"Surf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situated where the ancient Guanche capital stood. We landed at the Puerto di Oratava, several miles from the villa: it is defended by some small batteries, at one of which is the very difficult landing-place, sheltered by a low reef of rocks that runs far out, and occasions a heavy surf. I took my own saddle ashore: and being mounted on a fine mule, we all began our journey towards the hill. The road is rough, but has evidently once been made with some pains, and paved with blocks of porous lava; but the winter rains have long ago destroyed it, and it ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... upon Samoa. It swept across the island, levelled forests of cocoa palms, battered villages to pieces, caught that little fleet in the harbour, and played with it in a horrible madness. To right and left were reefs, behind was the shore, with a monstrous surf rolling in; before was a narrow passage. One vessel made its way out—on it was the officer who had surveyed the harbour. In the open sea there was safety. He brought his vessel down the coast a little distance, put a rope about him and in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my father's mansions razed to the ground, and himself falls at the altar built by the God, slain by the blood-polluted son of Achilles, the friend of my father slays me, wretched man, for the sake of my gold, and having slain me threw me into the surf of the sea, that he might possess the gold himself in his palace. But I am exposed on the shore, at another time on the ocean's surge, borne about by many ebbings and flowings of the waves, unwept, unburied; ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... laugh loud in the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While the ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grow ten months of the year. The region is especially famed for potatoes, which become almost a fruit here. The farm I live on is charmingly situated about a mile from the old Mission, and two from the beach, on which a tremendous surf breaks and thunders day and night. From my house I look over the coast-table and range of mountains, the hills of Monterey, the bay, and a near landscape, exquisitely diversified by plain and wood, hill and valley, and almost every shade ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... cattle. As there seemed to be no inhabitants here to obstruct our taking away whatever we might think proper, I was confident of his being able to make amends for our late disappointment, if the landing could be effected. There was a reef here surrounding the land as at Wateeoo, and a considerable surf breaking against the rocks. Notwithstanding which, our boats no sooner reached the lee, or west side of the island, but they ventured in, and Mr Gore and his party got safe on shore. I could, from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Hotel del Coronado, on the great and fertile beach in front of San Diego. It is the 2d of June. Looking southward, I see the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the sun as blue as the waters at Amalfi. A low surf beats along the miles and miles of white sand continually, with the impetus of far-off seas and trade-winds, as it has beaten for thousands of years, with one unending roar and swish, and occasional shocks of sound as if of distant thunder on the shore. Yonder, to ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... and blustered with increasing loudness through the rigging; and as the craft plunged more sharply I caught the sound of an occasional clatter of spray upon the deck forward. This went on for some considerable time, and then I became aware of the sound of surf booming distantly, but rapidly increasing in strength and volume, until after a period of perhaps ten minutes its thunder seemed to suddenly fill the air, as the brigantine brought it square abeam; then it rapidly died away again until it was lost altogether in the tumult ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the surf-white strand Chants of deep peal the sea-waves raise, Like voices from a viewless land Hymning a ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... hill called Hutchinson's Hill, you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries, for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men. Their wives ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... other divisions, on the right and in the centre, commanded by the brigadiers Whitmore and Laurence, made a show of landing, in order to divide and distract the enemy. Notwithstanding an impetuous surf, by which many boats were overset, and a very severe fire of cannon and musketry from the enemy's batteries, which did considerable execution, brigadier Wolfe pursued his point with admirable courage and deliberation. The soldiers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... dreadful secret he had been telling me as we came along, and then the parting when I didn't expect it, all I had of the man about me gave way somehow in a moment. And I sat alone, crying and sobbing on the sand-hillock, with the surf roaring miles out at sea behind me, and the great plain before, with Matthew walking over it alone on his way to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... reached a point opposite the imperilled swimmers, he was obliged to wait a little for the life-line, but as soon as it reached him he tied one end of it around his waist and plunged into the surf. The men who had brought the line did not uncoil it nor even take it out of the box, and very soon it was seen that the bathing-master was not only making his way bravely through the breakers, but was towing after him the coil of rope, and the box in which it ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... hither