"Albatross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long and narrow is said to have a high aspect ratio. A higher aspect ratio than is found in any bird or any flying machine would theoretically improve its powers of flight, but the practicable span of the plane, or length of the wing, is limited by the need for rigidity and strength. The albatross, nevertheless, the king of soaring birds, has enormously long and narrow wings; and the planes of some flying machines have an aspect ratio almost as high as the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... a brief glint of sunshine now and 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, hove-to in the trough ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... against Coleridge in his Lake Poets. It was not Coleridge who had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, but Wordsworth, and it is quite conceivable, therefore, that the source from which his friend had derived the idea of the killing of the albatross may (if indeed he was informed of it at the time) have escaped his memory twelve years afterwards, when the conversation with De Quincey took place. Hence, in "disowning his obligations to Shelvocke," he may not by any means have intended to suggest that the albatross incident ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... way completed their embankments on the three landward sides, they lay out the remaining part of the interior into equal little quadrangles, separated from each other by narrow foot-paths, crossing at right angles. In each crossing of these paths an albatross builds his nest, and in the middle of each quadrangle, a penguin, so that every albatross is surrounded by four penguins, and every penguin has albatross on four sides as neighbors. In this way the whole place is regularly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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 the political party which ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thousandth 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, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hail'd it in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a bird—a large gray bird—but whether a loon or a wild goose or the identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird would ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all sorts of sailor-superstitions. He hates to take a ship out of port on a Friday, and wouldn't kill an albatross for anything." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... 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
... Fuegians, the abundance of whales, which had never before been disturbed, the immense flocks of albatross and petrels, did not change his resolve. Cape Horn was rounded more easily than could have been expected. Upon the 9th of February the expedition was in the Straits of Magellan, and upon the 24th ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 in graceful circles, now presenting ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... are very greedy and ravenous; they will often eat so much that they are not able to move or fly, but sit quite stupidly and insensible. One of them will often, at a single meal, devour the entire body of an albatross (bones and all), which is a bird nearly as large as the vulture itself. They will smell a dead carcass at a very great distance, and will soon surround and ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... ALBATROSS, the largest and strongest of sea-birds, that ranges over the southern seas, often seen far from land; it is a superstition among sailors that it is disastrous to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the vivid realisation of the serpentine element in Geraldine's nature; and in The Ancient Mariner, whose fate is interwoven with that of the wonderful bird, at whose blessing of the water-snakes the curse for the death of the albatross passes away, and where the moral of the love of all creatures, as a sort of religious duty, is ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... "The albatross—its docility was charming—soon occupied a splendid isolation on the tarpaulined covered hatchway platform.... I shall in future read Keats' 'Ancient Mariner' with an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... 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 it ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... 10, 1772. The next day he "saw some white birds about the size of pigeons, with blackish bills and feet. I never saw any such before."[2] These must have been Snowy Petrel. Passing through many bergs, where he notices how the albatross left them and penguins appeared, he was brought up by thick pack ice along which he coasted. Under the supposition that this ice was formed in bays and rivers Cook was led to believe that land was not far ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... they knocked down another bird, and in the evening they got two more. The day after that they captured an albatross, which furnished them at last with an ample supply ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... animals, 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, and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... 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, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... The albatross is hung about the mariner's neck instead of the crucifix, and drops off only when he blesses the creatures of the calm and is able to pray. The sleep which refreshes him is sent by "Mary Queen" from heaven. The cross-bow ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... wife was hatching 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 hen sitting on ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the meridian of Albatross Island, and by midnight cleared the Strait, when we steered a course for King George the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... 