At the turn of the tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below, which sets the whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling in a manner most remarkable to see, and which has given to it, among the people in our parts, the name of the Shivering
Sand. A great bank, half a mile out, nigh the mouth of the bay, breaks the force of the main ocean coming in from the offing.
Sail this boat the way you've seen a ship sailed, and you'll be across the
sands before you know it."
As for the yellow hen, she continued to peck away at the
sand busily, and seemed quite contented with her bill-of-fare.
I dug into the
sand with the point of my hunting-knife.
"Yes," said the young man, in an undertone, "I guessed on the
sands and now I know; that was why I let him fall soft."
Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the
sand. Very close around the stockade--too close for defence, they said--the wood still flourished high and dense, all of fir on the land side, but towards the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks.
The beautiful salmon boat lay on the hard
sand, squashed flat as a pancake, while on it were perched French Frank's schooner and the Reindeer.
One can imagine them, covered with
sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows.
There was not a variation in the surface of the soil, not a hillock of
sand, not a pebble, to relieve the gaze.
Now works its iron will, the startled
sand Blinding the combatants together locked In the death-grip; while hill and vale and stream Glow with the flash and crash of arms.
In addition, she was stiffened from the long trudge, and the
sand, to her surprise, was anything but soft.
The ancient Kings of Egypt conveyed the waters of the Nile to this place by an artificial canal, now so choked with
sand, that there are scarce any marks remaining of so noble and beneficial a work.