and thither by the gusts of her own emotions. But now she was at peace, she was reconciled to the Church; she would never be alone again. The struggle of her life still lay before her, and yet in a sense it was a thing of the past. She felt like a ship that has passed from the roar of the surf into the shelter of the embaying land, and in the distance stretched the long ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... bluff. But would they go on with their bloody work? They would suddenly find themselves leaderless, unguided. Would that suffice to stop them? The vivid memory came to me anew of that arch villain, Sanchez, lying where I had left him, his head resting in the surf—dead. Would the discovery of his body halt his followers, and send them rushing back to their boat, eager only to get safely away? This did not seem likely. Estada knew of my boarding the sloop from the wharf, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog—now darkening to twilight—with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on foot up the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... in addition to the pack she had slung over her shoulder. They finally started down a narrow path that led on down to the shore, leaving some of their equipment behind to be brought later on in the afternoon. As they neared the shore the boom of the surf ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... island, we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung around towards the shore. Some people came down to the water edge and hallooed to us, as we did to them; but the wind was so high, and the surf so loud, that we could not hear so as to understand ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... so steep is the pitch of the ground, and so narrow the shingly ledge at the bottom. And truly in bad weather and at high tides there is no shingle ledge at all, but the crest of the wave volleys up the incline, and the surf rushes on to the top of it. For the cove, though sheltered from other quarters, receives the full brunt of northeasterly gales, and offers no safe anchorage. But the hardy fishermen make the most of its scant convenience, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... it to the other end. On the sand were still many bathing-machines, but many others had begun to climb for greater safety during the winter to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping up from the surf and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they were mostly tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their open doors, and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat and sewed or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and mothers they ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... gratuitous addition, that, doubtless, "he had drawn the Young Laird over the craig with him, though the tide had swept away the child's body—he was light, puir thing, and would flee farther into the surf." ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... afternoon at Madras—two frightened women, now gladly seeking the shelter of their cabins, as the fleet steamer Coomassie Castle turned her prow toward Palk Strait. The terrible ordeal of "passing the surf" had appalled them, and the exhausted Nadine Johnstone at last fell asleep with her arms clasped around her sad-hearted governess. A hundred times had they read over together the old nabob's telegram: ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... half; but there may have been little ground for this precision. The district was alive with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion. On summer days the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation of driftwood ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... wave broke over the ship, Bertric struggled forward to us, laughing as he came. The sea ran along the deck knee deep round him as far as the foot of the mast, but it did not reach us here in the bows, though the spray flew over us, and our ears were full of the thunder of the surf on the beach. But the sharp bows were firmly bedded in the shingle, and we were in no danger of broaching to as wave after ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... follow the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it rose again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and understood that it was a British gun being ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gulls, peculiarly dainty in their appearance ("Bonaparte's gulls," they are called in books, but "surf gulls" would be a prettier and apter name), were also given to flying along the breakers, but in a manner very different from the pelicans'; as different, I may say, as the birds themselves. They, too, moved ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... life, her interest would break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland on a night like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach, though by the almanac it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must now be dashing within thirty yards of our door. Ah! ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the most feeble among us, were placed below deck, together with a few of the least skilful of the negroes, who composed the crew, and the hatches closed upon us, to prevent the sea from coming in between decks, while the dangers occasioned by the surf running over the bar, was passed. The wretched condition to which we were reduced, was such as to awaken a feeling of sympathy, even among the blacks, who shed tears of compassion for our misfortunes; during this time, the most profound silence reigned on board; the voice of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and, outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... foot of a huge wall of vast cliffs, which rose majestically to an enormous height. Some of these, dividing the beach with their sharp spurs, formed capes and promontories, worn away by the ceaseless action of the surf. Farther on the eye discerned their massive outline sharply defined ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... swim ashore in such a sea as this? Besides, it is over a half a mile, and the surf on the beach would tear a fellow all ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after her course ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... rush to help was made by those who had watched with feverish anxiety the passage through the broken water, lest the frail craft should be overturned and all aboard drowned. A rope was bent on to the stern, and the crowd quickly hauled the coble away from the heavy surf into safety. At this point, an elderly gentleman, tall, with a long, shaggy beard and bushy grey hair, which might have been a wig, rode up on a brown mare. His appearance and demeanour stamped him with the ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... himself sliding toward the land he was so provoked with the cow that he dove head first, down to the bottom of the sea. That was a pull! The Elephant was jerked off his feet, and came slipping and sliding to the beach, and into the surf. He was terribly angry. He braced himself with all his might, and pulled his best. At the jerk, up came the Whale out of ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... running races with the waves, but walking soberly and anon halting to scan the beach ahead. Her legs were bare to the knee, and she had hitched up her short skirt high about her like a cockle-gatherer's. In the roar and murmur of the surf she did not hear the Elder approaching, but faced around with a start as he called ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the monotonous thunder of the surf and discern a glassy ocean farther out, for the morning was calm, promising also to be ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... bay whose waters seemed to be dyed red, as Captain Nemo had already mentioned. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds, by the sound of surf chafing against rocks, or by the distant moan of a steamer churning the waves of the gulf ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... steadily toward the island. The surf thundered against its ramparts most threateningly. But the outlook did not seem so serious as that upon the other ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... a bosom-brooch! It made a very handsome one. I crossed the beach for home about sunset. The tide was so far down as just to give me a passage on the hard sand, between the sea and the loose gravel. The sea was calm and smooth, with only the surf-waves whitening along the beach. Several ladies and gentlemen on horseback were cantering and galloping before ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... day the sun was as hot as summer, and the wind a point to the east. Shalah once again was steersman, for we were inside some very ugly reefs, which I took to be the beginning of the Carolina keys. On shore forests straggled down to the sea, so that sometimes they almost had their feet in the surf; but now and then would come an open, grassy space running far inland. These were, the great savannahs where herds of wild cattle and deer roamed, and where the Free Companions came to fill their larders. It was a wilder land than the Tidewater, for only once did we see a ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... upturned handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist and foam; one breaker smote the sea wall in a surge of froth, another plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came rain; lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm was on us for the space ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... telling me of a wilder storm in this same bay some years ago, and of which he says to-day's gale reminds him. On that previous occasion three ships were wrecked together within a few yards of this house. It must have been a dreadful, awe-inspiring scene. No boat could live on the surf, so every survivor had to be dragged ashore with ropes fastened to the cliffs and hauled by willing hands. Hundreds of townspeople and fisher folk came pouring over from St. Ives and all the hamlets round about in order to take part in the work of rescue. According to my informant the scene was ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... has a fairylike beauty. To-day a heavy, black sky hung above a still blacker sea, and the ice-wall, which shines in the light with a dazzling white purity, looked more like an old white-washed wall than anything else. There was not a breath of wind; the sound of the surf at the bottom of the precipice now and then reached my ears — this was the only thing that broke the vast silence. One's own dear self becomes so miserably small in these mighty surroundings; it was a sheer relief to get back to the company ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she opened her eyes ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... book filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each time one reads them. One sees the "sea like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island" and straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild angry howl ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... about three and a half miles long, and averaging half a mile in depth, cutting the strong tidal stream which runs round the south coast of Wales and up the Bristol Channel, with steep cliffs and outlying crags and peaks of rock over which