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All the stone steps are worn with deep hollows where human feet have trodden up and down for centuries, and storms have sent rivulets of water pouring through many a wild night. Some of the steps are worn quite in two and broken away, which makes the ascent frightening to the ladies. The crumbling wall is full of owls' nests. Rooks and swallows fly continually in and out of their holes.
"For centuries it was a capitol thatched with heather and more than once, in the evil days of English invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon to ships at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords.... In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith.
"No, I don't mind nothin' you kin do," said Marthy in the same dull tone, pouring her saucer full of coffee and spilling some on her pillow, because her hands were not as steady as they used to be. "He kin sleep in Charlie's room, if yuh want he should." She took two big swallows that emptied the saucer, handed the dish to Billy Louise, and lay down again.
Numbers of caterpillars mounted the stalks of grass, and many dragonflies and butterflies appeared, though this was winter. The caprimulgus or goat-sucker, swifts, and different kinds of swallows, with a fiery-red bee-eater in flocks, showed that the lowest temperature here does not destroy the insects on which they feed.
The roofs of some of the caves frequented by these swallows are several hundred feet above their floors, and to reach the nests, scattered over the curved roofs and sides, it is necessary to construct ladders and stages. These are made out of rattan and bamboo and are fastened by pegs driven into the limestone walls.
They did not look nice, but why should they not be so, knowing as we do that the young of swallows, unlike those of other birds, vent their ordure over the sides, so that the nests are not in any way defiled. Here I also learned that Pidgin, as in the expression "Pidgin" English, is John's attempt to pronounce "business."
As soon as they had all found a place to sit, suddenly, there was no noise left anywhere all was quiet; all was still. And in the silent moonlight John Dolittle spoke: "I had no idea that we had been in Africa so long. It will be nearly Summer when we get home. For these are the swallows going back. Swallows, I thank you for waiting for us. It is very thoughtful of you.
Blackbirds sang recklessly in the shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened; and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the distant "smoke-bush" blue was trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of gay life.
"Kiu Shiu," murmured the artist. "I wandered there in youth and have thought always to return. The rocks and cliffs are of great beauty. I remember well one white, thin waterfall that flung itself out like a laugh, but never reached a thing so dull as earth. Midway it was splintered upon a sunbeam, and changed into rainbows, pearls, and swallows!" "I know it excellently well," said Uchida.
And the one that was on the left side bounded across to the right side, and the one on the right to the left, and like two sea swallows sported around him. And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs, like four swallows in the air, about his head, now above, now below.
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