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 contact with the shores. Roswell fancied that it was like a groan of the mighty Pacific, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... of soaring, possessed by many birds, of which the albatross may be considered a type, led to numerous speculations as to what would constitute the ideal principle of the air motor. Sir G. Cayley, as far back as 1809, wrote a classical article on this subject, without, however, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the Bible find me at greater depths of my being." Of course, that would influence his writing, and it did. Even in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" much of the phraseology is Scriptural. When the albatross drew near, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Stanley. There were seven warships, besides the Canopus. The Invincible and the Inflexible had left Plymouth on November 11, and had proceeded to the West Indies. Their mission was to avenge Coronel. They had picked up at Albatross Rock the Carnarvon, Cornwall, Bristol, Kent, Glasgow, now repaired, and Macedonia, an armed liner. All had then steamed southwards towards the Falklands. The vessels started coaling. Officers came ashore to stretch their legs. Certain ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... water, he completed a voyage which never lost its 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 ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... occupies 35 miles of this space, and leaves to the north of it a passage of 47 miles in width, and to the south one of 37 miles. The latter, however, is impeded by Reid's Rocks, the Conway and Bell sunken rocks, with Albatross Island and the Black Pyramid; the tide also sets across it at the rate of from one to three knots, as I have already mentioned in the first volume; consequently, the entrance between King Island and Cape Otway is much safer, the chief danger being the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... 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 ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... As on 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
... Jacob asked him what kind of a bird it was, and little Sol didn't know. Then 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 ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... 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 ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... flowing sheet. But this did not continue: it fell calm, and remained so for nearly three days, during which not a breath of wind was to be seen on the wide expanse of water; all nature appeared as if in repose, except that now and then an albatross would drop down at some distance from the stern of the vessel, and, as he swam lazily along with his wings half-furled, pick up the fragments of food which had been thrown ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the doctor was in his office, when his servant brought him a visitor's card. This card, which was small as is usual in America, had the name of "Mr. Tudor Brown, on board the 'Albatross'" printed ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... I see a thicket of masts on the river. But in the prints to be There will be lake boats, With port holes, funnels, rows of decks, Huddled like swans by the docks, Under the shadows of cliffs of brick. And who will know from the prints to be, When the Albatross and the Golden Eagle, The flying craft which shall carry the vision Of impatient lovers wounded by Spring To the shaded rivers of Michigan, That it was the Missouri, the Iowa, And the City of Benton Harbor Which lay huddled like swans ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... her at full 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 ranges ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... that great 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
... 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 ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... her a created being that the ocean had been ordered to receive, as if fashioned by the Divine Architect, to add to the beauty and variety of His works; for, from the huge leviathan to the smallest of the finny tribe—from the towering albatross to the boding petrel of the storm—where could be found, among the winged or finned frequenters of the ocean, a form more appropriate, more fitting, than this specimen of human skill, whose beautiful model and elegant tapering spars were now all that could be discovered to break the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... 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 towards us with his party formed ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... 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 being ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... cross an Albatross, Thorough the Fog it came; And an it were a Christian Soul, We hail'd it ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... emotions. It loves, but its affections are selfish and egotistic. What may be called the epochs in its growth are finely treated by Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner" and by Tennyson in "In Memoriam." The Ancient Mariner felt only selfish affection. He had no love for "being as being." He killed the albatross with as little heed as he disregarded his fellow-men; but the ministries of his misery were multiplied until, at length, he was able to see something beautiful even in the writhing green sea-serpents that followed the ship of death on ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... 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 wings, but inclining them wide-spread, now this way, now ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... command is Prof. Leslie A. Lee, of the Biological Department of Bowdoin. With a life-long experience in all branches of natural history, the experience which a year in charge of the scientific staff of the U.S. Fish Commission Steamer "Albatross" in a voyage from Washington around Cape Horn to Alaska, and an intimate connection with the Commission of many year's standing, and the training that scholarly habits, platform lecturing and collegic instruction ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... 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 ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... possessed a few 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 addition ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... 2. With an albatross perched on his shoulder, and who might be introduced to the congregation as the immediate organ of ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... 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 ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... sea's azure floor,— No keel has ever ploughed that path before; The halcyons{1} brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? Our bark is as an albatross whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple east; And we between her wings will sit, while Night And Day and Storm and Calm pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless sea, Treading each other's ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Albatross. Caste. Cobra. Cocoa-nut. Commodore. Fetish. Lasso. Marmalade. Moidore. Molasses. Palaver. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... birds were 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 ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... unhealthy region, we climbed to a less dangerous height. Again we became the target for a few dozen H.E. shells. We broke away and swooped downward. Some little distance ahead, and not far below, was a group of five Albatross two-seaters. V. pointed our machine at them, in the wake of ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... will borrow, and so gracefully I'll wear Two feathers soft and snowy, for my long, black, lustrous hair. Of the albatross's down they'll be — O, how charming they'll look there — All to chase away this feeling — O, this ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... 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 ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Discover Port Dalrymple Account of the country within it Natural productions Animals Sagacity and numbers of the black swan Inhabitants; inferior to those of the continent Range of the thermometer Pass Table Cape Circular head Three Hummock Island Albatross Island Hunter's Isles Proceed to the southward ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... From the broad Caspian's reedy brink Down winding to the Green Sea beach. Around its base the bare rocks stood Like naked giants, in the flood As if to guard the Gulf across; While on its peak that braved the sky A ruined Temple towered so high That oft the sleeping albatross[225] Struck the wild ruins with her wing, And from her cloud-rockt slumbering Started—to find man's dwelling there In her own silent fields of air! Beneath, terrific caverns gave Dark welcome to each stormy wave That dasht like midnight revellers in;— And such the strange, mysterious ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... before; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? 415 Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 420 Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the albatross sails proudly on his broad wings, and cares nothing for high winds or storms. He rests and sleeps on the billows at night with his little companions, the stormy petrels. He is the largest and strongest of our birds of flight, the very king of the sea. The stormy petrels are not ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... vague glances, luminous as that of an albatross, hovered for a long time over the sea, interrogating space, seeking to pierce the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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
... 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 which ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... of clothing, the men have not much difficulty, as they barter with the sailors on passing ships, giving in exchange the skins of albatross and mollyhawks, the polished horns of oxen, small calf-skin bags and penguin mats made by the women, and occasionally wild-cat skins. They usually wear blue dungaree on week-days, and broadcloth or white duck on Sundays. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... 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
... tree, The bird in the cloudy sky, The fish in the wavy sea, The stag on the mountain high, The albatross asleep On the waves of the rocking deep, The bee on its light wing, borne Over the bending corn,— What is the thought in the breast Of the little bird at rest? What is the thought in the songs Which the lark in the sky prolongs? What mean the dolphin's rays, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the moonbeam, The albatross lone on the spray, Alone know the tears wept in vain for the children ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... sail on which she sat, holding the infant, but hesitated to disturb her. Away to the westward the dim summits of a range of mountains showed faintly blue, but of the Breckenbridge there was no sign, and a grey albatross sailing slowly overhead was their only companion. Already Adair and the others had cast away their hated convict garb, and clothed themselves in tattered garments given them by some of the ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... manoeuvres and appearance of these strange birds. They seemed to be of different species, for some had crests on their heads while others had none, and while some were about the size of a goose, others appeared nearly as large as a swan. We also saw a huge albatross soaring above the heads of the penguins. It was followed and surrounded by numerous flocks of sea-gulls. Having approached to within a few yards of the island, which was a low rock, with no other vegetation ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... them were caught in butterfly-nets. Their plumage is not unlike grebe, and I mean to have some muffs and trimmings for the children made out of it. Allen, the coxswain of the gig, skins them very well, having had some lessons from Ward before we left England. I want very much to catch an albatross, in order to have it skinned, and to make tobacco-pouches of its feet and pipe-stems of the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... 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
... from Mr. Day, giving even worse accounts of the state of things at Balaclava; but it is too late for hesitation now. My plans are perfected, my purchases made, and passage secured in the "Albatross"—a transport laden with cattle and commissariat officers for Balaclava. I thought I should never have transported my things from the "Hollander" to the "Albatross." It was a terrible day, and against the strong current and hurricane of wind Turkish and Greek ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... 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
... trades behind me an' I'd leave the Southern Cross, An' the mollymawks an' flyin'-fish an' stately albatross, An' I'd come through wind an' weather an' the fogs as white as wool, Till I sighted old Point Lynas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for her, and were soon 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 ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... directed for Cape Leeuwin, with the wind usually a-beam; the sea being too high for the ship to make good way any nearer. In this passage we were accompanied by several petrels, and amongst them by the albatross, the first of which had been seen in ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... 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 ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... noted, by some years, was Le Bris, a French sea captain, who appears to have required only a thorough scientific training to have rendered him of equal moment in the history of gliding flight with Lilienthal himself. Le Bris, it appears, watched the albatross and deduced, from the manner in which it supported itself in the air, that plane surfaces could be constructed and arranged to support a man in like manner. Octave Chanute, himself a leading exponent of gliding, gives the best description of Le Bris's experiments in a work, Progress in Flying ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... 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 care to traverse across to the latitude of 42 degrees ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... indifferent draughtsman, and I suspect that when the precise thought that I have in mind can best be expressed by a portrait of a humming-bird, or a flamingo, my readers because of my inexpert handling of my tools would hardly be able to distinguish the creature I should limn from an albatross, a red-head duck, or a June-Bug, which would lead to a great deal of obscurity, and in some cases might cause me to say things that I should not care to be held responsible for. There is left me then only a choice between English and Esperanto, and I incline to the former, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... that there is a warm current off the coast, but nobody imagined it was merely a sort of backwater from the Gulf Stream that formed a great circular mill-race around the cone of a subterranean volcano, and rejoined the Gulf Stream off Cape Albatross. But it is! That is why papa bought a yacht three years ago and sailed about for two years so mysteriously. Oh, I did want to go with ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... headland, thinking I might perchance discover a second vaulted archway. I saw nothing remarkable, however, but thousands of sea fowl of every sort and kind, from the gull and sea swallow to the mighty albatross. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... all afoot. The 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. Let's to ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... 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 ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the sanctified character of the day. With a rush like a sudden thought the white-barred eave-swallows came down the arid road and rose again into the air as easily as a man dives into the water. Dark specks beneath the white summer clouds, the swifts, the black albatross of our skies, moved on their unwearied wings. Like the albatross that floats over the ocean and sleeps on the wing, the swift's scimitar-like pinions are careless of repose. Once now and then they came down to earth, not, as might be supposed, to the mansion or the church tower, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... covered with canvas, the albatross, eagles of the Atlantic desert, traced their long, sweeping circles, flashing across the purest blue their great, sail-like wings. From time to time the boat would meet floating prairies, great fields ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... he was seeing 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
... deg. 52' W. In this situation we saw some 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the man at 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 ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... reality; it is like a thing looked at in a picture, like a dream. And, somehow, as I gazed at it, mechanically there came into my mind, as it were of its own accord, a story I had read in some old navigator's "yarn," of the albatross, sleeping on the great South Sea, in the fury of a storm, with its head beneath ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... fly as a bird in the air Despot man doth dare! His humbling cumbersome body at length Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tamed explosive strength And steel-ribbed albatross wings!" ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Henry's 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 not fear ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... Great albatross now began to wheel round the vessel and the sailors caught some of the monster white and gray birds with long strings to which they had attached bits of bread and other bait. These were flung out into the air and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... had little to say about his mysterious companion in the air. He thought it was a "French laddie." Nor had he any story to tell about the driving down of the baron's machine. He could only say that he "kent" the baron and had met his Albatross before. He called him the "Croon Prince" because the black crosses painted on his wings were of a more elaborate ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... Hadrian's glowing tower: Or tell what crowds on Easter-day repair To see their Pontiff-bird, in high-swung chair Upborne magnificent; when, rising slow, Th' emerging figure stands, all white as snow, Like some large albatross his arms outspreads, O'er all that mighty, silent, sea of heads! Thrice waves his wings, the voiceless blessing sends Far, far away to earth's remotest ends! The joyous news th' impatient cannon tells, Louder and louder, as the discord swells, Of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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, for ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... 