"Ebbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our adventurers till the 1st of August, when they left their harbour, and entered Ikkerasak, a narrow channel between Cape Chudleigh Islands, and the continent; it is ten miles in length, and dangerous from the currents and whirlpools occasioned by the flowing and ebbing of the tide, but the missionaries passed through in safety at low water with a fair wind. On quitting the channel, the coast ran S.S.W. low, with gently sloping hills, and the sea [Hudson's straits] appeared studded with small islands. Here they saw the Ungava country ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... ships some ten miles behind us. We had passed the Lunshan Hills, off which we spent two days, and from which I sent you my last letter. We were abreast of Plover Point, when suddenly the water shoaled so much that we had to drop anchor. Alas! the ebbing tide was too strong for us, and drove us on a bank, where we are now sticking. If we get off before morning it will not matter much; but if the 'Retribution' comes down and finds us here, we ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... which he lay; with her other hand she continually wiped the perspiration from his forehead. You might have heard a pin drop; no sound was heard but the crackling of the fire and the death-rattle, that dreadful sound which goes to one's heart, and which tells plainly that life is ebbing. This rattling in the throat lasted about an hour longer, and then the King lay motionless. The doctors bent their heads low to hear whether he still breathed—and we stood, not even daring to sit down, watching the death-struggle; ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... shining enthusiasm, of reflected inspiration from a vision, however trite, of eternal hymning; and it had been that same essence which finally held them apart through the greater number of their married years. Phebe's health, slowly ebbing, had drawn her farther and farther from the known world in general and the affairs and being of her husband in particular; her last strength had gone in the hysteria of protracted religious emotion, during which she had become scarcely more to Jasper Penny than an attenuated, rapt invalid lingering ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... will, it comes, Like the rain or the bow Or the nightingale's lay By the lake below: As free from restraint as the seraph that roams O'er the ebbing waves of the dying day, When the reddening west, 'twixt the sun and the sea, Seems to open the door ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... watchers could nurse and help and act. Oh, the blackness, the misery of the nights of watching, waiting in helplessness, well-nigh in despair, for the coming of the next "cable!" the consciousness of utter impotence to help or to do! the realization that a priceless life is ebbing away, while they who gave it—they to whom it is so infinitely precious—are at the very opposite ends of the earth! Oh, the tremulous opening of those fateful messages, the breathless reading of the cipher, the awful suspense of ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... as they passed over him; he watched the receding wave—he looked sternly at the approaching one. Time with him was fast ebbing. The wave that was to wash him into eternity was already curling towards him in fearful whiteness, which the glare of lightnings that seemed to illuminate the universe showed him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... afterward upon arriving at Barcelona, he found his mother just as he had seen her during his death-agony on the Portuguese coast.... Some fishermen had picked him up just as his life was ebbing away. During his stay in the hospital he wrote many times in a light and confident tone to Dona Cristina, pretending that he was detained by important business ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home and dinner. Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard almost cleared, and the road in a cloud of dust. The greater number of those who came a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both berlins, the calash, and two chaises. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... All the noise and brilliance and turbulence, all the gayety and folly and fancy of the royal ball had died away and left the Palais Royal and the capital to peace. Little waves of frivolity had drifted this way and that from the ebbing sea to the haven of this great house and that great house, where certain of those that had made merry in the king's gardens now made merrier still at a supper as of the gods. The Palace of Gonzague was one of those great houses. The hall where the Three Louis gazed at one ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... were alone. The former lay on his back, his head bolstered, and his face upturned toward the vault of heaven. The pain was over, and life was ebbing fast. Still, the mind was unshackled, and thought busy as ever. His heart was still full of Ghita; though his extraordinary situation, and more especially the glorious view before his eyes, blended certain pictures of the future with his ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the story of the wreck has been told by abler pens in the daily newspapers. How forty-seven people were saved; how the lifeboat from Cadgwith picked up some, floating insensible on the ebbing tide with lifebuoys tied securely round them; how some men proved themselves great, and some women greater; how a few proved themselves very contemptible indeed; how the quiet chief officer, Stoke, obeyed his captain's orders to take charge of the passengers;—are not these things told by the newspapers? ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... shall certainly be drown'd, come let us to Prayers. I was not very much accustom'd to the Sea, yet I imagin'd there could be no great Danger as long as we had a flowing Tyde, and that it did not blow a Storm: Had the Water been ebbing and a Storm ensu'd upon it, 'tis probable our Ship, being none of the strongest, might have been beaten to Pieces among those Sands. However, I step'd upon Deck to see how Things went; there was a profound Silence every where, the Passengers ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... tide was ebbing steadily, and the tiny arc of the rocks which showed the way in was growing more open, so that at the end of a ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Arthur threw down his scabbard and lifted his good Excalibur. Then he sprang upon the traitor. Sir Modred struck the king on the helmet, which had been worn thin in many battles. The stroke cut through the steel, and wounded Arthur mortally, but he used his ebbing strength for one last blow with Excalibur, ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... Shows to the faint of spirit the right path, And he is warned, and fears to step aside. Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, when thy shafts Drink up the ebbing spirit—then the hard Of heart and violent of hand restores The treasure to the friendless wretch he wronged. Then from the writhing bosom thou dost pluck The guilty secret; lips, for ages sealed, Are faithless to the dreadful trust at length, And give it up; the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... sensation of thankfulness that his trial had come on at last, even though it should result in his banishment. He rejoiced that he should even thus be set at liberty from his horrible situation.[16] He longed to feel the tide of human life ebbing and flowing around him, and to feel that he himself was not a mere drone in the hive. During the progress of the trial, though he was oblivious of most that was going on in the court-room, memory and fancy were keenly alert, and he rapidly lived ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... 62 degrees West, 7 Leagues from Lagoon Island. We saw no inhabitants, nor the appearance of any, and yet we were within 1/2 a Mile of the Shore. I observed by the Shore that it was near low Water, and at Lagoon Island I observed that it was either high Water or else there was no Ebbing and flowing of the Sea. From these Circumstances I infer that a South by East or South Moon makes high Water. Here we caught a King Fish, being the first fish we have got in these Seas. Wind East; course ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... ago—when I had gone to Nantasket Beach, to sit by the sea and inhale its air and refresh this puny body of mine—came to me your letter, all bounteous as all your letters are, generous to a fault, generous to the shaming of me, cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid book,— which is as sand to my eyes,—and now in this you tell me it shall be printed in London, and graced with a preface from the man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... betrayers of the liberty of our country and of mankind? Can we yet save the Republic? This is a fearful and momentous question, but it must be answered, and answered NOW. Inaction is syncope. Delay is death. The life of the Republic is ebbing fast, and the approaching Ides of March may toll the funeral words, It is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the Neighbour Kingdom, the staves of Beauty and Bands, Covenant & Brother-hood are broken by many, the home of Malignants and Sectaries exalted, the best affected born down, Reformation ebbing, Heresie and Schisme flowing; It can hardly be marvelled at by any Person of prudence and discretion, if we be full of such feares and apprehensions as use to be in those who dwell near a House set on fire, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... thousand fragments of shattered rock; they fell and thrashed the sea into foam a mile from shore. Rocks fell upon his already overwhelming burden; his knees bent, and the blood trickled from his nostrils. And with his fast ebbing breath he breathed his valedictory, fixing his stony eyes upon Pascherette as upon ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... self-seeking crowd pushed and jostled him, but never once lost his temper, and at length, after long waiting, his turn came and, having secured his portmanteau, he was before long driving away in the direction of Bloomsbury. His strength was fast ebbing away, and the merciless jolting of the cab evidently tried him to the utmost, but he bore up with the strong endurance of one who knows that at the end of the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ebbing slowly away. Letty did not know that her husband was watching by her bedside. The street was quiet now. So was the house. Most of its people had been up throughout the night, but now they had all gone to bed except the strange nurse and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... said, "All my debts but one are paid, All I love have long been dead, All my hopes on Heaven are stay'd, Death to me can bring no dole;" Thus the Elleree replied;— But with ebbing of the tide As sinks the setting sun he died;— May ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the hall in which the beautiful princess sat, to receive the homage of the flower of the youth of her kingdom. Soothingly soft, sweetly, lovingly soft, were the dulcet notes of the warbling Asparas, or singing girls, now ebbing, now flowing in tender gushes of melody, while down the sides of the elegant and highly pillared hall, now advancing, now retreating, the dancing girls, each beautiful as Artee herself in