"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every one else perished, Coiranus alone was saved by a dolphin. And when at last he died of old age in his native country, as it so happened that his funeral procession passed along the seashore close to Miletus, a great shoal of dolphins appeared on that day in the harbor, keeping only a very little distance from those who were attending the funeral of Coiranus, as if they also were joining in the procession and sharing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, A trip of dottrell, A swarm of bees, A school of whales, A shoal of herrings, A herd of swine, A skulk of foxes, A pack of wolves, A drove of oxen, A sounder of hogs, A troop of monkeys, A pride of lions, A sleuth of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... survey of the Premier Shoal, as it is now named, and then steered for the island of Maratua, which the sultan of Gonong Tabor had by his treaty made over to the English, representing it as having an excellent harbour and good water; but on our arrival we were much disappointed to find an island surrounded by reefs, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... I have heard that what is called a "shoal" of herrings consists of millions of fish, and takes up a place in the sea larger than the area of London. This fish takes its name from an old word which means an army; and the herring-army has to come a long, long march—if we so speak of a journey through "the paths of the seas"—before ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... thick and the silt and sand Were gathered day by day, Till not a furlong out from land A shoal had ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not—a great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that our own National Lifeboat Institution would do well to study the model for use in places where a sandy beach and shoal water make it sometimes impossible to launch the type of lifeboat now ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... inconvenience of absolute seclusion, for many months every year, until bridges and ferries are established. Having made his way through this wildest of wildernesses to the Skillet Fork, Mr. Birkbeck crossed that river at a shoal. The country, on each side of it, is flat and swampy; so that the water, in many places, even at this season, rendered travelling disagreeable; yet here and there, at ten miles' distance, perhaps, the very solitude tempts persons to pitch ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... years ago, presented an extensive surface of land covered with wood: there is not now a vestige of land to be seen; the spot where it existed being only known to voyagers by a shoal which is visible at low water. But not only have the islands been swept away, but the mainland along the west end of the lake seems gradually being encroached upon and engulphed by the waves; an undeniable proof of which is, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... around to the northwest like a pompano skipping along the water in a shoal. Then for three days it blows like a railroad train, out of the north, and we all shiver," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... To be sure, he knows nothing of that himself; but he has sharp rogues about him. If they once made good their landing here, it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done from the land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely come near enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the skulks—and that has enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that they would conquer the country—all brag—but still it would be a nasty predicament, and scare the poor cockneys like the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a fleet of fourteen cormorant fishers at a moment when the excitement of their pursuit is at its height. About seventy or eighty cormorants are diving and chasing about among a shoal of fish in a big silent pool, while fourteen wildly excited Chinamen, clad in abbreviated breech-cloths, dart their bamboo rafts about hither and thither, urging each one his own cormorants to dive by tapping them smartly with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the coffin itself was as a shoal in the Ravi River, splitting the stream into two branches, one on either side of the Dead; and the watchers of the Dead, who were soldiers, stood about It, moving no more than the still flame of the candles. Their heads were bowed; ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... very badly, had not permitted my gaining the advantage hoped for, but I began to examine the bay as soon as we anchored, and found that tho' extensive, it did not afford shelter to ships from the easterly winds; the greater part of the Bay being so shoal that ships of even a moderate draught of water are obliged to anchor with the entrance of the bay open, and are exposed to a heavy sea that rolls in when it blows hard from ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... his anxiety to be among the mackerel. Something must indeed be done for the mackerel; the case was a serious one. Had the Britishers shown a resolution to be among the fish, Smooth had lent them a hand to secure the whole shoal, and then brought them back, merely to avoid the penalty of the British law, and secure the bounty given by ours. Well, the Britishers were all gone to a political meeting, where a noisy politician of ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... when the accident occurred. The owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact, run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... of May 1836, our observer noticed salmon fry descending seawards, and he took occasion to capture a considerable number by admitting them into the salmon cruive. On examination, he found about one-fifth of each shoal to be what he considered sea-trout. Wisely regarding this as a favourable opportunity of ascertaining to what extent they would afterwards "suffer a sea change," he marked all the smolts of that species (about ninety in number) by cutting off the whole of the adipose fin, and three-quarters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... consequences as his only portion. The hot, reeking apartment wherein he toiled was the first solid ground that he had felt beneath his feet for many days. If he could hold that footing, the water might shoal so that he could reach the land. It is true he could always look to his mother for food and clothing if he would comply with her conditions. But, greatly perverted as his nature had been, food and clothing, the maintenance of a merely animal life, could no longer satisfy ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... scroll Would we read of sleep's dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole. Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee, Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal, From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen—his contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... witnessed the phenomenon, many persons having imagined that the end of the world was at hand. The regular recurrence of these meteoric displays has been satisfactorily explained by the assumption that round the Sun there travels in an elliptical orbit with planetary velocity a vast shoal of meteoric bodies some millions of miles in length and several hundred thousand miles in breadth. The nearest point of their orbit to the Sun coincides with the Earth's orbit, and the most distant part extends beyond the orbit of Uranus. These bodies accomplish a circuit of their orbit in ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the pursuit of the children of Israel. But here we find conflicting opinions. Some say that Pharaoh, arriving at the bank and seeing the impossibility of overtaking them, turned and retired; others, that there were shoal places in those far-away days where any one could cross; others, that they crossed on flats very like the ordinary modern mortal. But I do not accept this attempt to question the orthodox version, but will verify it as far as my observation will admit. The sea was likely red in those days, and has ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... frequently, we may conclude "that it swam upon or near the surface, arching back its long neck like a swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach. It may perhaps have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed amongst the sea-weed; and raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of powerful ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... impossible to row back against the tide with the fyke. I then untied it, and it went downstream, stake and all. I got it into the boat, rowed up, and set the stake again. Then I tied one end to the stake and got out of the boat myself in shoal water. Then the boat got away in deep water; then I had to swim for the boat. Then I rowed back and untied the fyke. Then the fyke got away. Then I jumped out of the boat to save the fyke, and the boat got away. Then I had to ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... it many a time—on the chart. I know every bluff and reef and shoal and cay around Andros from ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... them, consoled herself, as it is said, like Ariadne, with Bacchus.(675) This might be a fable, like that of her Cretan Highness—no matter; the fry of little anecdotes are so numerous now, that throwing one more into the shoal is of no consequence, if it entertains you for a Moment; nor need you ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... is one of the oldest towns in the valley; it stands at the head of navigation on the Sacramento, and was, therefore, a place of importance before the railroad was built. The river here is narrow and shoal, and it is crossed by one of those ferries common where the rapid current, pushing against the ferry-boat, drives it across the stream, a wire cable preventing it from floating down stream. The main street of the town consists mainly of bar-rooms, livery-stables, barber-shops, and hotels, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... washed out into the deep bay, and this periodical formation probably has prevented the Arabs from using the Rovuma as a port of shipment. It is not likely that Mr. May[4] would have made a mistake if the middle were as shoal as now: he found soundings ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... flower-like her beauty was, how like a lily, with a purity and an innocence to disarm any villainy. Thirty families had halted at the mill the day before, the mob checking their advance at that point. All was quiet until about four in the afternoon. We were camped on either side of Shoal Creek. Children were playing freely about while their mothers and fathers worked at the little affairs of a pilgrimage like that. Most of them had then been three months on the road, enduring incredible hardships for the sake of their religion—for him you ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... our clothes: about one o'clock an Indian came running to the shore with a turkey on his back: several others soon joined him, but we had no intercourse with them. We then went on for three miles, but the ascent soon became so obstructed by sandbars and shoal water, that after attempting in vain several channels, we determined to rest for the night under some high bluffs on the south, and send out to examine the best channel. We had made eight miles along high bluffs on each side. The ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... on that coast soon carried the vessel on a shoal, and Columbus was roused from his sleep by the striking of the ship and the cries ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... aboard. Even the best of the charts, are not absolutely correct, and this one may be entirely wrong. I shall rely more on keeping a careful watch tonight than on the map; you see this cape? For all I know it may jut out fifty miles east of where it appears to be and we might run into shoal water at any minute." ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... remained at anchor below, with the mortar boats, to cover the advance. An hour later a rocket shot up from the bluff and instantly the Confederate batteries opened fire. They were soon joined by long lines of sharpshooters. To avoid the shoal that makes out widely from the western bank, as well as to escape the worst of the enemy's fire, both of musketry and artillery, the ships hugged closely the eastern bluff; so closely, indeed, that the yards brushed the leaves from the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... and beasts sang the song again, and there came the largest, a mighty female, and she bore him well and easily over to Kes-poog-itk. But she was greatly afraid of getting into shoal water, or of running ashore, and this was what Glooskap wished her to do that he might not wet his feet. So as she approached she asked him if land were in sight. But he lied, and said "No." So she went ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... investigations in Europe and America, which it was difficult to make people appreciate, namely, the impossibility of man's fisheries affecting the numbers of the herring to any appreciable extent, a year's catch not amounting to the estimated number of a single shoal; while the flatfish and cod fisheries remove many of the most destructive enemies of the herring. Those who had not studied the question in this light would say that "it stands to reason" that vast fisheries must tend to exterminate the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... solved, the nature of this strange appearance can no longer be disputed since the twentieth of June. On that day, in the afternoon, the schooner "Markel" while speeding with all sails set, came into violent collision with something just below the water level. There was no shoal nor rock near; for the lake in this part is eighty or ninety feet deep. The schooner with both her bow and her side badly broken, ran great danger of sinking. She managed, however, to reach the shore before her ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... the seashore, the trawlers lay before thee these gifts by the grace of thine aid from the promontory, having imprisoned a tunny shoal in their nets of spun hemp in the green sea-entrances: a beechen cup and a rude stool of heath and a glass cup holding wine, that thou mayest rest thy foot weary and cramped with dancing while thou chasest ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Duro (t.v., p. 181) mentions a Spanish ordinance of 22nd February 1674, which authorized Spanish corsairs to go out in the pursuit and punishment of pirates. Periaguas, or large flat-bottomed canoes, were to be constructed for use in shoal waters. They were to be 90 feet long and from 16 to 18 feet wide, with a draught of only 4 or 5 feet, and were to be provided with a long gun in the bow and four smaller pieces in the stern. They were to be propelled by both oars and sails, and were ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... for a row," an excursion concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no conversation ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... was very complimentary to himself, fully as much so as he had expected; and the prospects of a new printing house, under his care, were set forth strongly. He had scarcely finished reading the letter, when the vessel struck on a shoal; for they were not out of the bay yet. She sprung a leak, and there was considerable excitement on board before the crew ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... more than three fathoms on it, it is small, and we had 14 fathoms close to it. This patch is about one mile North by West from the north-west point of the bay. Off this point is a low rocky islet; and when on the shoal, we could just make out the white sandy beach in the bay open between it and the point. The western points of the island are all shut in by the north point; therefore, keeping them open, will always enable the navigator to give this ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... shrouds, and the dashing of the waves, mingle with the roar of the thunder. The swelling sea seems lifted up to the heavens, to scatter its foam among the clouds; then sinking away to the bottom assumes the color of the shoal—a Stygian blackness. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of which we spoke, sailed towards Ireland, and it was not far across the sea, and he came to shoal water. It was caused by two rivers; the Lli and the Archan were they called; and the nations covered the sea. Then he proceeded with what provisions he had on his own back, and approached the shore ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... the meshes, but had lingered, until disturbed, beside their entangled companions. It contained a considerable body of herrings. As we raised them over the gunwale, they felt warm to the hand, for in the middle of a large shoal even the temperature of the water is raised—a fact well known to every herring fisherman; and in shaking them out of the meshes, the ear became sensible of a shrill, chirping sound, like that of the mouse, but much fainter—a ceaseless ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... said the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller. "There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck. Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... conversation showed him gaps and open stretches, whole subjects with which he was unfamiliar. Nevertheless, thanks to his Spencer, he saw that he possessed the outlines of the field of knowledge. It was a matter only of time, when he would fill in the outline. Then watch out, he thought—'ware shoal, everybody! He felt like sitting at the feet of the professor, worshipful and absorbent; but, as he listened, he began to discern a weakness in the other's judgments—a weakness so stray and elusive that he might not have caught it had ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... discrepancy there were several reasons. The cost of transportation to and from France was high—approximately twice that of freighting from London to Boston or New York. Navigation on the St. Lawrence was dangerous in those days before buoys and beacons came to mark the shoal waters, and the risk of capture at sea during the incessant wars with England was considerable. The staples most used in the Indian trade—utensils, muskets, blankets, and strouds (a coarse woolen cloth made into shirts)—could ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... gave me an ample letter, saying many flattering things of me to my father, and strongly recommending the project of my setting up at Philadelphia as a thing that must make my fortune. We struck on a shoal in going down the bay, and sprung a leak; we had a blustering time at sea, and were oblig'd to pump almost continually, at which I took my turn. We arriv'd safe, however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I had been absent seven months, ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Cut-Through a little ways, and then come about, and back he comes again, never slacking speed a mite, and running close to the shoal as he could shave, and all the time going through the bloodiest kind of pantomimes. And past he goes, to wheel 'round ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... border towns, but that which entered in the south was repulsed at Estrelleta, while that which invaded the north was defeated at Beler. A small Haitian fleet which set out to attack Puerto Plata blundered on a shoal where it was left high and dry and captured by ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... nearer, but is now almost abandoned for the drift-net; we shall find seines still common further west. The seine may be described as a wall of netting, buoyed at the surface and weighted below; this is dipped in the thick of the shoal, its ends drawn together, and the fish taken out with a tuck-net. The leaded bottom of the net must touch the ground or the fish will escape; thus seine-fishing is only practicable in shallow waters. With it is associated the occupation of ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... little party, with the exception of Elvira, who had accepted hospitality at a neighbouring farm, were camping in a meadow not far from a stream called Shoal Creek, which drove the mill. The logs of their evening fire were still alight. Susannah sat just within the dark opening of a low canvas-covered waggon; the unsteady flame light fell upon her, and sometimes showed a ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... them from the shore or from my canoe at twilight. Just outside the lily pads a shoal of minnows would be playing at the surface, or small trout would be rising freely for the night insects. Then, if you watched sharply, you would see gleaming points of light, the eyes of Chigwooltz, stealing out, with barely a ripple, to the edge of the pads. And then, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... but Jonas half persuaded and half compelled him to go through. When he was in the middle, the water came up so high, that Jonas was obliged to lift up his feet to keep them from being wet. Presently, however, it became more shoal, as the horse walked slowly along; and at last he fairly reached the dry ground, and stood dripping on ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... passing-bell doth toll, And the furies in a shoal Come to fright a parting soul, Sweet ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... wharf like a hyphen to link the grit with the salt. Down to the outer tip of the wharf ran a narrow-gauge track of rusted iron rails, and over the track on occasion plied little straddlebug handcars. Because the water offshore was shoal ships could not come in very close but must lie well out in the lagoon and their unloadings and their reloadings were carried on by means of whale-boats ferrying back and forth between ship side and dock side with the push cars to facilitate the freight movement at the land end of the connection. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... toward this point, Alfred, after divesting himself of some of his clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to stand, and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... than an hour they came up with her, then they laid the grappling irons aboard her and captured her. Then taking her in tow they made all sail for their own island and were but a little distant from it when the wind veered round and, splitting their sails, drove them on to a shoal which lies off our coast. Thereupon we sallied forth and, looking on them as spoil driven to us by Fate,[FN207] boarded and took them; and, slaying the men, made prize of the wreck, wherein we found the treasures and rarities in question and forty maidens, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... moment, while the fire-dots, like a shoal of swimming stars, drew slowly nearer, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... came on board; and the ships were again among the weeds. Columbus was determined to ascertain if these indicated shoal water and sounded, but could not reach bottom. The men caught a bird with feet like a gull; but they were convinced it was a river bird. Then singing land birds, as was fancied, hovered about as it darkened, but they disappeared before morning. Then a pelican was observed flying ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... is reported on Shoal Creek "3 or 4 miles above its mouth." No one could be found who knew its location more definitely or was able to give a ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... seine; The fishers cast the seine, and 'tis "Heva!" in the town, And from the watch-rock on the hill the huers are shouting down; And ye hoist the mainsail brown, As over the deep-sea roll The lurker follows the shoal; To follow and to follow, in the moonshine silver-clear, When the halyards creek to thy ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... think I have waited until now to sound that shoal water with a cautious plummet? Your mother is as ignorant of the propinquity as Greta herself. Lowther was dead before your family settled in Newlands. The families never once came together while the widow lived. And now not a relative survives who ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... assumes the aspect of a tiny flower, with the white denticulations for petals and the two bright red dots, the stigmata at the bottom, for stamens. When the grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel yard. It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones. The maggot has ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... how the trouts therein were but little, and not seldom none at all; and even therewith came these words into Birdalone's mouth, she scarce knew how: My lady, why do we not fish the lake, whereas there be shoal places betwixt us and the eyots where lie many and great fish, as I have seen when I have been swimming thereover? And now in that same creek whereas the serpent used to lurk when I was little, we have a thing come, which is made to swim on ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... heard them say that a party was aground on the shoal, had hurried down, without stopping to ask another question, to the shore. When he arrived there, he saw the vessel coming safely down the stream. After much labor it had been got off; and they were now going on in uncertainty, hoping to find ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and their British allies have been so unfortunate in the Gulf that they have chosen a safer approach to the shores of the South. Nearly all the blockade-runners at the present time go in at the Cape Fear River, where the shoal water favors them. A class of steamers of light draft and great speed are constructed expressly to go into Wilmington. Over $65,000,000 have been invested in blockade-running; and in spite of the capture of at least one a week by our ships, the business appears to pay immense profits. ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... sailed on her next trip, she was probably the most dangerous pirate ship that was ever afloat. You see they were all of them experienced men. They had years of practice behind them. They knew their ship, and they knew the ocean. There wasn't a shoal or a passage, an inlet or a creek from one end of the Spanish Main to the other that they didn't know. Black Pedro spread terror into far corners of the ocean, where neither his father nor grand-father had ever been heard of. They would have been proud ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... sea-level, though their fronts are back in narrow fiords, eight or ten miles from the sound. A similar point juts out into the sound five or six miles to the south, while the missing portion is submerged and forms a shoal. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... death? There are those poor fishermen now; there will be a white squall some day, and they will go down with those lateen sails of theirs, and be food for the very prey they were going to catch; and if you continue living here, you may eat one of your neighbours in the shape of a shoal of red mullets, when it is the season. The great secret, we cannot penetrate that with all our philosophy, my dear Herbert. "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Barren, barren, barren! And yet what a grand world it is! Look at this bay, these blue waters, the mountains, and these ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... or left boundary of a river, in looking from its source towards the sea, and the immediate margin or border of a lake. Also, a thwart, banco, or bench, for the rowers in a galley. Also, a rising ground in the sea, differing from a shoal, because not rocky but composed of sand, mud, or gravel. Also, mural elevations constructed of clay, stones, or any materials at hand, to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... marine affairs, Despatching single cruisers here and there, His vessel having need of some repairs, He shaped his course to where his daughter fair Continued still her hospitable cares; But that part of the coast being shoal and bare, And rough with reefs which ran out many a mile, His port lay on the other side ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... we landed upon the small island in the bay, and found it to be separated from the mainland by a very shoal channel, through which our boat had some difficulty in passing; the island is small, and formed of loose fragments of granite, over which the decomposed vegetable matter had formed a soil, which, although shallow, was sufficient to nourish ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the fish on which they and all their countrymen on the coast depend ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... to anchor,' he squeals, frantic. 'I believe we're plumb over to Wellmouth and drivin' right onto Horsefoot Shoal.' ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... himself with all the cups of his arms out of the tub of boiled rice, until Miss Mackerel made up her mind that he was an omeshi gurai, (rice glutton,) and drinking like a shoal of fishes, Lord Cuttle-fish went home, coiled himself up into a ball, and fell asleep. He ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... busy until nightfall, pulling and hauling. Some were sent ashore in a skiff, with a big hawser, which was made fast to a tree, and then all the power of the boat, men and steam, was put upon it to twist her nose off from the shoal into which it was stuck. All sorts of devices were resorted to, and a small gain was made once in a while; but it looked very much as if the calculation of Charlie, five feet in an hour, was too liberal an allowance for the progress towards ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Over life's tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; Chart and compass came from Thee; Jesus, Saviour, ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The Olaf was anchored at the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dangerous shallows, till January 9, 1580. When they thought themselves clear, and were sailing forward with a strong gale, they were, at the beginning of the night, surprised in their course by a sudden shock, of which the cause was easily discovered, for they were thrown upon a shoal, and, by the speed of their course, fixed too fast for any hope of escaping. Here even the intrepidity of Drake was shaken, and his dexterity baffled; but his piety, however, remained still the same, and what he could not now promise himself from his own ability, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... be called to mind in such a review is the long period of commercial depression which followed a short period of fictitious prosperity and inflated values. Misled by the apparently fair prospect of making money rapidly—of which prospect a shoal of interested persons sprang up to make the most—undertakings were entered upon on borrowed capital and properties were bought at prices which could not be realised upon them perhaps twenty years afterwards. The consequence of all this ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... called by the Indians, Ta-tzun-in. Ascending it by wading, with considerable difficulty, its bed was seen to be chiefly limestone rock. There are two rivers flowing into Newton Inlet from fifty to seventy-five feet in width, navigable for canoes at high tide about half a mile, when shoal rapids are reached. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... with foul wrecks And blood disfigured; floating carcasses Roll on the rocky shores; the poor remains Of the barbaric armament to flight Ply every oar inglorious: onward rush The Greeks amid the ruins of the fleet, As through a shoal of fish caught in the net, Spreading destruction; the wide ocean o'er Wailings are heard, and loud laments, till night, With darkness on her brow, brought grateful truce. Should I recount each circumstance ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that his statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation. But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... an hour we found ourselves nearing the land on the eastern shore of the bay, where we observe the railway comes out to meet us. The water on this side is so shoal for a distance from the shore that no ships of any considerable burden can float in it, so that the railway is carried out on piles into the deep water for a distance of nearly a mile. Here we land, and get into the train waiting alongside; then the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... outside of which is the rich dark blue of deep water. All the sea is perfectly clear from any mixture of sand or mud. It is this perfect clearness of the water which renders navigation among coral reefs at all practicable; as a shoal with even five fathoms water on it, can be discerned at a mile distance from a ship's mast-head, in consequence of its greenish hue contrasting with the blue of deep water. In seven fathoms water, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... world exists in my fancy in a most vivid and accurate manner. Repeated meditation on displays of shoal, sand-bank, and water, has created a sort of attachment to geography for its own sake. I have often reflected on the innumerable links in the chain of my ideas between my first eager examination of the route ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... for the General to devote his whole energies against the little city of Alkmaar. On that bank and shoal, the extreme verge of habitable earth, the spirit of Holland's Freedom stood at bay. The grey towers of Egmont Castle and of Egmont Abbey rose between the city and the sea, and there the troops sent by the Prince of Orange were quartered during the very brief period in which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Rameswaram, off the Indian coast, and lying between the Gulf of Manaar on the S.W. and Palk Strait on the N.E. It is more than 30 m. long and offers a serious impediment to navigation. Some of the sandbanks are dry; and no part of the shoal has a greater depth than 3 or 4 ft. at high water, except three tortuous and intricate channels which have recently been dredged to a sufficient depth to admit the passage of vessels, so as to obviate the long journey round the island of Ceylon which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... question of logic and thought-sequence, is a highly abstract study; for although, as has been said, you can do almost anything with words, with words alone you can do next to nothing. The realm where speech holds sway is a narrow shoal or reef, shaken, contorted, and upheaved by volcanic action, beaten upon, bounded, and invaded by the ocean of silence: whoso would be lord of the earth must first tame the fire and the sea. Dramatic and narrative writing are happy in this, that action ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... superintend the deepening and cleansing of the river; they have power to receive donations for charitable purposes, and annually relieve great numbers of poor seamen and seamen's widows and orphans; and as they alone supply outward-bound ships with ballast, on notice of any shoal or obstruction arising in the river Thames, they immediately direct their men and lighters to work on it till it is removed. The profits arising to the Corporation by this ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... inland from the sea, over shoal, against white rapid, and over spouting fall, toward the hidden valleys among the glaciers—and most of them die, don't they, when they get there? There's a symbol of life for you, but I sometimes think that, whether ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... cloister without loss of respect for the dead, perhaps even with the silent approval of their own day and generation could it awake from its endless sleep and review the strange and eventful course of human life since they left "this bank and shoal of time." But may it not be safely prophesied that of all the names on the starry scroll of national fame that of Charles Darwin will, surely, remain unquestioned? And entwined with his enduring memory, by right of worth and work, and we know with Darwin's ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... away under her lofty and spreading canvas, cleaving the billows before her, manned by an able crew, and under the guidance of experienced officers; the finger of science to point the course of her progress, the faithful chart to warn of the hidden rock and the shoal, the long line and the quadrant to measure her march and prove her position. The poor little hooker cleft not the billows, each wave lifted her on its crest like a sea-bird; but the three inexperienced fishermen to manage her; no certain means ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... could fully see the burning roundhouse. A moment later, chilled to the bone but with his mind cleared by the sharp plunge, Bucks felt his companion's arm drawing him toward the farther shore where, in the slack water of an elbow of the stream, Dancing led the way across a shoal of gravel and Bucks waded after him ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... milk-and-waterism. He often gives a foretaste of the terrific power which preachers will wield when they draw inspiration from science and life. Without ever frightening people with horrid pictures of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time. How needless to draw upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences of violating natural law! Suppose a preacher should give a plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature exacts for the crime, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... touch any shoal sufficiently shallow to necessitate this. Several times Francis could feel, by the dragging pace, that she was touching the oozy bottom; but each time she passed over without coming to a standstill. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... the fog clears gives us misty views of the Kilpatrick Hills. Ahead, Dumbarton Rock looms up, gaunt and misty, sentinel o'er the lesser heights. South, the Renfrew shore stretches broadly out under the brightening sky—the wooded Elderslie slopes and distant hills, and, nearer, the shoal ground behind the lang Dyke where screaming gulls circle and wheel. The setting out is none so ill now, with God's good daylight broad over all, and the flags flying—the 'Blue Peter' fluttering its ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Lat.; at night about three hours before daybreak, we again unexpectedly came upon a low-lying coast, a level, broken country with reefs all round it. We saw no high land or mainland, so that this shoal is to be carefully avoided as very dangerous to ships that wish to touch at this coast. It is fully ten miles in length, lying in ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... the boatman. "Zey take in water at ze gills and zey shoot it out from a pipe near ze mout', an' zat way zey push zemselves along tail first. I'll bring ze boat closer to ze shore for zey'll back away from ze boat an' get into shoal water where we can ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off—in preparation for deep water—sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the self-concern ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... middle of January. And now we met with an adventure which was like to have stayed our further progress and put a summary end to all our hopes. For sailing forward under a strong gale we were one night suddenly surprised by a shock, caused by our being thrown upon a shoal, on which the speed of our course served to fix us very fast. Upon examination we found that the rock on which we had struck rose perpendicularly from the water, and there was no anchorage, nor any bottom to be found for some distance. On making ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... schooner, plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had made, and the Sylph, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of the shoal. The deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist the sails it was obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked frantically in a bright, unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now continuously aflame ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tadpole which, first of the shoal, attains to the dignity of possessing limbs, for so ferocious are the later ones, and so jealous of their precocious little brother, that they almost always fall upon him, and not content with killing, never rest till every morsel ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... from her reverie as the bottom of the dory struck the sand. The shoal water stretched twenty feet beyond. He pulled in the oars and rose desperately. "It's of no use: I shall have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... like, my lady; it is all the same. You have read of panic stricken people, when a church or a theatre is on fire, rushing to the door all in a heap, and crowding each other to death? It is something like that with the fish. They are swimming along in a great shoal, yards thick; and when the first can get no farther, that does not at once stop the rest, any more than it would in a crowd of people; those that are behind come pressing up into every corner, where there is room, till they are one dense mass. Then they push and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the Griffin was—that have followed in her wake up what Hennepin called "the vast and unknown seas of which even the savages knew not the end." They have, in the evolution of nautical zoology, lost beak, wings, and feathers, and now like a shoal of wet lions, tawny and black, their powerful heads and long steel backs just visible above the blue water, they course the western Mediterranean from spring to winter. [Footnote: It is an intruding and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... along this island to the southwest, and fell in with two islands at its extremity, and passed between them; that on the north side is named Bolyna, and that on the south Bamdym. Sailing to the west-southwest a matter of fourteen leagues, they fell in with a white bottom, which was a shoal below the water; and the black men they carried with them told them to draw near to the coast of the island, as it was deeper there, and that was more in the direction of Borneo, for from that neighborhood the island of Borneo could already be sighted. This same day they reached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... chest, a fathom under the sand," the Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles. "Kings, principalities and powers!—all of us, the least of us. And plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more. The latitude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ship's company ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... cause, and to profit by, sly confusion—the plan of his able lawyers. They had for years steered his hardy craft, now under the flag of peaceful commerce and now under the black banner of the buccaneer. The best of pilots, they had enabled him to clear many a shoal of bankruptcy, many a reef of indictment. They served well, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... not absorbed by caustic potash, but was partly taken up by pyrogallic acid, that is to say, that little or no carbonic acid was present, but that a fair amount of oxygen was present, diluted of course by nitrogen. The exposure of a shoal of the beautiful blue pelagic Siphonophore, Velella, for a few hours, enabled me to collect a large quantity of gas, which yielded from 24 to 25 per cent. of oxygen, that subsequently squeezed out from the interior of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... know, whose concord high Of thought and music lifts the soul Where many a glimmering starry shoal Glides through ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... coasts about Scarborough, where the haddocks, cods, and dog-fish, are in great abundance, the fishermen universally believe that the dog-fish make a line, or semicircle, to encompass a shoal of haddocks and cod, confining them within certain limits near the shore, and eating them as occasion requires. For the haddocks and cod are always found near the shore without any dog-fish among them, and the dog-fish further off without any haddocks or cod; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the passing-bell doth toll, And the Furies, in a shoal, Come to fright a parting soul, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... upon a shoal, during the tempest and the obscurity of the night, and the pilot knew not where they were. His reckoning was lost—his calculations had all been set at naught by the confusion produced by the fearful ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Between us and the shore, a land-floe, of some thirty miles in width, followed the sinuosities of the coast-line. Bergs here and there strewed its surface; but the major part of them formed what is called a "reef," in the neighbourhood of Devil's Thumb, denoting either a bank or shoal water in ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... glory and joy that he felt was the inmost message of the chord—this Presence in the room sought to push forward into objective reality. And behind it, he knew, lay the stupendous urgency and drive of some power that held the entire universe in its pulses as easily as the ocean holds a shoal ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Brooklyn—Plymouth Church Extracts from Henry Ward Beecher's Sermon Greenwood Cemetery Barnum's Hippodrome On Board the "Manhattan" Setting Sail—The Parting Hour Sea-Sickness A Shoal of Whales Approaching Queenstown—The First Sight of Land Coasting Ireland and Wales Personal ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... shoal of jolly porpoises came rolling and tumbling by, turning up their sleek sides to the sun, and spouting up the briny element in sparkling showers. No sooner did the sage Oloffe mark this than he was greatly rejoiced. "This," exclaimed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... to move me. The rest of the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skipping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I fain would have him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times at least this happened ere the line hinted that he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the hollow formed between the round hill at the right entrance of the Sarawak river and the next hill a-head, and as you approach the river's mouth, steer for a small island close to the shore, called Pulo Karra, or Monkey Island. These marks will conduct you over a shoal with 1/4 three, the least depth at high water; you will then deepen your water, and keep away for the low green point on the far side of the river, edging gradually in; and when you are some distance from the opposite ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... have been laid on many New England farms, at shoal depths, of two or two and a half feet, and have in a few years failed. For a time, their effect, to those unaccustomed to under-drainage, seems almost miraculous. The wet field becomes dry, the wild grass gives place to clover and herds-grass, and the experiment ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... was one of those powerful romances of an ideal society with which recent days have made us all familiar. But Caspar's book was the forerunner of the shoal which the last ten years have cast upon our shores. He was one of the first to follow in the steps of Sir Thomas More and Sir Philip Sidney, and picture life as it should be rather than as it is. His hero, an Englishman of our own time, puzzled and distressed at ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shall close again By day nor yet by night, While man shall take his life to stake At risk of shoal or main (By day nor yet ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing that Godwin had acquired could be enduring, for the very lands he left behind him no longer exist, his chief estate on the coast of Kent was swallowed by the sea, and now forms the dangerous shoal called the Goodwin Sands. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had come triumphantly through many terrible dangers, so it was no wonder he had a good deal of confidence in himself. And his shapely little body was so packed full of energy, so thrilling with vitality, that he felt himself already a sort of lord in those shoal-water domains. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... days the party had completed all preparations and Bivens's big steamer, the Buccaneer, slipped quietly through the Narrows and headed for the Virginia coast, towing a trim little schooner built for cruising in the shoal waters of the South. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... looking out forward, suddenly called Code's attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and "upending," and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... is supposed, the place where Jimenez, the discoverer of California, lost his life in 1533, and where Cortez planted his ill-fated colony two years later. In entering the bay, the flagship ran on a shoal, and they were obliged to cut away her masts and lighten her of her cargo of provisions, a great part of which was wet and lost. Here Vizcaino landed and built a stockade fort, and leaving the dismantled ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... such as are generally made use of as mantel-piece ornaments, teeming with life, and running about in every direction. A few fish were caught in nets outside the Runnymede, quantities of small ones being driven into shoal water by the large ones, which ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... captain; "there's many a shoal and lone rock down on the charts that nobody ever could find again. I've had my ship right over the Chimneys, near enough to see the smoke, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... upon the principle of the screw-propeller, a small piece of clock-work for registering the number of revolutions made by the little screw during the descent; and it having been ascertained by experiment in shoal water that the apparatus, in descending, would cause the propeller to make one revolution for every fathom of perpendicular descent, hands provided with the power of self-registering were attached to a dial, and the instrument was complete. It worked beautifully ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... that day full of the plan for his great scheme—just a quibble of the law and the thing was done. We were all to be made rich and successful by it, he explained. There is no use in describing to you the intricacies of his idea; it was one of those shoal waters in which the honesty of young lawyers can sometimes come to grief. The pursuit of law will winnow out the true from the false; it makes an upright man a hundred times more certain and more proud of ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... answer sullenly that they have nothing to sell. Then follows a direction, which they obey, to cast the net on the right side of the boat. Perhaps they thought the stranger—for it is clear that as yet they had no suspicion of his identity—had seen some sign of a moving shoal which had escaped them. They secure a great haul of fish. Then John has an inkling of the truth; and I know no words which thrill me more strangely than the simple expression that bursts from his lips: It is the Lord! With characteristic impetuosity ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from which projects a long handle. This is used only when there are floods; the fisher draws it up the rivulets, and every now and then pulls it up to look for his success. Sometimes he nets a great many at a time, and especially if he wait the arrival of the flood, because a large shoal mostly comes down with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... 24th.—Mr. Pennell, his daughter, and a few other friends, joined us in an expedition to Itaparica[70], a large island that forms the western side of the Bay of All Saints. A shoal runs off from it a long way to sea, and there are reefs of coral rocks on different parts of its coast. The distance from the city to the nearest landing place on the island is five miles and a half, which our boats' ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... hours. I lay for a long time under a tree, studying the Ogallalla tongue, with the zealous instructions of my friend the Panther. When we were both tired of this I went and lay down by the side of a deep, clear pool formed by the water of the spring. A shoal of little fishes of about a pin's length were playing in it, sporting together, as it seemed, very amicably; but on closer observation, I saw that they were engaged in a cannibal warfare among themselves. Now and then a small one would fall a victim, and immediately disappear down ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the lines thrown out alongside of the vessel, and the astonishing quantity of fish, all of the cod species, which were drawn on board, added to the weeds that floated on every side, were more than sufficient to make it believed that they were sailing upon a shoal. We shall speak below of the species of this fish; but as for the weeds, which were perceived on every side, besides that they gave reason to suppose that we were approaching the land, their appearance in this gulph, also gives ground ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... chieftains—to Balor of the Evil Eye, and to Indec, son of De Domnand, chiefs of the Isles. These two leaders gathered ships from all the harbors and settlements of the Fomorians, from the Hebrides, the Shetlands, and far-distant Norway, so that their fleet was thick as gulls above a shoal of fish along the north shores ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... a rush of steps arose behind, and next moment they were caught up in the toils of a net constructed of towels knotted together, stretching across the path, and held at each end by two swift runners who swept them along at a headlong pace, catching up a shoal of stray fish on the way until even the stalwart dredgers were compelled, from the very weight of their ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed |
