United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The vast solitudes of Espartillar were within eight hours of Buenos Ayres, three by wagon and five by rail, so it was possible to wander out one night to the star-lit camp, where the silence was only broken by the screech of an occasional night-bird, or the beat of the wings of myriads of flighting ducks, without the slightest trace of man or his works perceptible in the great, grey, still, unpeopled world, and to be sitting the next night in evening clothes in a garish, over-gilt, over-decorated restaurant, humming with the clatter of plates and the chatter of high-pitched Argentine voices, as a noisy string-band played selections from the latest Paris operette.
Milkwort and liverwort starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of grass.
She shivered in her fur-lined coat, as if almost frightened at finding herself so marvellously nothing before that black sky and dark sea, which seemed all one, relentlessly great.... And crouching down, she waited for the dawn to break. It came from over the Downs, sweeping a rush of cold air on its wings, flighting towards the sea. With it the daring soon crept back into her blood.
Milkwort and liverwort starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of grass.
Again a call the curlew are flighting. He looks and looks, in his excitement struggling to his feet and raising his head incautiously far above the sheltering rock. There they come, a great flock of thirty or more, bearing straight down on him, a hundred yards off eighty sixty now.
They sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer night come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled of lime blossom early this summer. Two bats were flighting with the faint mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit the discreet light in there.
Then she would come back, springing towards him from rock to rock, and crouch down beneath a neighbouring seaweed-covered boulder, and they would talk together in whispers, or perhaps they would not talk at all, for fear lest they should frighten the flighting birds.
Here, close to the harbour, are wonderful guano islands, on two of which were dense solid masses of birds covering what seemed to be hundreds of acres of ground. How many millions or billions must there have been! And yet, it being the evening, millions more were flighting home to the islands. With glasses they could be seen in continuous files coming from all directions.
"I don't know how you'll amuse yourself this morning," Furley observed, "and I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to get out for the flighting this evening." "Don't worry about me," Julian begged. "Remember that I am practically at home. It's only three miles to the Hall from here so you mustn't look upon me as an ordinary guest. I am going for a tramp in a few minutes." "Lucky chap!"
And across all that not a sign of life save the wings of the tireless birds, teal and duck, cormorants, and beyond the seaward rocks the great sea geese fishing and the guillemots flighting and the white tern darting like dragon-flies. Where was Bompard? Had he, by any chance, come back and taken some other road off the beach? There was only one way: the break in the cliffs, beyond the caves.
Word Of The Day