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As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who passed close behind with observant eyeglass fixed upon the little group, and with an air which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest motives.
They would thus have the wind with them when they returned home heavily laden, and with these little navigators the difference is an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff head- wind is a great hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed, they can face it with more ease. Virgil says bees bear gravel-stones as ballast, but their only ballast is their honey-bag.
This continued for some little time, now and then a rounded or a flattened stone appearing in it, and then gradually fading away. As Clewe stared intently down upon the illuminated space, the brown earth seemed to melt and disappear, and he gazed upon a surface of fine sand, dark or yellowish, thickly interspersed with gravel-stones.
I had always loved it, always feared to be near it; I had so longed to know what might be within it. As a little knickerbockered child I would pick the colored gravel-stones from the mortar, and play with them in the dust; and if perchance one stone struck the iron door, I would run away from the echo the blow produced.
Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small gravel-stones into the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat-catching when you have set your mind on it.
The goodly ship is built upon the stocks, the platforms are reared, and the cradle is ready; but mistaken prëconceptions may scatter the incline with gravel-stones rather than with grease, and thus put a needless hindrance to the launching: whereas a clear idea that the probabilities are in favour, rather than the reverse, will make all smooth, lubricate, and easy.
"We haven't any bullets, but we can use gravel-stones or dried peas or a tallow candle. I've seen a candle fired right through a board, Miss Ruth," he said. "We'll load them with powder now; perhaps we shan't need anything else," Ruth replied. In the gathering darkness Phillis saw a redcoat reconnoitring the grounds. He rapped upon the door leading to the kitchen.
Jones appears to have been impressed also with the hardness of the beach, where they camped in the open, doubtless to avoid surprises: "Instead of feathers, my bed was gravel-stones, by the river side ... which at first seemed not to suit me, but afterward it became more natural." In those days, traveling was beset with difficulties, both ashore and afloat.
The other one manuvred about awhile, but could not draw her enemy out of her stronghold; then she clambered up the bank and began to bite and tear off bits of grass, and to loosen gravel-stones and earth, and roll them down into the mouth of the disputed passage.
If he had ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it is hard to see how he could have believed that the bee in its flight abroad carried a gravel-stone for ballast: "And as when empty barks on billows float, With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat; So bees bear gravel-stones, whose poising weight Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight;"
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