"Flippers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bearing down on them, peering forward anxiously. He waved when he saw the two helmeted heads. There was a slight gleam from the masks even in the darkness. As he came alongside, the boys held the pole overhead, water churning under their flippers. Orvil bent and took it, lifted it on board, and continued ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... mate was hit in the head, and taken down below; and poor old Nesbitt, who was at the wheel, steering the craft beautifully, had a bullet right into his bow-window, as they call it. "Well," the old fellow says, "here's a shot between wind and water, I reckon—we must have a plug;" so he puts his flippers into his waistband, and stuffs his flannel jacket into the hole. Then we throws her up in the wind again, and rakes him with our three guns well into him, and carries away more of his gear, and stops his sailing—and so we goes on for a whole hour and thirty-five minutes; and, to ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... farther back, of a story which had come down to them, so old that it was older than the great trees were, of monstrous things which swam along the shores and which were not serpents, though they had long necks and serpent heads, because they had great bodies which were driven by flippers through the water as the beaver goes with his broad feet. And at the same time, the old story goes, were great birds, far taller than a man, who fed where now the bustards and the capercailzie are. And these tales I do not believe, though I have seen bones washed from ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... under-surface of the wings of penguins is wholly devoid of feathery covering. Manuel de Mesquita Perestrello, who visited the south coast of Africa in 1575, also describes the Cape penguin. From a manuscript of his Roteiro in the Oporto Library, one learns that the flippers of the sotilicario were covered with minute feathers, as indeed they are on the upper surface and that they dived after fish, upon which they fed, and on which they fed their young, which were hatched in nests constructed of ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... confined in stall yokes somewhat after that fashion. He also knew how green turtles are captured in large mesh nets down along the Florida coast streams like Indian River; for the stupid creature, having passed its flippers through the net, and being unable to continue the forward movement on account of the bulging shell, simply keeps trying to urge itself on, and never dreaming that it could back ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... at its full height upon a block of ice, about eight feet above the surface of the sea. It must have climbed this elevation by crawling up one side of the frozen mass, which was shelving and easy of access, by means of its tusks and flippers; but, whatever was its way of mounting the acclivity, it quickly showed us how it managed to descend; for, upon a couple of bullets passing through its neck, it gave itself a heave backward, rolled overhead and heels down the slope of the hummock, and was launched violently into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... echoed Ben, with a movement aback, But too slow to escape from the creature's attack; If flippers it had, they were furnished with nails,— "You willin, I'll teach ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in a pram. Norwegians are thrifty folk, and bomb harpooning is expensive. So when the whale and steamer meet, at the end of the chase, a tiny pram is launched with two men rowing and a third standing up in the stern to wield the fifteen-foot lance. As the humpback's flippers are also fifteen feet long, and as they thrash about with blows that have sunk several prams and killed more than one crew, it still requires the fittest nerves and muscles to give the ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... they went home. Billy in his dress generally looked like a seal standing on his hind flippers, and Sammy resembled one also—nevertheless it was a ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... buckskin thong to one of the gopher's flippers and hung it from his saddle-horn, then all remounted and turned their ponies toward the place where Chris had disappeared among the trees ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to thinking, and the result of that mental activity was a determination to learn to handle his mitts scientifically—people of the West Side do not have hands; they are equipped by Nature with mitts and dukes. A few have paws and flippers. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him yet rolling over and over embracing a big cow, his head jammed in an ecstasy of ferocity between the animal's front flippers, his legs clasped to hold her body, only his right arm rising and falling as he plunged his knife again and again. She struggled, turning him over and under, wept great tears, and fairly whined with terror and pain. Finally she was still, and Perdosa ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tales. He was hunting along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate, but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... said Mr. Blossom. "Lizzie really is a sea-lion, though it is easier for me to call her a seal, since nine out of ten persons do so. Few know the difference between a seal and a sea-lion. The latter, of which Lizzie is a specimen, have flat front flippers, without hair and triangular in shape. They use their flippers almost as well as we do our hands, and you can see what an aid they are in swimming. The sea-lions have long necks, and carry their heads well up. There are nine species of them, and the so-called 'fur seal' ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... swordfish came up, probably annoyed by the hook fast in him. When he showed his flippers, as Captain Dan called them, we all burst out with wonder and awe. As yet I had no ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey |
