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As he spoke there reached our ears the first, far-off murmurs of a dreadful music. I cannot describe it in words because that is impossible, but it was something like to the buzz of a thousand humming-tops such as are loved by children because of their weird song. "Back to the wall!" cried Oro triumphantly. "The time is short!"
I am not sure that she was convinced that I ought to have been checked; but he could not help seeing that it reduced their favourite theory to an absurdity for a small child to exercise the privilege. He ceased to argue, and told me peremptorily that it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more.
For the moment the ship, enveloped in vapours, could not be seen; but in two minutes glimpses of her hull appeared, shewing the bluff bulge of her starboard bottom: for she leaned steeply to port with a forward crank, her two starboard screws, now free, spinning asleep like humming-tops.
It is melancholy to think how much valuable property was engulphed in this untrodden waste, how many shuttlecocks, hit a little too hard, had toppled over and settled on some flowery clump, in full view of, but out of reach for ever of their unfortunate possessor; how many marbles had bounded over and leaped into the green abyss; how many bits of slate-pencil, humming-tops, little ships made of walnut-shells, and other most precious articles, had been lost there to human ken, and now lay hidden and mouldering away!
Some few of the boys had humming-tops, but though these pleased by their noise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head against the good old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind up with a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flat button held between your forefinger and middle finger.
"Leave the small ordnance alone yet awhile, and we shall sink her without them." "Whing, whing," went the Spaniard's shot, like so many humming-tops, through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructed ports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who was to windward, unless close alongside. "Blow, jolly breeze," cried one, "and lay the Don over all thou canst.
In spite of howling jaguars, and snarling pumas, and buzzing mosquitoes, and the whole host of nocturnal abominations peculiar to those regions, our weary travellers lay peacefully in their hammocks, and slept like humming-tops. In regard to Quashy, we might more appropriately say like a buzzing-top.
"Leave the small ordnance alone yet awhile, and we shall sink her without them." "Whing, whing," went the Spaniard's shot, like so many humming-tops, through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructed ports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who was to windward, unless close alongside. "Blow, jolly breeze," cried one, "and lay the Don over all thou canst.
There were humming-tops, which reminded me, by their music, of the great spinning-wheel that whirred away in my mother's kitchen when I was a child. There were graces, and battle-doors, and jack-straws for the amusement of the children when it was too cold or stormy to play out of doors. On a table was an array of slippers, which Mary and her mother had wrought for father and the boys.
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