"Gull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the body of a mullet; and some with a shark's head and the flat body of a sting-ray. Many birds partake of the parrot; some have the head, neck, and bill of a parrot, with long straight feet and legs; others with legs and feet of a parrot, with head and neck of a sea gull. Voyage to South Wales by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... full half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly to catch the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... warm shore, within the shallows play; Where gaping mussels, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood; - Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace How sidelong crabs had scrawi'd their crooked race, Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye; What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come. And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home, Gave from the salt ditch side the bellowing boom: He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce, And loved to stop beside the opening sluice; Where the small stream, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... enterprise, who freed his mind of 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 ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... are birds having a Gull or Tern-like form and with a hooked bill, the base of which is covered with a scaly shield. They have webbed feet and are able to swim and dive, but they commonly get their living by preying upon the Gulls and ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... sustenance since I have known of it. In my first printed mention of it I declared: 'The world is no more the alien terror that was taught me. Spurning the cloud-grimed and still sultry battlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull lifts her wing against the nightfall, and takes the dim leagues with a fearless eye.' And now, after twenty-seven years of this experience, the wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and doubly emphasize that declaration. I know—as having known—the meaning ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... mind; I'll find it out from himself soon. By the way, what were you telling me about explosions yesterday when that little white gull came to admire your pretty face, and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mercutio, would smoke while the dinner was serving up. Those who were rich and foolish carried with them smoking apparatus of gold or silver—tobacco-box, snuff-ladle, tongs to take up charcoal, and priming irons. There seems, from Decker's "Gull's Horn-Book," to have been smoking clubs, or tobacco ordinaries as they were called, where the entire talk was of the best shops for buying Trinidado, the Nicotine, the Cane, and the Pudding, whose pipe had the best bore, which ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... estimate of the sea-gull as an intellectual force is compressed into the word "gullibility"—a verbal monument of contempt. But when we think how many things the gull does that we cannot do—how he has mastered the arts of flying and floating, so that he is equally ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Chris made out, coasting on the air, a sea gull, balancing upon its black-tipped wings. Swallowing a lump in his throat that proved bothersome, Chris jerked at one oar and deftly coiled the magic rope over his arm, holding to the ship's ladder ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Security, did again make a feast for the town of Mansoul; and there was at that time in the town one Mr. Godly-Fear, one now but little set by, though formerly one of great request. This man, old Carnal-Security, had a mind, if possible, to gull, and debauch, and abuse, as he did the rest, and therefore he now bids him to the feast with his neighbours. So the day being come, they prepare, and he goes and appears with the rest of the guests; and being all set at the table, they did eat and drink, and were merry, even all but ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... particular, would seem to have been literally taken from the wing of the large sea-fowl, the shape so nearly corresponding that, with the canvas spread in the manner just mentioned, one of those light craft has a very close resemblance to the gull or the hawk, as it poises itself in the air or is sweeping down upon its prey. The lugger has less of the beauty that adorns a picture, perhaps, than the strictly latine rig; but it approaches so near it as to be always pleasing to the eye, and, in the particular evolution described, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... storms. But 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 ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some horrific Gorgon's mammoth skull, Thrown up by Titan spade, From out those caves Where saurians with mastodons had played, Before the sea had made their homes their graves, And scared their ghosts with screech of sea-born mew and gull, ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... many a score; Whence noise was none save that of plashing oar; Nor word was spoke, to break the calm serene. Unhear'd is whisker'd boatman's hail or joke; Who, mute as Sinbad's man of copper, rows, And only intermits the sturdy stroke When fearless gull too nigh his pinnace goes. I, hardly conscious if I dream'd or woke, Mark'd that strange piece of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... all of the king-duck species, about the open water near the margin of 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
... the strongest swimmer would be as a chip on a cataract. The task now is not to paddle, but to steer—to keep the craft away from the rocks. This is the part of the steersman, who stands braced to his paddle used rudder-wise astern; and the canoe rides the wildest plunge like a sea-gull. One after another the brigades disappear in a white trough of spray and roaring waters. They are gone! No human power can bring them out of that maelstrom! But look! like corks on a wave, mounting and climbing and riding the highest billows, there they are again, one after another, ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... not speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast. Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach 'peeping' softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the leaf when they came; the winds ran crying through the forests, tearing the leaves and branches from the oaks, and mourning among the pines of the uplands. The sea was gray as a gull's back, with dark shadows under the cliffs and white tresses of foam along the headlands. At evening a cold wind brought the rain beating in from the ocean. Thus the Fomorians landed at the Cataract of the Oaks, and marched ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... hands to his mouth, and hollowing the palms, uttered three mournful cries, long and loud, like the wailing of a gull. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 white spray dancing ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... later she stepped on to the platform, dressed all in gray, with roses in her cheeks, and a pair of gull's wings ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for 3000 years, which the fellaheens know how to place on their heads with so much grace—and one sees these heaps of fragile pottery gliding along the water as if carried by the gigantic wings of a gull. And in the far-off, almost fabulous, days the life of the mariners of the Nile had the same aspect, as is shown by the bas-reliefs on the oldest tombs; it required the same play of muscles and of sails; was accompanied no doubt ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Ulysses, to betoken his madness, took his plough down to the shore and drew furrows in the sand—the sea that even Demeter, great goddess, could not sow nor bring to any fruition. Yet now the ocean is our wheat-field and ships are our barns. The sea-gull should be painted on the village tavern sign instead of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Heavy sea running, the Sisters west-south-west about 4 miles, at 6 hauled up for a sandy beach bearing S.S. Found this place a good shelter from the wind and good riding, found the tide setting about cast and west, at 4 made sail, Rocky Island south-east 1/2 east 4 miles standing alongshore, Gull Island south-south-east 5 miles.* (* Islands ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... if she needed Vee," I goes on. "She's just got in the habit of havin' her 'round. That might be all right, too, if she didn't have the travel bug so bad. But with her keepin' on the wing so constant— Well, I'm no bloomin' sea-gull. And when you're engaged, this long-distance stuff ought to be ruled out. It's got ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... perforated, and a piece of reed, from eight to ten inches long, thrust through it, which seamen whimsically term their spritsail-yard. They seem to have no kind of religion; they bury their dead under ground, and they live in distinct clans, by the terms Gull, Taury Gull, or Uroga Gull, &c. They are very expert with their implements of war, which are spears made of reed, pointed with crystal or fish bone; they have a short club made of iron wood, called a waday, and a scimeter made of the same wood. Those ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... were greedy to explore. Around it rolled the woodland in billows of intense green with sandy beaches in the troughs and straight cliffs at the crests. The green islands were vivid in color. So was the sky above, like the flash in a sapphire. A half-dozen sails fluttered gull-like, and as many launches darted along, suggesting living ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... of Buzan raved and grieved, the ship of the brothers Simeon, like a golden fish, swam under the blue waters, and when the island was lost from sight the fourth Simeon brought her to the surface and she rose upon the waters like a white-winged gull. By this time the princess was becoming anxious about the long time they were away from ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... stand here 'mongst the wreckage on the strand, A wreck myself, which the breakers cast upon the sand When the vessel crashed 'gainst the sharp cliff-rocks! Be greeted, Sea, that nurses healthy thoughts And recreates the soul in shrunken body When every spring thy billows break And gull and swallow chatter 'bove thy wave, To wak'n anew the joy of life, ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... the Brook Brook and Waterfall The Turn of the Trail Mountain and Valley Sunshine and Shadow Canon and Hillside The Bottom of the Canon Wild-cat Canon The Trout's Paradise Fishing for Brook Trout They have Stood the Storms of Centuries Sea Gull Rock Comrades Among the Redwoods A Chinese Shoemaker In Chinatown The Breaking Waves The Glass-bottom Boat Fog on the Bay Italian Fishing Boats Drying the Nets The Witchery of Moonlight Mount Tamalpais An Uninterrupted View Where ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... did advance, Was, like our fashions, first produced in France; And, when worn out, well scourged, and banished there, Sent over, like their godly beggars, here. Could the same trick, twice played, our nation gull? It looks as if the devil were grown dull; Or served us up, in scorn, his broken meat, And thought we were not worth a better cheat. The fulsome Covenant, one would think in reason, Had given us all our bellies full ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... went overboard the water had washed off his hat. Likewise it had washed off his long black hair—which was a wig—and his head was all round and shiny and bald, like a gull's egg out in a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... stricken to the heart. He perceived by what facility, by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the gull of this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure against himself, against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle counsels had impelled him to embark on that adventure. At the same ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... manuscript, and we thought him better, when at the end of July, in London, he was struck down by the first attack of the head, which robbed him of all after power of work, although the intellect remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him to Cannes for the winter, where he was seized with a violent internal inflammation, in which I suppose there was again the indication of the lesion of blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now,—the time of which I can hardly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and, thumping violently, was carried by the tide (dragging her anchor) some two or three miles, grounding finally upon the shoal of Gull Island. At flood tide sail was made on her as soon as she floated, and we succeeded in getting her back into the channel. As the vessel grounded at every ebb tide and on the return of the water was violently swung around, thumping on her bottom and swinging ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and once more the cheerful sight of the blue sky. We halted at half past seven, after being twelve hours on the road, having made a N.b.W. course, distance only six miles and a quarter, though we had traversed nine miles. We saw, during this last journey, a mallemucke and a second Ross gull: and a couple of small flies (to us an event of ridiculous importance) were ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... dropped down the face of the cliff into the sea; brown and grey lay the hillsides and rocks under the glaring noonday sun; there was no living soul in sight, no movement, save far below the flight of a pair of ravens or the white flick of a gull's wings out to sea. Gorge beyond gorge lay the land, still and colourless in the circle of a sea and sky widely and splendidly blue. I felt that I walked on a younger earth, just emerged from its fierce chaos of whirling molten matter, and as yet unsoftened by luxuriant vegetable ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... now art seeming Death-pale, bloody red, Like a dying sea-gull gleaming White with blood o'erspread. Purple tides the wounds are showing From thy faith in justice flowing; Denmark, bear the cross, thy burden ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... toward the observant matrons. The grave-digger was singing something so old that his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never known it; but the good dames instantly sang the victorious refrain through their noses, in tones as shrill as those of the sea-gull; and the grave-digger, summoned to surrender, passed ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... once had the opportunity of observing. I was living at the time—for purposes of investigation, and by special permission— on board of the Gull Lightship, which lies directly off Ramsgate Harbour, close to the Goodwin Sands. It was in the month of March. During the greater part of my two weeks' sojourn in that lightship the weather was reasonably fine, but one evening it came on to blow hard, and ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead: We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest To the shark and the sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... Moon is 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
... made a brief toilet. She shook out her long hair, passing her damp hands over it, and it fell in curls again. She straightened her dress, but she still felt chill in the cool morning air. There was a cape of gull's feathers, hanging by the flap of the wigwam, and she reached it down making a sign ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... come back with him to a box-like edge of rock, which would give them a view of what lay some three hundred feet below. All was still. The moon, a great yellow ball, floated in the sky above and in the sea beneath. A lone sea-gull, awakened by the supporting party, sailed screaming away. Not a move, not a sound was to be detected below. Yet there, in a rocky cavern, were a number of world-criminals, and behind some crag were three jackies ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... present his weightier doings, taken delight in hawks and hounds. Having one day with a falcon of his brought down a crane and finding it young and fat, he sent it to a good cook he had, a Venetian hight Chichibio, bidding him roast it for supper and dress it well. Chichibio, who looked the new-caught gull he was, trussed the crane and setting it to the fire, proceeded to cook it diligently. When it was all but done and gave out a very savoury smell, it chanced that a wench of the neighbourhood, Brunetta ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... from Ravavai, your craft may not fly, as flies the sea-gull, straight to her nest. For, owing to the prevalence of the trade winds, ships bound to the northeast from the vicinity of Ravavai are fain to take something of a circuit; a few thousand miles or so. First, in pursuit of the variable winds, they make all haste to the south; and there, at ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... more—just three. The realization comes to you with a joyous shock. Somebody sights a sea-gull. With eager eyes you watch its curving flight. Until this moment you have not been particularly interested in sea-gulls. Heretofore, being a sea-gull seemed to you to have few attractions as a regular career, except that it keeps ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... lips and looked unutterable things at the girl, but she regarded neither the matron's sour expression nor her father's stern glance, for her eyes were fascinated and held by the vessel which sped along the water like a white-winged gull. No one except Ella and the colored man continued the observance of Houghton. The girl was in a perverse mood, and watched until her father rebukingly spoke her name; then she ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, is enough to reveal their frank and easy method. Their characters, like an apothecary's drugs, wear labels round their necks. Mr. Justice Clement and Mr. Justice Greedy; Master Matthew, the town gull; Sir Giles Overreach, Sir Epicure Mammon, Mr. Plenty, Sir John Frugal, need no explanatory context. Are our dramatists to blame for withholding from us the heroes of our modern ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the port quarter, and turned to the helm again, leaving me to see if I could catch sight of what he had seen. Maybe it was but the dipping wing of a gull. ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... as the aspen leaves when storms are in. Some took one side, some another; but when, in due season, it was seen what inordinate pride Baldassare had in the black-eyed bambino there was no question of sides. He had ranked himself with the unforgivable party: the old man was an old fool, a gull whose power of swallow stirred disgust. Vanna had the rights of it, they said; such men were made to be tricked. As for Fra Battista's pulpit, it was thronged about with upturned faces; for those who had not been before went now to judge what they would ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... minister's daughter has got a white gull's wing on her hat, and—it's up in the spare chamber on the bed, and I don't think Sabriny would ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... impossible, when one's in good heart and at really pleasant things. I've a lot of nice things to do, but the heart fails—after lunch, particularly!" Heart and head did, however, fail again; and another attack of brain fever followed. Sir William Gull brought him through, and won his praise as a doctor and esteem as a friend. Ruskin took it as a great compliment when Sir William, in acknowledging his fee, wrote that he should keep ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... one on board was looking in vain for a buoy to indicate 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 deceived other ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... the Jutland shore and have won through the gale safely. That is all. But it was by my own fault, for I must needs take the boat and put out to sea with my hawk there to find fresh sport. It seemed to me, forsooth, that a great black-backed gull or fierce skua would give me a fine flight or two. And so it was; but I rowed out too far, and before I bethought myself, both wind and tide were against me. I had forgotten how often after calm comes a shift of wind, and it had been over ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... hear the call No trumpet note—no roll of drums, But quiet, sure and sweet— The self-same voice that summoned Drake, The whisper for whose siren sake They manned the Devon fleet, More lawless than the gray gull's wait, More boundless than the sea, More subtle ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... swindle me into buying a lot of copies to give away, and he wanted most to bamboozle me into having a picture made, not half so good as I can get for a few dollars a dozen at any good photographer's, and pay him the price of a good team of horses for it. He thought he could gull old Jake Vandemark! If I would pay for it, I could get printed in the book a few of my remarks on the history of the township, and my two-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar picture. Others would write about something ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... bench, hoisted the sail, untied the helm, and we were soon ploughing round to the spot where we had left Laura; but she was gone. On the rock where she was, perched a solitary gull, which flew away with a scream ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the French, M. Victor Hugo will please twig the proper meaning of the word "spray"; I shall be very angry if he make it appear that my hero is a gull. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... so close was she now, from the reef points on the great mainsail, luminous with the sunlight, and white as the wing of a gull, to the rail of the bulwarks. A crowd of men were hanging over the port bulwarks gazing at the island and the figures on the reef. Browned by the sun and sea-breeze, Emmeline's hair blowing on the wind, and the point of Dick's ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... and seemed resolved not to be again so easily caught napping. But ducks are silly things and are easily deceived, or have very short memories. Anyway it was the case with these. When a goodly number of them were again seen swimming about, a peculiar sound like the cry of a sea gull was heard, and soon Koona was observed moving very cautiously out to a little point on the sandy beach, just in front of the clump of bushes behind which his master was hidden. Here he curled himself up into ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... little ship, and we had not been under way a quarter of an hour before we were all agreed that she far exceeded our most sanguine expectations; she was a magnificent little sea boat, riding the long Pacific surges as buoyantly as a gull, very stiff under her canvas, and extraordinarily fast and weatherly. The only thing that caused us any concern was that we found she was leaking to a somewhat alarming extent; but we were quite prepared for that, as she had been standing ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... me! So that I may show my confidence in you in return by letting you give me the slip with the despatches, eh? Ah, Dalila, Dalila, you have been trying your tricks on me; and I have been as great a gull as my jackass of a lieutenant. (He advances threateningly on her.) Come: the despatches. Quick: I am not to be trifled ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... every old sailor who died, turned into a sea- gull. Prompted by curiosity, Paul said: "Now, Joe, what is the first thing you would purchase supposing you had ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... There are not a few of these notices in Richardson's Dictionary: thus one from Lord Bacon under 'essay'; from Swift under 'banter'; from Sir Thomas Elyot under 'mansuetude'; from Lord Chesterfield under 'flirtation'; from Davies and Marlowe's Epigrams under 'gull'; from Roger North under 'sham' (Appendix); the third quotation from Dryden under 'mob'; one from the same under 'philanthropy', and again under 'witticism', in which he claims the authorship of the word; that from Evelyn under 'miss'; and from Milton ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... filled from the eastward, and not by the river as I had at first supposed. The waters at the head of the lagoon were putrid, nor was there a fish in, or a wild fowl upon it. The only bird we saw was a beautiful eagle, of the osprey kind, with plumage like a sea gull, which had a nest in ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the east wind. Below them the river was brightly blue, and a skiff dipping its way up stream caught the sunlight on sail and hull until, as it danced from sight around the headland, it looked like a white gull hovering over the water. Above, on the campus, the football field was noisy with voices and the pipe of the referee's whistle; and farther up the river at the boathouse moving figures showed that some of the boys were about to take advantage of ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fast deepening into black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; and far away there were the rising grounds, between which and us there seemed to be no life, save here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... captain grudgingly, "perhaps you're right. I'm not good at birds. I know a gull or a goose or turkey ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. I remember that—though it didn't interest me in the least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you know—flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of the temple—a black thing ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... them through the curtains on one of the spare bedrooms; of the rector of the parish, whose candle he had blown out as he was coming late one night from the library, and who had been under the care of Sir William Gull ever since, a perfect martyr to nervous disorders; and of old Madame de Tremouillac, who, having wakened up one morning early and seen a skeleton seated in an armchair by the fire reading her diary, had been confined to her bed for six ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... the man had not understood his question, and he repeated it twice. Tabuenca gave no heed; but all at once, seized with the utmost indignation, he snatched the cigar furiously from his mouth and began to blaspheme in a whining, gull-like voice, shrieking that he couldn't make out why folks pestered him with matters that didn't concern ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Cockburn, and the mellifluous Coleridge was palpably preparing to succeed him. People whispered wonders about Charles Bowen; and Henry James and Charles Russell had established their positions. In the hierarchy of Medicine there were several leaders. Jenner ruled his patients by terror; Gull by tact, and Andrew Clark by religious mysticism. To me, complaining of dyspepsia, he prescribed a diet with the Pauline formula: "I seek to impose a yoke upon you, that you may be truly free." In the chief ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... "The nation is gull'd by misrepresentation, from the high to the low one system is acted upon; but I have a document in my pocket which came into my possession in rather an extraordinary manner, and is as extraordinary in its contents; it was thrust into my hand on my way ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... about two thousand five hundred, were principally located around Mille Lac, Gull and Sandy Lakes; the Pillager and Winnebagosish bands, about two thousand, around Leach, Winnebagosish, Cass and Ottertail Lakes; the Red Lake Bands, numbering about fifteen hundred, were located ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... There 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 ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... I, "Captain, the 'Spitfire' will have to put into Halifax to report herself and be surveyed, so we may pursue our course in peace. But this 'Black Hawk' is a doll, ain't she? don't she skim over the water like a sea gull? The truth is, Cutler, when you ain't in a hurry, and want to enjoy yourself at sea, as I always do, for I am a grand sailor, give me a clipper. She is so light and buoyant, and the motion so elastic, it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... came rather painful disillusionment. We differed fundamentally, it seemed, these eloquent fellows and myself. One actually told me in so many words, and with a cynical smile at his other companion of the moment, as who should say: 'Really, this innocent needs awakening'; that I was playing the gull's part on the surface of things. 'We are not concerned with principles,' he said, in effect. 'That may be all right for the groundlings—our audience. Our concern is parties, office—the historic game of ins and outs, in which we ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the water as a sea gull does when searching for food on the wing, for she had come quite low, the Mermaid mounted once more into the air, and was soon sailing along over the heads of Tony and ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... been bent on going to buy a tame sea-gull there, as a birthday present for Trevor; and Emily had lured him off from that, by a promise of getting one from an old fisherman whom she knew. So there was not much fear of his running back into the danger, though I should not have a happy moment till he ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spawn and young fry; floods also sweep away and leave on banks, or rocks, a considerable quantity of spawn, which of course comes to nothing. Escaping the above perils and causalities, and arrived at maturity, they become the prey and food of the otter and heron, king's fisher, gull, &c., who emulate man in their destructive propensities. The larger fish also prey upon the smaller. Luckily otters are not so numerous in any English river as they used to be. Night lines, shackle, rake and flood nets, and other devices not at all creditable to those who use them, and to which ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... your pocket, master Bame, Than e'er you'll meet in heaven. Set hand on seal To this now, master Bame, to prove your faith. Come, all have signed it. Here's the quill, dip, write. Good!" And Kit, pocketing the paper, bowed The gull to the inn-door, saying as he went,— "You shall hear further when the plan's complete. But there's one great condition—not one word, One breath of scandal more on Robert Greene. He's dead; but he was one of us. The day You air his shirt, I air this paper, too." ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... comfort. In truth, it was Zephyr, the kindly West Wind, come to befriend her; and as she took heart, feeling some benignant presence, he lifted her in his arms, and carried her on wings as even as a sea-gull's, over the crest of the fateful mountain and into a valley below. There he left her, resting on a bank of hospitable grass, and there ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it) bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the Giant's Causeway. A thunderstorm ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... however clumsy he may be when taken from his own element, he has a free and floating motion which is almost graceful in his own yielding and buoyant home. It is so with all wild creatures, but especially with those of water and air. A gull is not reckoned an especially graceful bird, but yonder I see one, snowy white, that has come to fish in this safe lagoon, and it dips and rises on its errands as lightly as a butterfly or a swallow. Beneath that neighboring causeway the water-rats ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 and cards hast never play'd, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... painting, she smiled and thought. She was like a pearl in the good North light. Across the pallor of her face ran a magnetic current of color from the famous hair to the crimson jacket she wore, pinned at the throat by a soaring gull, with the tiniest ruby for an eye.... David Cairns called. He seemed drawn and nervous. Obviously he had come to say things. Beth knew ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... dell ill card veal rank tell bill hard meal sank well fill bark neat hank yell rill dark heat dank belt hill dint bang dime rave cull hint fang lime gave dull lint gang tine lave gull mint hang fine pave hull tint rang mine ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... July 26, 1836, bearing letters of introduction, and visited Fort Snelling, whence he left with a French trader, named Fronchet, to explore the sources of the Mississippi. He entered the Crow Wing river, and by the way of Gull river and Gull lake he entered Leech lake. The Indians were disappointed when they found he had no presents for them and spent most of his time looking at the heavens through a tube, and they became unruly and troublesome. The Rev. Mr. Boutwell, whose mission house ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the Rose, released from the strain, shook her feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and cool and alive with the piping of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his mistress's attention held unduly by a chirping, bright-winged caucus of birds of inferior size and interest, he barked and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... lies bare, with pools in it here and there, in which small fish swim, while down by the sea there sits a solitary gull on a stone, or a sea-fowl walks by the water's edge. The fine, wave-marked sand is full of heaps, covered with lines, left by the large, much sought after bait-worms, that burrow down into the earth. Hidden among the stones, or in the masses of sea-weed, lie the quick, transparent, shrimp-like ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... de Caledonia settlement. Ah went behin' him er many er day wid de hoe or he'd crack mah haid. He use tuh be de sheriff here de years uv de boom an his nephew is de sheriff now—Grady Wosley. Later en while ah wuz a gull ah werked fuh de Swilleys an wuz partly raised on dey plantation. De ole man wuz name Lawson Swilley. His wife, Margaret Swilley, and I clare dem two people treated me white. She mammied me er many er day. Ah wuz bred and born right down dar er-round Caledonia. Ah wuz a big ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... refine the domestic interlude or farce; and the result is certainly amusing enough. The plot turns on the courtship of Dame Christian Custance [Constance], a widow of repute and wealth as well as beauty, by the gull and coxcomb, Ralph Roister Doister, whose suit is at once egged on and privately crossed by the mischievous Matthew Merrygreek, who plays not only parasite but rook to the hero. Although Custance ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... That home of reviling— No wooing can gull 'em In Cave of Adullam. No angel can lull 'em To cease their defiling The Cave of Adullam, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sea-gulls in Kansas. And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, and in four minutes you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... picking the way as before, and never a falter in the sweep of Satan's running. If his head was a little lower, if his ears lay flat, only the master knew the meaning, and still, when he spoke, the glistening ears pricked up, and they bounded on to a greater speed than before. The flight of a gull on unstirring wings when the wind buoys it, the glide of water over the descent of smooth rock, with never a ripple, like all things effortless, swift, and free, such was the gait of Satan as he fled. Let them spur the fresh horses from Caswell City till their flanks dripped red, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... a dream in this tranquil region, where untrammeled nature had worked her teeming will for centuries upon silent centuries. Here were such peace and stillness that the cry of the blue jay seemed audacious; the dive of a gull into the smooth water was a startling event. To the imaginative mind of Hudson this spot seemed to have been set apart by Providence, hidden away behind the sandy reaches of the outer coast, so that irreverent man, who turns all things to gain, might never discover and profane ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the breath of the briny deep, And the tug of the bellying sail, With the sea-gull's cry across the sky And a passing boatman's hail. For, be she fierce or be she gay, The sea is a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... awful buffeting she was receiving the Quickstep never faltered. On she plowed, riding the green billows like a gull, and shipping a sea only occasionally. The deckload, double-lashed, held, although the deckhouse groaned and twisted until Matt Peasley regretted the impulse that had impelled him to do this foolish thing for the sake ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... me any such thing. Why should he? I should like to see him dare to order me about. He just said that I had better not; but that was nothing. I'm sure he was only trying to gull me. He said anybody light could get across if they kept to the edge, and nobody could be much ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... his chair gazed thoughtfully and silently out of the window. He watched a gull dip over the East River. He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and across his gray eyes flickered a ghost of amusement. After a long pause he inquired in ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... of the "Gannel Crake" is heard by everyone who woos the charms of a romantic coast after the sun has set beyond the western sea. It is said to be the cry of some species of night gull, but is traditionally referred to by the superstitious natives as the cry of a troubled spirit that ever haunts ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... not sure," I answered. "I think with white-wash. At any rate, they gave them a good careening. But since then these solitudes are only the home of the sea-gull, the ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays; Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains, And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains. Repeal that act! again let Humour roam Wild o'er the stage—we've time for tears at home; 360 Let Archer [34] plant the horns on Sullen's brows, And Estifania gull her "Copper" [35] spouse; The moral's scant—but that may be excused, Men go not to be lectured, but amused. He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill Must wear a head in want of Willis' skill; [36] Aye, but Macheath's example—psha!