United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"If it hadn't been for the mate," said McGuffey severely, "I'd 'a' let you two boobies suffer the penalty for your foolishness. Any man that goes to work and fraternizes with a cannibal ain't got no kick comin' if he's made up into chicken curry with rice.
The puzzle of the flying boobies was solved in the startling realization that the mother had returned from the sea with a fish in her stomach and had disgorged it into the gullet of her offspring. I watched this feat performed dozens of times, and at length scared a mother booby into withdrawing her bill and dropping a fish on the sand. It was a flying-fish fully ten inches long.
In all this long passage across the Pacific, nearly in the lat. of 13° N. we saw neither fish nor fowl except once, when by my reckoning we were 5975 miles west from Cape Corientes in Mexico, and then we saw a vast number of boobies, supposed to come from some rocks not far off, which are laid down in some hydrographical charts, but we saw them not.
Shoals of porpoises, albacores, bonitos, and other gregarious fishes will appear in the same place, each kind in pursuit of its favourite prey, while sharks, threshers, and sword-fish, accompanied by their "pilots" and "suckers," though in lesser numbers, here also abound, from the very abundance of the species on which these sea-monsters subsist "Flocks" of flying-fish sparkle in the sun with troops of bonitos gliding watchful below, while above them the sky will sometimes be literally clouded with predatory birds, gulls, boobies, gannets, tropic and frigate-birds, albatrosses, and a score of other kinds but little known, and as yet undescribed by the naturalist.
"And don't you look at me like that," continued Slegge, who was delighted to find a large audience gathering round him to listen while he gave one of the new boys a good setting down, "or you may find that, after I have done with you, you won't be fit to show your ugly mug in the row of grinning boobies staring over the wall at a twopenny-halfpenny wild-beast show."
After the boobies had left us, we saw no more birds till we got nearly abreast of Madagascar, where, in latitude 27° 3/4 S., we saw an albatross, and after that time we saw them every day in great numbers, with birds of several other sorts, particularly one about as big as a duck, of a very dark brown colour, with a yellowish bill.
The woods were perfectly clear and free from underwood, and the soil seemed rich and deep. We found the same kind of pigeons, parrots, and parroquets as in New Zealand, rails, and some small birds. The sea-fowl are, white boobies, gulls, tern, etc. which breed undisturbed on the shores, and in the cliffs of the rocks.
So, from less to more, we entered into the marrow of my case; and I told him how I had observed the estranged countenances of some of the heritors; at which he swore an oath, that they were a parcel of the damn'dest boobies in the country, and told me how they had taken it into their heads that I was a leveller.
The 28th day we had between twenty and forty fathom. We saw no land this day, but saw a great many snakes and some whales. We saw also some boobies and noddy-birds, and in the night caught one of these last. It was of another shape and colour than any I had seen before.
At noon I deduced my situation by account, for we had no glimpse of the sun, to be in latitude 14 degrees 52 minutes south; course since yesterday noon west-south-west 106 miles; longitude made from Tofoa 22 degrees 45 minutes west. Saw many boobies and noddies, a sign of being in the neighbourhood of land.
Word Of The Day