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Driving as we were at a great rate, before the gale, we were reckoning on the occasional partial lightening of the fog to catch sight of and recognize some point of land or rock, according to which we might steer our course amongst the reefs which swarm at the entrance of Brest harbour. We had to be ready to change our course and go about at any moment.
Among the ancient sediments which now form the stratified rocks of the land there occur many thin reef deposits, but none are known of the immense thickness which modern reefs are supposed to reach according to the theory of subsidence. Barrier and fringing reefs are commonly interrupted off the mouths of rivers. Why?
Then you don't care to sit and drink after dinner as you do at an hotel of an idle day, for you want to go on deck, light your cigar, take a sweep round the horizon with your glass to see if there is any sail in sight, glance at the sky to ascertain if the breeze is likely to hold, and then bring yourself to anchor on a seat, and have a dish of chat for a dessert with the captain, if he is a man of books like you, Cutler, or a man of reefs, rocks, and sandbars, fish, cordwood, and smugglin', or collisions, wracks, and salvage, like the pilot.
A few moments after, the fragments of the two vessels appeared in the trough of the sea, and on the caps of the waves with here and there the contracted arms, the livid and despairing faces of some unhappy wretches, striving to make their way to the reefs along the shore, at the risk of being crushed to death by the shock of the furious breakers.
From the very debilitated state of some of the crew, from dysenteric affections contracted at Timor, we were not able to leave Swan River before the 25th of October. Some reefs have been reported three or four miles off the north-east side of it: but we could see nothing of them, and had a depth of 25 and 26 fathoms.
To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul. Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said again: "Joan! O Joan, Joan!" "I knew they'd come tonight I couldn't sleep." "Thank God for your wakefulness!" said he. She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at sunset.
The weather was still clear and the wind light: they proceeded cautiously, on account of the reefs and currents, and with a careful watch for the piratical vessels, which have for centuries infested those seas; but they were not molested, and had gained well up among the islands to the north of Galago, when it fell calm, and the vessel was borne to the eastward of it by the current.
This mark will lead clear, or very nearly so, of all the reefs; but as there is uncertainty in the distance from Tanjong Labu, it may be necessary to diverge from the straight course in order to avoid some of the patches. In the daytime the coral is seen with the greatest ease; and a vessel with a lookout aloft, and a breeze, may proceed with safely.
He pointed out another thing, a shrub called tuldum, with tiny yellow flowers on green stalks, good to tie round the arm to make one see far. Ras Bernas is a long, wandering cape composed of rocky hills of ironstone and silicate curiously blended together, with shoals and rocks, and coral reefs, and sandbanks hanging on to it in very shallow water.
The Spaniards approached the island just before dawn, but through the ignorance of the pilot the whole armadilla was cast upon some reefs near the shore.
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