retiring tide

They were not more than fifteen or twenty yards distant, and I was delighted to see the ingenuity with which they turned over the oyster-shells, clods of mud, and other small bodies left exposed by the retiring tide.

Sea-weeds, as every visitor to the coast knows, are torn up in great numbers by the waves, especially during storms, and afterwards left on the shore by the retiring tide.

Sometimes he moved slowly on, his eyes fixed on the sand which the retiring tide had left a firm and even footing.

The origin of these marks, he is of opinion, must be ascribed to showers of rain which fell upon an argillaceous beach exposed by the retiring tide, and their preservation to the filling up of the indentations by sand. 

Suddenly, a crowd of pipy fragrance involves the room: these �rial forms cease to be visible; and broken sounds, like the retiring tide beneath Dover cliff, die away356 into utter silence.