He steamed the gunboat full tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark.
"'Twixt Land & Sea"
Joseph Conrad
That was an interminable time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater.
"A Book of Ghosts"
Sabine Baring-Gould