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The feature of his experiences which most strikes the reader now, is the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of the natives. They took the Endeavour for a gigantic white-winged sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts.
At last came the day when the river broadened to an estuary; when we saw the tide marks along the roots of the mangroves, and the salt flavour was in the air, and white-winged gulls swept screaming over our heads, scaring away the gaudy, noisy parrots that had been our feathered companions for so long.
The amazing apparition of the huge white-winged ship with its crew of goblins, and what they said, and what they did, and how they looked, had remained clearly photographed upon the retina of Taniwha's mind's-eye for three-quarters of a century. From his youth up he had, of course, proudly repeated the story. A more delightful child's narrative it would be hard to find.
The longer they looked upwards, the bluer seemed the sky. The grass beneath their feet was as green and soft as in springtime. Driven by the wind, here and there a white-winged gull sailed over their heads, a cloud of them rested upon a freshly turned little square of ploughed land between two woods. A flight of pigeons, like torn leaves tossed about by the wind, circled and drifted above them.
Micheline, pale, and her eyes red for want of rest, was seated near the gallery, silently watching the sea, on which were passing, in the distance, fishing-smacks with their sails looking like white-winged birds. Madame Desvarennes was serious, and was giving Marechal instructions respecting her correspondence, while at the same time watching her daughter out of the corner of her eye.
After crossing himself three times the fellow rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, took a hatchet and one, two without any haste built a vessel. What a curious vessel it was! The Tsar Archidei watched the wonderful structure from the shore and as soon as the orders were given for sailing, the new vessel sailed away like a white-winged hawk.
A great chirping and twittering went on among the birds, busy with their summer house-keeping, and, far away, the white-winged gulls were dipping and diving in the sea, where ships, like larger birds, went sailing to and fro. "Oh, Phebe, it's such a lovely day, I do wish your fine secret was going to happen right away!
Sometimes I stopped to watch the passers in the street, the moonlight shining on the spire opposite, or the gleam of some vessel floating, like a white-winged sea-gull, down the broad Potomac, whose fullest flow can never wash away the red stain of the land.
Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington his eyes no longer on his nephew examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his elbow. Everything suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable gesture with which his host declared: "And now, Mr. Faxon, we'll dine."
Tell that sot, he continues, p'intin' at Jack, to put down his gun an' not offer it at me no more. He's a heap too vivid with that weepon. Only I'm a white-winged harbinger of peace, I shore ups an' makes him eat the muzzle offen it. "'Well, whatever be you thirstin' for, anyhow? says Enright.
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