1 On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water.
2 Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse.
3 He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf.
Les Misérables (V1) By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 2: CHAPTER VIII—BILLOWS AND SHADOWS 4 Three ships the south wind catches and hurls on hidden rocks, rocks amid the waves which Italians call the Altars, a vast reef banking the sea.
5 We reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the helm was hard a-weather.
6 But Melanie reefed up her top hoop a little higher to hide her thickening figure and the wounded invaded the brick house.
7 when Orion rising on us through the cloudrack with sudden surf bore us on blind shoals, and scattered us afar with his boisterous gales and whelming brine over waves and trackless reefs.
8 Next we graze the high reefs and jutting rocks of Pachynus; and far off appears Camarina, forbidden for ever by oracles to move, and the Geloan plains, and vast Gela named after its river.