United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But whaur Tam hung there was naething but the craig, and the sea below, and the solans skirling and flying. It was a braw spring morn, and Tam whustled as he claught in the young geese. Mony's the time I heard him tell of this experience, and aye the swat ran upon the man. It chanced, ye see, that Tam keekit up, and he was awaur of a muckle solan, and the solan pyking at the line.
"At the end of this corridor I shall come to a spiral runway, which I must follow down instead of up; after that the way is along but a single branchless corridor. Am I right?" "Quite right, Dator," answered Solan; "and now begone. Already have you tempted fate too long within this forbidden place." "Tonight, or tomorrow, then, you may expect the signal," said Thurid, rising to go.
Nearer at hand, the flight of a flock of sea larks along the links of the shore would attract my attention, while once I heard the splash of a solan goose diving in the bay, and saw the spray rise in a glittering column high above the water. Suddenly my dreamy meditations were interrupted.
The three guardian ladies and their strings of followers headed over the fevered and benighted town, as the records of the period attest, windpiping these and similar Solan notes from the undigested cropful of alarms Lord Fleetwood's expected conduct crammed into them. They and all the world traced his present madness to the act foregoing: that marriage!
So surprised and horrified was Solan that he forgot to finish his thrust; instead, he wheeled toward the switch with a loud shriek a shriek which was his last, for before his hand could touch the lever it sought, my sword's point had passed through his heart.
The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but different legs, pursues the fleeing shoals under water; to the swift and slippery fish all are alike terrible in their certainty.
He thocht this by-ordinar and outside the creature's habits. He minded that ropes was unco saft things, and the solan's neb and the Bass Rock unco hard, and that twa hunner feet were raither mair than he would care to fa'. "Shoo!" says Tam. "Awa', bird! Shoo, awa' wi' ye!" says he. The solan keekit doun into Tam's face, and there was something unco in the creature's ee.
Here Banks provided the Christmas dinner, shooting several solan geese, which were made into a pie, and were "eaten with great approbation; and in the evening all hands were as drunk as our forefathers used to be upon like occasions."
They pulled in and anchored the punt; then they set forth again, rowing slowly as the light faded out of the sky, and keeping a watch all around on the almost glassy seas. There was no sign of any herring; no solan geese sweeping down; no breaking of the water; and none of the other boats, so far as they could make out, had as yet shot their nets.
"If I get a dwam here," he toucht, "it's by wi' Tam Dale." And he signalled for the lads to pu' him up. And it seemed the solan understood about signals. For nae sooner was the signal made than he let be the rope, spried his wings, squawked out loud, took a turn flying, and dashed straucht at Tam Dale's een. Tam had a knife, he gart the cauld steel glitter.
Word Of The Day