her splendour, seemed almost to demand, in their aggregate, that gaze of homage due only to the peerless ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... o'clock in the morning of Aug. 23rd the seven men embarked, taking advantage of the ebbing tide, and made their way down the Savannah River. It was very dark, the Moravians were unaccustomed to rowing, and Mr. Johnson, who steered, went to sleep time after time, so when they accidentally came across ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... later, on the western horizon, they beheld the ocean. Many of the streams whose sources they had seen when they crossed the divide from the lake basin, and whose courses they had followed, were now rivers a mile wide, with the tide ebbing and rising within them many hundreds of miles from their mouths. When they reached the shore line they found the waves breaking, as on earth, upon the sands, but with this difference: they had before ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... look but one instant longer and then turn away. Ten seconds passed, twenty, half a minute, in total silence. He was confused, disturbed, and yet wholly unable to shut out her penetrating glance. His fast ebbing consciousness barely allowed him to wonder whether he was weakened by the strong emotions he had felt in the church, or by the first beginning of some unknown and unexpected malady. He was utterly weak and unstrung. He could ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the silent, cordial servants, who were devoted to Christophe, extended to him a little of the respectful affection they had for their mistress. Joyous was it to listen to the song of the fleeting hours, and to see the tide of life ebbing away.... A shadow of anxiety was thrown on their happiness by Grazia's failing health. But, in spite of her little infirmities, she was so serene that her hidden sufferings did but heighten her charm. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... along the green banks of the Dee, or among the tidal islands at the mouth of the river, overgrown by waving seaweeds, and fringed with great white bunches of blossoming scurvy-grass. He loved to hunt for crabs and sea- anemones beside the ebbing channels, or to watch the jelly-fish left high and dry upon the shore by the retreating water. Already, in his simple way, the little ragged bare-footed Scotch laddie was at ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves Whose streams of brightening purple rush Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature's flame they start From the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... seemed only a mockery of my distress. Soon after the first rays of the sun appeared, Dr. Wyman came, but only to repeat, It is death. I asked him how long she might be a dying. "Perhaps several hours; but she may drop away at any moment." We all gathered about her bed and watched the ebbing tide of life. The girls were already kneeling together on the left side. They never changed their posture for more than four hours; they wept, but made no noise. The boys stood at the foot of the bed, deeply moved, but calm and self-possessed. The strain was fearful; and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... night, when Passion's ebbing tide Left bare the Sands of Truth, Yasmini, resting by my side, Spoke softly of ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... Buena Vista, with its desultory custom and few, lingering, impecunious guests. Here, too, his old Virginian ideas of hospitality were against his financial success; he could not dun nor turn from his door those unfortunate prospectors whom the ebbing fortunes of Buena Vista had left stranded ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... exceedingly, and yet not a soul could see her. The room behind them was full of black night while the country stretched before them in silence and lifeless solitude. Never had she known such a sense of shame before. Little by little she felt her power of resistance ebbing away, and that despite her embarrassed efforts to the contrary. That disguise of his, that woman's shift and that dressing jacket set her laughing again. It was as though a girl friend were ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... jack-boots,—"so thick in the soles," according to Jenny Dennison, "forby being tough in the upper leather." The tide failed us opposite the opening of Loch Alsh; the wind, long dying, at length died out into a dead calm; and we cast anchor in ten fathoms water, to wait the ebbing current that was to carry ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... have fainted; but a torrent of tears recalled the ebbing current of my heart, and I grew proud in ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... pursuit. Would the longed-for blaze never show itself? And how slowly his gallivat was moving! The rowers were bending to their work with a will, but six men are but a poor crew for a vessel of a hundred tons, and the slow progress it was making was in fact due more to the still ebbing tide than to the frantic efforts of the oarsmen. The wind was contrary; it would be useless to hoist the sail. At this rate they would be half an hour or more in reaching the three grabs anchored nearer the mouth of the harbor. The willing rowers on their benches could not know ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... alone into his apartment. His sensibility seemed fast ebbing, yet an emotion of joy was visible in his eyes at the appearance of Mervyn. He seemed likewise to recognise in me his late visitant, and made no objection to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Francis Head says, "The point of the straits which it was desired to cross, although broader than