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Shoal   Listen
verb
Shoal  v. i.  (past & past part. shoaled; pres. part. shoaling)  To assemble in a multitude; to throng; as, the fishes shoaled about the place.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shoal" Quotes from Famous Books



... considerable time in the Thames, opposite Whitehall. Years had rolled on, but the Quaker mate who had so materially assisted the flying prince—by keeping the secret—arranging the escape with the crew, and when, in fear of danger from a privateer, rowing the prince ashore, and in shoal water carrying him on his shoulders to the land, near the village of Fecamp, in Normandy, yet he had not been with the king to claim any reward. This escape took place in 1651, and nearly twenty years had elapsed, ten of which were after the Restoration; so that in all probability the king, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest; a one that would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage to face the hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoal of fish from out the weeds. It's best not to vex a priest, or to run ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats

... 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: thus it is with 'draft' and 'draught'; 'plain' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... hatching their eggs on the sloping ground beyond. Skua-gulls and giant petrels were perched here and there amongst the rocks, watching for an opportunity of marauding the nests of the non-predacious birds. Sea elephants raised their massive, dripping heads in shoal and channel. The dark reefs, running out into the pellucid water, supported a vast growth of a snake-like form of kelp, whose octopus-like tentacles, many yards in length, writhed yellow and brown to the swing of the surge, and gave the foreground an indescribable weirdness. I stood looking out to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... platforms inside the fort could be raked from end to end. As good fortune would have it, two of these vessels, in attempting to carry out their orders, ran afoul of each other, and all three stuck fast on the shoal on which is ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... ice, and many penguins; and at midnight, came at once into water uncommonly white, which alarmed the officer of the watch so much, that he tacked the ship instantly. Some thought it was a float of ice; others that it was shallow water; but, as it proved neither, probably it was a shoal of fish. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... partly by later 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 fish; apropos of which, he made his well-known remark, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald shoal, the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of sea—the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with the more majestic heave of the Pacific. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ever forgit 'er?" granted Stump, "I wish them Romans had looted her. W'en I was goin' down the Hooghly, she was comin' up, in tow. Her rope snapped at the wrong moment, an' she ran me on top of the James an' Mary shoal. Remember 'er, damn 'er!" ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... their goods at their shop doors and going inland. Ships were lying idle in the tide water, every sailor gone to find the golden river. The fair-haired man laughed and told how he'd swam naked in the darkness, his money in his mouth, and crawled up the long, shoal shore, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... colored sheen. Fantastic pink-and-orange crabs sidled awkwardly but nimbly this way and that. Tiny sea-horses, yet more fantastic, slipped shyly from one weed-covert to another, aware of a possible peril in every gay but menacing bloom. And just above this eccentric life of the shoal sea-floor small fishes of curious form shot hither and thither, live, darting gleams of gold and azure and amethyst. Now and again a long, black shadow would sail slowly over the scene of freakish life—the shadow of a passing albacore or ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... them the desire to breed, they swim out in shoals towards the sea; and the males lead the way shedding forth their milt as they go, while the females, coming after and swallowing it up, from it become impregnated: and when they have become full of young in the sea they swim up back again, each shoal to its own haunts. The same however no longer lead the way as before, but the lead comes now to the females, and they leading the way in shoals do just as the males did, that is to say they shed forth their eggs by a few grains at a time, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... Terra Anegada which means submerged land, or land over which the high tides flow considerably. It refers to a long stretch of shore at the entrance to King Sounds, where the tides cover immense tracts of country, and which has, in consequence, been called Shoal Bay. ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... Doubtful Islands; he believed them to have been discovered by De Bougainville. The following morning at daylight they found themselves almost on the top of what Cook calls "a half drowned island, or rather large coral shoal of about 20 leagues in circuit." In the lagoon which it surrounded they saw a large canoe under sail. The island was named after Furneaux. As they were now in such a dangerous neighbourhood, Cook ordered that at night the cutter with an officer and seven ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... on a shoal on the island of Jolos, near these Philipinas Islands. Being seen by the Indians and natives of that land, the latter attacked them, and put them all to the sword, leaving only the captain alive for the ransom that they can get for him. For two years there have been such droughts in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... May, the Rebel fleet made an attack upon our navy, in which they sunk two of our gun-boats, the Mound City and the Cincinnati, and returned to the protection of Fort Pillow with one of their own boats disabled, and two others somewhat damaged. Our sunken gun-boats were fortunately in shoal water, where they were speedily raised and repaired. Neither fleet had much to boast of as ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... 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 their poles. The scene is animated ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... probable that the freshets form banks inside the mouth, which are 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

... the flash and motion of the man They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, But if a man who stands upon the brink But lift a shining hand against the sun, There is not left the twinkle ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... scorching July morning, under an awning at the end of a rickety pier, waiting for the excursion-steamer which was to convey us to the distant sand-banks over which the clear waters lap, away down below the green-sloped highlands of Neversink,—sea-shoal banks, from which silvery fishes were warning us off with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... 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, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Island. About twenty leagues farther to the west he discovered four other islands; afterwards fell in with Maitea, Otaheite, isles of Navigators, and Forlorn Hope, which to him were new discoveries. He then passed through between the Hebrides, discovered the Shoal of Diana, and some others, the land of Cape Deliverance, several islands more to the north, passed the north of New Ireland, touched at Batavia, and arrived in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... it should receive The ocean flood; nor firm enough to stand Against its buffets — all the pathless coast Lies in uncertain shape; the land by earth Is parted from the deep; on sandy banks The seas are broken, and from shoal to shoal The waves advance to sound upon the shore. Nature, in spite, thus left her work undone, Unfashioned to men's use — Or else of old A foaming ocean filled the wide expanse, But Titan feeding from the briny depths ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... shoals, and another projected still farther out. Between these two capes was a bay capable of receiving small vessels. The identity here of the description with the coast near Laguna de Moron seems very clear. The cape east of Laguna de Moron coincides with Cape Palmas, the Laguna de Moron with the shoal river described by Columbus; and in the western point of entrance, with the island of Cabrion opposite it, we recognize the two projecting capes he speaks of, with what appeared to be a bay between them. This all is a remarkable ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... "Shoal'd the water from 20 to 17 faths., and before the man in the chains could have another cast the ship struck and lay fast on some rocks, upon which we took in all sail, hoisted out the boats, and sounded round the ship, and found that we had got upon ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... motor boat. On our way we stopped at "C" beach and picked up Commander Worsley. Next to Anzac, but at the Cove, found that Birdwood had left word he would meet me at the ex-Turkish Post No. 2,—so, as the water was shoal in spots, we rowed down there in a dinghy, along the shore where our lives would not have been worth half a minute's ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... shoal work of those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... length—as it inevitably must—to women, and the unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... ship had been forced much further up the beach than before, and she had now in her bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly visible, we found that she had pushed the stones at the bottom up before her, and that the broken keel, stern-post, and deadwood had, by the recent pressure, been more damaged and turned up than before. She appeared ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... death!" said Lady Godiva, as the feathers fluttered down into the boat and rested on the dead boy's pall. "War among man and beast, war on earth, war in air, war in the water beneath," as a great pike rolled at his bait, sending a shoal of white fish flying along the surface. "And war, says holy writ, in heaven above. O Thou who didst die to destroy death, when ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... touched at the islands of Gaulus and Melita,[47] which mark the boundary between the Adriatic and Tuscan Seas. There a strong east wind arose for them, and on the following day it carried the ships to the point of Libya, at the place which the Romans call in their own tongue "Shoal's Head." For its name is "Caputvada," and it is five days' journey from Carthage for an ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... Blunt's first thought was to have Daubleday[288] lead the Indian Expedition, the auxiliary white force of which was to be selected from the regiments at Fort Scott. Doubleday accordingly made his plans, rendezvoused his men, and arranged that the mouth of Shoal Creek should be a rallying point and temporary headquarters;[289] but events were already ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... for their time could not be lost in chatting; they had an immense quantity of fish in a traveling shoal, which had not ceased passing for the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... plan of my own, and I reckon I shall make it go," proceeded the captain of the steamer. "The Teaser don't draw much water, and I know how to help her over the shoal places." ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... temper on a kindling mind— Are these the dreams his young Ambition saw? Poor fellow! he had better far been blind! I'm sorry thus to probe a wound so raw— But, then, as Bard my duty to Mankind, For warning to the rest, compels these raps— As Geographers lay down a Shoal in Maps." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... and fell over Ben; but being only an oar, it did not hurt him. We found ourselves on the top of a level rock, with the water quite shoal ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... must be because you call them fishes and not fish," replied Vavasor. "If the fishes were a shoal of herrings or mackerel, I doubt if you would—at least for many times. If, on the other hand, the men and women in the concert-room were as oddly distinguished one from another as these different fishes, you would prefer going with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... fists. "You scoundrels, you highwaymen, you—you—road-hogs!—I'll have the law of you! I'll report you! I'll take you through all the Courts!" His home-sickness had quite slipped away from him, and for the moment he was the skipper of the canary-coloured vessel driven on a shoal by the reckless jockeying of rival mariners, and he was trying to recollect all the fine and biting things he used to say to masters of steam-launches when their wash, as they drove too near the bank, used to flood his ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... look!" said Florry Meldrum, watching a shoal of them that rose from the water just like a covey of white larks, and which, after skimming past the Nancy Bell, again settled in the sea, quite tired out with ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... do you mean?" asked the Chief Guardian. "Buried treasure along this little strip of coast? Perhaps, however, you may mean out on the Shoal Islands." ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... battalions, and the trenches on the left bank took up the firing. The Kaffir guide disappeared in terror. But Hart still believed that there was a drift to be found somewhere or other and pushed his Brigade, like a shoal of herrings driven into a purse net, up the loop; and some companies even reached the kraal near the head of it. Without artillery—for Hart had not brought up the field batteries assigned to him—and exposed to a concentrated fire from front, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... wide jaws and capacious gullet were big enough to accommodate a cousin a full third of his own size, if swallowed properly, head first. His speed was so great that any smaller fish which he pursued was doomed, unless fortunate enough to be within instant reach of shoal water. Of course, it must not be imagined that the great trout was able to keep his domain quite inviolate. When he was full fed, or sulking, then the finny wanderers passed up and down freely,—always, however, giving wide berth to the lair under ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... not a ravine among mountains, but a narrow space between mountains and the sea. The mountains landward were steep and inaccessible; the sea was shoal. The passage between them was narrow for many miles along the shore, being narrowest at the ingress and egress. In the middle the space was broader. The place was celebrated for certain warm springs which here issued from the rocks, and which had been ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... beguiled from that Arcadia by wily persons who took advantage of his innocent youth, who initiated him into the metropolitan mysteries which sadden the soul and deplete the pocket, who finally abandoned him upon the shoal of a youngest brother's allowance when his father passed away from the place in Lincolnshire, and young Sir Grant, reigning in the old baronet's stead, deemed himself generous in making the family scapegrace any provision at all. Yet such were the outlines of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... originated. Once more may we perceive that surrounding natural objects supplied the needful lessons. From the beginning there must have been a constant experience of like things placed side by side—men standing and walking together; animals from the same herd; fish from the same shoal. And the ceaseless repetition of these experiences could not fail to suggest the observation, that the nearer together any objects were, the more visible became any inequality between them. Hence the obvious device of putting in apposition things of which it was desired to ascertain ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... remonstrance was made by Christie, but the baddish boy insisted that he had an equal right in all her nets, and, setting his sail, he ran into shoal water. ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... case of emergency, the whole crew; and there were Dutch whalers upon the coast, in which they could all be conveyed to Europe. As for wintering where they were, that dreadful experiment had been already tried too often. No time was to be lost; the ships had driven into shoal water, having but fourteen fathoms. Should they, or the ice to which they were fast, take the ground, they must inevitably be lost; and at this time they were driving fast toward some rocks on the N.E. Captain Phipps sent for ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... many interesting experiences in the eastern archipelago, but no mishaps except that the ship grounded on a rocky shoal near one of the islands. Fortunately there was no leak, and after throwing overboard eight of their cannon, three tons of cloves they had gathered in their voyage through the isles of spices, and many bags of meal, the "Golden Hind" was got afloat again, none the worse ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... mean? Simply this, I think: that the West brings down what it can of the Spirit into the world of thought and passion; brings it down right here upon this bank and shoal of time; but China rises with you into the world of the Spirit. We do not as a rule allow the validity of the Chinese method. We sometimes dub Keats, at his best a thorough ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... gills; several received severe bites from the sharp teeth of the fish, into whose mouths they had incautiously thrust their hands. Not a few scampered out, declaring that there were sharks or other monsters among the shoal, which had attacked their legs. Among the most eager were Gilbert, Fenton, and Oliver Dane. The three youths on all occasions bore each other company, and after each of them had secured a fish large enough to feed a dozen hungry men or more, Fenton and Oliver were seen coming out with an ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston

... all. Annunziata was a pure and innocent creature, unused to the ways of the world and incapable of suspecting the wickedness of men. She was on the point of falling into a deadly snare, on the point of being wrecked upon the most dangerous shoal life presented. Her very purity and innocence would make her an easy victim. Giovanni was not wicked; he was merely young, the prey of the irresistible passion of youth. Annunziata's surpassing loveliness had fired his blood, had driven him to ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... forms and characteristics. The northern coast has no sheltered waters of any considerable extent, and the shore slopes abruptly to a great depth, which gives it a marine life of no special importance. In the shoal waters about Juan Fernandez are found a species of codfish (possibly Gadus macrocephalus), differing in some particulars from the Newfoundland cod, and a large crayfish, both of which are caught for the Valparaiso ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... carrying the mails and a considerable amount of specie, had her progress obstructed by two junks that wilfully forced her into shoal water. In the confusion that followed the grounding, a score of coolies, who up to that moment had been regarded as honest deck passengers, rushed to the pilot-house and engine-room and murdered every white man on board. Practically ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... 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 ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... watch 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, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... 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

... men, whose joys were not fed by earthly possessions or delights. How should they have a sense of community of aims with grovelling hearts that cling to wealth or ambition, that are not at peace with God, and have no holdfasts beyond this 'bank and shoal of time'? A man who has drunk into the spirit of Christ's life is thereby necessarily thrown out of gear with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... but to make a dash for it, and I swung the helm over and steered for the open. But the moment our bows entered the fast-running stream we were swung round like a top, and the instant after we crashed head foremost onto the shoal and stopped dead with our masts shivering. We were in the worst possible position, dead to windward of the bank with wind, sea, and current all tending to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... lessened, my vitality grew, and the terrible desire to yield and be swept away waned. Now we had reached the foot of the cyclopean stairs, now we were half up them—and now as we struggled out upon the ledge on which the watching fortress stood, the clutching stream shoaled swiftly, the shoal became safe, dry land and the cheated, unseen ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... handed the letter over to Henty. A. P. blushed as he read it. His red corpuscles had a habit of rushing to the surface, like a shoal of small sea-fish, at the slightest ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks 5 pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance, With the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... telegraph-wire. But there was nothing to throw light on the connexion between the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel had supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... Lady, and his Boy one of the nicest I have seen these 30 years. He himself sees wonderful things: he saw 2 sharks (supposed by Newson to be Sweet Williams) making love together out of the water at Covehithe; and a shoal of Porpoises tossing up a Halibut into the Air and catching it again. You may imagine Newson's demure face listening to all this, and his comments ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast, during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent. Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of hungry sea-fowl hovering and flittering above them; the white ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... kept on "tacking" across the harbor, going to and fro, for more than an hour, enjoying every minute of it just as much as the children did. When at length, however, the children began to quiet down a little (the sharp edge of novelty being worn off), the Captain ran into shoal water, and brought his boat's head once more up into the wind; but this time, instead of letting her head "pay" off to starboard, he steered her right into the wind's eye, with the sails shivering all the time, until the boat stopped, when he cried out to Main Brace to "let go the anchor," which ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... 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 useful regulation ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... deem'd that Death had freed my soul From Love's tormenting, overwhelming thought, To crush its aching burthen I had sought, My wearied life had hasten'd to its goal; My shivering bark yet fear'd another shoal, To find one tempest with another bought, Thus poised 'twixt earth and heaven I dwell as naught, Not daring to assume my life's control. But sure 'tis time that Death's relentless bow Had wing'd that fatal arrow to my heart, So often bathed in life's dark ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... church, as before, But rather was quiet and inclined To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting From further tracking and trying and testing. "This tolerance is a genial mood!" (Said I, and a little pause ensued). "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, "And sees, each side, the good effects of it, "A value for religion's self, "A carelessness about the sects of it. "Let me enjoy my own conviction, "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness, "Still spying there some dereliction "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!" ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... Captain Whiddon and John Douglas the master to discover. Who found some nine foot water or better upon the flood, and five at low water: to whom I had given instructions that they should anchor at the edge of the shoal, and upon the best of the flood to thrust over, which shoal John Douglas buoyed and beckoned (beaconed) for them before. But they laboured in vain; for neither could they turn it up altogether so far to the east, ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh

... satisfy myself that the gas was 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 chambered cartilaginous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... horseback, as the character of the region or the distance to be traversed might render best, followed along the windings of the stream till he came to a beaver dam. He would examine the water carefully to find some shallow which the beavers must pass in crossing from shoal to deep water. Here he would plant his trap, always under water, and carefully adjust the bait. He would then follow on to another dam, and thus proceed till six traps were set, which was the usual number taken on ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... gave up, and were borne along. [27:16]And running a little under the island called Clauda, we with difficulty became masters of the boat, [27:17]and taking it out they used helps, under-girding the ship; and fearing lest they should fall on the shoal, letting down the mast they were driven in that condition. [27:18]And we being exceedingly pressed with the storm, on the next day they cast the cargo overboard, [27:19]and on the third day with our own hands we cast overboard the furniture of the ship. [27:20]And neither sun nor stars ...
— The New Testament • Various

... 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 Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... to Newton that some large vessel had lately been wrecked, for the spars were fresh in the fracture, and clean—not like those long in the water, covered with sea-weed, and encircled by a shoal of fish, who finding sustenance from the animalculae collected, follow the floating pieces of wood up and down, as their adopted parent, wherever they may be swept by the inconstant winds ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... sight of Grande Terre, drew up in line of battle, and started for the entrance to Barataria Bay. Within this the pirate fleet, ten vessels in all, was in line to receive them. Soon there was trouble for the assailants. Shoal water stopped the schooner, and the two larger gunboats ran aground. But their men swarmed into boats and rowed on in the wake of the other vessels, which quickly made their way through the pass and began a vigorous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... fleet, crashing into vessel after vessel, until finally, getting foul of a small steamer, dragged it from its moorings; and the two began a waltz in the crowded harbor, to the great detriment of the surrounding craft. At last the two runaways went aground on a shoal, and pounded away there until every seam was open, and the holds ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, deg. deg.5 With the English ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... almost always to benefit a few, and to ruin a great many. The average deficiency is never equally spread over the fishermen; one sweeps the board—another loses all. Nor are the cases few in which the accustomed shoal wholly deserts a tract of coast for years together; and thus the lottery, precarious at all times, becomes a lottery in which there are only blanks to be drawn. The wealthy speculator might perhaps watch such changes, and by supplementing the deficiency of one year by the abundance of another, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... Company in the interior. There I obtained, at fabulous expense, a train of pure Esquimaux dogs, and started on January 31 through a region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. On February 7 we reached Cedar Lake, thence sped on to Lake Winnipegoosis and Shoal Lake, across a belt of forest to Waterhen River, which carries the surplus floods of Lake Winnipegoosis to Lake Manitoba, the whole length of which we traversed, camping at night on the wooded shore, and on February 19 arrived at a mission-house fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without a feeling ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... sudden deaths and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept. We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously. But we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers hovered at the river's mouth; that the Belgic had been beached out there on a shoal by a "sub," and that we would be lucky if our throats were not cut in the water as we tried to swim ashore after we had been blown ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... and Orion had a quick run to the rendezvous off the Sha-la-tung shoal, about twenty miles from Pehtang. On their way, near the entrance to the gulf, they came up with the fleet conveying the troops intended to be disembarked near the mouth of the Peiho. It was a magnificent sight, as the clouds of canvas appeared covering the blue ocean, the ships' bows dashing up ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 by sea between New York and Tobago, and yesterday's ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... Aberdeenshire, I frequently delighted to walk by the banks of the river. I, one day, observed something like a black string moving along the edge of the water where it was quite shallow. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that this was a shoal of young eels, so closely joined together as to appear, on a superficial view, on continued body, moving briskly up against the stream. To avoid the retardment they experienced from the force of the current, they ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... greatest. He gave to the world, while yet the name of the writer was unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verse of Adelaide Procter. "In the spring of the year 1853 I observed a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical."[296] The contributions had been large and frequent under an assumed name, when at Christmas 1854 he discovered that Miss Mary Berwick was the daughter of his old and dear ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... southern extremity of a great shoal near the mouth of the Zuider Zee, northeast of the island of Wieringen. "Under the Vlieter" would mean at the east side of this shoal, in the Tesselstroom or channel ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... 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 "take," ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... skipper; "he've been fattened like a goose in a cage. They've made a sad fool of un these last few years. What boastin'! 'Tis stupid. He've growed old enough t' know better, Tumm. 'Tis jus' disgustin' t' hear a big boy like he mouth such a shoal o' foolish yarns. An' he've not the least notion that they're not as true as Gospel ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... mind of cent. per cent., which rises above the constrained mirth of the assembly, will hold the guests so anchored to the consideration of profit and loss, that in vain they spread a free sail—the tide of gayety refuses to float their barks from the shoal beside which they are moored. In their seasons of gayety the French are philosophers, for while they imbibe the mirth they discard the wassail, and wine instead of being the body of their feasts, as with other nations, it is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... 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 ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... abject slavery, our very lives being within the power and at the very nod of a most capricious tyrant), let me refer you to statements which I presume you will already have seen before the receipt of this. Suffice it to say, that the shoal we run upon was never laid down on any chart yet published, nor ever before discovered by any of our vessels cruising off this coast; consequently, the charts and soundings justifying as near an approach to the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... This seems to be the more reasonable when we consider the relative proportions of land and water. The whole surface of the globe is supposed to have an area of about two hundred million square miles. Of these only about fifty millions are dry land. Within the harbor of Nassau the divisions of shoal and deep water presented most singular and clearly defined lines of color, azure, purple, and orange-leaf green,—so marked as to be visible half a mile away. All was beneath a sky so deeply and serenely blue as constantly to recall the arching ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... salmon. Immediately on opening the inlet we encountered a rapid current setting outward, and, after rowing a mile and a half to the N.W.b.W., the breadth of the stream varying from one third of a mile to four or five hundred yards, came to some shoal water extending quite across. Landing on the south shore and hauling the boats up above high-water mark, we rambled up the banks of the stream, which are low next the water, but rise almost immediately to the height of about two hundred ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the shoal in question a smoke bomb left the car and hovered almost motionless in the air, though briefly. This indicated that the submarine lay on the bottom directly underneath ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... service in the north seas. After joining part of the squadron at Spithead, they proceeded to Yarmouth, where the whole armament, consisting of fifty-two sail of various descriptions, unfortunately lessened by the loss of the Invincible of seventy-four guns, which struck on a shoal off Winterton, having been assembled, and fully prepared, took their departure on the 12th of ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... 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, the bottom can still be discerned on looking over the side of a boat, especially if it have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... 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 ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... strongest arm so dear to their fellows, which gave that inexpressible sense of brotherhood. Science has given us the steamship,—it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,—the sliding current, the restless and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... leader's thoughts were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the Aimable, and to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground." Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the village whither the captive had been taken. Just as they entered ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... the white spray of breakers on a rocky shoal, and a beach beyond. And beyond that, in hard outline against a golden sky, was a gigantic tube that stood vertically in air to reach beyond the upper limits of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... 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

... passing-bell doth toll, And the Furies, in a shoal, Come to fright a parting soul, Sweet Spirit, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... Duchesse to be pulled down—and important state intrigue to be farthered, or baffled, as circumstances render most to my own honour and glory—I wished for business but now, and I have got enough of it. But Buckingham will keep his own steerage-way through shoal and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under way, and in this instant she leaned ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... immense size. By the bank the 'wild willow,' or water-betony, with its woody stem, willow-shaped leaves, and pale red flowers, grows thickly. Across where there is a mud-bank the stout stems of the willow herb are already tall. They quite cover the shoal, and line the brook like shrubs. They are the strongest and the most prominent of all the brook plants. At the end of March or beginning of April the stalks appear a few inches high, and they gradually increase in size, until in July they reach above the waist, and form a thicket by the shore. Not ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... it, at the rate of twenty-seven miles an hour; at the foot of the rapid the water takes a sudden leap over a slight precipice, whence its name. From the Long Sault to Prescot is forty-one miles shoal water, running from six to eight miles an hour, and impassable by steamboats. Then the Rapid du Plas, half a mile long, and Rapid Galoose, one and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... surf-plank requires some care, for it is a short, heavy board, and in the back-wash is apt to fly back on the unwary, hitting them on their food-receptacle, and effectually (to use a schoolboy term) "bagging their wind." You walk out in the shoal water up to your shoulders, and as a big sea comes in, you throw yourself chest foremost on to your plank, and are then carried along on the top of the roller at the pace of a leisurely train (an Isle of Wight train), to be deposited with a bang ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... applied the iodoform process to cotton, and only his subsequent unfortunate attempts to become a Cotton King prevented her being a very rich woman. As it was she had a tolerable independence. She came into prominence as one of the more able of the little shoal of young women who were led into politico-philanthropic activities by the influence of the earlier novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward—the Marcella crop. She went "slumming" with distinguished vigour, which was quite usual in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... was detained for five weeks on a shoal twenty miles below Chibisa's, and here the first death occurred—the carpenter's mate succumbed to fever. It was extremely irksome to suffer this long detention, to think of fuel and provisions wasting, and salaries ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... 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

... 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 ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, that human association is an artificiality. We do not run together naturally and easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. We are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after a long heredity of extreme separation. We are beings strongly individualized, we are dominated by that passion which is no more and no less than individuality in action,—jealousy. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... Canadians, however, began to apprehend an ambush in every thicket, and to regard the broad, tranquil plain as a sailor eyes some shallow and perfidious sea, which, though smooth and safe to the eye, conceals the lurking rock or treacherous shoal. The very name of a Sioux became a watchword of terror. Not an elk, a wolf, or any other animal, could appear on the hills, but the boats resounded with exclamations from stem to stern, "voila les Sioux! voila les Sioux!" ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... a volume, a clear view of the numerous reasons, derived from thirty-five years' experience, which induce me to prefer a force that can move in all directions in the obscurity of night through narrow channels, in shoal water, and with silence and celerity, over a naval armament of the usual kind, though of far superior force. You would then perceive with what efficacy the counsel of Demosthenes to your countrymen might be carried into effect by desultory attacks on the enemy; ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... Examination of the coast, northward. The ship found to be in a gulph. Anchorage near the head of the gulph. Boat expedition. Excursion to Mount Brown. Nautical observations. Departure from the head, and examination of the east side of the gulph. Extensive shoal. Point Pearce. Hardwicke Bay. Verification of the time keepers. General remarks on the gulph. Cape Spencer and the Althorpe Isles. New land discovered: Anchorage there. General remarks on ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... too, was the flat, calm sea, save northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around the Marie had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor burning on the flat, black belt ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... guns, but no person came off, and not a single boat could anywhere be seen. The whole shore seemed deserted. Nevertheless, we discerned houses in the harbour, and stood towards the entrance; but finding the water shoal suddenly, the captain let go the anchor, and sent a boat in, with the mate and three of my companions. They brought word, to my great mortification, that nearly all the inhabitants had gone to fish in other parts of the bay, and that but one ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild



Words linked to "Shoal" :   water, shoaly, animal group, sandbank, body of water, school



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