"Gull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the breeze so light that the old patched sails were taking the schooner along at a gentle three knots per hour. A sail or two shone like snow in the offing, and a gull hovered in the air astern. From the cabin to the galley, and from the galley to the untidy tangle in the bows, there was no sign of anybody to benefit by the conversation of the skipper and mate as they ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... pies on the other side of the hearth. Ephraim looked across at him desperately. "I want to play holly-gull ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met; Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger. ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... Canon The Laughter of 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 the Shadows are Dark On Bear ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... 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, That home ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... flare of a sea gull to Zoe—no containing her. Little snatches of song bubbled. She was a ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... intent only on the gospel, which he preached with a keen, breathless fervor. Scofield had given him a home, clothed him, felt for him after that the condescending, curious affection which a rough barn-yard hen might feel for its adopted poult, not yet sure if it will turn out an eagle or a silly gull. It was a strange affinity between the lank-limbed, cloudy-brained enthusiast at one end of the porch and the shallow-eyed, tobacco-chewing old Scofield at the other,—but a real affinity, striking something deeper in their natures than blood-kinship. Whether Dode shared in it was doubtful; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... you are here, answer me. I cannot see you." A gull flew away from the cliff with a scream, and I could hear no other sound. "Tell me, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... was thinking What course to take for the delivery of your letter, And now I have it: but faith did this Lady (For do not gull your self) for certain know, ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that has no shelter and no food. Once I watched a sunset in November across one of these reservoirs. When the sun sank low the water blackened; the wind drove little waves slapping with foam against the stone bank; a single sea-gull swept up out of the dark and fled away down wind like a scrap of torn paper; it was the most solitary ending ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the place is very silent, except for the clink of hammers where they are breaking down our wooden walls, and, seaward, the cry and splash of gull and tern dipping for their prey in the shoal of herring-fry which is wandering about the bay. Close inshore a porpoise is wallowing, like the jolly sea-pig that he is, in his berth of glistening water. The wild creatures seem to have grown tamer since there ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... for the boats among the banks of sand and mud. Most of the land in the upper part of this branch was low and full of swamps. Pelicans and various other birds were here seen in great numbers. Among the rest an uncommon kind, called then the Hooded Gull, and supposed to be a non descript; but it appears from a drawing sent to England, a plate from which is here inserted, to be of that species called by Mr. Latham the Caspian Tern, and is described by him as the second variety ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... they are on the fin, the sea-gulls are eager and ready to pounce upon them, and they have to take refuge in the sea again. With all their beauty, they have a hard life of it, constantly escaping away from the sea-gull, into the shark! ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... we are sailing high above it all, the wind occasionally lifting one of the wings, and then the other, like a sea-gull's. There is a haze, and it's not easy to see. You peer over the edge, and behold ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... the gold of autumn has turned to brown, and the raw, cold winds of winter have whirled the dead leaves over rookeries, quay, and garden. The boats rock at their tethers and now and then a sea gull darts through the canal and sweeps on to the lagoon. In the narrow opening fronting the broad waters lawless waves quarrel and clash, forcing their way among the frightened ripples of San Giuseppe, ashy gray ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fade; horizons cease For you who 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 than the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... oar, A lug-sail set, or haul a net, from the Point to Mullaghmore; From Killybegs to bold Slieve-League, that ocean-mountain steep, Six hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep, From Dooran to the Fairy Bridge, and round by Tullen strand, Level and long, and white with waves, where gull and curlew stand; Head out to sea when on your lee the breakers you discern!— Adieu to all the billowy coast, and ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed and stoked, the Roumania reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose tapering toward the blue harbor and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... o'clock on the bright, summer morning of Tuesday, July the twelfth, Captain Glazier and his companions, fully equipped, and with a driver celebrated for his knowledge of frontier life, began their long and toilsome wagon journey. A ride of between three and four hours brought them to Gull Lake, where a halt was proposed and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... 