—no more! It formed no thieves—the thief was formed before; [37] ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... about 10 P.M., a large herring-gull struck one of the south-eastern mullions of the Bell Rock Light House with such force, that two of the polished plates of glass, measuring about two feet square, and a quarter of an inch in thickness, were shivered to pieces and scattered over the floor in a thousand ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... sweetness of the spring morning was about them. On the heavily wooded shore the great evergreens towered darkly against the sun, but its beams fell with dazzling brightness upon the meadowy undulations of the lake. Above them they heard at times the wild cry of the soaring gull, or the apparently disembodied voice of some unseen bird. Behind them they left the beautiful stretch of Kempenfeldt Bay, gleaming in the sunshine, and now they slowly ascended the waters of Cook's Bay, called after the great circumnavigator, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... 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 ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lonesome prairie, Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near, Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... there was 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 as to his religious ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old flintlock musket suggestive of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to discharge and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at a gull that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell slowly with outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping from its bill. I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... melancholy Life for the space of six Years. Several Fishes of Prey pursued me when I was in the Water, and if I betook my self to my Wings, it was ten to one but I had a flock of Birds aiming at me. As I was one day flying amidst a fleet of English Ships, I observed a huge Sea-Gull whetting his Bill and hovering just over my Head: Upon my dipping into the Water to avoid him, I fell into the Mouth of a monstrous Shark that swallow'd ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... gigantic stature. They had vast bodies, short legs, short necks, and seemed as large as an ordinary-sized ox. Their wings were short, and evidently could not be used for flight; their beaks were like that of a sea-gull; each one had a man on his back, and was harnessed to a car. The chief motioned to me to enter one of these cars. I did so. He followed, and thereupon the driver started the bird, which set forth with long, rapid strides, at a pace fast as that of a trotting horse. So astonished was I that ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... new century had been celebrated the year before, on the first day of the year 1800; but it was now discovered, by the wisdom of John Gull, that the new century did not commence till the old one was finished, and therefore millions, who had before celebrated it, now performed the ceremony over again. I was then, as I now am, in a gaol, but I was in a very different ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... hales he in a gull old ends reciting, To stop gaps in his loose writing; With such a deal of monstrous and forced action, As might make Bethlem a faction: Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table, But makes jests to fit his fable.... The laws of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the wharf and climbed into the boat. The water slapped vigorously against its side, for the tide was running, and above, a wraith-like gull occasionally dropped one ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... had 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
... his most beloved music, said first that it was "the sharp whistling of the wind as it went through the uplifted spears of the seven battalions of the Fianna," and this was fitting for a hero to say. But when the poet in him spoke, he said his music was the crying of the sea-gull, and the noise of the waves, and the voice of the cuckoo when summer was at hand, and the washing of the sea against the shore, and of the tide when it met the river of the White Trout, and of the wind rushing through the cloud. And many ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... wind was blowing a moderate breeze, there was a long but very regular sea running, and we were doing ten knots very comfortably, the little Francesca, sliding over the long liquid hills and down into the broad valleys as easily and buoyantly as a sea gull. We in the schooner were showing every rag we could spread, but the brig had her royals stowed, in order that she might ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... and increased to a partial gale. The sloop was running under a bit of mainsail; it seemed at times as if the following seas would founder the little vessel as they towered over the low rail. Nothing was to be seen but the wide expanse of water. Not even a solitary gull. The Captain remarked to his wife, "It is a curious fact that, excepting the petrels, sea birds keep near to the land in bad weather." Captain Godfrey feared the night, and as it came on the wind grew in strength. A terrible sea was running, ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... so?' saies one. 'It is like a witty scold meeting another scold, knowing that scold will scold, begins to scold first. So,' says he, 'the mustard being lickt up, and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first.' 'I'll try that,' saies a gull by, and the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered. 'How now?' saies Tarleton; 'does my jest savour?' 'I,' saies the gull, 'and bite too.' 'If you had had better wit,' saies Tarleton, 'you would have ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... is the scene! Yet thy voracious eye Drinks not its beauty; but with bloody glare Watches the wild-fowl idly floating by, Or snow-white sea-gull winnowing the air: Oh, pitiless is thine unerring beak! Quick, as the wings of thought, thy pinions fall— Then bear their victim to the mountain-peak Where clamorous eaglets flutter ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and the Children in ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... over the cards. A gull flashed past the window with a scream, as though it had seen them and was ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of paternage that's passin'," growled the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all his days knowed all the old ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... even knowing her. Was the luminous blue from which had arisen the early gods to be dishonored by the oily spot that would disclose assassination en masse!... Were the rosy strands from whose foam Venus had sprung to receive clusters of corpses, impelled by the waves!... Were the sea-gull wings of the fishing-boats to flee panic-stricken before those gray sharks of steel!... Were his family and neighbors to be terrified, on awakening, by this floating cemetery washed to their doors during ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 with ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... sun smites With sea-drawn lights The turned wing of a gull that glows Aslant the violet, the profound Dome of the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... In Samuel Rowlands's Humors Looking Glass (1608), a rich country gull is represented as filling his pockets with money and coming to London. Here a servant "of the Newgate variety" shows him the sights ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... I have marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us of ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... beaches, assumed the place of waving woods, smiling corn-fields, and blooming orchards; while for the melodious notes of woodland songsters, was heard the wild cry of the stormy petrel, or the shrill scream of the large sea-gull. ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... November 22nd was compelled to state that His Royal Highness was suffering from "a chill resulting in a febrile attack" which had confined him to his room. On the following day a bulletin signed by Doctors Jenner, Clayton, Gull and Lowe stated that the Prince was suffering ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said Blakeney finally, "that ass Santerre will have dispersed the pack of yelling hyenas with his cavalry by now. They'll to the Temple prison to find their prey; we'll in their wake. A moi, friends! and remember the sea-gull's cry." ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... many scraps of paper! I couldn't raise a sou on the whole of them! And you ask me if I have any remorse. THEY are the ones who should have remorse and pity. They played me for a simpleton; and I fell into their trap. I was their latest victim, their most stupid gull!" ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... 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 off ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Shott several sorts of Birds, one of which was an Albetross as large as a Goose, whose wings when Extended measured 10 feet 2 inches; this was grey, but there are of them all White except the very tip end of their Wings. Another sort, in size between an Albetross and a large Gull, of a grey Colour, with a white Spot above their Tail about the Breadth of one's hand, and several other sorts. Wind Westerly; course North 13 degrees West; distance 48 miles; latitude 57 degrees 45 minutes South, longitude 82 degrees 16 ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... it was felt. And so with his sense for nature, with that which seems like style in him; it is a wonderful way of trusting instinct, of trusting the approaches of natural things. He says, quite simply: 'I was told by a sea-gull that had come a great way,' as a child would tell you now. And when he tells you that 'Cynon rushed forward with the green dawn,' it is not what we call a figure of speech: it is his sensitive, literal way of seeing things. More definite, more concrete, closer ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... pass'd, the creaking oar Is heard upon the fronting shore; Where thronging round in many a band, The curious ghosts beset the strand. Now suddenly the boat they 'spy, Like gull diminish'd in the sky; And now, like cloud of dusky white, Slow sailing o'er the deep of night, The sheeted group within the bark Is seen amid the billows dark. Anon the keel with grating sound They hear upon the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... gull Jack is still flourishing, and the time is coming when I look for that singularly sudden change in the plumage of his head which took place last March. I have asked all my ocean-going friends to note whether these little birds are not the gulls par excellence ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... 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
... Bob crossed Alder Brook about forty rods this side of the Gull Rock. They saw his tracks where he crossed the next day, but Bob had the matches, and the sheriff and about forty that went out to get him came back that night looking kind of down in the mouth. There wasn't ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... to gull the world, the Star-gazers assert that the heavens are the book in which God has written the destiny of all things; and that it is only necessary to learn to read this book, which is simply the construction ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... been favored, sir, vastly beyond your deserts. I acquiesce, since Fate is proverbially a lady, and to dissent were in consequence ungallant. Shortly I shall find you more employment, at Dover, whither I am now going to gull my old opponent and dear friend, Gaston de Puysange, in the matter of this new compact between France and England. I shall look for you at Dover, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... into a fitful breeze and the white sail moved very slowly. The tide was in, and the water lapped with a cooling sound against the dark green piles. In the distance the blue of the bay melted into the blue of the sky, while the nearer waters mirrored every passing gull, the masts of the fishing boats, the tall marsh grass, the dead twigs marking oyster beds—each object had its double. On a point of marshy ground stood a line of cranes, motionless as soldiers on parade, until, taking ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... gay? Orange is quite the vogue," answered the milliner, who seemed reluctant to make any change, and yet was anxious to please her customer. "Perhaps you'd prefer some wings; or stay, here is a sweet little gull that will go all right with the rest of the trimming. We will take off the oriole ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... 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 ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, Lets the loose water waft him as it will; The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, Paddles and plunges, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
