United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down; lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls, and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity of himself. Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the automatic pulses which never cease.
Screened from the blazing sun, his hot skin rejoiced in the coolness of the damp grotto. With unseeing eyes, he glanced out over the glassy mirror of the placid water. Unheeding, he heard none of the bird-calls, and paid no attention to the intimate little sounds of the lake side. What should he do when at last he saw Tess and the boy? Would he dare claim them?
There was a tiny spot of blood on one hand. Dawn on Angel Island. A gigantic rose bloomed at the horizon-line; half its satin petals lay on the iron sea, half on the granite sky. The gold-green morning star was fading slowly. From the island came a confusion of bird-calls. Addington emerged from the Clubhouse. Without looking about him, he staggered down the path to the Camp.
The maple-leaves showed silver; the flock of chimney-swifts had returned, and among them, twinkling white and blue and brown, were tree-swallows and barn-swallows squeaking in their flight like new harness; a pair of night-hawks played back and forth across the water, too, awakened, probably, by the thunder, or else mistaken in the green darkness of the storm, thinking it the twilight; and the creek up and down as far as I could hear was ringing with bird-calls.
It may have been in consequence of this taste for pigeon-flying that the whole neighbourhood resounded with whistles and bird-calls. Men and boys gave each other this shrill greeting as they passed, or warned each other by it, or used it to express reproach or pleasure, hilarity or dismay, varying its peculiar note to suit each emotion.
Through warm sunshine, tempered by fresh breezes, they came yet deeper into the drowsy farmland. Gradually the yeomen-soldiers, who had been wrangling over the mystery of Edric's actions, dropped one by one into lazy silence, or set their tongues to whistling cleverly turned answers to the bird-calls in the hedges.
Smoke-clouds began to drift downwind; and from the forest depths arose not only harsh cries from the panic-stricken Horde, but also beast and bird-calls as the startled fauna sought to flee this new, red terror.
And when they had delivered, solemnly, their mysterious herald's message and subsided, off started the little nimble notes of the fugue, hastening from all sides, meeting, crossing, dispersing, returning, telling their wonderful news of improbable adventures; multitudinous, scurrying away in orderly haste to protect the hero and heroine, and be joined by other notes, all full of inexhaustible good-will; taking hands, dancing, laughing, and giving the assurance that all is for the best in the world of enchantment, in the world of bird-calls, and tinkling triangles and magic flutes, under the spells of the great Sun-priest and Sun-god Mozart.
Before they had gone a mile on their route the sun was blazing strongly, sharp bird-calls came from the trees, and from the porters tramping under their loads a hum like the hum of an awakened beehive. These people will talk and chatter when the sun rises; club them, or threaten them, or load them with burdens as much as you please, the old instinct of the birds and beasts remains.
Yet surely if he could only put it properly to Samuel, if he could express the pitiful trouble in the old father's soul, the senior warden's heart would soften. "It must touch him!" Dr. Lavendar thought, and closed his eyes for a moment.... When he said Amen, the bird-calls were like flutes of triumph.
Word Of The Day