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We got out, one afternoon, under a sky crowded with masses of darkness, in a station recently bombarded and smashed, and its roof left like a fish-bone. It overlooked a half-destroyed town, where, amid a foul whiteness of ruin, a few families were making shift to live in the rain. "'Pears we're in the Aisne country," they said. A downpour was in progress.
Miles of wasteland, dotted with peat-ricks and cropping ponies, stretched to the northern horizon: on our left three long coombes radiated seaward, and in the gorge of the midmost was a building stuck like a fish-bone, its twisted Jacobean chimneys overtopping a plantation of ash-trees that now, in November, allowed a glimpse, and no more, of the grey facade.
It only makes the old centrality much more strange, subtle, complex, and vital. It only robs us of the nice old ideal simplicity. Which ideal simplicity and logicalness has become such a fish-bone stuck in our throats. The universe is once more in the mental melting-pot.
"He swallowed it in one mouthful, and the only thing that he spat out was the mainmast, that had stuck between his teeth like a fish-bone. Fortunately for me, the vessel was laden with preserved meat in tins, biscuit, bottles of wine, dried raisins, cheese, coffee, sugar, candles, and boxes of wax matches. With this providential supply I have been able to live for two years.
Yes! and I have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the carvers.
Stern grabbed the shade and steadied it. Beatrice stooped and snatched up the thing from where it lay beside the table. Only one glance Stern gave at it, as she held it up. A long reed stem he saw wrapped at its base with cotton fibers a fish-bone point, firm-lashed and on that point a dull red stain, a blotch of something dry and shiny. "Blow-gun darts!" cried he. "Poisoned!
Among peoples remote from civilization, it still suffices in our day, together with its ornamental complement, the fish-bone through the cartilage of the nose, the red feather in the hair, the string round the loins. We must not forget the smear of rancid butter, which serves to keep off the Mosquito and reminds us of the unguent employed by the grub that dreads the Tachina.
"Because, you foolish man," said the girl, calmly, "before your letter got there, there would be one from Melbourne saying that he had been choked by a fish-bone, or died of measles, or something of that sort." Mr. Barrett, hardly able to believe his ears, stopped short and looked at her. The girl's eyes were moist with mirth and her lips trembling.
I saw that some few of these wretched human beings that inhabited the wide waste before my eyes, had weapons pointed with flint or fish-bone, which they made use of for destroying birds, quadrupeds, or fishes, that they fed upon raw; but their greatest delicacy appeared to be a maggot or worm, which they sought for with great perseverance in the buds of the palm.
At luncheon Diana cautioned Betty against swallowing a fish-bone. "You might die, darling, if you did." "Then I shall swallow every single bone I can," announced Betty. "But, darling," said Diana, "why do you say that? You don't want to die. You are quite happy, aren't you?" "Yes, I'm very happy, but I want to die, all the same."
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