United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Black clouds with copper edging hung in the zenith; seabirds made their way, screaming, to shelter in the island. Then fearful noises as of torrents were heard from the sea; the mists of the morning were swept away and the storm was upon us. The vessel was now in deadly peril, and ere long what we had feared took place.
"We shall go away, since you really wish it," said she. "But won't you tell us first, what it is that troubles you? We know nothing about it. We do not even know where we are." "This is Little Karl's Island!" said the ram. "It lies outside of Gottland, and only sheep and seabirds live here." "Perhaps you are wild sheep?" said Akka. "We're not far removed from it," replied the ram.
Of course, this explanation would have been demanded, but the Bridgewater was an "overdue" ship long before the news of the disaster arrived in England. As the sun rose, the scene looked less hopeless, and the men found that they were near a small sandbank, on which were a quantity of seabirds' eggs. Close by were the Porpoise and Cato still holding together on the reef.
On other evenings the road chosen lies in the direction of the Caves of Hercules, where the samphire grows neglected, and wild ferns thrive in unexpected places. I remember once scaring noisy seabirds from what seemed to be a corpse, and how angrily the gorged, reluctant creatures rose from what proved to be the body of a stranded porpoise, that tainted the air for fifty yards around.
Every now and then an owl called in his flute-like notes across the thickets, and we heard the cry of the seabirds from the creek; and the soft wind came gently up, rustling the fir over our heads, stirring among the leaves of the tall syringa, and wandering off into the warm dusk. The next day I had to return to London on business, taking leave of the strange household with some regret.
"My fine barque gone to the bottom of the sea, cargo and all the gatherings of years. Hard, cruel luck!" Mingling with his words of sorrow are cries that seem cruel too: the screams of seabirds, gannets, gulls, and the wide-winged albatross, that have been long hovering above the Calypso, as if knowing her to be doomed, and hoping to find a feast among the floating remnants of the wreck.
Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds.
The coloring of woods and mountains stood out again in the resplendent verdancy of spring after the torrents of rain, like the wet colors of some freshly washed painting. The sampans and junks, which for the last three days had been lying under shelter, had now put out to sea, and the bay was covered with their white sails, which looked like a flight of enormous seabirds.
To his terrified fancy, a few leafless and projecting branches assumed the appearance of muskets, a point of rock became the prow of one of those light, sharp-built boats in which the Uzcoques were wont to dart like seabirds upon their prey; and, invoking his patron saint, the frightened sailor crossed himself, and with a turn of the rudder brought his vessel yet nearer to the Venetian galleys that escorted the convoy.
This gulf extends about fifty miles into the land, and has three other islands, one of which is named Branco by the Portuguese, or the White Island, on account of its white sands; the second is called Garze, or the Isle of Herons, where they found so many eggs of certain seabirds as to load two boats; the third is called Curoi, or Cori. These islands are all small, sandy, and uninhabited.
Word Of The Day