that about a mile distant; preoccupied by Mr. Telford's suspension bridge—was of course one of the narrowest that could be selected, in consequence of which the ebbing and flowing torrent rushes through it with such violence, that, except where there is back water, it is often impossible for a small boat to pull against it; besides which, the gusts of wind which come over the tops, down the ravines, and round the sides of the neighboring mountains, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... recollection and regret, a kind of peace stole over me. It was quite sudden, quite abnormal; not that afterglow of hope that sometimes follows a dark plunge of despair, but a gentle firm trust that seemed, without explaining, yet to make all things plain; not ebbing and flowing, not changing with physical sensation or mental weariness, but deep, abiding, sustaining. You may think it rash of me thus, after so short an interval, to write so assuredly of it; but even if I lost the sense (and I shall not) the memory of that moment would support me; 'If ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his life passed quickly, its frantic routine ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a space. He ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... moments to open the outer door. Then, with a thrill of pleasure, such as only those who love the water can fed, I thrust out into the river, on to the last of the ebb, then fast ebbing. The fall under the bridge at that state of the tide was truly terrifying. It roared so loudly that I could hear nothing else. It boiled about the bridge piers so fiercely that I was scared to see it. I had seen the sea in storm; but then one does not put to sea in a storm. This waterfall tumbled ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the time for the tide to ebb arrived and there was no ebbing. On the contrary, the water continued to rise. The government observer at the Highlands telephoned that Sandy Hook was submerged. Soon it was known that Coney Island, Rockaway, and all the seaside places along the south shore of Long Island were ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... "You traitor! you coward! can you look at her sitting there helpless, her very life ebbing away already with every minute that passes, and tell me coolly ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the tide of Islam turned, and its fortunes have been ebbing ever since. At the present day little territory remains to them in Europe. India and Egypt are now subject to England; Russia has annexed Central Asia; France rules Algiers and Tunis. One wonders whether there will be a ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... when coupled with ignorance, is that in which vice takes deepest root, as it is, when educated, that against which vice is least effectual. To think of changing the natural inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere in your work of love; and, above ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... temperature of Cornwall, the ayre thereof is cleansed, as with bellowes, by the billowes, and flowing and ebbing of the Sea, and therethrough becommeth pure, and subtill, and, by consequence, healthfull. So as the Inhabitants doe seldome take a ruthful and reauing experience of those harmes, which infectious diseases vse to ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... amongst a lot of tiny islets, lying upon the glassy water like a triton amongst minnows, seemed to be the centre of the fatal circle. It seemed impossible to get away from it. Day after day it remained in sight. More than once, in a favourable breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbing twilight, thinking that it was for the last time. Vain hope. A night of fitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the rising sun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ring looking more barren, inhospitable, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... rayless sun, Day's journey done, Sheds its last ebbing light On fields in leagues ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Cecily, whose courage was ebbing, began to deal in evasions. "Indeed I know not as to thy brother. I am not sure ... mayhap I did not hear him named.... They said so many ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... blood have I seen spilled, and what a fate is mine, that I should ever bring distress on all for whom I would most willingly sacrifice my own happiness!—But do not let us imbitter the moments given us in mercy, by fruitless repinings— Try what you can to stop thine ebbing blood, which is so dear to England—to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... seemed to stretch out from the rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the boat into the trough of ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... from the packet on the pier at Calais. A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide ebbing out towards low water-mark. There had been no more water on the bar than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar itself, with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like a lazy marine monster just risen to the surface, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the particles move among each other with friction, can only be sustained by the incessant degradation of energy from the mechanical form into the lower form of diffused heat. Thus the very fact that the tides are ebbing and flowing, and that there is consequently incessant friction going on among all the particles of water in the ocean, shows us that there must be some great store of energy constantly available to supply the incessant draughts made upon it by ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... and then feeling his patience ebbing she lifted her face impulsively to his. "You will be good to me? Promise! ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... thou fill'st in Eros name to-night, O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break; While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, Lo where Love walks, ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... up in sympathy with the mother, the sister, the wife, who watched at the bedside of the heir to the throne; and when, on the very anniversary of the Prince Consort's death, the life that had seemed ebbing away turned to flow upward again; a sort of sob of relief rose from the heart of the people, who rejoiced to be able, at a later day, to share with their Queen her solemn act of thanksgiving for mercy shown, as she went with ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... up before my face, I managed to make out by the flash of a match, which burned for a moment before being blown out, that the sides of the cave are quite perpendicular, not the smallest ledge to stand on. The tide, however, is ebbing fast, and the water in the cave calming, so that if no bad leak has been made by all this thumping we may yet be saved. Our only chance is ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gonzalves, with a highly varnished complexion, who took off his hat elaborately as he passed the open door. She became conscious of her use of the roses, and abandoned them. Presently she sat down on a bentwood rocking-chair, and swayed to and fro, aware of an ebbing of confidence. Half an hour later she was still sitting there. Her face had changed, something had faded in it; her gaze at the floor was profoundly speculative, and when she glanced at the empty door it was with timidity. Arnold had not come and ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of the oars the boats might get as near as possible before they took the ground, whence the advance to the assault must be by wading. The flanking movement required low water, to facilitate passing the ford. Between the two, the hour was fixed for an ebbing tide, probably to allow for delays, and to assure the arrival of the infantry so as to profit by the least depth. At 11 A.M. of June 22 the boat division arrived off the northwest point of the island, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... sailors, and losing his life in consequence.[167] On the 13th, 14th, and 15th of January, the weather assumed something of a milder form; and on the 16th, appearances were altogether so agreeable, as to induce Bougainville to weigh, the breeze being from the north, and the tide, which was ebbing, in his favour. He was not long, however, before he had cause to repent his facility of confidence. The wind soon shifted to W. and W.S.W., and the tide would not serve him to gain Rupert Isle. His vessel sailed very ill, and drove rapidly to leeward. The Etoile, it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... understand, now, why I concealed myself from you? I dreaded the day when I should blush before you, before my own son. And yet it was for your sake. Death would have been a rest, a welcome release for me. But your breath was ebbing away, your poor little arms no longer had strength to clasp me round the neck. And then I cried: 'Perish my soul and body, if only my child can be saved!' I believed such a sacrifice permissible in a mother. I am punished for it as if it were a crime. I thought you would be ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was the fallen tree, the apex lay on a sand bar, jutting a few yards from the bank. And the forlorn hope of Barry was to swing the stallion a little distance away from the banks, run him with the last of his ebbing strength straight for the bank, and try to clear the rocky portion of the river bed with a long leap that might, by the grace of God, shoot him into the comparatively protected current. Even then it would be a game only a tithe won, for the chances were ten to one that before they ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... brief June night was nearly spent. The blind still creaked against the open window sash, but the thud of horse-hoofs and beat of passing footsteps had become infrequent, while the roar of the mighty city had dwindled to a murmur, as of an ebbing tide upon a shallow, sand-strewn beach. The after-light of the sunset, walking the horizon, beneath the Pole star from west to east, broadened upward now towards the zenith. Even here, in the heart of London, the day broke with a spacious solemnity. Richard raised himself, and, sitting up, blew ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... country; but so far from the waters partaking of the apparent motion of the waves in approaching the shore, this motion of the waves continues, even when the waters are retiring. If we observe a flat strand when the tide is ebbing, we shall still find the waves moving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... situation. Those only who have been in difficulties in business, who have borne the ceaseless strain on body and mind which the burden of obligations, each day rushing forward with ever increasing velocity for liquidation, entails upon those who are honestly striving to stem the ebbing tide of fortune, can fully understand how relieved I felt at the thought that I had no longer any bills to pay. Then a strong sense of indignation towards my prosecutors mingled with the wild and bitter current of my thoughts, and prevented me from being overpowered and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... about how he got the better of so-and-so or the length of his ski-jumps, Winn's eyes became unpleasantly like probes, and Maurice felt the elan of his effects painfully ebbing away. Still, there was a certain honor in being sought out by the most exclusive person in the hotel and Winn's requests, stated in flat terms and with the force of his determination behind them, were extraordinarily difficult ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... indolence. I did not hate my fellow-creatures, but I dreaded the trouble of talking to them. My only recreation, at this period, was sauntering out in the evening beside the sea-shore. It was my regular practice to sit down upon a certain large stone, at the foot of a rock, to watch the ebbing of the tide. There was something in the contemplation of the sea and of the tides which was fascinating to my mind. I could sit and look at the ocean whole hours together; for, without any exertion of my own, I beheld ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... through the glistening eye, and tender solicitude watches the care-worn face, seeking to win one happy smile — even then, he dare not give himself up to joy. The thought is never absent from him that life perhaps is ebbing fast; the very labours to which his only hope of income is attached, are gradually wearing him down to the grave; and when he is no more, what shall be the lot of those whose beaming faces smile so ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... glare of the foaming breakers, the minds of the seamen were full of dreary apprehensions, and some of them fancied they heard the cries of their lost comrades mingling with the uproar of the elements. For a time, too, the rapidly ebbing tide threatened to sweep them from their precarious anchorage. At length the reflux of the tide, and the springing up of the wind, enabled them to quit their dangerous situation and take shelter in a small ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of the money makers are piled one on top of another, the streets are as irregular as those of London or Paris, and have all sorts of fascinatingly suggestive names. My hotel stands in the debatable land between the two districts. Fashionable life is ebbing away from its neighbourhood. Business is, as yet, a little shy of invading it. The situation makes an appeal to me. I may be, as Gorman says, a man of no country, but I am a man of two worlds. I cling to ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... trees she paced for many minutes. How could she wait until dinner—until he came home? She felt her pride ebbing away as she watched the sun cross the sky. The minutes seemed hours long. Molly went swiftly into the house. First assuring herself no one was within hearing distance, she paused before the telephone, longing, yet scarcely daring to use it. Then she took ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... exclusively the inexhaustible source for the supply of hysterical males for the clinics of the whole Continent (L'Etude des Maladies du Systeme Nerveux en Russie). As regards Austria and Germany, the same neurotic taint of the Jews has been emphasized by Krafft, Ebbing, etc.... In New York it has been shown by Collins that among 333 cases of neurasthenia which came under his observation, more than 40 per cent, were of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the sight. Multiplying this number by four, our conclusion was that, as a result of the expedition, the length of the war and its outcome might very possibly be affected. At any rate, there would be such an ebbing of German morale, and such a flooding of French, that the way would be opened to a decisive victory on ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... and damp even within doors. One after another they came, and they stood and knelt beside him on the right and left. He spoke to them all,—to his father and his mother first, for he felt the tide ebbing. With streaming eyes Veronica bent down and looked for the fading light in his, through her fast-falling tears. And close to her his mother stretched out weak hands that trembled with every breaking sob. His father knelt there, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... writing to you, my dear Marya Alexandrovna, and I am writing only because I do not want to die without saying good-bye to you, without recalling myself to your memory. I am given up by the doctors ... and I feel myself that my life is ebbing away. On my table stands a rose: before it withers, I shall be no more. This comparison is not, however, altogether an apt one. A rose is far more interesting ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... lady would not be nervous, or keep the children too long at their lessons, which was a bad thing in hot climates, and a very urgent appeal to all to be careful of her, whose heart was wrapped up in their happiness, to whom the breath of life came ebbing and flowing, according to the welfare and goodness of ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... doubt might come—the care, the anxiety, the painful reckoning of ways and means, to her who knew that the roof that covered them and the daily bread of her children, depended on the dear life now ebbing so fast away. But now, seeing—not Heaven's light, indeed, but the reflection of its glory on his face, she no more feared life than he feared death, now drawing so near. The children came in, at times, ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... turn toward New York. All young Californians are conscious, sooner or later in their growth, of the call of the great city, and just now Susan was wrapped in a cloud of dreams that hung over Broadway. She saw herself one of the ebbing and flowing crowd, watching the world from her place at the breakfast table in a great hotel, sweeping through the perfumed warmth and brightness of a theater lobby to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... sun has gone from the heights of heaven, The knights a-tilting no longer ride, The sails are vanished, the beaches empty— There is nothing left but the ebbing tide. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Promised Land beyond that desert flight, Thrall tricked with knighthood, never the more knight, Tomb thyself kinglike in the Pyramid,— I cross the barren desert to be free. My ship strides on despite an ebbing sea; But there the Legion Lie shall find its doom, And glut one deep, dark, hollow-vaulted tomb. [A short pause; he looks at her and takes her ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... so accustomed to the silent familiarity existing between their ebbing and flowing thoughts; they were—without a word spoken—so thoroughly certain of the language their minds were uttering to each other, that when their lips did speak at length, the words that came were like a continuance ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was Guthmund and not Olaf who had given the command to the Norsemen to attempt the taking of the bridge, and Olaf was very angry at seeing so many of his best men sacrificed. He had seen that the tide in the creek was ebbing, and that very soon the bridge would cease to be an important post. Accordingly he ordered that those who were still endeavouring to ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... This ebbing and flowing mind with its ever-changing expression is the charm of early childhood. It is the charm of all genius as well. Turn to Shelley's "Skylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... home in silence. Every step of the way, the softer sentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour. Adapting my conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my arm drop limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished her such a cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds of truth when I characterise it ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... limbs were like so much lead; but still he struggled on. Every now and then, too, the water washed over his face, telling him that his position was lower, and at last, when all seemed to be over and his strength was ebbing away, he raised his head for a last farewell look-out for help, and one of his ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... sheep, and donkeys drawing sideless carts in which whole families of veiled women and half-naked children were seated tailor fashion. On we spun, past the Zoo, past scattered villas of Frenchified, Oriental fashion which might have been designed by a confectioner: past azure lakes left by the ebbing Nile, and so into sudden dazzling sight of three geometric mountains in a tawny desert—two, monsters in size, and one a baby trying to catch ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... life prized by so many millions, as that which was then ebbing from the breast of Mirabeau. He seemed to be the only guarantee for the solid adjustment of the Revolution. With his disappearance, all hope of tranquillity and good government was prepared to vanish. His was the intellect in which the extremes of that momentous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the ebbing tide, this is set afloat and carried away seaward. Driven then upon the coral reef, it bilges, is broken to pieces, when the fragments, as waifs, dance about, and drift far ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the night grew blacker, while the storm howled; but the waves receded with the ebbing tide, and the broken hulk remained fast fixed in the sands. The poor girl shivered all through that night and clung to her preserver. She did not weep at the loss of her father, for the horror of their situation dried the fountains of grief. All night long the warring ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... chair, the colour slowly ebbing from her sallow cheeks. "Don't fool with me, Olga," she ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... had sunk into the nearest seat, and in that unfortunate moment had taken his eyes off the sufferer, whose life was ebbing so swiftly, and had dropped his face in his trembling hands to think out what he had best do in this ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... No, child, I feel and know that time will never come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps—well, I shall die at peace. At peace, no; not——' she faltered, and the thin, semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of me ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... upon his face, nor how they grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... asked, knowing well by the ashen pallor beneath the bronze of the desert that the man's stormy life was fast ebbing to its close. A dreadful froth bubbled from von Kerber's lips, and the words ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... father-in-law hurried back to Hull, it was to find that life was slowly ebbing. Towards the end her mind cleared of delirium, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... was among the last to admit that she had bought on an ebbing tide. She contended that her house was well worth the price she had paid; what if speculation had come to a stop? So much the better; her house was still worth its price. She would stand firm. It was not until the Metfords, whose ostentation had brought them before her notice, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the Year of the Boar, and the season of autumn; but I to could no longer take the solitary walks that he loved. He could not even rise from his bed. His life was ebbing, though none could divine the cause; and he slept so deeply and so long that his sleep was ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... powers through the vapor of this subtle poison. His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting of his last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak of it, would he not always have thought ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... blood. Straight with pert looks we raise our drooping fronts, And pour in crystal pure thy purer juice;— With cheerful countenance and steady hand Raise it lip-high, then fix the spacious rim To the expecting mouth:—with grateful taste The ebbing wine glides swiftly o'er the tongue; The circling blood with quicker motion flies: Such is thy powerful influence, thou straight Dispell'st those clouds that, lowering dark, eclips'd The whilom glories of the gladsome face;— While dimpled ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... I should die thus; but she told me, too, that I should kill the one dearest to me on earth. Thank God! this cannot be—for I know my life to be ebbing fast. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Moro from him with a convulsive heave that crashed him senseless against the stump of a charred tree. His colorless left eye, lusterless in strange contrast to the baleful fire that glowed in the right, Malabanan gathered his fast ebbing strength in a last effort and staggered toward the unconscious Moro, his glittering weapon upraised, heedless of the pale American who stepped ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... boy translated it in pentameter, "Tempus habet nullat posteriori comas"). The fault was mine for wasting an invaluable hour among the 'shy traffickers' of Salcombe. By the time we worked down to the bar the tide had been ebbing for an hour and a half. The wind still blew strong from the south-west, and the seas on the bar were not pleasant to contemplate. Let alone the remoter risk of scraping on one of the two shallow patches which ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... work out of doors and their dreaming at home; and those whose work is done at home need something like a wherry in which to dream out of doors. On a squally day, with the wind northwest, it is a dream of action, and to round yonder point against an ebbing tide makes you feel as if you were Grant before Richmond; when you put about, you gallop like Sheridan, and the winds and waves become a cavalry escort. On other days all elements are hushed into a dream of peace, and you look out upon those ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... twenty to twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... grief, even when he sings with breast against the thorn, so in his life do we find no word of bitterness or moaning or complaining. Even amid the terrible blight of war and its final utter ruin, prophet-like, he speaks in faith and hope and courage. His own heart breaking, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his stricken people. It is so true and prophetic that we quote the words ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... sun, and love is the sea; Love is the tide that comes and goes; Flowing and flowing it comes to me; Ebbing and ebbing to thee it flows! Oh my sun, and my wind, and tide! My sea, and ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... moonbeam. She was standing very close to Waitstill, closer than she had been to any woman for many years, and she studied her a little, wistfully, yet courteously, as if her attention was attracted by something fresh and winning. She looked at the color, ebbing and flowing in the girl's cheeks; at her brows and lashes; at her neck, as white as swan's-down; and finally put out her hand with a sudden impulse and touched the knot of wavy bronze ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they had dressed, Russell and he began to amuse themselves on the sea-shore. The little translucent pools left on the sands by the ebbing tide always swarm with life, and the two boys found great fun in hunting audacious little crabs, or catching the shrimps that shuffled about in the shallow water. At last Eric picked up a piece of wood which he found lying on the beach, and said, "What do you say to coming crab-fishing, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... was let go, and the ship swung to the now fast ebbing tide, the quarterboat was lowered, and the skipper was rowed ashore, while Mr Sutcliffe went the rounds of the decks and satisfied himself that everything had been done to make the Concordia perfectly ready to get under way at a moment's notice; the yards were accurately ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... if you ever felt that existence was ebbing away without being put to its full value: as for me, I am never conscious of life without being also conscious that it is not enjoyed to the utmost. This is a bitter feeling, and its worst bitterness is our ignorance ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observation, in judging of the weather, by which they know when they may look for rain, wind, or other alterations in the air; but as to the philosophy of these things, the causes of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing, and of the original and nature both of the heavens and the earth; they dispute of them, partly as our ancient philosophers have done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ from them, so they do not in all things ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... hour in caves forlorn, And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind.... Such was the Boy,—but for the growing Youth, What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked: Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker |
