"Gull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what it had already swallowed. The whole scene far and wide presented nothing but the lone, tame undulations, liable to be changed by every wind, and solitary beyond expression—a few rabbits scudding hither and thither, or a sea-gull floating with white, ghostly wings in the air, being the only living things visible. On the one hand a dim, purple horizon showed that the inhabited country lay miles inland; on the other lay the pale, gray, misty expanse of sea, on ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... breviary book. In such a place, so lone, so grim, At dawning pale, or twilight dim, It fearful would have been To meet a form so richly dressed, With book in hand, and cross on breast, And such a woeful mien. Fitz-Eustace, loitering with his bow, To practise on the gull and crow, Saw her, at distance, gliding slow, And did by Mary swear - Some lovelorn fay she might have been, Or, in romance, some spell-bound queen; For ne'er, in work-day world, was seen A ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the wind blew through the fields of grass like countless angels in the courts of heaven. Shadow and color and light and movement dancing before the first syllable of the Name. A gull flew down almost to my hand, and the sunlight thundered in my ears. Last night the sea was sadly purifying the earth. I now understand the Washer of the Ford. Majesty lies in darkness, and grief is only the privilege of seeing Majesty. Today on the porch with closed eyes buried in my hands ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... English in me that loves the soft, wet weather— The cloud upon the mountain, the mist upon the sea, The sea-gull flying low and near with rain upon each feather, The scent of deep, green woodlands where the buds ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the assassin, therefore I fled to France, and for ten years have maintained myself by the two arts which so often go together, astrology and buffoonery. I had always been fond of knowledge, and had learned all that could be taught in the grand science of astrology, so that however much I may gull fools here, I have obtained the confidence of many powerful personages by the accuracy of my forecasts. Had Orleans but believed my solemn assurance he would not have ridden through the streets of Paris to his death that ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... white sand, with here and there a glimpse of the purple, rock-hemmed sea. Little of life animates this coast, in many spots the custom-house officer and a fisherman or two being the sole inhabitants, their nearest neighbours removed from them by many miles. Only the flamingo, the heron, and the sea-gull people these solitudes, within the last few years broken by the whistle of the locomotive. We are following the direct line of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... water-eating a large six-penny loaf before she felt at all stayed or satisfied. She says she did get light, but it was all in her body and none in her mind-and this lightness of body lasted a long time. Oh! she was so light, and felt so well, she could 'skim around like a gull.' ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... been flying high, but now she swooped down almost like a gull, seeking to rest on the water. We were headed toward her now, and as the flying boat sank I saw one of the passengers rise in his seat, swing his arm, and far out something splashed in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... hour the galley skimmed to and fro among the anchored fleet, now running free like a white-winged gull, anon close-hauled, the razor bows cleaving a path through the dancing water in a little ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the shriek of the passing steamer, casting golden-green reflections into the stream at twilight, and shadows of deepest blackness, star-pierced, at remoter depths of night. Here, now and then, a stray gull from the sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... not a gull," said the man, squinting his eyes to look at the distant bird. "It's too big. I declare! I ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... He comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on which he never touched himself or suffered others to interrogate him, his conception of and attitude towards the Unseen. He wore his religion as Sir William Gull wore the fur of his coat, INSIDE. Outwardly he died as he had lived, a Stoic; that on the most personal and sacred of all topics he should consult the Silences was in keeping with his idiosyncrasy. Another famous man, questioned ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... the ice; but our distance from this was so great, that we never saw any of them, and the weather was yet too cold to station a shooting-party in that neighbourhood. Dovekies were now also numerous, and a gull or two, of the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... hundred yards, disappear with almost silent plunge beneath the blue waves, and after a short interval emerge, bearing their glittering prey in their beaks. Of all the movements of birds, either upon foot or on the wing, I think there is none so interesting to look at as the actions of the fishing gull while engaged in pursuit of his prey. Even the kite is not more graceful in its flight. The sudden turning in his onward course—the momentary pause to fix more accurately the position of his prey—the arrow-like descent— the plunge—the ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... she found a fine lodge, and all things ready for her reception, and she became the wife of the water-tiger. Whilst the children were playing along the shore, and the boy was casting pebbles into the lake, he saw a gull coming from its centre, and flying towards the shore, and when on shore, the bird immediately assumed the human shape. When he looked again, he recognized the lost mother. She had a leather belt around her loins, and another belt of white metal, which was, in reality, the tail of the water-tiger, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... sea. It is but a cat's-paw of wind, and yet it looks like a river flowing in silence from some fairy region. The boats start out of the haze and glide away into dimness after having shown their phantom shadows for a few seconds; the cry of the gull rings weirdly; the simulated agony of the staunch bird's scream makes one somehow think of tortured souls; you think of dim strange years, you feel the dim strange weather, you remember the still strange land unvexed of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... a gull in Utah is an offense in law; but stronger than legal proscription, more powerful than fear of judicial penalties, is the popular sentiment in favor of these white-winged deliverers. Every year come these graceful creatures to spend the springtime ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... the cowslips of the King's Park—could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving heather, and the full moon hanging above the restless tide. She could listen to the surf in the storm, and the ripple in the calm, to the cry of the gull and the wh-r-r of the moorcock; pull wild thyme, and pick up rose-tinted shells and perforated stones; and watch shyly her hardy cottar servants cutting peats and tying up flax, and even caught snatches of their rude Border lore of raid and foray under doughty Homes, who wore ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... crackling fire of drift wood, and nearly always enough applejack for all, and now and then hot soup. Marianne wrenches these luxuries, so to speak, out of the sea, often alone and single-handed, working as hard as a gull to feed her young. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... he knew and loved he heard—the sigh of the wind in the pines, the mourn of the wolf, the cry of the laughing-gull, the murmur of running brooks, the song of a child, the whisper of a woman. And there were the boom of the surf, the roar of the north wind in the forest, the roll of thunder. And there were the sounds not of earth—a river of the universe rolling ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... unsubstantial as itself. Even living, moving things had that aspect. Far out on the lowest further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a level with the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos and threes and small groups and in rows; but they did not look like gulls—familiar birds, gull-shaped with grey and white plumage. They appeared twice as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling whiteness and of no definite shape: though standing still they had motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the "visible heat"; at rest, they were ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... have not before heard, professed to give the origin both of the abnormal ferocity and of the preterhuman powers of Atotarho. He was already noted as a chief and a warrior, when he had the misfortune to kill a peculiar bird, resembling a sea-gull, which is reputed to possess poisonous qualities of singular virulence. By his contact with the dead bird his mind was affected. He became morose and cruel, and at the same time obtained the power of destroying ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... conveys the surplus water of some lake or lakes lying farther up the country. The solemn effect of the scenery was heightened by the absence of all traces and signs of men or other animals; and the occasional scream of a gull looking down upon us, made the general silence and solitude more impressive. How prodigal is nature of her beauties and glories, thus repeated and renewed in places where there is no one to admire, and ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... jockey, do, cozen, diddle, nab, chouse, play one false, bilk, cully^, jilt, bite, pluck, swindle, victimize; abuse; mystify; blind one's eyes; blindfold, hoodwink; throw dust into the eyes; dupe, gull, hoax, fool, befool^, bamboozle, flimflam, hornswoggle; trick. impose upon, practice upon, play upon, put upon, palm off on, palm upon, foist upon; snatch a verdict; bluff off, bluff; bunko, four flush [Slang], gum [U.S.], spoof [Slang], stuff (a ballot box) [U.S.]. circumvent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... these wind-tossed bird scarers is the ki'-lao. The ki'-lao is a basket-work figure swung from a pole and is usually the shape and size of the distended wings of a large gull, though it is also made in other shapes, as that of man, the lizard, etc. The pole is about 20 feet high, and is stuck in the earth at such an angle that the swinging figure attached by a line at the top of the pole hangs well over the sementera and about 3 or 4 feet above the grain (see Pl. LXVII). ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... sez in the 'a'penny noospapers. I mind me well on the night o' the storm, the very night ye went out on the 'ills an' found 'im, I was settin' at my door down shorewards watchin' the waves an' hearin' the wind cryin' like a babe for its mother, an' if ye'll believe me, there was a sea-gull as came and flopped down on a stone just in front o' me!—a thing no sea-gull ever did to me all the time I've lived 'ere, which is thirty years since I married Twitt. There it sat, drenched wi' the rain, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the author. They say, "Very well done." "The alliteration is so pretty." "What's an oesophagus, a bird?" "What's it all mean, anyway?" I tell them it means Mark Twain, and that an oesophagus is a kind of swallow. Am I right? Or is it a gull? Or a gullet? ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "'The sea-gull And the eagul And the dipper-dapper-duck And the Jew-fish And the blue-fish And the turtle in the muck; And the squir'l And the girl And the flippy floppy bat Are differ-ent As gent from gent. So let ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... ragged Avarice guards with bolted door His useless treasures from the starving poor; Loads the lorn hours with misery and care, And lives a beggar to enrich his heir. 100 Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull, A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool. While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power, Ambition slays his thousands in an hour; Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien, And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen; Or wrathful Jealousy invades the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... tales. One of them spoke, and said, "A wigwam stands in the deep. At the bottom of the lake a big turtle lies asleep in this wigwam. Around him swim white fish and trout, and the slow-worm goes creeping by. The scream of the sea gull and the shouts of the rovers do not waken him. Nothing can disturb his slumber but ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... there is great need, that by keeping a vigilant eye on the skirmishers thrown out from time to time by the Party of Generals, they may see that their feints and manoeuvres do not oppress the small defaulters and release the great, and that they do not gull the public with a mere field-day Review of Reform, instead of an earnest, hard-fought Battle. I have had no consultation with any one upon the subject, but I particularly wish that the directors may devise some means of enabling intelligent ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... latch and flung the gates asunder, throwing one-half to the keeper, and running with the other half, forwards. Gerald suddenly let go the horse and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun. She was not afraid. As he jerked aside the mare's head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a witch screaming out from the side ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... friend of all was a sea-gull. Davy found him, with a broken wing, and nursed him carefully till he was well; then let him go, though he was very fond of "Little Gulliver," as he called him in fun. But the bird never forgot the boy, and came daily to talk with him, telling all manner ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... leans, so sweet and soft, Flitting oft, O'er the mirror to and fro, Seems that airy floating bat, Like a feather From some sea-gull's ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... continued the pirate captain. "I want to prove to you that the distance from this spot to the boat is about five hundred yards. You see that gull on the water? It is about the same distance ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... engines. The harsh, discordant cries of a sea-parrot grated unpleasantly on the ear, and set half a dozen alert in a small band of seals that were ahead of us. Away they went, breaching and jumping entirely out of water. A sea-gull with slow, deliberate flight and long, majestic curves circled round us, and as a reminder of home a little English sparrow perched impudently on the fo'castle head, and, cocking his head on one side, chirped ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Cheyenne cattleman his had been the role of the sporting ex-telegraph operator, who could get "flashes" on the result of horse races before the names of the winners came over an imaginary tapped wire to the make-believe pool room where the gull was stripped; and he had been at some pains and expense to procure a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the deep is my island throne, Where the sea-gull roams and reigns alone; Where nought is seen but the beetling rock, And nought is heard but the ocean-shock, And the scream of birds when the storm is nigh, And the crash of the wreck, and the fearful cry Of drowning men, in their ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... awake his companion and tell him of it? A pity, if it should prove to be nothing, or only the chattering of a sea-gull. His brave protector had need of rest. Ben would not be angry to be awaked; but the sailor would be sure to laugh at him if he were to say he had heard a little girl talking at that time of night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... true," answered Adam Woodcock; "but who can ensure us of that? Moreover, these were but tales the monks used to gull us simple laymen withal; they knew that fairies and hobgoblins brought aves and paternosters into repute; but, now we have given up worship of images in wood and stone, methinks it were no time to be afraid of bubbles in the water, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... about the rock, they were now seen in great numbers, having been in an almost undisturbed state for six months. It had now also, for the first time, got some inhabitants of the feathered tribe: in particular the scarth or cormorant, and the large herring-gull, had made the beacon a resting-place, from its vicinity to their fishing-grounds. About a dozen of these birds had rested upon the cross-beams, which, in some places, were coated with their dung; and their flight, as the boats approached, was a very unlooked-for indication of life and habitation ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rose to the Lord in trembling prayer! The wave came rolling on; every paddle with all their united strength struck into the sea; and next moment our canoe was flying like a sea-gull on the crest of the wave towards the shore. Another instant, and the wave had broken on the reef with a mighty roar, and rushed passed us hissing in clouds of foam. My company were next seen swimming ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... she loved not the world; She sat on it as a gull sits on the ocean; She slept the sleep of a captive mother, Mourning ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... was at college "studying for a doctor," but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull in the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to be out on ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... scarcely half an hour after the sail had been hoisted, the rowers became inactive, reclining on their benches, and, making an eye-shade with their hands, pointed out to each other a white spot which appeared on the horizon as motionless as a gull rocked by the viewless respiration of the waves. But that which might have appeared motionless to ordinary eyes was moving at a quick rate to the experienced eye of the sailor; that which appeared stationary upon the ocean was cutting a rapid way through it. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my lover, My friends are the Oceans four, The Heavens have roofed me over, And the Dawn is my golden door. I would liefer follow a condor, Or the sea-gull soaring from ken, Than bury my Godhead yonder, In the dust ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... clear, cold wind goes through them, that is very sweet to me. And when the drinking-hall is set out in Almhuin, and the cup-bearers give out the bright cups to the chief men of the Fianna, that is very sweet to me; and it is sweet to me to be listening to the voice of the sea-gull and the heron, and the noise of the waves of Traig Liath, the song of the three sons of Meardha, the whistle of Lugaidh's Son, and the voice of the cuckoo in the beginning of summer, and the grunting of the pigs ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... that I went to the house of a man named Peters, to whom I was directed, as one deeply engaged in the pursuit, and able to introduce me to it. A sea-gull nailed on his door with extended wings, like the owls and weasels that we see on barns, guided me. I found the worthy in a sort of cellar, which by the ropes, sails, oars, hammocks, and barrels which filled it, might have been taken for a naval ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... queer idea," answered little Marie, bursting into shouts of laughter, "and he would make a queer husband. You could gull him to your heart's content. For instance, the other day, I had picked up a tomato in the curate's garden. I told him that it was a fine, red apple, and he bit into it like a glutton. If you had only seen what a face he made. Heavens! how ugly ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... were probably Pirates in the neighborhood; for it appears by the papers since, that a piratical schooner captured by the Sea Gull, was fitted out at VILLA CLARA—a town not very far distant ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... chattering vociferously, and in terrible consternation at our approach, while the old ones kept uttering the most plaintive cries overhead. The eggs were very small, being those of a small species of gull which frequents those inland lakes in great numbers. The wind again began to rise; and after a little consultation on the subject we landed, intending to spend the remainder of ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... live timbers beneath his feet, the—the vacuum within him would be filled, but the thought of a ship somehow, when he was there, failed to exalt him. He loved them always, the long live ships, the canvas white as a gull, the delicacy of spars—all the beautiful economy.... But to command one again, to go about the world, aimlessly but for the bartering of cargo, and to return at the voyage's end, with a sum of ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... shoots past, and the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... black lines down their backs; crouching down without moving, they would be well hidden. The common tern lays its eggs amongst rough stones, where you would think that anything so fragile as an egg would easily get broken. Near his case there is a beautiful pure white gull, who lives in the Arctic regions among the ice and snow. It is a wonderful law of Nature that birds and animals often resemble their surroundings. We have seen that the tiger is not easily seen among his bamboo-stems, and that birds the colour of sand live ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... steak, And some sea gull eggs, And a pint of sea cow's milk, Green sea weed sauce And water cress And ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... been easily deceived in some matter is often described as a "gull," or is said to have been "gulled." Gull is now the name of a sea-bird, but in Early English it was used to describe any young bird, and from the idea that it is easy to deceive such youngsters came the use of the word to describe ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... The herring-gull is by nature a fish-eater; but of recent years, in some parts of Britain, it has been becoming in the summer months more and more of a vegetarian, scooping out the turnips, devouring potatoes, settling on the sheaves in the harvest ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... costumes and properties had been invented from such things as came to hand. Sheets sculpturesquely draped the deities who took part; a fox-pelt from the hearth did duty as the leopard skin of Bacchus; a feather duster served Neptune for a trident; the lyre of Apollo was a dust-pan; a gull's breast furnished Jove with his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... soaring, which the hawks possess, but which is also exhibited by seagulls. On a March morning two gulls came up from the sea, and as they neared the Downs began to soar. It was necessary to fix the gaze on one, as the eyes cannot follow two soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally—a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider—and was ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a laugh; "and what poor gull am I to adore an attested wanton?" Then, with a sneer, he spoke of Melicent, and in such terms as ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star, if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in the shape of a novel. To-day we feel it might be anything. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand might even be, like Trigorin's in 'The Sea-gull,' like a piano; ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... many other diseases peculiar to civilisation, and concerning the wherefore and the why an apposite passage occurs in the works of Sir William Gull. ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... be expected the fauna and flora of the Shoals is neither rare nor extensive. Gulls are to be seen of course at all times,—especially the large burgomaster gull, one of the finest of birds in size and ferocity, and in power of sight nearly equal to an eagle. In spring and fall flocks of coot and the more fishy sort of ducks are to be found there together with a good many loons. Snowy owls are not uncommon in cold weather, and during winter ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... when he saw Sif bewailing her stolen hair, and beheld the frightened salmon hurrying alone towards the deep water, he was at no loss to know whose work this mischief was. Straightway he took upon himself the form of a sea-gull, and soared high up over the water. Then, poising a moment in the air, he darted, swift as an arrow, down into the river. When he arose from the water, he held the struggling salmon tightly grasped in his ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... and distinctly feminine movement. The feet are kept on the ground, while the body sways back and forth in graceful undulations to the music and the hands with outspread palms part the air with the graceful stroke of a flying gull. Some of their dances are performed seated. Then they strip to the waist and form one long line of waving arms and swaying shoulders, all ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... rapidly with the tide towards the bar of a large river. The sound of birds came from great flocks of sea-gulls that were preying on the shoals of fish, which fed at the meeting of the fresh and salt water. Presently, as I watched, a gull seized a fish that could not have weighed less than three pounds, and strove to lift it from the sea. Failing in this, it beat the fish on the head with its beak till it died, and had begun to devour it, when I drifted down upon the spot and made haste to seize ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... betrayed much more of his true self to his wife than to others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his true self and the self he presented to the world in general. But he never did so. Only the feeble eyes of the poor gull Roderigo were allowed ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... took up a red herring from one of the baskets, and tore it to pieces with my teeth. I looked around me in every quarter to see if there was any vessel in sight, but there was nothing to be seen but now and then a screaming sea-gull. I tried to rouse my companion by kicking her with my foot; I did not succeed in waking her up, but she turned round on her back, and, her hair falling from her face, discovered the features of a young and pretty person, apparently not more ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... had realized. Possibly, some of her emphasis imparted itself to her touch on the tiller, and jerked the sloop too violently into a sudden puff as it careened. At all events, the boat swung sidewise, trembled for an instant like a wounded gull, and then slapped its spread of canvas prone upon the water ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the approaching end of this first stage of their journey. A few hundred yards south of their goal they seemed about to alight, but Droop slightly inclined the aeroplanes and speeded up the propeller a little. Their vessel swept gently upward and northward again, like a gull rising from the sea. Then Droop let it settle again. Just as they were about to fall rather violently upon the solid mass of ice below them, he projected a relatively small volume of gas from beneath the structure. Its ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterward, by a short hard ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... glorious one. Old Sol cast his rays upon the sea which gave them back broken and shattered into a thousand shafts of shimmering light. The air was cool and clear. Here and there in the distance a white sail like a fleeting gull marked the position of a sailing vessel, while a smudge of smoke from a steamer far away to the west lent a touch ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... common crow, with which it is often confounded, the fish crow is of much smaller, more slender build. Thus its flight is less labored and more like a gull's, whose habit of catching fish that may be swimming near the surface of the water it sometimes adopts. Both Audubon and Wilson, who first made this species known, record its habit of snatching food as it flies over the southern waters — a rare ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... over that part of the interior traversed by the Expedition. Like Elanus notatus, it has a bright full eye, the iris inclined to a light pink. Its shoulders are black, and its back like a sea-gull, slate-coloured. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... A gull, white as snow, came flitting by and wheeled out away over the harbour; as her eyes followed it he stood looking at her, his anger gone, but his mind only half convinced by her ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the channel when the captain himself called out, "It is for me then to point out the buoy; there it is!" but as they drew near, the buoy floating on the water spread but a pair of wings and flew away in the shape of a gull, and many a gull in a fog may have ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... self, to the best manhood that is in him, and not to the mere selfishness, the antica lupa so cunning to hide herself in the sheep's fleece even from ourselves. It is true, the contemporary world is apt to be the gull of brilliant parts, and the maker of a lucky poem or picture or statue, the winner of a lucky battle, gets perhaps more than is due to the solid result of his triumph. It is time that fit honor should be paid also to him who shows a genius for public usefulness, for the achievement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... poor little coddy-moddy! A little baby gull. Pity! Something's hurt it, but it's alive yet. Makes me feel bad to see any young creetur suffer; most of all to see a bird. Put it in the crook of your elbow, Sissy, and fetch it along. I'll take it home with me and see if I can't save ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... the clouds do not mean wind or bad surface. The latter became poor towards the end of the afternoon. We have not risen much to-day, and the plain seems to be flattening out. Irregularities are best seen by sastrugi. A skua gull visited us on the march this afternoon—it was evidently curious, kept alighting on the snow ahead, and fluttering a few yards as we approached. It seemed to have had little food—an extraordinary visitor considering our distance ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... fool. He had not wit enough to be a traitor. Poor thick-eyed beetle! not to have foreseen 135 That he, who gull'd thee with a whimper'd lie To murder his own brother, would not scruple To murder thee, if e'er his guilt grew jealous And he could steal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Tophet.) (Takes out money.) Where's the blunt? I must be cool to-night, or ... steady, Deacon, you must win; damn you, you must! You must win back the dowry that you've stolen, and marry your sister, and pay your debts, and gull the world a little longer! (As he blows out the lights.) The Deacon's going to bed—the poor sick Deacon! Allons! (Throws up the window and looks out.) Only the stars to see me! (Addressing the bed.) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... past the first line, soaring over the bar on a foamy roller-crest like a storm-driven gull winging in towards the land. The wiry figure of Bill Wheaton crouched in the stern while two sailors fought with their oars. As they gathered for their rush through the last zone of froth, a great comber rose out of the sea behind them, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Deep unsounded, And the dim and dizzy ledge, And the booming roar rebounded, And the gull that skims the edge! The Giant of the Pool Heaves his forehead white as wool— Toward the Iris every climbing From the Cataracts that call— Irremovable vast arras Draping all ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... scorn of writers, Faustus still doth hold, Nought is now said, but hath been said of old; Well, Faustus, say my wits are gross and dull, If for that word I give thee not a Gull: Thus then I prove thou holdst a false position; I say thou art a man of fair condition, A man true of thy word, tall of thy hands, Of high descent and left good store of lands; Thou with false dice ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... June so clear that a sea gull loomed mammoth against the sky; a day when a sail against the horizon was visible for miles; a day when the whole world seemed swept and garnished as for a festival, Zenas Henry Brewster drew rein before the Spence cottage, hitched the Admiral ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... if the sea breeze would desert us. It usually came in about one o'clock, but that hour and another had passed and yet we watched for the first change. Without a breeze our chances of overhauling the stranger were gone. Only a white speck like the wing of a gull now marked her whereabouts on the edge of the horizon, and in another hour she would be invisible even ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... islet, with uncertain steps, through the gloom and fog. Once he steadied himself on a jutting piece of the rock as he supposed, when to his immense surprise—wh'r'r'r—it rose from under his hand, with a shrill cry of alarm, and fluttered wildly seaward. It was some sleeping gull, no doubt, disturbed unexpectedly in its accustomed resting-place. Eustace staggered and almost fell. Cleer supported him with her arm. He accepted her aid gratefully. They stumbled on in the dark once more, lighting now and again for a minute or ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings, And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue Is like the light ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... island they emptied their pouches on the sand—too often, I must confess, solely for my benefit. Selfish bachelor birds on returning with full pouches jerked their catch into the air, and so swallowed it. It used to amuse me, however, to watch a robber gull, perched on their back, cleverly and neatly intercepting the fish as it ascended. These fish, with broiled turtle meat and tinned fruits, made quite a ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... thousand baseless and confused visions. He was a birdhe was a fishor he flew like the one, and swam like the other,qualities which would have been very essential to his safety a few hours before. Then Miss Wardour was a syren, or a bird of Paradise; her father a triton, or a sea-gull; and Oldbuck alternately a porpoise and a cormorant. These agreeable imaginations were varied by all the usual vagaries of a feverish dream;the air refused to bear the visionary, the water seemed to burn himthe rocks felt like down pillows as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... flight ended in a spacious paved landing; whence, looking back and up, he could see two immense columnar pedestals surmounted by statues, while forward extended the basin, a sheet of water on which, white and light as a gull, his galley rested. He had but to call the watchman on its deck, and a small boat would come to him in a trice. He ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... home, and Captain Cock, who was quite drunk, comes after me, and there sat awhile and so away, and anon I went again after the company was gone, and sat and played at cards with Sir W. Pen and his children, and so after supper home, and there I hear that my man Gull was gone to bed, and upon enquiry I hear that he did vomit before he went to bed, and complained his head ached, and thereupon though he was asleep I sent for him out of his bed, and he rose and came up to me, and I appeared very angry and did tax him ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... nonce; had come out of his chair by the ingle-nook to taste a little the salt of life. The north-easter flashed in the white cataracts of his eyes and woke a feeble activity in his scrannel limbs. When the wind blew loud, his daughter had told me, he was always restless, like an imprisoned sea-gull. He would be up and out. He would rise and flap his old draggled pinions, as if the great air fanned an expiring ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... one evening as Perrin Corbet was crossing a hill on his return home from fishing, he thought he heard a low moaning. He stopped and listened. Was it the cry of a sea-gull flying into shelter from the storm which was approaching? Was it, perhaps, the spirit of some drowned fisherman haunting his house? No—it was the voice of a living woman in distress! He waited, and gradually ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... great number of gulls, and were witnesses to the disgusting mode of feeding of the arctic gull, which has procured it the name of the parasite; and which, if the reader is not already acquainted with it, he will ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... you hold And give me leave (my Lord) to say thus much (And in mine own defence) I am no Gull To be wrought on by perswasion: nor no Coward To be beaten out of my means, but know to whom And why I give or lend, and will do nothing But what my reason warrants; you may be As sparing as you please, I must be bold To make use of my own, without ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... leisurely along. "I should think any booby might know this is not the night for a fire, when things are so wet; but it is the night for a wreck, and the feller pullin' that bell tells me there is one off Gull's P'int." ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand |
