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A Pennsylvania soldier, running heavily down hill ahead of me, was shot, sprang high into the air in one agonized bound, like a stricken hare, and fell forward under my very feet, so that I leaped over him as I ran. The Canadian coureur-de-bois was hit, but the bullet stung him to a speed incredible, and he flew on, screaming with pain, his broken arm flapping.
And the rush of the storm gave Byrne an eerie sensation of being blown through infinite space. For a moment there was only the sound of the gale and the flapping of a loose picture against the wall, and the rattling of a newspaper. Then he heard it. First it was a single note which he could not place. It was music, and yet it was discordant, and it had the effect of a blast of icy wind.
I was much exhausted, and sat down on the breech of a carronade to rest and recover my stunned and scattered faculties. The crew of the pirate were so busily engaged with the captured ship that I found myself quite alone on the deck. Not a man remained in the ship. An idea suddenly occurred to me just then. I glanced up at the sails. They were all flapping in the wind except the fore-topsail.
Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting with one foot in the air. With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed him.
Both trailed to port, where we could not see them; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary grandeur, her flapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so that they were stamped very sharply upon the black add starry sky. But the whole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and horror.
Travis recalled it was the custom of the Horde that the women fought as warriors when necessary. Menlik there was no mistaking the flapping robe of their leader. And they were singing! The rider behind the shaman thumped with violent energy a drum fastened beside his saddle horn, its heavy boom, boom the same call the Apache had heard before.
The vessel, straining at the rope that bound her to the shore, lay with a clumsy shoulder over the bank that shelved abruptly into the great depths where slimy weeds entangled. Her sails were housed and snug, the men in the bows lay under the flapping corner of the jib and played at cards, though the noise of the raindrops on their canvas roof might well disturb them.
No sooner were the Gorgons broad awake, than they hurtled upward into the air, brandishing their brass talons, gnashing their horrible tusks, and flapping their huge wings so wildly, that some of the golden feathers were shaken out, and floated down upon the shore. And there, perhaps, those very feathers lie scattered, till this day.
In a second the boatswain was away piping on the forecastle, and ropes cast off and sails flapping again. "Helms a-lee!" was the next order from the captain, followed by a second which grew familiar enough to me in time. "Raise tacks and sheets!" and the foretack and main-sheet were cast off with the weather main-brace hauled taut.
When the fish is in the water, it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy of hue, and as as soon as it is dead it returns to its original colour a dingy sea-green; but whilst it is floundering and flapping upon the deck, it is impossible to say what is its real appearance, so many and so different are the hues which it assumes.
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