the surf is flung ceaselessly, even on still summer days, and with a dangerous tidal race at its northern end and the south-west and south-east angles. It stands, too, in the highway of the winds as well as of the waters, and is so scored and buffeted by gales ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll sure have to swim for it. Take ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... went calling in Cape Town, last night, without leave, stayed till past eleven and undertook to come in by sea. He shipped in a leaky boat with a crew composed of one Kaffir boy; the Kaffir funked the surf; they had an upset and Eaton-Hill waked up the picket by the fervor of his ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... The evening was extremely bright and pleasant; but the wind rose during the night, and the waves began to break heavily on the shore, making our island tremble. I had not expected in our inland journey to hear the roar of an ocean surf; and the strangeness of our situation, and the excitement we felt in the associated interests of the place, made this one of the most interesting nights I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... surf is safe for us, we can sail several hours toward Mobile, and gain that much. Indeed, I think we can get that far west before it will be tolerably safe to run ashore. We're hungry and thirsty, of course, but we must endure it. ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... had been there was a single bit of bow-plating sticking up out of the surf, and a bunch of miscellaneous floating wreckage drifting sluggishly toward the beach. And there was a solid, rounded, metallic shape apparently quite as long as the original tramp had been. There was a huge armored tube across its upper part, ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... was pulled through the surf. That afternoon the 'Firefly' hove in sight, and took ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... curiosity, we crossed the moat and found ourselves on the great bathing beach. To get out of the hands of the servants who immediately surrounded us, we jumped into one of the little wagons and were driven out into the surf. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of pressure, of prodigious poetry and beauty and amazement. This was a strange jungle of life. Tall coasts of windows stood up into the pure brilliant sky: against their feet beat a dark surf of slums. In one foreign street, too deeply trenched for sunlight, oranges were the only gold. The water, reaching round in two arms, came close: there was a note of husky summons in the whistles of passing craft. Almost everywhere, sharp above ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... rolled languidly to his feet and receded, leaving scattered half-wreaths of opalescent foam on the snowy sands. The wind that fanned his face was filled with the spicy odors of the sea. Seized by a capricious impulse, he threw off his clothes and dashed into the surf. The undulating billows closed around him; a singular lassitude passed into his limbs as he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his head; a tawny glory was all about ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... shore in long, hoarse strokes. Tiny seagulls, like specks of spray, wheeled above the line of surf. Their crying seemed larger than they. Far away the coast reached out, and melted into the morning, the tussocky sandhills seemed to sink to a level with the beach. Mablethorpe was tiny on their right. They had alone the space of all this ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... vaccination, medical attendance, medicine, public worship, amusements, and interment. It furnishes and maintains its own museums, parks, art galleries, libraries, concert-halls, roads, bridges, markets, slaughterhouses, fire-engines, lighthouses, pilots, ferries, surf-boats, steam-tugs, life-boats, cemeteries, public baths, washhouses, pounds, harbours, piers, wharves, hospitals, dispensaries, gas-works, water-works, tramways, telegraph-cables, allotments, cow-meadows, artisans' dwellings, schools, churches, ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... salt water to drop from the roof of the snow-house upon his lips. Though rather alarmed on tasting the salt, which could not proceed from a common spray, he kept quiet till the same dropping became more frequently repeated. Just as he was about to give the alarm, on a sudden a tremendous surf broke close to the house, discharging a quantity of water into it; a second soon followed, and earned away the slab of snow placed as a door before the entrance. The missionaries immediately called aloud to the sleeping Esquimaux to rise ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... amid the tall roofs of Antananarivo, and the well-watered gardens of Hankey; among the deep ferns of Raiatea and in the cotton-fields of Samoa; in Calcutta and Benares, within the shadows of the wealthy temples of Kali and Mahadeo; or where the creamy surf in curling waves throws up the garnet sands of Travancore,—each Sabbath-day rises the hymn of praise, the earnest prayer; each month they break the bread and drink the cup in memory of Him whom, not having seen, they love; in whom, though now they see Him not, ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... silent and distraught, as the two women, muffled up in their cloaks, chatted cheerfully, and partook of the sandwiches and claret that Janet had got out of the basket. "Fhir a bhata," the men sang to themselves; and they passed under the great cliffs, all black and thunderous now; and the white surf was springing over the rocks. Macleod neither ate nor drank; but sometimes he joined in the conversation in a forced way; and occasionally he laughed more ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... low but steep, the waters appeared to be deep, and a heavy surf dashed upon the island, and threw up its spray far over the mound. He was so near that he could distinguish the pebbles on the beach, and could see beyond the mound a long, flat ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was thus the equal of the undying sun. The other ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... results in a sagging chin; which detrimentally affects the brain-mind center of persistence. A man whose jaw habitually hangs loose may be capable of great determination for a while, but he is not persistent in character. He might clench his teeth, stiffen his body, and plunge into the surf to rescue a drowning person; but his first resolution to effect the rescue would be weakened by the cold water and by fear. He lacks the quality of the bulldog that will die rather than loose its ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... old sailor caught hold of my father's disengaged hand with a grip of iron, shouting a welcome in his hearty, loud voice which could have been heard across Pall Mall; for it was as breezy as the sea, echoing in ringing accents whose cordial tones I can almost fancy I now hear, like the surf of breakers breaking in the distance on ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was calm as glass, the sky cloudless azure; and the doubt was not whether we should be able to get on board through the surf, but whether, having got on board, we should not lie till ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... something dark in the hollow of a wave that swept to its fall. The moon came out as it broke, and the something was rolled in the surf up the shore. Donal stood watching it. Why should he move? What was it to him? The next wave would reclaim it for the ocean! It looked like the body of a man, but what did it matter! Many such were tossed in the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... a fire of thirty or forty pieces of cannon, with musketry from one end of the town to the other, opened upon the invaders. Nothing, however, could check the intrepidity with which they advanced. The night was exceedingly dark: most of the boats missed the mole and went on shore through a raging surf, which stove all to the left of it. The Admiral, Freemantle, Thompson, Bowen, and four or five other boats, found the mole: they stormed it instantly, and carried it, though it was defended, as they imagined, by 400 or 500 men. Its guns, which were six-and-twenty ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... ballooned out to the horse-block with a billowy rush somewhere between bounding and soaring; and Miss Betty slid down from the colt, who shied violently, to find herself enveloped, in spite of the dome, in a vast surf of green and ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Intrepid drew in with the land, they saw that the boiling surf of the western passage would force them to select the northern entrance, which twisted and turned between the rocks and the shoals. It was now nearly ten o'clock, and as the ketch drifted in before the light easterly breeze she seemed ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... thunder-cloud: now down the sweep Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale 15 Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale, Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about; While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron, With splendour and terror the black ship environ, 20 Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire In fountains spout o'er it. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to give it the name of a bay, while at the same time it is so large and so much exposed to the southeast and northwest winds, that it is little better than an open roadstead; and the whole swell of the Pacific Ocean rolls in here before a southeaster, and breaks with so heavy a surf in the shallow waters, that it is highly dangerous to lie near in to the shore during the southeaster season, that is, between the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and easy when you read about them in books of adventure. Shipwrecked mariners on coral islands in the Pacific always lash a few logs together with incredible speed, and perform wonderful journeys through boiling surf to rescue kegs of provisions and other useful commodities which they observe floating about on the waves. The waters of the moat, being tranquil, and overgrown with duckweed, would surely prove more hospitable than ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sea was almost as smooth as a mirror. The water was wonderfully transparent, and they could see hundreds of tropical fish swimming lazily at a great depth. On the beach the waves lapped in musical ripples, in striking contrast to the thundering surf on ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... in the mingled sounds of dock and river which came to her she could hear the roar of surf upon a golden beach. The stuffy air of Limehouse took on the hot fragrance of a tropic island, and she sighed again, but this time rapturously, for in spirit she was a child once more, lulled by the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... shoulders. The heavy pea-jacket was off from one arm, as if he had endeavored to extricate himself from it in the water. The sinewy arms lay powerless and free from tension then, but they told me that, when they first drew him from the surf, both hands were grasping a broken oar with such strength that they were unable to loose his hold, till suddenly the muscles relaxed, and the arms fell upon the ground. They turned the body, and a little water ran from ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... be long now before we'll be on this old stamping ground of ours," remarked Joe, as he looked at the surf breaking on the shore. "It will be ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... he gasped vainly, with a rattling noise in his gullet; his eyeballs started; a myriad coruscant lights danced and interlaced blindingly before them; in his ears there rang a roaring like the voice of heavy surf ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... to the window, pushed back the curtains of faded chintz, and stared out into the darkness. The wind was howling in the trees and about the eaves of the old inn, the harsh roar of the surf mingled with the noise of the storm, and the sleet lashed the window-panes ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... they lay for some days awaiting permission to land. At length all was ready. The ship's officers collected the tips due to them, and the pilgrims were put on shore: falling to kiss the ground as they struggled out of their boats through the surf. One by one they were brought before Turkish officials, who took record of their names and their fathers' names—an occasion on which noblemen often tried to pass themselves off as of low degree, to escape ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... difficult chances without misplay. Opportunities came for runs, but no runs were scored for several innings. Hopes were raised to the highest pitch only to be dashed astonishingly away. The crowd in the grand stand swayed to every pitched ball; the bleachers tossed like surf in a storm. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... the only person who lets me enjoy things, and now I cannot enjoy them in her absence. Yesterday I drove alone over the three beaches, and left her at home with a dress-maker. Never did I see so many lines of surf; but they only seemed to me like some of Kate's ball-dresses, with the prevailing flounces, six deep. I was so enraged that she was not there, I wished to cover my face with my handkerchief. By the third beach I was ready for ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... they sought to gain the ship a second time: the swell was so great, and the surf so strong, that no boat could venture—no vessel dared approach. Meanwhile, the generous crew were agitated by a thousand fears. In vain they waited for the wished-for boat: no answer was returned to ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... spot. Except by birds, turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many feet ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Station, and from which much had been hoped, proved almost useless owing to shortage of rolling stock, and consequently supply depended almost entirely on motor lorry and camel from Railhead, or from the Wadi Sukharieh, where some supplies were being landed in surf boats. The question of supply had been most difficult, and water supply hardly less so, even for the one corps, and it looked as if we might come in for some scarcity when we got up nearer the front. In the pursuit ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... streets came up to us like a distant surf. A steward, moving noiselessly, brought fresh siphons. And in the silence Trefethan's voice fell ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... ruffled the surface of the deep, and the lazy motion of the vessel as it rolled on the long unceasing swell that ever sets on that rocky shore, lulled the senses of all into a sleepy apathy. The only music that ever reached our ears was the eternal roar of that monotonous surf, as it licked the rugged beach ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... its greatest intensity about 7.15, when all the enemy slopes were hidden by waves of smoke like a heavy surf breaking on a rock-bound coast. Here and there spouts and columns of earth and debris shot up in the sunlight. It seemed that every living thing must perish within the radius of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the little coastwise steamer, there was an old sea running which made the surf leap high on all the rocky shores. I stood on deck, looking back, and watched the busy gulls agree and turn, and sway together down the long slopes of air, then separate hastily and plunge into the waves. The tide was ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ships ought not to anchor in less than eight, in which depth the south end of the Green Island (a small island lying under the west shore) will bear W. You water at a well that is behind the beach at the head of the bay. The water is tolerable, but scarce; and bad getting off, on account of a great surf on the beach. The refreshments to be got here, are bullocks, hogs, goats, sheep, poultry, and fruits. The goats are of the antelope kind, so extraordinarily lean, that hardly any thing can equal them; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... less in shadow, picked out here and there by twinkling lights. On the summit rested a fleecy cloud which concealed the pointed crags and hung from the edges of the precipice like a border of fine drapery. On the right, groups of buildings stretched onwards to Sea Point, where the surf was breaking on the rocks within a few feet of the road; on the left were the more picturesque suburbs of Rosebank, Newlands and Claremont nestling amid their woods and orchards; and still further on lay Wynberg, with its vast hospital, already become a household word in English homes. The dreary ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... respect. When a gun was fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Surf Duck or Sea Coot (O. perspicillata). A black Duck with white on head, but none on ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... view. As we could not