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The Strife Of The Sea
The Strife Of The Sea
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Published in New York in 1903.
The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.
Contents:
The Old Man Of Sand Key — The Outcast — The Sea Dog — The Cape Horners — The Loggerhead — The White Follower — King Albicore — The Nibblers — Johnny Shark — A Tragedy Of The South Atlantic — In The Wake Of The Weather-Cloth
Excerpts:
.....TO the southward of where the backbone of the western hemisphere dips beneath the sea rises a group of ragged, storm-swept crags and peaks,—the wild rocks of the Diego Ramirez. Past them flows the current of the great Antarctic Drift, sweeping from the father of all oceans—the vast South Pacific,— away to the eastward, past the bleak pinnacles of Cape Horn, to disperse itself through the Lemaire Strait and Falkland Channel northward into the Atlantic Ocean.
.....With the wild snore of the great west wind sounding over them, and the chaotic thunder of the Pacific Ocean falling upon their sides, they are lonely and inhospitable, and are seldom, if ever, visited by man. Only now and then he sees them, when the wind-jammer fighting to go past the last corner gets driven close in to the land of fire. Then, on some bleak and dreary morning, when the west wind is roaring through downhaul and clewline and under the storm topsails, the heavy drift may break away for a few minutes and show the wary navigator a glimpse of the death-trap under his lee that will add a few gray hairs to his head, and bring the watch below tumbling on deck to man the braces.
.....Bare of vegetation and desolate as they are, the rocks are inhabited. To the leeward of the great Cape Horn sea that crashes upon them, the ledges and shelves are full of life. In the shelter, the strange forms sit and gaze seaward, peering this way and that, squawking and scolding in hoarse voices that might be heard above the surf-thunder. They appear like great geese sitting on their tails, for they sit upright, their feet being placed well down on their long bodies, giving them a grotesque look that is sometimes absurdly human.
.....They have no wings,—only little rudiments covered with fine hair like feathers that serve as side fins when swimming. They never flap them, as do their cousins, the Cape pigeons and albatrosses. In fact, their bodies are covered with short, close, hair like feathers, very minute, seldom wider than a pencil's point, and lying tight to the skin, like scales on a fish. These figures have birdlike heads, not unlike those of diver-ducks, and they have beautiful black eyes, with red rings around them.
.....They are the penguins of the southern zone, half bird, half fish, and, one might say, half human, to judge by their upright waddle on their webbed feet.
The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.
Contents:
The Old Man Of Sand Key — The Outcast — The Sea Dog — The Cape Horners — The Loggerhead — The White Follower — King Albicore — The Nibblers — Johnny Shark — A Tragedy Of The South Atlantic — In The Wake Of The Weather-Cloth
Excerpts:
.....TO the southward of where the backbone of the western hemisphere dips beneath the sea rises a group of ragged, storm-swept crags and peaks,—the wild rocks of the Diego Ramirez. Past them flows the current of the great Antarctic Drift, sweeping from the father of all oceans—the vast South Pacific,— away to the eastward, past the bleak pinnacles of Cape Horn, to disperse itself through the Lemaire Strait and Falkland Channel northward into the Atlantic Ocean.
.....With the wild snore of the great west wind sounding over them, and the chaotic thunder of the Pacific Ocean falling upon their sides, they are lonely and inhospitable, and are seldom, if ever, visited by man. Only now and then he sees them, when the wind-jammer fighting to go past the last corner gets driven close in to the land of fire. Then, on some bleak and dreary morning, when the west wind is roaring through downhaul and clewline and under the storm topsails, the heavy drift may break away for a few minutes and show the wary navigator a glimpse of the death-trap under his lee that will add a few gray hairs to his head, and bring the watch below tumbling on deck to man the braces.
.....Bare of vegetation and desolate as they are, the rocks are inhabited. To the leeward of the great Cape Horn sea that crashes upon them, the ledges and shelves are full of life. In the shelter, the strange forms sit and gaze seaward, peering this way and that, squawking and scolding in hoarse voices that might be heard above the surf-thunder. They appear like great geese sitting on their tails, for they sit upright, their feet being placed well down on their long bodies, giving them a grotesque look that is sometimes absurdly human.
.....They have no wings,—only little rudiments covered with fine hair like feathers that serve as side fins when swimming. They never flap them, as do their cousins, the Cape pigeons and albatrosses. In fact, their bodies are covered with short, close, hair like feathers, very minute, seldom wider than a pencil's point, and lying tight to the skin, like scales on a fish. These figures have birdlike heads, not unlike those of diver-ducks, and they have beautiful black eyes, with red rings around them.
.....They are the penguins of the southern zone, half bird, half fish, and, one might say, half human, to judge by their upright waddle on their webbed feet.
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