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' magazine competition, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Campanella, is absolutely barren—grey limestone, with the scantiest over-growth of rosemary and myrtle. A more desolate spot can hardly be imagined. But now the morning breeze springs up behind; sails are hoisted, and the boatmen ship their oars. Under the albatross wings of our lateen sails we scud across the freshening waves. The precipice of Capri soars against the sky, and the Bay of Naples expands before us with those sweeping curves and azure amplitude that all the poets ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... this problem of aerial flotation as if it were of the 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... over a Japanese fleet off Midway in 1942 was one of the 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 did not include Palmyra Atoll, which is now partly privately owned ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the water; but there was still light enough reflected from the sky to have enabled us to see any object within sight almost as distinctly as in broad day, but not an object of any description could we see, not even a solitary albatross. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... 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: "The nights ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... assistance was not of much value, though I stood by clinging to the bulwarks, 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 in ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ligeia! My beautiful one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, O! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, [23] Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed in his mind, he seemed almost an apparition, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet crowned ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Marsden, in his notes to his translation of Marco Polo's Voyages, supposes the roc to be a description of the albatross or ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the ship are thrown together far more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... winds. What a dreary outlook it was! 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 ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... naturally followed the increased interest in humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with unabated ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... towards frozen regions, where avarice' self has been forced to give up half-formed settlements by the severity of the climate. We are in the midst of a dark boisterous sea; over us, a dense, grey, cold sky. The albatross, stormy petrel, and pintado are our companions; yet there is a pleasure in stemming the apparently irresistible waves, and in wrestling thus with the elements. I forget what writer it is who observes, that the sublime and the ridiculous border on each other; I am sure they approach very nearly ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... PICKING ONE "OFF THE TAIL" The German Albatross airplane going down in flames was in pursuit of the light British "Quick" machine seen on the left, when suddenly a British Nieuport (at the right) dived through the clouds. The Albatross nose-dived, the British following with his guns working, and soon the German burst into flames and crashed ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... swelling sea and empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure down to the soft mountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continent on the larboard horizon. But one living thing there was besides myself: a grey-breasted albatross, of a princely width of pinion. I had not observed it till the hull went down, and then, lifting my eyes with involuntary sympathy in the direction pointed to by the upraised arms of the sailor, I observed the great royal bird ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... 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
... birds the albatross is the most skillful in the art of sailing in the air. It is a large sea-bird, about the size of a swan, and has very long and powerful wings. It lives far out upon the open ocean, hundreds of miles from land, and spends nearly all of its life in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... get a passage as far as Mons in an albatross scout which was taking dispatches to ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... Like the albatross and the tropic-bird, forever on the wing, For them nor night nor breaking morn may peace nor shelter bring. All drooping from the weary cruise or shattered from the fight, No dear home-haven opes to them ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... morning, just as one venerable mandarin was saying to another, in their usual edifying style of conversation, "Pelican of the Morning, before the magic charm of thy lofty countenance I am spell-bound, like an albatross bewildered amid the flapping sails of a mighty—" down burst the door with a crash, and a lion rushed roaring in among them. What a scrambling there was of the long-flowered dresses! What a tumbling, a flying, a groaning, a screaming! Never before were such confusion and fear in an assembly of ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... English, after taking the precaution of telling me that he would accept nothing for his trouble. He was long and lean and brown, and had a 'glittering, eye' like the Ancient Mariner, but his conversation was much more cheerful than that of the hero who shot the albatross. He was a born actor, for he accompanied his talk with magnificent dramatic gestures, and, after letting his voice drop suddenly to a tragic whisper, he would raise it again to the most gusty and blustering heights of sound. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 |
