"Albatross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "the Islands Of the Albatross and Beaver? By another name you call them. One is crested by a prison, Grim and somber, melancholy; One is gay with flags and bunting, Ringing with the martial music Of your sailor boys in training; Yet, if you observe them closely, You will ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from lake to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic birds. But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... a remarkable occurrence, for I never saw the latter bird before so far without the tropic; but here was one nearly five hundred miles to the southward of it, and at least three hundred leagues from the nearest land; an albatross (Diomedea exulans, Linn.) was shot, but did not measure more than nine feet nine inches across the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... charm to him, notwithstanding the rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from a boat, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Albatross, Alpaca, Corded Alpaca, Angora, Astrakhan, Bandanna, Beaver (Fur Beaver), Bedford Cord, Beige, Bindings, Bombazine, Bottany, Boucle, Broadcloth, Bunting, Caniche, Cashmere, Cashmere Double, Cassimere, Castor, Challis, Cheviot (Diagonal or Chevron), Chinchilla, Chudah, Corduroy, ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... 21st.—Passed Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible and Nightingale Islands, about 37 south latitude, 12 longitude west. —Saw a great many whales, mostly sperm, thousands of birds, albatross, Cape pigeon, and many others, the names of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... passed to sunset the gloom quickly deepened. The sun sank early into banks of leaden clouds, and the Karluk slid on through the seething seas in a scene of strange loneliness, save for the suspended albatross that never varied its position by an inch or by a flirt of ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... explorations of the Pentland Hills. Why had that walk on Christmas Eve, two years ago, kept them happy for a term? They had just walked between the snow that lay white on the hills and the snow that hung black in the clouds, and had seen no living creature save the stray albatross that winged from peak to peak. She thought without more zest of their cycle-rides; though there had been a certain grim pride in squeezing forty miles a day out of the cycle which, having been won in a girls' ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... was announced. The racecourse was so constructed that the larger birds stood upon one side, and the smaller birds and animals upon the other. This was so arranged, chiefly at the request of a deputy of frogs, because, at a mass meeting once, an albatross had eaten twenty-seven of these animals in a fit of absent-mindedness, as he said. Still the frogs desired to prevent the recurrence of so ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... islands in addition to the King's instructions respecting new discoveries...You will carefully examine...all within 6 miles round the island to ascertain whether a vessel may anchor. Having completed the survey...you will ascertain the time of bearing...between the south westernmost point and Albatross Islands, the northernmost of Hunter's Islands and the Pyramid. Having completed...your survey thus far you will ascertain to what distance soundings may be got to the westward of the Norfolk's and Lady Nelson's passages taking ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... gentlemen, And though our flagship lie Where white the great-winged albatross Came wheeling down the sky, Or black abysses yawned for us, We could ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... of the southern seas is the multitude of birds which inhabit it. Huge albatrosses, molimorks (a smaller albatross), Cape hens, Cape pigeons, parsons, boobies, whale birds, mutton birds, and many more, wheel continually about the ship's stern, sometimes in dozens, sometimes in scores, always in considerable numbers. If a person takes two pieces of pork and ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... I don't want a fracas until I see the lay of the old man. He's a queer one for sure, hey? Did you ever see a skipper with such a look? Sech bleeding eyes—an' nose, hey? Like the beak of an old albatross. He hasn't come out to lay the course yet, but let her go. She'll head within half a point of what she's doin' now. Sink me, but I don't believe there's three bloomin' beggars in my watch as can steer the craft, ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... on the west side, although he coasted along very near the shore. On this Too-gee asked with much earnestness, if Captain Cook had seen an island covered with birds. Gannet Island being pointed out, he immediately fixed on Albatross Point as the situation of the river, which Captain Cook's account seems to favour, who says, 'On the north side of this point (Albatross) the shore forms a bay, in which there appears to be anchorage and shelter for shipping.' Governor ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... so naturally I couldn't watch Mac. The second boche was still much farther off than his mate. By this time I had gotten to 2,200, the boche was almost up to me and taking a diagonal course right in front. He started to circle and his gunner—it was a biplane, probably an Albatross, although the mist was too thick and dark for me to see much but the bare outline of his dirty, dark green body, with white and black crosses—opened fire before I did and his first volley did some damage. One bullet cut ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... from peaks of Pyrenees To Graians; youngness ruled the track. When songful beams were shut in caves, And rainy drapery swept across; When the ranked clouds were downy waves, Breast of swan, eagle, albatross, In ordered lines to screen the blue, Youngest of light was nigh, we knew. The silver finger of it laughed Along the narrow rift: it shot, Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft, Then haled on high the volumed blot, To build the hurling palace, cleave The dazzling chasm; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... incidents that lead to the killing of the albatross; those that lead from the killing of the albatross to the blessing of the water snakes; and those that lead from this point to ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... vague glances, luminous as that of an albatross, hovered for a long time over the sea, interrogating space, seeking ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in here to-day with four men picked up from an open boat south of New Guinea, who reported that the Government survey vessel Albatross has run ashore in a storm on Ysabel Island, one of the Solomon group. The crew and passengers, including Dr. Thesiger Smith, the famous geologist, were saved, but the vessel is a complete wreck, and the unfortunate people were compelled to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... penguins; and being near an island of ice from which several pieces had broken, we hoisted out two boats, and took on board as much as filled all our empty casks, and the Adventure did the same. While this was doing, Mr Forster shot an albatross, whose plumage was of a colour between brown and dark-grey, the head and upper side of the wings rather inclining to black, and it had white eye-brows. We began to see these birds about the time of our first falling ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... books on Antarctic exploration, a copy of Browning and one of "The Ancient Mariner." On reading the latter, we sympathized with him and wondered what he had done with the albatross; it would have made a very welcome ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... instead of at north, the usual point at which gales in these regions begin. During the stormy weather which prevailed throughout the passage, we were unceasingly attended by those majestic birds and monarchs of the ocean—the White Albatross (Diomedia exulans) which with steadily expanded wings sailed gracefully over the surface of the restless main in solemn silence, like spectres of the deep; their calm and easy flight coursing each wave in its hurried career seemed to mock the unsteady motion of our little vessel ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... part as large. No other audience a millionth part as large. No human eye could look across it. Wing of albatross and falcon and eagle not strong enough to fly over it. A congregation, I verily believe, not assembled on any continent, because no continent would be large enough to hold it. But, as the Bible intimates, in the air. The law of gravitation unanchored, the world moved out of its place. As ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... descriptions of Father and Mother Albatross and their island home, in the last and most beautiful tale of "Kerguelen's Land," she was indebted to her husband, a wide traveller and very accurate ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... of July, in the evening, the sailors saw innumerable birds going from the south-west to the north-east, which flight of birds was a sign that land was not far off. For several successive days birds were seen, and an albatross perched upon the admiral's vessel. Still the fleet went on without seeing land, and, as it was in want of fresh water, the admiral was thinking of changing his course, and, indeed, on Thursday, the 31st of July, had commenced steering northwards for some hours, when, to use ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... tail feathers. Cartridge paper of various pale tints is best, as one can choose the ground that will best set off the colors of the feathers. Every other page may be white, and about three black sheets will be useful for swan, albatross and other white-plumaged birds. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... turning points of World War II. The islands continued to serve as a naval station until closed in 1993. Today the islands are a National Wildlife Refuge and are the site of the world's largest Laysan albatross colony. Palmyra Atoll: The Kingdom of Hawaii claimed the atoll in 1862, and the US included it among the Hawaiian Islands when it annexed the archipelago in 1898. The Hawaii Statehood Act of 1959 ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... my chaperon, Charlotte, because in my hour of need I simply fastened myself to you like a limpet, or an albatross, or a barnacle, or any other form of nautical vampire that you prefer. Still, I might as well confess that I cabled to Duke, or wirelessed, or did something awfully expensive of that sort at St. Thomas while you were having that interminable talk with the captain, who, by the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fulcrum, by means of which they present their bodies and outstretched wings and tails at various angles to the wind, and literally sail. How often, when becalmed on southern seas, when not a breath of air was stirring and the sails idly flapped against the mast, have I seen the albatross, the petrel, and the Cape-pigeon resting on the water, or rising with difficulty, and only by the constant motion of their long wings able to fly at all. But when a breeze sprang up they were all life and motion, wheeling ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they any otherwise derange themselves for the new visitors, than to peck at their legs as they passed by. This species of albatross is white on the neck and breast, partly brown on the back and wings, and its size is less than many others met with at sea, particularly in the high southern latitudes. The seals were of the usual size, and bore a reddish fur, much inferior in quality to that ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the wheel and the guard at the quarter-railing, he was alone on the deck. A few birds flew round about the vessel, and seemed to pass under her stern windows only to appear again at her bows. A lazy albatross, with the white water flashing from his wings, rose with a dabbling sound to leeward, and in the place where he had been glided the hideous fin of a silently-swimming shark. The seams of the well-scrubbed deck were sticky with melted pitch, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... peaks it was here my good fortune to view for the first time that majestic bird, the condor, which, it is declared, has never been seen to flap its wings. Thus in the South Seas I had been privileged to see the albatross, and here the condor. Lucky, indeed, to have viewed these monarchs of the air, free in their proper element, in all their pride, grace and beauty. How often, as a boy, or even as a man, has one anticipated "some day" seeing these noble birds in their native ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... red. He raised himself upon his elbows and stared at the owl which stared back from red rimmed eyes, cold, emotionless, implacable. He had been terribly shaken, and now a superstitious fright overcame him. The raven and the albatross were in his mind and he murmured under his breath passages from their ominous poems. The scholar had his raven, the mariner had his albatross and now he alone in the forest had his owl, to his mind the most terrible bird ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... intolerable if they remembered everything. Everything, nevertheless, is just what they themselves would like to remember, and just what they would like to tell to everybody. Be sure that the Ancient Mariner, though he remembered quite as much as his audience wanted to hear, and rather more, about the albatross and the ghastly crew, was inwardly raging at the sketchiness of his own mind; and believe me that his stopping only one of three was the merest oversight. I should like to impose on the world many tomes ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... imposing, in its native brown. The outlines of all the rocks, and the shores of the different islands, had an appearance of volcanic origin, though the rocks themselves told a somewhat different story. The last was principally of trap formation. Cape pigeons, gulls, petrels, and albatross were wheeling about in the air, while the rollers that still came in on this noble sea-wall were really terrific. Distant thunder wants the hollow, bellowing sound that these waves made when brought in ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cross an Albatross, Thorough the Fog it came; As if it had been a Christian Soul, We hail'd it in ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... sidewalk, and the man guiding it motioned to Hopkins to jump into it. He did so without slackening his speed, and fell into the turkey-red upholstered seat beside the chauffeur. The big machine, with a diminuendo cough, flew away like an albatross down the avenue into ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... October we reached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope. Flocks of sea birds fluttered around our masts, for this colder region is the home of the beautiful sea dove, the great white albatross and an innumerable multitude of smaller kinds, that on the approach of stormy weather seem to rise, as by the stroke of a magician's wand, from the sea. One of the few changes one meets with on a voyage to Africa is angling for birds, for they are as easily taken as the finny tribe, by baiting ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... to lend a hand in case I should be required. While glancing to windward, as I did every now and then, in hopes of seeing signs of the abatement of the gale, I caught sight of what seemed the wing of an albatross, skimming the summit of a tossing sea. I looked again and again. There it still was as at first. I pointed it out to the captain. "A sail running down towards us," he observed; "it is to be hoped that she is a friend, for we are ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... will, and tells how the ship sailed forth gayly, and how it met after a time with storms, and cold, and fog, until at last it was all beset with ice. Then when to the sailors all hope seemed lost, an albatross came sailing through the fog. With joy they hailed it, the only living thing in that wilderness of ice. They fed ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... measured a very large male condor, and the width from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other was fourteen English feet and two inches—an enormous expanse of wing, not equalled by any other bird except the white albatross. (Diomedea exulans, Linn.). The snipes (Scolopax frenata, Ill.) found on the little plain between the bay and the light-house are in color precisely like those of Europe, from which, however, they differ in having two more feathers in their tails. Small ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... drift of seaweed, and a berried branch, Which silenced them as if they had seen a Hand Writing with fiery letters on the deep, Then a black cormorant, vulture of the sea, With neck outstretched and one long ominous honk, Went hurtling past them to its unknown bourne. A mighty white-winged albatross came next; Then flight on flight of clamorous clanging gulls; And last, a wild and sudden shout of "Land!" Echoed from crew to crew across the waves. Then, dumb upon the rigging as they hung Staring at it, a menace chilled ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... cliffs, and mountains of Somaliland were searched with glasses for signs of habitations. So desolate, however, appeared the country, and so few the signs of life, that, as a diversion, the men cheered whenever an occasional school of porpoises or a solitary albatross came more closely under view. Cape Guardafui was passed soon after lunch, and the following evening the ship stopped her engines for half an hour in order to exchange messages with Aden, which was dimly visible through the thick bluish haze of ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... saw a crab in one of them; five-fingers too. From the edge of the rocks, you may look off into deep, deep water, even at low tide. Among the rocks, I found a great bird, whether a wild-goose, a loon, or an albatross, I scarcely know. It was in such a position that I almost fancied it might be asleep, and therefore drew near softly, lest it should take flight; but it was dead, and stirred not when I touched it. Sometimes a dead fish was cast up. A ledge of rocks, with a beacon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the Lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny Postage-Stamp. "You'd best be getting home," he said: ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... portion, it is difficult even now to contemplate calmly the blundering fatuity of that bigoted medieval brand of "patriotism" which led the decrepit Philippine government to play the Ancient Mariner and shoot the Albatross that ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... anchor in a small, well-sheltered cove on one of the Kent's Group of islands. Less than a hundred yards away was one of the rudest attempts at a house ever seen—that is, externally—for it was built with wreckage from many ships and was roofed with tarpaulins and coarse "albatross" grass. Seated on a stool outside the building was Mrs. Lester, engaged in feeding a number of noisy fowls with broken-up biscuit, but looking every now and then towards the Braybrook Cattle, which lay on the rocks a mile away with only her lower masts standing. It was nearing the time when ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... an egg, and he kept comparatively near the island where her nest was situated. There was only one egg, but parental affection is not influenced by numbers. There is always love enough for the largest family, and everything that could be desired in an only child, and Mother Albatross was as proud as if she had been a ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... cozy corners aboard Mr. Courtney's snow-white Albatross in which a couple with many important things to say could be free from prying observation, Johnny and Constance behaved like normal human beings who were profoundly happy. They mingled with the gaiety all the way out through ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... chief who was steering the canoe, there could be no mistake. The sharpened albatross bone used by the Maori tattooer, had five times scored his countenance. He was in his fifth edition, and betrayed it in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... swayed up to their cranes—the two parts of the wrecked boat having been previously secured by her—and then hoisting everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the well known, methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... affords a striking illustration of the real object of all these elaborate movements. The male albatross, an ugly and dull-coloured bird,[66] during courtship stands by the female on the nest, raises his wings, spreads his tail, throws up his head with the bill in the air, or stretches it straight ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... little Jacob said "Huh!" So they went to ask Mr. Steele or Captain Solomon. Captain Solomon was standing right behind them, and he was smiling because he had heard what the boys said. And he said that the bird was an albatross, and that little Jacob was pretty nearly right about the length of its wings. Little Sol was taken down a peg and ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... "Nor herring, nor albatross, nor flying-fish?" continued Cap, who kept his eye fastened on the guide, in order to see how far he might venture. "No such thing as a fish that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... their holiday in the stormy gale. The lordly and graceful Albatross, whose motion is a very melody, swept screaming by upon the blast. The smaller Cape pigeons followed us fast, passing and repassing across the vessel's track. At last one of them spies a fragment on the waters, which has been thrown overboard: a moment it hovers ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... expression which is in the face of science; for Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from erudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora. When Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the southern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate explorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity. The strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative religion and mythology, he explores with cosmopolitan impartiality and imaginative ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... good deal out of our course during the night. At noon we were in lat. 26 deg. 44' S., long. 103 deg. 50' E. I managed to go to the deck-house to-day for lunch, and remained on deck a little afterwards. Just before sunset we saw several sea-birds, and a splendid albatross with a magnificent spread of wing. It was wonderful to watch its quick turns and graceful skimming flight, so swift, and yet with ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... then—for it was nominally summer time in low latitudes. Days of gloomy calm, presage of a fiercer blow, when the Old Man (Orcadian philosopher that he was) caught and skilfully stuffed the great-winged albatross that flounders helplessly when the wind fails. Days of strong breezes, when we tried to beat to windward under a straining main-to'gal'nsail; ever a west wind to thwart our best endeavours, and week-long gales, that we rode out, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... only during the night. Between latitudes 56 and 57 degs. south of Cape Horn, the net was put astern several times; it never, however, brought up anything besides a few of two extremely minute species of Entomostraca. Yet whales and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant throughout this part of the ocean. It has always been a mystery to me on what the albatross, which lives far from the shore, can subsist; I presume that, like the condor, it is able to fast long; and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... channel or near land. And, besides, old fellow, you must recollect that although we can see her plainly, we to those on board would appear but the tiniest speck in the distance, if we were seen at all, and would be taken for a wandering albatross, or one of those Molly hawks like that we caught this morning. They don't see us, evidently, or they would take ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Nothing but sky and water with waves which were mountains high. The only bit of life outside of our ship's company was a number of birds of a different nature from any I had ever seen and they followed the ship day after day. Cape pigeons and albatross were in large numbers. We caught many of the latter and measured them. I remember one weighing thirty pounds and measuring fifteen feet from tip to tip of the wings. Cape hens about as large as good sized turkeys, ice birds, and many other small birds. I enjoyed ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... four to be attacked, and about ten kilometres within German-held territory. The cable ran to the outskirts of a village situated on a railroad and a small stream. The location of enemy aviation fields was also shown pictorially, each one represented by a minute sketch, very carefully made, of an Albatross biplane. We noticed that there were several aerodromes not far ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... here to be found, among which may be mentioned sea-hens, blue peterels, teal, ducks, Port Egmont hens, shags, Cape pigeons, the nelly, sea swallows, terns, sea gulls, Mother Carey's chickens, Mother Carey's geese, or the great peterel, and, lastly, the albatross. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or the old Spanish grandee on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would not have borne my thirteen stone weight. Perchance the giant wings of the Albatross would have been more practicable, if less poetical, and with these appendages I might have been tempted to have a peep at my friends in England, despite the supremely ridiculous figure I should have cut in the air, and the chance I should have stood of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... ALBATROSS. A large, voracious, long-winged sea-bird, belonging to the genus Diomedea; very abundant in the Southern Ocean and the Northern Pacific, though said to be rarely met ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... there are many groups that have special attraction for children. For instance, among the "Birds we read about" are the flamingo, cassowary, condor, and quetzal; the eagle owl is contrasted with the pygmy owl, and the peacock, lyre bird, albatross, swan, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... command of the Norfolk. Bass's association with him. Twofold Bay. Discovery of Port Dalrymple. Bass Strait demonstrated. Black swans. Albatross Island. Tasmanian aboriginals. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... nature of a miracle—something not to be explained. Explanations which have been advanced have, it is true, been in many cases altogether untenable. For instance, some have asserted that the albatross, the condor, and other birds which float for a long time without moving their wings—and that, too, in some cases, at great heights above the sea-level, where the air is very thin—are supported by some gas within the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... that he understood very well the cash value of his old uniform. If he had a peg-leg or an empty sleeve, so much the more impudently could he pass around his property cap. For forty years, he and his mendicant band have been a cursed albatross hung around the necks of their honest fellows. Able-bodied men, they have lolled back and eaten up millions of dollars, belonging to a State which they pretend to love and which, as they well know, has needed every penny for the desperate struggle of existence. Since ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Kaumualii, the last King of Kauai, visited Honolulu in the ship Albatross, Capt. Nathan Winship, in order to have an interview with Kamehameha. It was then arranged between the two chiefs that Kaumualii should continue to hold his Island in fief of Kamehameha during his life-time, on condition of ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... speed through the air, took flying leaps over outlying spurs of mountain ranges that lay in their path, swooped down into valleys, and flew over level plains fifty yards from the ground, like an albatross over the surface of a smooth tropic sea. Then he soared up from the earth again, until the horizon widened out to vast extent, and they could see the mighty buttresses of "the Roof of the World" stretching out below them in an endless succession of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... muskets were loaded, their cartouch boxes were fastened round their waists, and their patoo-patoos were fixed to their wrists. Their hair was tied up in a tight knot at the top of their heads, beautifully ornamented with feathers of the albatross. As the opposite party landed, ours all crouched on the ground, their eyes fixed on their visitors, and perfectly silent. When the debarkation was completed I observed the chief, Ta-ri-ah, put himself at their head, and march ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... 