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 javelin flashing in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 here ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... drifting down, with the smoke, toward the marsh and the bend of the river, and a small junk that toiled up against wind and tide, a cluster of naked sailors tugging and shoving at her heavy sweep, which chafed its rigging of dry rope, and gave out a high, complaining note like the cry of a sea-gull. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... day," he answered, glancing at a gull that hovered above the ship. "Not whilst my father ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... day she'll expect to dress you in white, and bid us all to come and dance at the wedding! But in the meantime, Mother mustn't blame someone who has just a LITTLE more discernment than- -well, young Brevoort, for example, for seeing that her tame dove is really a wild little sea-gull starving for the sea. Now, look here, Miss Nina, you hate all this society ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... optical illusion: the whole surface of a field was covered with black and white, vibrating as though waves were passing over it. When we came nearer we saw that the field was covered so thick with gulls that the ground was hidden. The gull was a small white variety about the size of a pigeon, with a black ruff around its neck. The wave-like motion was made by the birds digging away in the newly turned earth for worms and larvae; judging by the way they worked, ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Welsh women are; but from all accounts, Nest Gwynn (Nest, or Nesta, is the Welsh for Agnes) was more regularly beautiful than any one for miles around. The Welsh are still fond of triads, and "as beautiful as a summer's morning at sun-rise, as a white sea-gull on the green sea-wave, and as Nest Gwynn," is yet a saying in that district. Nest knew she was beautiful, and delighted in it. Her mother sometimes checked her in her happy pride, and sometimes reminded her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... 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.) Lie there, Deacon! sleep and be well to-morrow. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meet M. Doctor Doddie, I have a tricke to gull the Asse withall; I christned him right Doctor Doddipole. Heere he comes passing luckely; Ile counterfeit business with him in all poste haste possible. Maister Doctor, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... 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
... solemnly. He said nothing—his gravity had returned. Now in the glare of the tropical day, with the "Bertha Millner" sitting the sea as placidly as a brooding gull, he was Talleyrand again. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... winds, dragging its tumour over the deep, cramped and eat more and more into the sea round the hooker. Not a gull, not a sea-mew, nothing but snow. The expanse of the field of waves was becoming contracted and terrible; only three or four ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... hunter and trapper, though he was a man of some little substance; that having accidentally seen an advertisement in the paper, stating that if the heirs of the late Josiah Flint, of Barnet, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, would apply to Messrs. Grub and Gull, Fleece Court, Chancery Lane, London, they would hear of something to their advantage, he, believing himself to be a descendant of the said Josiah, had come over to hear the welcome news. He remarked, with his peculiar smile, that he had heard a ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... young men. Still, she was not insensible to admiration, and was quite aware of these two young aborigines following in her wake as surely as a gull in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... hull like a breasting gull Where the rolling valleys be, And dipped where the shining porpoises Put ploughshares ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... or in conjunction with the men's dance, but has a different 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 moving ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... 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 field and ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the most vivid pictures, although it has certainly some unnatural colouring, is that given in The Gull's Horne-Booke, a satirical work published in London in 1609. Under the heading of "How a Gallant should behave himselfe in Powles-Walkes," one of the chapters gives some details of the place. The following extracts are perhaps ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... school-master, to whom he is alledging still the weakness of the boy, and pays a fine extraordinary for his mercy. The first whipping rids him to the university, and from thence rids him again for fear of starving, and the best he makes of him is some gull in plush. He is one loves to hear the famous acts of citizens, whereof the gilding of the cross[90] he counts the glory of this age, and the four[91] prentices of London above all the nine[92] worthies. He intitles himself to all the merits of his company, whether schools, hospitals, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... pure white breast, a slate-colored back, and black-tipped wings. Its nest is built of seaweed on some rocky cliff or ledge. As soon as it can scramble out of its nest, the young gull likes to sit on a ledge of rocks, where it looks like a ball of soft, gray down. When hundreds of them are seen sitting on the same cliff, it seems wonderful that the mother birds can find their own children, but they ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... by the rushing rapids where you spear the great "namha" ( sturgeon) will we light the evening fire and lie down to rest, lulled by the ceaseless thunder of the torrent; the lone lake shore will give us rest for the midday meal, and from your frail canoe, lying like a sea-gull on the wave, we will get the "mecuhaga" (the blueberry) and the "wa-wa," (the goose) giving you the great medicine of the white man, the the and suga in exchange. But ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... had resembled his previous conceptions of such people! And confidence-thieves always operated in the grandest hotels! He immediately decided that if the sequel should prove him to be a simpleton and gull, he would at any rate be a silent simpleton and gull. He would stoically bear the loss of two hundred pounds and breathe no ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... as blue as the heart of a sapphire, and the sea would be as blue too, only for the glad white of the rippling waves. And the wind is as soft as the winnowing of a sea-gull's wing; and green, green, are the laughing shores of Ulva. The bride is coming. All around the coast the people are on the alert—Donald in his new finery; Hamish half frantic with excitement; the crew of the Umpire down at the quay; and the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... hard as we stood in for the Old Head of Kinsale pilot boat breasting the foaming surge like a sea gull—"Carrol Cove" in her tiny mainsail—pilot jumped into the main channel a bottle of rum swung by the lead line ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... "Help, help, ye nations, or I die; "'Tis Freedom's fight and on the field "Where I expire your doom is sealed." The Gull-King hears the awakening call, He hath summoned his Peers and Patriots all, And he asks. "Ye noble Gulls, shall we "Stand basely by at the fall of the Free, "Nor utter a curse nor deal a blow?" And they answer with ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... left alone on the heaving deck, surveyed the scene, and thought it very desolate. Around was a grey waste of tossing waters, illumined here and there by the setting rays of an angry sun, above, a wild and windy sky, with not even a sea-gull in all its space, and in the far distance a white and fading line, which was the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... struck by the variety of birds in the Pentlands—wild geese, ducks, northern divers, and puffins, with, of course, the never absent gull. What a melancholy noise the gull makes, crying sometimes exactly like a child. And yet it is a pleasing companion on a desolate expanse of water, and most amusing to watch as it dives for biscuit or anything eatable thrown to it from the ship's side. Some of the gentlemen tried to capture them ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Horned Grebe Holboel Grebe Pied-billed Grebe Puffin Dovekie Cormorant Double-crested Cormorant Black Guillemot Brunnich Murre Paresitic [*sic] Jaegar Kittiwake Gannet Black Skimmer Sooty Shearwater Great Black-backed Gull Ring-billed Gull Claucus Gull Herring Gull Laughing Gull Bonapart Gull Black Tern Gull-billed Tern Wilson Tern Roseate Tern Least Tern Black-capped Petrel Leach Petrel ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... felt sorry for the man in his seeming distress of mind did he not know that this was but a part and parcel of the deep plan which Mr. Graylock was pursuing in order to gull the public; no doubt when at home and free from observation he was in the habit of shaking hands with himself because of the clever little dodge he had played looking ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... not so wonderful as that of 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 ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Gull Island Lake, forty miles above, the river is alternately quick and dead water. Part of it is very heavy rapids, over which it was necessary to track, and in some places to double the crews. Each boat had a tow line of fifty feet, and in tracking the end was taken ashore by one of the crew of two, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... quarter and even half an hour. He brought such an atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed to give me new strength—being so pale and bloodless now that I thought the sun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Pinch and Patch, Gull and Grim, Go you together, For you can change your shapes Like to the weather. Sib and Tib, Lick and Lull, You all have tricks, too; Little Tom Thumb that pipes Shall go betwixt you. Tom, tickle up thy pipes ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... this, and some that, and Tremouille mocks, that the Maid uttered her prophecy to no other end but to make you fulfil it, and slay her enemy for the sake of her 'beaux yeux.' The others would hear nothing of this, and, indeed, though I am no gull, I wot that Tremouille is wrong here, and over cunning; he trusts neither man nor woman. Howsoever it be, he went with the story to the King, who is keen to hear any new thing. And, to be short, the end of it is this: ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Gull on rock. Very pretty. Frightened away by the McDonald person, who has just taken up his customary position. Is he reading ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 fright as the great sail glided past, they whirred off, uttering discordant ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a spice of mischief in his composition. He could not resist a humorous impulse to gull a ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... 