"Breakwater" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew that ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... breakwater which government is constructing here at great expense. When finished it is proposed that the Indian steamers shall call here instead of at Galle, the harbor of which is dangerous. This may be a decided improvement upon the whole, but the tourist who does not see pretty ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... At lunch the captain said, "I'll soon show you land! It will be Mizzenhead, the farthest southwest point of Ireland." This is the first pen put to paper since I wrote you at the Delaware breakwater, eleven days ago. Think of it, oh, ye scribbling fairies, almost two weeks and not a letter written ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... ever suffers degradation at the same time along its whole indented length; and we {287} must remember that almost all strata contain harder layers or nodules, which from long resisting attrition form a breakwater at the base. We may at least confidently believe that no rocky coast 500 feet in height commonly yields at the rate of a foot per century; for this would be the same in amount as a cliff one yard in height retreating ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... at home, pale and frowning, bit nervously at the ends of their cigars, and, from the lee of the boats drawn up on the sand, studied the lowering horizon with the tense penetrating gaze of sailormen, or nervously watched the harbor entrance beyond the Breakwater on whose red rocks the first storm waves were breaking. What was happening to so many husbands and fathers caught with their nets down off shore? Each succeeding squall, as it sent the terrified watchers staggering along ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... vigor—and that assault, also, in the presence of the caliph and the crescent, was gloriously discomfited. Now if, in the moment of triumph, some voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out, 'How long shall this great Christian breakwater, against which are shattered into surge and foam all the mountainous billows of idolators and misbelievers, stand up on behalf of infant Christendom?' and if from the clouds some trumpet of prophecy had replied, 'Even yet for eight hundred ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the evening of August 29th, while cruising to the westward, weather threatening, ran in for a harbor behind the Stonington breakwater, where we anchored. My glass falling and there being every indication of a storm, I prepared my ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the woods began again. They seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away—no connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the sea along a breakwater. ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... park is one of the most beautiful in England and occupies the whole of one side of the Sound. Through our glasses we could see beautiful lawns, walks and tropical palm trees growing here in the open air. Soon we could distinguish the great breakwater that almost closes the entrance to the Sound. On all sides we could see from grimy walls and caverns the black gaping mouths of cannon. The shore outlines rose about five hundred feet on each side and great batteries and the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... surf-drenching has sometimes to be endured in landing at the mole. This is a serious objection to the port where every ton of freight must be transferred between ship and shore by lighters. Nevertheless, this difficulty might be easily overcome by the construction of a substantial breakwater, such as has lately been successfully built at Colombo, Ceylon, or that which has robbed the roadstead of Madras, India, of its former terrors. To be sure, such a plan requires enterprise and the liberal expenditure of money. Unless the citizens open their purses and pay ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... stronghold of those who exchange cash for artists' dreams. He ransacked the studio and set out on his mission in a cab bulging with large, small, and medium-sized canvases. Like a wave receding from a breakwater he returned late in the day, a ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... between two headlands, the points of which approached each other so closely that the river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel through which to pour itself into the sea. The Golden Fortune, therefore, backed by towering woodlands, looked out to sea at one side, across to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of zigzag steps, by which ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... to speak of Tangier and the mole again. I spent many years upon the devising and construction of that great breakwater. It could have sheltered every ship of his Majesty's navy. It was wife and children to me. My heart lay very close to it. I fancied indeed my heart was disrupted with the disruption of the mole, and it has at all events, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... reach'd the shelter of the deep sea bay, Their sails they furl'd, and lower'd to the hold; Slack'd the retaining shrouds, and quickly struck And stow'd away the mast; then with their sweeps Pull'd for the beach, and cast their anchors out, And made her fast with cables to the shore. Then on the shingly breakwater themselves They landed, and the sacred hecatomb To great Apollo; and Chryseis last. Her to the altar straight Ulysses led, The wise in counsel; in her father's hand He plac'd the maiden, and address'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the debris of her scattered stores and cargo, overtaken by the wild growth of the strange city and the reclamation of the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded; her retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of solid warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her. But still a ship despite her transformation. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... as she ran along the south coast, anchoring under Portland for a day, while the party examined the works of the breakwater and paid a visit to the quarries, where the convicts were at work. She put into Torquay, Dartmouth and Plymouth, spending a day in the two former ports and two at the last named. They looked into Fowey, and ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... slipped through the breakwater of Alexandria. Hundreds awaited her coming—nurses, doctors, and friends. Bill and Claud could not get up to view the scene. But Paddy watched it all. His eyes scanned the faces on shore. At last they rested on a familiar figure—a girl with a ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... Inside the breakwater the 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 ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... entered the car, which cautiously proceeded along the breakwater, with glimpses of black water and an occasional dim light on either hand. They bumped over the railway-lines and rough cobblestones of a dockyard, glided through a slumbering town, and so gradually drew out into the open country where ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... is open to the eastward, and the hurricanes which sometimes occur during July, August, and September, blow the strongest from the southeast, so that vessels will not venture in the bay during the hurricane season. I have landed twice at the Cape in a small boat, and I think a breakwater can be built, at small cost, so as to make a safe harbour at all seasons. Stone can be obtained with great ease from three cones of rocks rising from the sea, and forming the extreme southerly point of the Cape, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... been found on removing boxing that the portion adjacent to the wood was frequently friable and of poor quality, owing to the fact just stated. It is usual to face or plaster concrete work after removing the boxing. On breakwater work, where the writer was engaged, the wall was faced with cement and flint grit, and this was found to form a particularly hard and lasting protection to the face of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... a launch out, too, patrolling the riverside from here to Tilbury. Another lies at the breakwater." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Should you care to take a run ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... this city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody. At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to the rhythmic surf, stands the Hotel Coronado; ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Channel packet and had seen the bows swing westward of Dover Castle and head toward the pier. Would Sylvia be there, he had wondered, as he watched the cluster of atoms on the quay, and in a little while he had seen her, standing quite alone, at the very end of the breakwater that she might catch the first glimpse of her lover. Others had traveled with them in the carriage to London and there had been no opportunity of speech. All that he knew was that she had been alone now for some weeks in the little ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... three years, nearly sixteen, hard of body, weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, he judged it time to go home and open the books. So he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a windjammer bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater to San Francisco. It was a hard voyage, of one hundred and eighty days, but at the end he weighed ten pounds the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... into some sort of shelter," guessed Harry. "Probably von Kluck has navigated the schooner behind a breakwater." ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... harbour was diverted from the south at a cost of L. 80,000, and 90 acres of new ground (in addition to 25 acres formerly made up) were provided on the north side of the river for the Albert Basin (with a graving dock), quays and warehouses. A breakwater of concrete, 1050 ft. long, was constructed on the south side of the stream as a protection against south-easterly gales. On Girdleness, the southern point of the bay, a lighthouse was built in 1833. Near the harbour mouth are three batteries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... found that they had been driven to the landward shore of a long island, which formed a natural breakwater to a spacious bay, with a narrow entrance at either end. The island was thickly covered with woods, giving shelter to a multitude of wild goats, its only inhabitants. For the Cyclopes have no ships, so that the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... early they reached Plymouth Harbour. As they entered the mouth of the breakwater, the tender came alongside to convey them ashore. Guy looked over the bulwarks and saw Cyril waiting for him. In a fervour of delight at the sight of the green fields and the soft hills of old England—the beautiful Hoe, and the solid stone ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... north-western side, and uniting again with the island at its south-western extremity, forming a lagoon of the same length as the island, and about three-quarters of a mile wide at its widest point. The barrier reef, in fact, constituted a magnificent natural breakwater, upon which the surf eternally broke in a loud, sullen roar of everlasting thunder, while inside it the water was smooth as a mill pond, shoaling very gradually from the reef to the shore of the island, which consisted of a narrow ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... of the cliff beyond the large idol, is much destroyed; on this, the force of the current would have acted: a breakwater occurring along the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... on the least encouragement, but Dick's indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the breakwater. 'Got it at last!' he exclaimed, as a lock of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... floating fortresses Villefranche was useful to France. Now it sees only torpedo-boats and destroyers, and the lack of direct communication with the interior has prevented its commercial development. Better an artificial breakwater with no Alps behind than a natural ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... of France, is not often visited by those who travel in Normandy, for with the exception of the enormous breakwater, there is nothing beyond the sights of a huge dockyard town that is of any note. The breakwater, however, is a most remarkable work. It stands about two miles from the shore, is more than 4000 yards long by 100 yards wide, and has a most formidable appearance with its circular ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... were fastened to the anchors. This construction would not be suitable below low-water mark. Fig. 26 represents the Aberdeen sea outfall, consisting of cast iron pipes 7 ft in diameter, which are embedded in a heavy concrete breakwater 24 ft in width, except at the extreme end, where it is 30 ft wide. The 4 in wrought iron rods are only used to the last few pipes, which were in 6 ft lengths instead of 9 ft, as were the remainder. Fig. 27 shows an inexpensive method of carrying small pipes, ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... of the breakwater outside Malamocco, and a pilot-boat was making us from the land. Even at this point the innumerable fortifications of the Austrians began, and they multiplied as we drew near Venice, till we entered the lagoon, and found it a nest of fortresses ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... "Yankee" cruised up and down the coast between Delaware Breakwater and Block Island. Many vessels were sighted, and on two occasions it was considered expedient to sound "general quarters," but nothing came of it. We finally concluded that the enemy were fighting shy of the vicinity ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... through a transit except across the college campus, to sun-tanned, fever-haunted veterans who, for many years, had fought Nature where she was most stubborn, petulant and cruel. They had seen a tidal-wave crumple up a breakwater which had cost them a half-year of labor, and slide it into the ocean. They had seen swollen rivers, drunk with the rains, trip bridges by the ankles and toss them on the banks, twisted and sprawling; they had seen a tropical hurricane overturn a half-finished light-house ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... forms a natural breakwater to the coast of Dalmatia is broken into two groups by the Punta Planka, the ancient Promontorium Syrtis, south of Sebenico. To the northern group belong Veglia, Cherso, Ossero, Arbe, Pago, and a number of smaller and less important islands, including Ugljan, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... a vast expanse about seventy miles across from Sivan Island to Roanoke. On the seaward side stretches a chain of long and narrow islands, forming a natural breakwater north and south from Cape Lookout to Cape Hatteras and from the latter to Cape Henry, ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... their offices and gone home, that we were able to get hold of it this evening. At last everything and everybody were collected on board; our usual parting gifts of books and newspapers to barracks, hospitals, and schools were sent ashore, and we steamed slowly out of the harbour and round the breakwater. Then 'Full speed ahead' was the order given, and once more we left the lights and luxuries of land behind us and sailed forth into the soft ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... I cast anchor at Fayal, exactly eighteen days from Cape Sable. The American consul, in a smart boat, came alongside before the Spray reached the breakwater, and a young naval officer, who feared for the safety of my vessel, boarded, and offered his services as pilot. The youngster, I have no good reason to doubt, could have handled a man-of-war, but the Spray was too small ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... leading to the citadel. From gaps between the tall leaning houses a glimpse of the sea, silvered by the dying moonlight, flashed now and again; and in the silence of the night the low ripple of small waves against the breakwater could be distinctly heard. A sense of holy calm impressed him as he paused a moment; and the words of an old monkish verse came back to him from some far-off depth ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... evening, just after nightfall, a number of passengers were gathered on the upper deck eagerly watching the colored breakwater lights and the city lights beyond. Suddenly a general curiosity was aroused by a small boat of some sort, on the left, scudding swiftly along in the darkness like a blacker streak on the black ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... fading into a soft cloudless summer's night, and Doctor Mulhaus stands upon Mount Edgecombe, looking across the trees, across the glassy harbour, over the tall men-of-war, out beyond the silver line of surf on the breakwater, to where a tall ship is rapidly spreading her white wings and speeding away each moment more rapidly for a fair wind, towards the south-west. He watches it growing more dim minute by minute in distance and in darkness, till he can see no longer; then brushing ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... vessel was steered through an opening between them; but in another few minutes she struck heavily, one of her masts went over the side, and she lay fast and immovable. Fortunately, the outside bank of sand acted as a sort of breakwater; had she struck upon this the good ship would have gone to pieces instantly; but although the waves still struck her with considerable force, the captain had good hope that she would not break up. Darkness came on; the tempest seemed to lull. As there was no immediate ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... for services. wa'ter break (breakwater), that which breaks the force of water. weap'on, any thing to be used against an enemy. whence, from which or what place. whiff, a quick puff of air. whith'er, to what place. wig, a covering for the head, made of hair. wine, a liquor made from grapes. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... onto the First Level Down. The city roof curves down all along the south side of the city into the water and about fifty feet below it. That way, even in the post-sunset and post-dawn storms, ships can come in submerged around the outer breakwater and under the roof, and we don't get any wind or heavy ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... little knicknacks and curiosities, which Elizabeth always laughed at, such as a glass ship, which was surrounded with miniature watering-pots, humming-tops, knives and forks, a Tonbridge-ware box, a gold-studded horn bonbonniere, a Breakwater-marble ruler, several varieties of pincushions, a pen-wiper with a doll in the middle of it, a little dish of money-cowries, and another of Indian shot, the seed of the mahogany tree, some sea-eggs, a false book ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... idea at home seems to be that a woman's goodness depends on someone else keeping it for her: that she should stick her head into the sand like an ostrich and, since she sees nothing, be womanly. If I have a soul at all, and it can't sail beyond a harbor's breakwater, I have nothing to lose, but if it can go out and come back safe it has the right to do it. That's what college means to me: the preparation for a real life: the chance to equip myself. That's why the question seems a vital crisis—why it ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... their effect on the Establishment is very remarkable. In a letter to his friend Isaac Williams he says: 'Everything I hear makes me fear that latitudinarian opinions are spreading furiously in the Church of England. I grieve deeply at it. The Anglican Church has been a most useful breakwater against Scepticism. The time might come when you, as well as I, might expect that it would be said above, "Why cumbereth it the ground?" but at present it upholds far more truth in England than any other form of religion would, and than the Catholic Roman Church ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys and wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare rising from its mossed lawns studded with immemorial oaks. And Loch Kilbawne among the wild highlands, and Lochs Innsa and Barre, and Ballybarron Harbour, with its Titanic breakwater, and three beacons, and the dun-brown islands bidden in their veil of surf-edged spindrift, shaken by the voices of hidden waters roaring ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... time they had reached the end of the great breakwater, terminating in a lighthouse, the limit, on one side, of the inner harbor. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... past the iceberg. At moments when she plunged the whiteness of the water creaming upon the surges on either hand threw out a phantom light of sufficient power to enable me to see that the forward part of the brig was littered with wreckage, which served to a certain extent as a breakwater by preventing the seas, which washed on to the forecastle, from cascading with their former violence aft; also that the whole length of the main and top masts lay upon the larboard rail and over the side, held in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... "On the great breakwater at Port Said stands the bronze statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, his right hand extended in a gesture of invitation to the mariners of all nations to take their ships through the great canal which was the fruit of his genius and diplomacy. Not one word is there to indicate ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... to Ceylon covers a distance of about thirteen hundred miles. We sighted the island on Sunday, December 24th, and landed at Colombo on the following day, which was Christmas. When we rounded the seaward end of the substantial breakwater now building, over which the lofty waves were making a clean breach, five of the large and noble steamships of the P. and O. line were seen moored in the harbor, making this a port of call on their way to or from India, China, or Australia. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... "ye 've be'n helpin' me nicely wid the washin', an' I 'm going ter give ye a holiday. Ye can take yer hook an' line an' go fishin' on the breakwater. I 'll fix ye a lunch, an' ye need n't come back till night. An' there 's half a dollar; ye can buy yerself a pipe er terbacky. But be careful an' don't waste it," she added, for fear she was ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... of Tobermory resembles that of Oban. A quiet bay has its secure island-breakwater in front; a line of tall, well-built houses, not in the least rural in their aspect, but that seem rather as if they had been transported from the centre of some stately city entire and at once, sweeps round its inner inflection, like a bent bow; and an amphitheatre ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... great engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous for the Caledonian canal and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie (1761-1821), drainer of Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo bridge and the Plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of Eskdale borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be made famous by Scott: Rennie was the son of an East Lothian farmer. Both of them learned their trade by actual employment ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the naval strength of Athens is so great that it is impossible to concentrate the entire fleet at one harbor. Each of these establishments is protected by having two strong battlements or breakwaters built out, nearly closing the respective harbor entrances. At the end of each breakwater is a tower with parapets for archers, and capstans for dragging a huge chain across the harbor mouth, thus effectively sealing the entrance to any foe.[*] The Zea haven has really the greatest warship ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... of any kind, whether of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke, breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible under the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... "Trust the people." We know what was their object well enough, They let in the flood of Irish democracy. The Radicals got forty, but the Nationalists gained sixty, and then part of the Radicals—the steady, sensible party among them—ran out a breakwater to prevent both countries being swamped. A break-water is a good thing, but there was no necessity for the flood. They cannot altogether repair the damage they have done. Look at the Irish members of twenty years ago, and look at them now. Formerly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... be dancing about me. He merely said gruffly to the man: 'You clear out of this.' And, motioning me to follow, set off wading shoreward without paying further attention to him. He stepped on to a stone breakwater that ran out from among the roots of the sand-hills, and so struck homeward, perhaps thinking our incubus would find it less easy to walk on such rough stones, green and slippery with seaweed, than we, who were young and used to it. But my persecutor walked as daintily ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... half speed through the narrow channel in the coral reef which makes the natural breakwater of the harbor. This channel is carefully buoyed on either side, and at night safety-lamps are placed upon each of these little floating beacons, so that a steamship can find her way in even after nightfall. Though ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... distinctly than formerly; his complexion is clearer; in short, H.R.H. seems, on the whole, more healthy after this crisis than when in the stall-fed state, for such it seemed to be, in which I remember him. God grant it! his life is of infinite value to the King and country—it is a breakwater behind ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Russian base in Georgia and the Russian garrisons in Turkestan were firmly established. Thereafter the flood of Russian conquest overflowed irresistibly the plains of Central Asia, until it was arrested by another breakwater, the kingdom of Afghanistan. It is true that the North-western Afghan borderlands were comparatively open and easily penetrable by an invading force; but beyond them lie lofty ranges with passes at high altitudes, guarded by a hard-fighting and intractable people, and on the farther side of these ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... anxious, but the distance was diminishing; Harry was almost at the steps with the child, and the boy had rowed his skiff round the breakwater out of sight; a young fisherman leaned over the railing with his back to her, watching the lobster-catchers on the other side. She was almost in; it was only a slight dizziness, yet she could not see the light-house. Concentrating all her efforts, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... detained. Reached Boulogne in safety, and in high spirits made our way on board the steamer, deposited our traps below, came on deck, and prepared for the ordeal. A high north-wester had been blowing all day, and as we ran along behind the breakwater, I could see over it the white and green waves fiendishly running, and showing their malign eyes sparkling with hungry expectation. "Come out, come out!" they seemed to say; "come out, you little black imp of a steamer; don't be hiding behind there like a coward. We dare you to come out here and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he describe the exact measurements between various points, but the depth of water, the character of the bottom, the currents, and the prevailing winds. He went on, besides, to show how, by running out a pier here, and a breakwater there—by filling up this, and deepening that—safe anchorage could be secured in all weathers; while the headlands could be easily fortified, and 'at a moderate cost,' I quote himself, 'of say twenty two or three millions of francs, while a fort erected ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... MacGentle in?" "That way, sir." You opened a door with "Private" painted in black letters upon its ground-glass panel. Another bald-headed gentleman, with a grim determination about the mouth, rose up from his table and barred your way. This was Mr. Dyke, the breakwater against which the waves of would-be intruders into the inner seclusion often broke themselves in vain; and unless you had a genuine ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... light, though late in the afternoon, when the anxious watchers upon the Hoe made out, beyond Drake's Island, two big ships coming in round the western end of the breakwater. Though deep in the water they towered above their escort of destroyers and fast patrol boats. The leading ship was listing badly, her tripod mast with its spotting top hung far over to port, and she was ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... below the fort, where the natives were always in the habit of bathing, a party of soldiers of the regiment then in garrison went down one sultry afternoon for a swim. It was a lovely spot for bathing; the water was blue, clear and calm, as the reef that stretched far out to sea served as a breakwater to the heavy surf, and preserved the inner water as smooth as a lake. Here were a fine lot of English soldiers stripped to bathe; and although the ruddy hue of British health had long since departed ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... it seems that Rosenthall was one. He must have let it out to Purvis in his cups. Anyhow, I heard Purvis taunting him with it, and threatening him with the breakwater at Capetown; and I begin to think our friends are friend and foe. But about to-morrow night: there's nothing subtle in my plan. It's simply to get in while these fellows are out on the loose, and to lie low till they come back, and longer. If possible, we must doctor the ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the harbor of Piraeus in the forenoon of Lord's day, September eighteenth, and anchored outside the breakwater at Smyrna, in Asia Minor, the next morning. The landing in Turkish territory was easily accomplished, and I was soon beyond the custom house, where my baggage and passport were examined, and settled down at the "Hotel d'Egypte," on ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... a number of fruit trees. In this orchard was situated the thatched roof dwelling where Martial had wished to retire, with Francois and Amandine. From this place the island terminated at its point by a breakwater, formed of large piles, to prevent the washing away ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... thinking it imagination, but there I really saw a man up to the breast in the flood, supporting with arms and shoulders a powerful black horse, which he urged across the current. Another minute, and I stood firm behind the breakwater they formed at my side. My dear charge had again fainted; he assisted me to raise her to the saddle; but suddenly, as he looked at her, he uttered a wild cry of astonishment, and kissing and embracing her, exclaimed, "My Madeline, my daughter, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... in the centre of the bay. This sheltered cove, about 300 yards across the chord of the arc, formed rather more than a semicircle by the natural formation of the coast, and was further improved by a long reef of hard sandstone, which extended from either point like an artificial breakwater. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... lake (Pontchartrain), as the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, his hand clasping hers—the tiller, that is—hour by hour, and the small waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away from the saucy north wind. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... through an extraordinary natural fortification of rocks; and if we ascend the heights of Le Roule, we shall obtain, what a Frenchman calls, a vue feerique du Cherbourg. We shall look down upon the magnificent harbour with its breakwater and surrounding forts, and see a fleet of iron-clads at anchor, surrounded by smaller vessels of all nations; gun-boats, turret-ships and every modern invention in the art of maritime war, but scarcely any ships of commerce. The whole energy and interest ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... the South East filled the canvas and drove them shoreward at a slant, the water lapping gently against the bows. It seemed a very little while before they rounded the headland and entered the narrow funnel of cliffs leading into Polperro. Not a soul was to be seen at the breakwater, a circumstance Barraclough noted with satisfaction, although he had no reason to expect opposition. They lowered sail at the harbour mouth and came alongside a slippery wooden ladder stapled into the stone wall of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the great crater, there was formed an immense rent about twelve miles long, from which a vast torrent of lava descended. After flowing for several miles, and destroying a part of Catania in its course, it entered the sea, and formed a small promontory, which has since proved very useful as a breakwater. But besides this stream, there were at the same time thrown up such immense quantities of ashes, cinders, stones, and other matters, that they formed two conical hills, more than three hundred feet in height above the slope of the mountain from which they rose, and measuring ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... shingle on the beach. And from this lovely spot you will witness one of the most splendid panoramas in the world. You will see—I hardly know what you will not see—you will see Ram Head, and Cawsand Bay; and then you will see the Breakwater, and Drake's Island, and the Devil's Bridge below you; and the town of Plymouth and its fortifications, and the Hoe; and then you will come to the Devil's Point, round which the tide runs devilish strong; and then you ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... other side of the old one; but this only prompted the adventurers to get past or through it to the first goal of their ambition. They had not yet realized the vastness of the Pacific, and took America to be a mere breakwater protecting the precious shores of Cathay. Later, they found that America repaid looting on her own account; but meanwhile there was set on foot that search for the Northwest Passage which resulted in ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... what headland this might be; but Thorbeorn knew it was not Ericsfrith, which he had intended to make. They rounded it, however, without mishap, and had a fair wind when they were beyond it. At last they could see a shore with a rough breakwater of stones; and presently upon that shore some men standing together. They cast anchor and let down their sails, and before all was shipshape a boat came rowing out to them, with a man in the stern in ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... to the Lizard already referred to, and saw many of the sights in the neighbourhood. After visiting Penzance on the conclusion of our work we saw Cape Cornwall (where Whewell overturned me in a gig), and returned homewards by way of Truro, Plymouth (where we saw the watering-place and breakwater: also the Dockyard, and descended in one of the working diving-bells), Exeter, Salisbury, and Portsmouth. In returning from Camborne in 1826 I lost the principal of our papers. It was an odd thing that, in going through Exeter on our way ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... that can delight the eye; and both this and a little satellite islet are fenced in by an encircling coral reef, within which is clear still deep water, fit for navies to ride in, and approachable through numerous inlets in its natural breakwater. It was a spot of much distinction, containing the temple of the god Oro, who was revered by all the surrounding groups, as the god of war, to whom children were dedicated to make them courageous. There dreadful human sacrifices ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... width from thirty to sixty yards, and its surface is level and smooth; it is composed of obscurely stratified hard sandstone. At high water the waves break over it; at low water its summit is left dry, and it might then be mistaken for a breakwater erected by Cyclopean workmen. On this coast the currents of the sea tend to throw up in front of the land, long spits and bars of loose sand, and on one of these, part of the town of Pernambuco stands. In former times a long spit of this nature seems to have become consolidated by the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were obliged to run into a sheltered bay, where part of the load was put ashore, and with the canoes thus lightened we crossed to a long, narrow point which reached half-way across from the other side, making an excellent breakwater between the upper and lower parts of the lake. The crossing was accomplished in safety, though it was rough enough to be interesting, and Job and Joe went back for what ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... that somebody should sit up with her all night, so that she could not cut the ropes and run away, Tom seriously considered the proposal. The next day a snug little dock was built, in which she seemed quite contented, and from which she could not escape without climbing over a stone breakwater—a feat of which there was no reason to believe that she ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in Buffalo Creek, which can be navigated for about one mile, we sailed to the breakwater, a solid wall several feet high, having a length of 4,000 feet, which was erected at the expense of some millions of dollars for the protection of the city from being flooded by the unruly waters of ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... the great hotels—is its Digue, or Dyke, a great longdrawn-out breakwater against whose cemented walls pound the furies of the North Sea with such a virulence and force as to make one seasick even on land. "See our Digue and die," say the fisherfolk of Ostende,—those that have not been ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... could see them stumbling up the gangways of the transport, each man heavily accoutred; and sometimes a man would laugh, and sometimes a man would swear ... and then the ship sailed out of the harbour, rounding the pier and the breakwater, churning the sea into a long white trail of foam as she set her course past the South Stack.... They could see the lights on her masthead diminishing as she went further away, and then, as the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... behind-hand in improving the occasion; for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toad-stools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan; who, such was her sense of duty, even under the humanizing influence of shrimps, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... whole course of its one hundred and eight years' existence the society never paid more than eleven annual dividends, because for many years it saved up its income for building an extension to its harbour, and eventually lost all these savings and L100,000 of Government money besides in a great breakwater, which proved an irremediable engineering failure, and lies now in the bottom ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... fog, we went on deck to find the ship lying inside a long breakwater bristling with cannon, which looked formidable enough: but the whole thing, I was told, was useless against modern artillery and ironclads: and there was more than one jest on board as to the possibility of running the Channel Squadron across, and smashing Cherbourg in a single night, unless ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... on, till all before them was sea. Then he began to rapidly descend a gully, where everything that was green was left behind, and they were between two vast walls of rock, almost shut-in by a natural breakwater stretching across, half covered by the sea and sand. Below them, in a natural pool, lay a boat which might have been built and launched to sail upon the tiny dock of stone; for there was apparently no communication with the sea, so well was it shut off from where, as the bare and worn masses of ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Peterson arrived at Cape Town. As the steamer which bore him slipped up Table Bay to her pier All Hands And Feet saw a big barkentine, flying the American flag, at anchor just inside the breakwater and rightly conjectured she was his future command. Three hours ashore proved ample time to consummate all of the Retriever's neglected business. He discovered that the man to whom he was to administer a good, sound, commercial thrashing, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... directed, and pulled through with vigorous strokes. Five minutes afterward her keel grates upon a beach, against which, despite the tumbling swell outside, there is scarce so much as a ripple. There is no better breakwater than a ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... fear that our servants should have a good appetite—our wealth is in their strength, not in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, and see what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbourless cliffs—you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of refuge; the unclean pestilence ravins in your streets—you have to bring the full stream from the hills, and to send the free winds through the thoroughfare; the famine blanches your lips and eats away your flesh—you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morass ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... the evening we entered the harbour of Toronto, which is a very capacious one, and is protected by a natural mole of sand some miles in extent. Though this breakwater has some houses and a few trees, it is ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... lurch, glory to the breakwater!' exclaimed Father Boyle, as the boat pitched finally outside the harbour fence, where a soft calm swell received them with the greeting of civilised sea-nymphs. 'The captain'll have a quieter passage across. You may spy him on the pier. We'll be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Rue d'Esplanade, and when at the highest part of the Public Gardens take the road to the right. The view is magnificent. In front is the Mediterranean, and behind Lake Thau with its villages. At the base of the mountain is Cette, and beyond Frontignan. The Port of Cette is protected by a breakwater 548 yds. long, which encloses a harbour of 210 acres, furnished with two jetties; the western, constructed by Vauban, is 656 yds. long, and the eastern 548 yds. This busy port, besides having an extensive carrying trade, has a large wine manufactory, where ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... brisk export trade in grapes, raisins and onions, mostly consigned to Great Britain or the United States. Baltic timber and British coal are largely imported. The harbour bay, which is well lighted and sheltered by a breakwater, contains only a small space of deep water, shut in by deposits of sand on three sides. In 1904 it accommodated 402 vessels of 175,000 tons; about half of which were small fishing craft, and coasters carrying agricultural produce to Spanish and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... to Cape Canaveral along the beach. You will find a gang of men at work on a government breakwater. The superintendent is Mr. Rowan. Show him ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the bay I took passage in a small steam-launch to visit the Olympia, where the Admiral's flag floated, to call on him. There was plenty of steam, and it was pleasant to get out a good way behind the breakwater, for the waves beyond were white with anger, and the boat, when departing from partial shelter, had proceeded but two or three hundred yards when it made a supreme effort in two motions—the first, to roll over; the second, to stand on its head. I was glad both struggles were ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... mile or so to the left of St. Pierre a lighthouse stood out in the water, gleaming white against the dark land behind it. It was only visible by day, however, for it was no longer used as a beacon. The changing of the channel and the building of the breakwater in the harbor of St. Pierre had made it necessary to have the light there and the old one was abandoned. It now stood silent and lonely, gradually falling into decay under the buffeting of wind and waves. Looking south from the island the eye was greeted only by a wide ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... size—nearly 100—and mounted 22 guns. She had been built at Cawsand, that village which in smuggling days attained so much notoriety, and stands at the end of a delightful bay facing the western end of Plymouth Breakwater. This vessel had a successful time in landing cargoes to the east of Torbay without paying the lawful duty. And there were many fishing-boats of from 18 to 25 tons, belonging to Torbay, which were at this time accustomed to run ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... toward us; and more than once it seemed certain to sink as it broached to and shipped seas again. But half a dozen bold fishermen rushed with a rope into the short angry surf—to which the polled shingle bank still acted as a powerful breakwater, else all Bruntsea had collapsed—and they hauled up the boat with a hearty cheer, and ran her up straight with, "Yo—heave—oh!" and turned her on her side to drain, and then launched her again, with a bucket and a man to bail out the rest of the water, and a pair ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hardly be said. Yet I cannot leave this beauty of the sea at Capri without touching on a melodrama of light and colour I once saw at Castellammare. It was a festa night, when the people sent up rockets and fireworks of every hue from the harbour-breakwater. The surf rolled shoreward like a bath of molten metals, all confused of blue, and red, and green, and gold—dying dolphin tints that burned strangely beneath the purple skies and tranquil stars. Boats at sea hung out their crimson cressets, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Manx ones are giving the fishing the goby. There's life in the ould dog yet, though. Would be, anyway, if them rusty Kays would be doing anything for the industry. They're building piers enough for the trippers, but never a breakwater the size of a tooth-brush for the fishermen. That's reminding me, Phil—the boys are at me to get you to petition the Tynwald Court for better harbours. They're losing many a pound by not getting out ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... sail of Cartier's boat fluttered in the breeze that blew from the land, and with swift grace the little craft came into harbour. Ellenor dashed the tears from her eyes and smiled down at the men in the boat as they fastened it to a hook in the breakwater and climbed up beside her. Her father was her friend, her refuge, her comfort; and something of his influence over her seemed to belong to the other man, his mate. Perrin Corbet was tall and angular, without the slightest pretention to good looks, but with ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... settlement were the questions of the heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy. Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the people and a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race and wholly ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and an inner basin 15 acres in extent, with a depth on sill at ordinary spring tide of 25 ft. Outside these harbours is the triangular bay, which forms the roadstead of Cherbourg. The bay is admirably sheltered by the land on every side but the north. On that side it is sheltered by a huge breakwater, over 2 m. in length, with a width of 650 ft. at its base and 30 ft. at its summit, which is protected by forts, and leaves passages for vessels to the east and west. These passages are guarded by forts placed on islands intervening between the breakwater and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... arrangements and after dinner we went down to the water front. The ship's boat was waiting for us and we rowed out. The schooner was anchored some way across the harbour, not far from the breakwater. We came alongside, and I heard the sound of a ukalele. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... there before Their Majesties, on a most lovely day, and had everything arranged. The table was set in view of the sea; the English ships were plainly visible on the distant horizon; certainly they were far from suspecting Napoleon's presence. There was still a strong battery on the breakwater to protect the roadstead and the harbor. I do not think that our neighbors would have ventured to salute us at closer quarters, even if they had been better informed. At a signal from the Emperor the squadron lying in the roadstead, consisting of three large ships, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... exceedingly high, and, every here and there, a beautiful rainbow was formed for a moment among the falling drops. We afterwards found that this coral reef extended quite round the island, and formed a natural breakwater to it. Beyond this the sea rose and tossed violently from the effects of the storm; but between the reef and the shore it was as calm and as ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne |
