aleutian chain. Since my return to America I have read the account of a curious discovery on an island of the North Pacific. In 1816, the ship Canton, belonging to the East ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... 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 describes ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... did," answered I. "I took a good look round while we were coming in, and I noticed a distinct discoloration of the water about a mile out, as dead to leeward of the island as it can possibly be. I have no doubt we shall find that to be the shoal of which your friend spoke. And there was another thing I noticed while I was aloft, and which I will take this opportunity of mentioning. The island is literally covered with birds, sir, and, unfortunate as is ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... said I, as we drew up in shoal water under lee of the rock, and I noted his short legs and stocky chest, "no doubt you are well water-logged, and a little healthful exercise will help to warm your blood, especially as we dare not light a fire for such purpose. So bend that broad back of yours, and aid ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... remoteness and difficulty of access. Far north of the Arctic Circle, the diggings are about seventy-five miles above the head of light-draught steamboat navigation, and more than six hundred miles above the confluence of the Koyukuk with the Yukon. Transshipped at Nulato to the shoal-water steamboats that make three or four trips a season up the Koyukuk, transshipped again at Bettles, the head of any steamboat navigation, freight must be hauled on horse scows the remaining seventy-five miles of the journey; and all that handling and hauling means high rates. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale. That ever man should marry! For one Hypermnestra that saved her lord and husband, forty-nine of her sisters cut their husbands' throats all in one night. There was a shoal of virtuous horse leeches! Here ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... is a bay, [237] where there is a sandy island. This entire bay is very shoal, except on the eastern side, where there are some four fathoms of water. In the channel which enters this bay, some four leagues from there, is a fine cove, into which a river flows. There is a ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... discovered, the trap was set at the edge of the dam, at a point where the animal passed from deep to shoal water, and always under the surface. Early in the morning, the hunter mounted his mule ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the greatest. He gave to the world, while yet the name of the writer was unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verse of Adelaide Procter. "In the spring of the year 1853 I observed a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical."[296] The contributions had been large and frequent under an assumed name, when at Christmas 1854 he discovered that Miss Mary Berwick was the daughter of his old ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... 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 that the land could not be far distant; and keeping good watch, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... now leisure 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 very brief period in which the citizens wavered ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a 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 ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... two armies were at first successful and captured several border towns, but that which entered in the south was repulsed at Estrelleta, while that which invaded the north was defeated at Beler. A small Haitian fleet which set out to attack Puerto Plata blundered on a shoal where it was left high and dry and captured ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... standing inshore, commenced firing away at the northern forts. Another signal presently went up, and the Agamemnon was seen gliding on at more rapid speed than heretofore towards the shore, some little distance to the north of Fort Constantine, the nearest point which a shoal running off from the land would allow her to reach. A gallant little steamer, the Circassian, was observed leading the way, fearless of the shot which the guns of the fort threw at her. As the Agamemnon passed the Sanspareil, which had been ahead ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... melancholy, but Mr. Bigler was not a man to be crushed by one misfortune, or to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition of apparent honesty. He was already on his feet again, or would be if Mr. Bolton could tide him over shoal water for ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... thick and the silt and sand Were gathered day by day, Till not a furlong out from land A shoal had barred ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... 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, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... 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 already be sighted. This same day they reached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... to and fro, for more than an hour, enjoying every minute of it just as much as the children did. When at length, however, the children began to quiet down a little (the sharp edge of novelty being worn off), the Captain ran into shoal water, and brought his boat's head once more up into the wind; but this time, instead of letting her head "pay" off to starboard, he steered her right into the wind's eye, with the sails shivering all the time, until the boat stopped, when ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... had been provided with a large number of these buoys. They were pieces of board, part of them painted red, and part blue, with a line and weight attached to each. Near the dangerous rock or shoal one of these buoys was to be located, which would be kept in place by the weight. The coxswains had written instructions from the commodore to keep red ones on the starboard side, and blue on the port side, going up the river, and vice ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... great Gulf Stream which, bifurcating at the Azores, sweeps southwards with easting, now sets in our favour; it is, however, partly a wind-current, and here it often flows to the west even in winter. The ever-rolling seas off this 'Bristol coast' are almost clear of reef and shoal, and the only storms are tornadoes, which rarely blow except from the land: from the ocean they are exceedingly dangerous. Such conditions probably suggested the Bristol barque trade, which still flourishes between Cape Palmas and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... dam, empire, falls, gulf, hall, high school, hospital, hotel, house, island, isthmus, kindergarten, lake, mountain, ocean, orchestra, park, pass, peak, peninsula, point, range, republic, river, square, school, state, strait, shoal, sea, slip, theatre, university, valley, etc.: South Hall, Park Hotel, Hayes Block, Singer Building, Dewey School, South Division High School, Superior Court, New York Theatre, Beloit College, Wisconsin ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... 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 hang upon the ground abreast ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the long shelving area extending from the coast out to the edge of the continental plateau and stretching from the South Shoal off Nantucket to New York, making in all, from the eastern part of the Grand Bank to New York Bay, a distance of about 2,000 miles, an almost continuous extent of most ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... exactly under 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: thus it is with 'draft' and 'draught'; 'plain' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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
... With his broad fins and forky tail he laves The rising surge, and flounces in the waves. Thus all my crew transformed around the ship, Or dive below, or on the surface leap, And spout the waves, and wanton in the deep. 130 Full nineteen sailors did the ship convey, A shoal of nineteen dolphins round her play. I only in my proper shape appear, Speechless with wonder, and half dead with fear, Till Bacchus kindly bid me fear no more. With him I landed on the Chian shore, And him shall ever gratefully adore.' ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... after this it happened to him to be shipwrecked near Myconos, and while every one else perished, Coiranus alone was saved by a dolphin. And when at last he died of old age in his native country, as it so happened that his funeral procession passed along the seashore close to Miletus, a great shoal of dolphins appeared on that day in the harbor, keeping only a very little distance from those who were attending the funeral of Coiranus, as if they also were joining in the procession and sharing in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... came 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 ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... had a quick run to the rendezvous off the Sha-la-tung shoal, about twenty miles from Pehtang. On their way, near the entrance to the gulf, they came up with the fleet conveying the troops intended to be disembarked near the mouth of the Peiho. It was a magnificent sight, as the clouds of canvas appeared covering the blue ocean, the ships' ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... mouths of cannon. The shore outlines rose about five hundred feet on each side and great batteries and the white tents of some of Kitchener's army were to be seen almost everywhere. There was certainly no doubt about England being at war. As we drew near the breakwater a shoal of paddle wheel tugs rushed out to welcome us with their sirens blowing to pilot us safely into the most noted harbour in the world. From this port sailed such great captains as Drake, Hawkins and Cooke, who first ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... 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 ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... there were only two or three stars, but now the managers have starred a whole shoal of mediocre players and sacrificed plays and dramatist to them. That there seems to be a dearth of good plays is in part because of the fact that some good ones are ruined by changes made in them, whilst ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... have to give you a week's trial," said the editor, who, ever on the lookout for good chance material, took on shoals of men in that way and retained on the average one man per shoal. Anyhow it gave Jim Shorthouse the wherewithal to sew up the holes and relieve his ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... does it all mean? Simply this, I think: that the West brings down what it can of the Spirit into the world of thought and passion; brings it down right here upon this bank and shoal of time; but China rises with you into the world of the Spirit. We do not as a rule allow the validity of the Chinese method. We sometimes dub Keats, at his best a ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 23rd.—A shoal of porpoises passed us. A sailor struck one with a harpoon, but it got off again. They are of a salmon colour, no more like pigs than horses, just the shape of salmon, only much larger. In swimming they ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 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
... 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... "Mid-ocean,—and a shoal of whales at play, Lifting their monstrous frontlets to the day, Through rainbow arches ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... from the shore or from my canoe at twilight. Just outside the lily pads a shoal of minnows would be playing at the surface, or small trout would be rising freely for the night insects. Then, if you watched sharply, you would see gleaming points of light, the eyes of Chigwooltz, stealing out, with barely a ripple, to the edge of the pads. And then, when ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long |
