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Sometimes they assume a shadow of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails, hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by.
In her voluminous dressing-gown, her hair caught untidily in a loose net, her face flushed from stooping over the porridge saucepan, she looked, thought Jinny, 'like a haystack somehow. Of course she did not say it. The draught, flapping at her ample skirts, added the idea of a covering tarpaulin to the child's mental picture.
Diana, joining in the dance, and howling in her turn, jumped to the top of the projectile. An unaccountable flapping of wings was then heard amid most fantastic cock-crows, while five or six hens fluttered like bats against the walls.
Fortunately, when the man left the wheel, the way of the schooner was to some extent stopped, or Tom Fillot and Bannock would have been hopelessly left behind, the slavers not having the slightest intention of lowering a boat to pick up their enemies; but under the circumstances, as the vessel rolled in the hollow with her sails flapping and the great booms swaying to and fro, the men rose and swam close under the stern, Dick Bannock getting hold of a ring-bolt, and holding on in the darkness, while Tom Fillot swam with all his strength to keep up.
The officer who had made himself the friend of Russ and Rose was prepared for the bird's coming inboard. He ran with a piece of strong netting in his hands, and as the bird came thumping down on the deck, the man cast this net about the creature. Then what a flapping and croaking and struggling there was!
"One grows old fast in the country," was all she said. I thought of the flying figures that I had met in Norway and Sweden. It was a moment before I spoke, and then I said the wrong thing. "But it's this very sort of air, they say, that makes for vigor and " "Yes," she said thinly, "those who live in cities say so." She turned, her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag.
At length he sunk lower and lower, with outstretched wings, flapping them in vain, till his feet touched the rigging of the ship, and he slided from the sails to the deck, and stood before them. Then a sailor-boy caught him, and put him in the hen-house, with the fowls, the ducks, and the turkeys, while the poor stork stood quite bewildered amongst them.
The wind has changed all of a sudden, or rather the breeze has ceased. The sails are flapping against the mast, and the pennons are not moving. Every man to his post," he shouted. "I fear the wind will veer suddenly before we have time to turn round, and blow harder than will be pleasant for us. Gray, go to the wheel. The rest of you mount the rigging, furl the sails, all, even the great topsail.
To the eye of the beholder, however, he gazed as yet only on vacancy, but just as I was about to attempt self-explanation he was gone, tearing away down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, the ragged remains of his father's trousers flapping gently in the breeze.
That very night twelve months ago the packman was murdered at Broken Buss, and Easie Pettie hanged herself on the stump of a tree. The farmer had seen spectre maidens walking round the ruined castle of Darg, and the castle all lit up with flaring torches, and dead knights and ladies sitting in the halls at the wine-cup, and the devil himself flapping his wings on the ramparts.
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