find any place where we could possibly land our boat in safety, I and two more swam on shore with bags tied round our necks to hold the eggs in, and the boat with one of the men lay off, out of the surf. I should think the ground occupied by these birds (if I may be allowed so to call them) was at least a mile in circumference, covered in every part with grasses and reeds, which grew considerably higher ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... in a large, bright, bare room whose three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... show-cases of tintypes, there were at least acres of them. Occasionally an instantaneous photograph gave a lively picture of the beach, when the water was full of bathers-men, women, children, in the most extraordinary costumes for revealing or deforming the human figure—all tossing about in the surf. But most of the pictures were taken on dry land, of single persons, couples, and groups in their bathing suits. Perhaps such an extraordinary collection of humanity cannot be seen elsewhere in the world, such a uniformity of one depressing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spread over the incline of the forsaken cape head; and among the rocks and stones, happy words were lost in the roar of the wind and the surf. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... clear, and the unconscious concert of sea-sounds, the deeper pulse of ocean (in the horns), the flowing ripples, the sharp dash of lighter surf (in the Glockenspiel), all with a constant tremor, an instability of element (in trembling strings). We cannot help feeling the illusion of scene in the impersonal play of natural sounds. Anon will come a shock of exquisite sweetness that must have something of human. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... her and kissed her forehead lightly, as though he were in fear of too familiar approach to a thing too sacred for a rude caress. A great surf-like rush of comprehension swept over the woman. "Was I so loved as this—so honoured?" Then she said suddenly, "You are pale—are you in pain?" for she saw him grasp the wounded arm ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... ivied arches make, Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye, Frequent with hamlet, grove, and lucent lake Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie; Far to the east where billowy mountains break In surf of snow against a sapphire sky, Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges, Changing from gold to pink as ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... a perfect summer night when Elizabeth leaned out of her window into the stillness. The roar of the surf was as distinct as if it came from the pebbled beach below; yet, modulated by distance, it formed the base, sustained and rythmic, into which there fell harmoniously that legato treble of murmur which ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... higher in the outer bay. Slowly the brown ooze became a smooth, even, brown paste, and then, a few minutes later, the usual transformation scene took place. The bay was so protected by the long arm of land that half surrounded it that there was not only no surf, but no large waves even. The first you knew, the deepening water hid the ugly mud-flats, which were so level that only two or three inches of water were needed to transform the bay into ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... England summer. It had no snow-capped mountains in the distance; no amethyst foothills to enchain the eye; no wonderful canyons and splendid rocky passes to make the tourist marvel; no length of yellow sea sands nor plash of ocean surf; no trade, no amusements, no summer visitors;—it was just a quiet, little, sunny, verdant, leafy piece of heart's content, that's what Beulah was, and Julia couldn't spoil it; indeed, the odds were, that it would ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... just after the south-west monsoons, when all nature is clothed in verdant beauty, and a delightful coolness pervades the air, the Neilgerie Hills cannot be surpassed by those of Mahableshwa or any other sanitary station in India, even the Capital itself, whose shores are washed by the boiling surf from over the triple reefs of rocks during the rainy season; but that time being past, a more tranquil state of things pervades the ocean, and cool sea breezes waft over the city. At the time of which I am writing, Madras ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... for even the smaller steamers to go outside, the plan was modified so as to try drawing the boats on their trucks, though the number of our draft animals was as yet very small. [Footnote: Id., pp. 426, 427.] What with the heavy surf on the beach and the deep, soft sand beyond it, the weak teams could not pull the trucks far, and gave out before we reached the chosen position. As we turned back after midnight the moon was just rising, and the scene was a wild one, with the flying clouds and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... tightly in the cloak, which had fallen from the wretched man's shoulders as the fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... shores of this glorious island lay before us, fringed with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a bright joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently swelling ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... land, where beeves are good, And men have quaint, old-fashioned ways, And every burn has ballad lore, And every hamlet has its song, And on its surf-beat, rocky shore The eerie legend lingers long. Old customs live there, unaware That they are garments cast away, And what of light is lingering there Is ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson |