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 reaction eased ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... normal. It is true that when left alone a mask of gloom shadowed his face, and his thin fingers opened and closed nervously and unconsciously. Diane, Diane, Diane! It was the murmur of far-off voices, it was the whisper of the winds in the shrouds, it was the cry of the lonely gull and the stormy petrel. To pass through the weary years of his exile without again seeing that charming face, finally to strive in vain to recall it in all its perfect beauty! This thought affected him more than the thought of the stigma on his birth. That he could and would live down; he was still ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... their happy days among the orange-groves near Jackson Barracks, the captain astonished her by an outburst of derisive laughter. "Happy, madam?" said he; "by gad! if ever a woman died of neglect, abuse, and ill-treatment Mrs. Gleason did, and next time he attempts to gull you with sentiment, just you refer him to me." But then, as Mrs. Turner said, poor Captain Baxter's finer sensibilities seemed to have been blunted by a lifetime in the quartermaster's department, and for quite a while Mr. Gleason was one of her favorites,—quite ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... maritime tangle with the belligerents. One of the most difficult problems which Government officials had encountered since the war began, presented itself for solution. The Appam, as elsewhere described, was captured by a German raider, the Moewe (Sea Gull), off Madeira, and was crowded with passengers, crews, and German prisoners taken from a number of other ships the Moewe had sunk. Lieutenant Berg, for lack of a safer harbor, since German ports were closed to him, sought for refuge an American ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... shining sea in front, Culm Rock seemed shut out from all the rest of the world. True, sails flitted along the horizon, and the smoke of foreign-bound steamers trailed against the sky, giving token of the great world's life and stir; and there were Skipper Ben and the "White Gull" who touched at the little wharf at Culm every week; but for these, the people—for there were people who dwelt here—might have lived in another sphere for aught they knew or were conscious of what was transpiring in the wonderful land which lay ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... reflecting argosies of magic sails, and the star-lights tripped, and danced, and waltzed over the gently undulating swells. A moment more and I heard the tide rips sing, and the ground swell murmur, as it had done in my childhood, when I had listened and wondered what it meant. The sea gull, too, was nestling upon the bald sands, where he had sought rest for the night, and there echoed along through the air so sweetly, the music of a fisherman's song; and the mimic surf danced and gamboled along the beach, spreading ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... this symptom would enable him to tell whether insanity was feigned or not. Burrows declares that in the absence of further evidence he would not hesitate to pronounce a person insane if he could perceive certain associate odors. Sir William Gull and others are credited with asserting that they could detect syphilis by smell. Weir Mitchell has observed that in lesions of nerves the corresponding cutaneous area exhaled the odor of stagnant water. Hammond refers to three cases under his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... this whiteness which fell round us in avalanches, completely hiding the horizon. I was facing the sea, and as Captain Jouclas pointed out to me, we could not see a hundred yards in front of us. I then turned round and saw that the ship was as white as a sea-gull: the ropes, the cordage, the nettings, the port-holes, the shrouds, the boats, the deck, the sails, the ladders, the funnels, the ventilators, everything was white. The sea was black and the sky black. The ship alone was white, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... cry 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 ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... modestly outlined in a letter to The Daily Chronicle, will be set forth in detail in a massive volume of 1,000 pages, with a portrait of the author, to be issued shortly by the House of Swallow and Gull. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... whilst the superstitious shook their heads, the Princess clung desperately and believingly to the hope that the text had brought her. And that day, in a way that was almost dramatic, the change came. Sir William Gull, the royal physician, had done all that the highest human skill could suggest; he felt that the issue was now in other hands than his. He was taking a short walk up and down the terrace, when one of the nurses came running to him with pallid face and startled eyes. 'Oh, come, Sir William,' she said, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... I 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, ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 have our careers ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... backs kept off 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
... despise the bright garniture of Spring, and where, instead of the joyous carolling of little birds awakened anew to gladness, nothing is heard but the ominous croak of the raven and the whirring scream of the storm-boding sea-gull. A quarter of a mile distant Nature suddenly changes. As if by the wave of a magician's wand you are transported into the midst of thriving fields, fertile arable land, and meadows. You see, too, the large and prosperous village, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... tricks Upon green geese and turky-chicks, 150 And pigs, that suddenly deceast Of griefs unnat'ral, as he guest; Who after prov'd himself a witch And made a rod for his own breech. Did not the Devil appear to MARTIN 155 LUTHER in Germany for certain; And wou'd have gull'd him with a trick, But Martin was too politick? Did he not help the Dutch to purge At ANTWERP their Cathedral Church? 160 Sing catches to the Saints at MASCON, And tell them all they came to ask him Appear'd in divers shapes to KELLY, And speak ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... that for a time we watched two of that larger sort of gull, whose wings are brownish-white, circle and hover against the blue. And then we lay and looked at a band of water mirror clear far out to sea, and wondered why the breeze that rippled all the rest ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing nothing, thinking with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sheriffs 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 of treason; And yet, the name but ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Road, where the shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed sea-gull ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... two birds have wings exactly similar in shape, every wing being exquisitely adapted to its owner's needs. The gull soars or flaps slowly on his long, narrow, tireless pinions, while the quail rises suddenly before us on short, rounded wings, which carry it like a rocket for a short distance, when it settles quickly to earth ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... "Gull Lup," the monster—said wasn't the right word, but it was not a bark, growl, mew, cheep, squawk or snarl. Gulp was as close as Stern could come, a dry and almost painful gulping noise that expressed devotion in some totally foreign way ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... tic-a-tic-tick of the grasshoppers, and the wail of a passing gull, a human sound seemed to start abruptly out of the solitude—the voice of a man singing. I rose on my elbow, and pushed the straw hat up a bit. Under its brim through the quivering atmosphere, I saw the fellow, two hundred yards away, a dark obtrusive blot on the bronze landscape. He ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sea gull," I suggested; and then I asked with a sharpness in my voice I could not quite control, "Where did ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... was torn off and swept to leeward in blinding and drenching clouds of spindrift. And although our engine had been stopped, the ship lay to in the most perfect manner, heading well up into the wind and taking the seas, as they came at her, as buoyantly as a gull, shipping very little water except what came aboard in the form of spindrift or scud water, with an occasional spattering ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... clasps linking continent to continent. Around us were ships and sailors from all parts of the habitable globe; while through shine and shadow flitted boats and caiques innumerable, and except where these, or the rising of a porpoise, or the dipping of a gull, broke the surface of the water, it lay as smooth as a mirror, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... common-place bain-de-mer. The common-placeness, however, was only on the surface; for as one walked along the esplanade one discovered that the town had become a citadel, and that all the doll's-house villas with their silly gables and sillier names—"Seaweed," "The Sea-gull," "Mon Repos," and the rest—were really a continuous line of barracks swarming with Belgian troops. In the main street there were hundreds of soldiers, pottering along in couples, chatting in groups, romping and wrestling like a crowd of school-boys, or bargaining in the shops ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... so desolate about the grief of man, perched up there between sea and sky, nobody near but a floating sea-gull, that Kit almost wept ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... 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
... been safe in the street and away with it, in less than five minutes from when she first saw it. Oh, she had been quick and dexterous! And he? He had been a gull, and false to his trust, and altogether contemptible. What should he say to Lord Ashiel? Why in the world hadn't he locked up the letter when Higgs brought it in? This was what came of making red-tape ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... compliments from Jean and caresses from Hilda restored her good humour, and the work of the evening commenced. "Follow me closely," said the girl; "let your eye be keen and your step firm: the descent is no child's sport." Jean looked at the cliff, fitted for the flight of gull or cormorant rather than the foot of man, still less of gentle maiden: Hilda was already over the brink: Jean, following, saw that she was on a path no broader than a goat's track; the difficulties of the descent need not be described; it was possible for a ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... 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