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 of encountering the Albatross in the North Pacific, but their statements are disputed by mariners of the present day. The Albatross is peculiar to the south as the gull to the north. Gulls and boobies dart into the water when any thing is thrown overboard, and show great ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... ran upstairs into a storeroom, and was there for half an hour in the cold. The book was left open when she went away, and Tom looked at it. It was a collection of poems by all kinds of people, and the one over which she had been poring was about a man who had shot an albatross. Tom studied it, but could make nothing of it, and yet this was what had so much interested her! "O God!" he said to himself passionately, "if I could, if I did but know! She cares not a pin for me; this is what she cares for." Poor Tom! he did not pride ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... faltering glance which the Arctic explorer sends toward his coveted goal, ere he admits defeat, shows flocks of snow buntings active with warm life; the storm-tossed mariner in the midst of the sea, is followed, encircled, by the steady, tireless flight of the albatross; the fever-stricken wanderer in tropical jungles listens to the sweet notes of birds amid the stagnant pools; while the thirsty traveller in the desert is ever watched by the distant buzzards. Finally when the intrepid climber, at the risk of life and ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... pumps, we were now so lightened, they did not require to be worked at all; but the greatest dread we laboured under was from the dangerous condition of the main and fore masts, that tottered to and fro, threatening to go by the board every minute. Before the hour of sunset, a large bird, called the albatross, with wings the length of four to five feet each, skimmed along the surface of the waves, close to and around us; this inspired the crew with hopes, as they supposed it to be a good omen. It remained hovering near our unfortunate wreck for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... oxygen from the atmosphere as well as from the water in which it is dissolved. They pass a great part of their life in the air; but if they escape from the sea to avoid the voracity of the Dorado, they meet in the air the Frigate-bird, the Albatross, and others, which seize them in their flight. Thus, on the banks of the Orinoco, herds of the Cabiai, which rush from the water to escape the crocodile, become the prey of the jaguar, which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... nor from any disregard of the new influences it will bring to bear upon mankind. But I do not think it at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication—the main question here under consideration. Man is not, for example, an albatross, but a land biped, with a considerable disposition towards being made sick and giddy by unusual motions, and however he soars he must come to earth to live. We must build our picture of the future from the ground upward; ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... she was hove down in a blow off the Horn an albatross came aboard. You know what they be—the one bird in all the seven seas that don't us'ally need a dry spot for the sole of his foot. If Noah had sent out one from the ark he'd never have come back with any sprig of promise for the land-hungry wanderers ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... be as much ocean in that northern hemisphere as the geographers of Russia and France—who actually tabulated Bering's discoveries as an island—had placed on the maps. But in the first week of March, a sea-gull came swimming over the crest of a wave. Where did she come from? Then an albatross was seen wheeling above the sea. Then, on March 6, two lonely land seals went plying past; and whales were noticed. Surely they were nearing the region that Drake, the English freebooter, had seen and named New Albion two hundred years before. {184} Suddenly, on the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... smote him was odd. It was that he found himself a stranger among the fellow-beings he had come to meet. He found himself still a Selkirk of the world of trade and traffic and transfer of thought and well-wishing and strong-doing and of all social life. He was like a strange bird, like an albatross blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island where albatrosses ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the water the birds were flying in large flocks, like thick clouds big with a storm. Aquatic birds of all sorts were there, from the albatross which is common to the south, to the penguin of the arctic seas, but of enormous size. Their cries were deafening. In considering them the doctor found his knowledge of natural history too scanty; many of the names escaped ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... remember all the furniture was ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was. Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked, and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house, that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and desolate ocean. She told me ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... up Albatross to Walnut, then to Fourth where she took the car, and all the way down-town she was carefully rehearsing her stories and the most effective modes of presenting them. She knew the rooms of the Service League well, having been there on many ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... vanished above into snow. We had come to the tip of the world, and even that tip had ceased to be. But no. Out of the snow, down wind, with motionless wings, driving fully eighty or ninety miles an hour, appeared a huge albatross. He must have been fifteen feet from wing-tip to wing-tip. He had seen his danger ere we saw him, and, tilting his body on the blast, he carelessly veered clear of collision. His head and neck were rimed with age or frost—we could not tell which—and his bright bead-eye noted us as he passed ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Russian and German squadrons in the Baltic, between the Island of Oeland and the Courland coast; after a brief engagement the German squadron, outnumbered and outmatched in strength, flees; the German mine layer Albatross is wrecked by Russian gunfire and is beached by her crew; the Russian squadron then sails northward, sighting another German squadron, which is also outmatched in strength; the German ships flee after a thirty-minute fight, a German torpedo boat being damaged; Dutch lugger Katwyk 147 is sunk ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... days on the steamer," I said, "would be perfectly invaluable to him. He could read theology from morning to night. There'd be nothing, except an occasional albatross, to distract his attention." ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... deputation of Falmouth Whigs, headed by their Mayor, came on board to wish Macaulay his health in India and a happy return to England, nothing occurred that broke the monotony of an easy and rapid voyage. "The catching of a shark; the shooting of an albatross; a sailor tumbling down the hatchway and breaking his head; a cadet getting drunk and swearing at the captain," are incidents to which not even the highest literary power can impart the charm of novelty in the eyes of the readers of a seafaring nation. The company on the quarterdeck was much on ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... for the South Atlantic abounds in aquatic birds. We were followed continuously by clouds of them, low flying, skirting the water, of varied yet sober plumage. The names of these I cannot pretend to give, except the monarch of them all, in size and majesty of flight, the albatross, of unsullied white, as its name implies—the king of the southern ocean. Several of these enormous but graceful creatures were ever sweeping about us in almost endless flight, hardly moving their ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from Easter Island, the eyes of which ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... truth is, our own country hasn't enough combat planes to send out a patrol. They are developing some mystery motor, I hear, but I'm not very keen about trying out any mystery motors. Our Camels are mystery enough to suit me. When I'm up against the ceiling with a fast flying Albatross or tri-plane Fokker on my tail, I don't want any mysteries to handle. No, Red, for the time being I guess I'm satisfied. Besides, they might chuck me in the infantry, and I have a horror of having things drop on me from overhead. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... coast of Angra Pequena, together with others north and south, were annexed to Great Britain in 1867 and added to Cape Colony in 1874. Seal Island and Penguin Island are in the bay; Ichaboe, Mercury, and Hollam's Bird islands are to the north; Halifax, Long, Possession, Albatross, Pomona, Plumpudding, and Roastbeef islands are to the south. On these islands are guano deposits; the most valuable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... wealth builds round its owners. I don't think Mr. Peter Reid was kind, though perhaps he meant to be. Jean is such a conscientious, anxious pilgrim at any time, and I'm afraid the wealth will hang round her neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... place. They required a special sort of swift car to throw them into the air, but such a car was efficient in any open place clear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of the albatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might have brought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; these inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before the usurpation of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was there! It was the fall of innocence and purity; it was the fall of happiness into the abyss of woe; it was the fall of life into the arms of death. It was like the fall of the wounded albatross, from the regions of light, into the sea; it was like the fall of a star from heaven to hell. When the jasper gate forever closed behind the guilty pair, and the flaming sword of the Lord mounted guard over the barred portal, the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... yards long and five hundred yards wide, lay, in a perfect oval, a fleet of ships. By all appearances they had no right to be on land. There was no visible evidence that they could rise from the solid earth after once touching it, any more than the albatross can do from a ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... be placed on a United States steamship was the one consisting of an Edison "Z" dynamo and one hundred and twenty eight-candle lamps installed on the Fish Commission's steamer Albatross in 1883. The most interesting feature of this installation was the employment of special deep-sea lamps, supplied with current through a cable nine hundred and forty feet in length, for the purpose of alluring ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... fishing was allowed—a fact of which he was evidently aware. These fellows are proverbially stupid, and will go at a bait again and again, even though they must know it to be a lure. Only once, too, did we catch an albatross, the bird of the Southern Ocean. That was by a line baited with a small piece of pork. This was fastened to a round ring of iron, in which the hooked beak of the bird caught, and so it was dragged on board. The captain knocked it on the head, and it was then cut up. It measured 13 feet across ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... the awning by the engine-room door, lazily reading "Faust." There is a speck on the sky-line—the mail boat, bringing a letter from my friend. I look round at the translucent opal of the bay, the glittering white of the surf on the reef, the downward swoop on an albatross, and I listen to the dull roar of the breakers, to the solemn tang-tang of the bell-buoy on the bar, and the complaisant "ah-ha-a-a" of some argumentative penguin. Even the drab-coloured African hills in the distance, and the corrugated Catholic church (shipped in sections) with ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... west. We have had all sorts of weather—some beautiful, some very rough, but always contrary winds—and got within 200 miles of the coast of South America. We now have a milder breeze from the SOFT N.E., after a BITTER S.W., with Cape pigeons and mollymawks (a small albatross), not to compare with our gulls. We had private theatricals last night—ill acted, but beautifully got up as far as the sailors were concerned. I did not act, as I did not feel well enough, but I put a bit for Neptune into the Prologue and made the boatswain's ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the latter part of his homily to the wedding guest clearly pointed him out as the very man meant by Providence for a stipendiary curate to the good Dr. Bailey in his over-crowded church. [Footnote: St. James', according to my present recollection.] With an albatross perched on his shoulder, and who might be introduced to the congregation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and supported by the droning of a bassoon, she represented the mariner lecturing to advantage in English; the doctor overhead in the pulpit enforcing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... back to the market-place, expecting to find J——- at the Museum, but the keeper said he had gone away. We went into this museum, which contains the collections in Natural History, etc., of a county society. It is very well arranged, and is rich in specimens of ornithology, among which was an albatross, huge beyond imagination. I do not think that Coleridge could have known the size of the fowl when he caused it to be hung round the neck of his Ancient Mariner. There were a great many humming-birds from various parts of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cross an Albatross,— Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... The "Albatross," Master English's fastest sailer at length came into port; and the arrangements were speedily made. The first north-westerly wind, whether the night were clear or stormy—though of course with such a wind it would probably be clear—the attempt was to be made, immediately after midnight. Uncle ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Holy Mother may possibly have been found in its supposed sleeplessness. The bird was believed never to rest, to hatch its eggs under its wings, and to be incessantly flying to and fro on the face of the waters on messages of warning to mariners. Even to this day sailors believe that the albatross, the aristocratic relative of the petrel, sleeps on the wing; and the power of the albatross, for good and evil, readers of the Ancient Mariner will remember. We say for good and evil, because opinion ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... favored localities for that precious fluid older than Adam yet younger than the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can swallow a shower when they are provided with any means of catching it; but generally they are like the albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge's famous poem "The Ancient ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... "Vigilant" returned to Normanton from Thursday Island, where she had been relieving the "Albatross," she required a number of repairs which were executed, and she is now in ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... many exemplary Christians than those that sprinkled the turf under the birch-trees where Gelert was sleeping. It could not free the Ancient Mariner from the remorse that clung to him like a poisoned garment till it made him a "world's wonder," because, when he shot the albatross, he thought he was benefiting his fellows. Not less accusingly did the voices of the sea wail in the ears of the desolate Viking, because, when the bitter arrow went aside, he was fighting hard to save Oriana. Nothing could be ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Is it possible that Coleridge may have seen this apologue when he wrote his "Ancient Mariner," and introduced a similar incident of the albatross?] ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... young heart with a sweet infantine ardour, that even virtue can only pour when young, and youth when virtuous; and, at the words I have emphasised by the poor device of capitals, two lovely, supple arms flew wide out like a soaring albatross's wings, and then went all round the sad mother, and gathered every bit of her up ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade |
