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A kind of huge, misshapen sea-turtle was the chief prize of all. Three were taken during the strangers' first fortnight in the Abyss; but the fortunate boat-crews that brought them in devoured them, refusing to share even a morsel with any other of the people. Stern and the girl were warned against tasting any weed, fish, or mussel on their own initiative.
The similarity of motion in Families is another subject well worth the consideration of the naturalist: the soaring of the Birds of Prey, the heavy flapping of the wings in the Gallinaceous Birds, the floating of the Swallows, with their short cuts and angular turns, the hopping of the Sparrows, the deliberate walk of the Hens and the strut of the Cocks, the waddle of the Ducks and Geese, the slow, heavy creeping of the Land-Turtle, the graceful flight of the Sea-Turtle under the water, the leaping and swimming of the Frog, the swift run of the Lizard, like a flash of green or red light in the sunshine, the lateral undulation of the Serpent, the dart of the Pickerel, the leap of the Trout, the rush of the Hawk-Moth through the air, the fluttering flight of the Butterfly, the quivering poise of the Humming-Bird, the arrow-like shooting of the Squid through the water, the slow crawling of the Snail on the land, the sideway movement of the Sand-Crab, the backward walk of the Crawfish, the almost imperceptible gliding of the Sea-Anemone over the rock, the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral.
Yes, he knew a Gila monster when he saw one and this was plain enough; there were the orange and black markings, the wicked head, the beady, evil eyes and this one was growing! It would soon be as big as a sea-turtle and it was blinking at him with malicious purpose in its fixed gaze. The Dago Duke's hands and feet were like ice, while the cold sweat stood in beads on his forehead.
The latter turned to me, and said in her quiet and sober way "But I discovered soon enough that the sea-turtle was not a sea-dove, did I not?" "What are you talking about sea-doves?" asked the countess; "it seems you have secrets in common already." I opened my mouth to answer, when the little blonde opposite to me sprang up and put her little shell-coloured hand to my lips.
Lest some chief should look on her face and envy him, Misty Eyes hid his companion in a little hut among the trees, as secret and secure as a bird's nest, and sometimes they would go together to a cave, opening from the sea, opposite Pupehe's Rock, to catch and cook a sea-turtle.
The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse of his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the fins of a sea-turtle.
The sight of these islands was very satisfactory, for though our men had their fill of land and sea-turtle, which kept them from the scurvy, they were but weak, as that is but a faint food, except they had enough of bread or flour to eat with it; whereas they only had a pound and a quarter of bread or flour to five men per day, on purpose to husband our stock till we came to live entirely on salt-meat, when we should be under the necessity to allow more.
In that parlor were the trophies of Captain Shadrach's seafaring days whales' teeth, polished and with pictures of ships upon them; the model of a Chinese junk; a sea-turtle shell, flippers, head and all, exactly like a real turtle except, as Mary-'Gusta said, 'it didn't have any works'; a glass bottle with a model of the bark Treasure Seeker inside; an Eskimo lance with a bone handle and an ivory point; a cocoanut carved to look like the head and face of a funny old man; a Cuban machete; and a set of ivory chessmen with Chinese knights and kings and queens, all complete and set out under a glass cover.
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