White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume IBlack, William
General
White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume I
Black, William
Yachting -- Fiction
_Another cheer! Our isle appears—_
_Our biorlinn bears her on the faster!_
_Ho, ro, clansmen!_
_A long strong pull together!_
_Ho, ro, clansmen!_
"Hold hard!" calls Denny-mains; and behold! we are in among a network of
channels and small islands lying out here in the calm sea; and the birds
are wildly calling and screaming and swooping about our heads, indignant
at the approach of strangers. What is our first duty, then, in coming
to these unknown islands and straits?—why, surely, to name them in the
interests of civilisation. And we do so accordingly. Here—let it be for
ever known—is John Smith Bay. There, Thorley’s Food for Cattle Island.
Beyond that, on the south, Brown and Poison’s Straits. It is quite true
that these islands and bays may have been previously visited; but it was
no doubt a long time ago; and the people did not stop to bestow names.
The latitude and longitude may be dealt with afterwards; meanwhile the
discoverers unanimously resolve that the most beautiful of all the
islands shall hereafter, through all time, be known as the Island of
Mary Avon.
It was on this island that the Laird achieved his memorable capture of a
young sea-bird—a huge creature of unknown species that fluttered and
scrambled over bush and over scaur, while Denny-mains, quite forgetting
his dignity and the heat of the sun, clambered after it over the rocks.
And when he got it in his hands, it lay as one dead. He was sorry. He
regarded the newly-fledged thing with compassion; and laid it tenderly
down on the grass; and came away down again to the shore. But he had
scarcely turned his back when the demon bird got on its legs, and—with a
succession of shrill and sarcastic "yawps"—was off and away over the
higher ledges. No fasting girl had ever shammed so completely as this
scarcely-fledged bird.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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