... I keep them for? I should be overrun with pigeons but for putting them in pies; they make the garden very untidy as it is. I have given up keeping ducks, but I have a tame gull for the slugs. Who is this at the gate? Oh! Miss Wort with her inexhaustible physic-bottle. Everybody seems to have heard that ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the manuscript, acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Robert J. Sim. Certain events in the lives of Eve and Petro and little Solomon Otus are told with reference to his observations of eave-swallows and screech owls; his trip to an island off the Maine coast for gull-sketches added greatly to an acquaintance with Larie; and but for his six-weeks' visit with the loons of "Immer Lake," much of the story of Gavia could not have been told. Since Mr. Sim contributed not only the pictures to the book, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. There is a place 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 came on while we were at the inn, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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
... times, whom you peradventure in modesty would give place to, as being deceived by his habit, and presuming him some great worshipful man, believe it, if you shall examine his estate, he will likely be proved a serving man of no great note, my lady's tailor, his lordship's barber, or some such gull, a Fastidius Brisk, Sir Petronel Flash, a mere outside. Only this respect is given him, that wheresoever he comes, he may call for what he will, and take place by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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
... sun went down in that vast waste of water which lies to the southward of this continent, the little Sea Lion had fairly lost sight of land, and was riding over the long southwestern ground-swell like a gull that holds its way steadily towards its nest. For many hours her course had not varied half a point, being as near as possible to south-southwest, which kept her a little off the wind. No sooner, however, did night come ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... No!—the 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 upon thee in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "You should see me coming down on the water after a flight. By Jove, Anthony, that's the most wonderful little machine. I've called her 'The Gray Gull' because she not only flies but swims—cuts through the ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... First, He underboil'd his Wort to save its Consumption: Secondly, He boiled this Seed instead of the Hop; and Thirdly, He beat the Yeast in for some time to encrease the strength of the Drink; and all these in such a Legerdemain manner as gull'd and infatuated the ignorant Drinker to such a degree as not to suspect the Fraud, and that for these three Reasons: First, The underboil'd wort being of a more sweet taste than ordinary, was esteemed the Produce of a great allowance of Malt. Secondly, The Daucus ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... 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
... shaped very much like the canoe which the Great Spirit had given the Indians; but it was as much larger as an old bear is larger than a cub, the minute it is born, or an eagle is larger than a humming-bird. It had wings, white as the wings of the sea-gull, and as large over as a small lake. When it had come near the shore, its many wings were drawn up and hidden, and in their stead three tall poles were displayed, with many short ones crossing them, to one of which the Little Man jumped from ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... over burning sand and black crag, Nissr slanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing burst out beneath her, as the compressed-air valves were thrown and the air-cushions formed beneath her thousands of spiracles. Then, with hardly a shudder, easily as a tired gull slips down into the quiet of a still lagoon, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... in different localities. Most of them are on their reservation at White Earth: others are at Mille Lac, Gull Lake, and some at White Oak Point reservations. Upon the first-named reservation operations have been quite extensive in the erection of school-buildings, dwelling-houses, shops, and mills, and in breaking ground. At one time during the past summer ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... returned to Sandringham where he became decidedly ill. The Times of 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 ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... The 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 railway between ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the foretopsail was flying loose, and the headsails were streaming out in long, white pennons in front of her. Never have I seen a vessel which ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he had long known Loki, and was acquainted with all his cunning ways. So 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
... 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 by name, of whom Chichibio was sore enamoured, entered ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... book for girls. When a great ship is being lured to its fate on Black Gull Rock, some one suddenly fires the beacon on Beacon Hill, and the ship is saved. Who fired ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... wrong objection has been made by some who have not taken leisure to distinguish the characters. The hero of the play, as they are pleased to call him (meaning Mellefont), is a gull, and made a fool, and cheated. Is every man a gull and a fool that is deceived? At that rate I'm afraid the two classes of men will be reduced to one, and the knaves themselves be at a loss to justify their title. But if an open-hearted honest man, who has an entire confidence in one whom he takes ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... seaward end of the wharf on which it stood had rotted away and fallen in, and nothing now remained but the line of spiles, which rose out of the water like a row of bad teeth from which the gums had fallen away. And on top of each spile roosted a huge sea gull of marvelous whiteness, fatted with the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rotated the rising-plane. The great gull soared, careened and took the air with majestic power. The watchers on the mountain-side saw its hooded lights, that glowed upon its compass and barometric-gauge, slowly spiralling upward, ever upward, as Gabriel climbed with his ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... days, when the sky was intensely blue, there hung a dazzling haze like a golden veil and he could only tell that the sea was there by the sudden gleam of tiny white horses, flashing for a moment on the mirror of blue and shining through the haze; sometimes a gull swerved through the air above his head as though a wave had lost its bounds and, for sheer joy of the beautiful day, had flung itself tossing and wheeling into ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... of the 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 upon the life ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... we were followed by sea-birds that, curiously enough, were always thickest at meal times. Gulls kept with us the first two days and then disappeared, their places being taken by boobies. The gull is a pretty and graceful bird, somewhat resembling the pigeon in shape and agility. The booby has a little resemblance to the duck, but his bill is sharp pointed and curved like a hawk's. Beechey and one or two others speak ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... a jape on me, thou sodden-brained gull?" answered Lambourne, nothing daunted. "Why, dark and muddy as thou think'st thyself, I would engage in a day's space to sec as clear through thee and thy concernments, as thou callest them, as through the filthy horn ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... her tears, and caressed her hair, seeming to murmur 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 the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... 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 ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... am acquainted with no better Darwinian than the crab; and 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 run over the stones, lithe and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... horrid suspicion against him, and that even if Horrocleave's pate did conceal a dark thought, it would be conjured at once away by the superficial reasonableness of the falsified accounts. But now his mind was terribly and inexplicably changed, and it seemed to him impossible to gull the acute and mighty Horrocleave. Failure, exposure, disgrace, ruin, seemed inevitable—and also intolerable. It was astonishing that he should have deceived himself into an absurd security. The bank-notes, by some magic virtue which they possessed, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... have made but one circular wing-sweep, such as you may see a gull make over grey water on a stormy day. Next moment it was perched again on the chair-back—and all round the theatre, where it had passed, little sparks shone like tinsel seeds, then little smoke wreaths curled up like growing plants—little flames opened like flower-buds. People ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... observed, it appeared about as large as a gull; and the boys might have taken it for one—not knowing any other white bird likely to be flying about at such a height—but as there were several buzzards near it, and evidently below it, and as these looked no bigger than swallows, what must be its size? ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 165 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... land, and that I was drifting 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 the fish. In another ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... her, and their eyes met. Each read the meaning in the other's face too plainly to make reserve as to the real state of things possible. "The cause of all this cruel delay is explained at last," he went on. "The Sea-Gull on her way back to England was wrecked. All Bolston's papers are lost. He had a fever brought on by cold and exposure, and after he had lain for weeks in an Irish inn, he waked into life with scarcely his sense of identity come back to him. He writes that he has begun to recover himself, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... calls in the twilight - Calls as its chance were vain? The cry of a gull sent seaward Or the voice of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... he made an excuse to me that he must move about the marriage, and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner and (to speak truth) his gull. Trade and station belonged both to Randall; Case and the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon him like the flies, he none the wiser. Indeed, I have no harm to say of Billy Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose at him, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 of the sea; and so far ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... safely accomplished; the vigilant look-out at the mast-head giving prompt notice of a speck on the horizon no larger than a gull's wing, when the course would be so changed as to lose sight of it. Two cases of yellow fever, both ending fatally, occurred among the passengers during the brief voyage, and we were quarantined on ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... went away and in her own pleasant rooms in the big house, now so full of new activities, Robin was as unwatched as if she had been a young gull flying in and out of its nest in a tall cliff rising out of ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
