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In an evil moment in the spring of 1909, a predatory individual of Honolulu and elsewhere, named Max Schlemmer, decided that the wings of those albatross, gulls and terns should be torn off and sent to Japan, whence they would undoubtedly be shipped to Paris, the special market for the wings of sea-birds slaughtered in the North Pacific.
A flaring sign on the inner framework of this balcony besought her in Swiss-French, in the interests of order, not to feed the birds. The injunction seemed meaningless to her until she perceived, over by the water, several gulls lazily wheeling about. They were almost as grey as the fog they circled in.
"I'm old enough to have seen their foolish ways in my time, and find, over and over again, that they are mostly gulls to be took with words. They never ask what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his past. They never trouble about what he's done, or how he's made his money, or where he stands in public report. It isn't what he has done, but what he's going to do.
The road, very wild and lonely, ran for the greater part of the way near the edge of rather lofty cliffs, within sight of the North Sea. The sun shone, but a brisk east wind was blowing and the air was salt and cold. The dark green waves were flecked with white. Throughout the walk, they were accompanied by the plaintive, beautiful crying of the gulls.
Now it was whirling towards Europe, and the puffins crept deep into their holes, and the gulls circled with disconsolate cries, and the cormorants crouched gloomily in lee of their snuggest ledges, and all nature seemed waiting for the blow. Gard was awakened in the morning by the gale tearing at the massive stones of his shelter as though it would carry them bodily into the sea.
And it was full of winged life: not only the beautiful gulls, "Whose twinkling wings half lost amid the blue," in a white cloud over the far-off beach, but small birds of several kinds, who never came near enough to dry land to be identified.
His answer was that the Navy warrant officer might have thought he had held the camera steady, but he could have "panned with the action" unconsciously. This would throw all of our computations 'way off. I agreed with this, but I couldn't agree that they were sea gulls.
It has a long whisker-like feather curling out under the ear on each side. The top of the head and the tips of the wings and tail are black. The body, which is about ten inches long, is of a dark-slate colour. Large flocks of gulls, divers, and pelicans, likewise visit the islands.
But I go through the gate at the end of each voyage, and consider twelve cents a reasonable price for the pleasure of travelling up and down the North River for an hour and watching the city gulls in their winter holiday. I know a little more about them now. They are almost all herring gulls, although occasionally a stray bird of another species may be seen. The dark-gray ones are the young.
The word all at once bursts from Feliu's mouth, with that peculiar guttural snarl of the "r" betokening strong excitement, while he points to something rocking in the ebb, beyond the foaming of the shell-reef, under a circling of gulls. More dead?
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