- end_line
- 6278
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6218
- text
- sent pallid intimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves
languid; the stars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed
supine with the long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded
expectation of the sun. This was the critical hour to catch Rodondo in
his perfect mood. The twilight was just enough to reveal every striking
point, without tearing away the dim investiture of wonder.
From a broken stair-like base, washed, as the steps of a water-palace,
by the waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shaven
summit. These uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its most
peculiar feature. For at their lines of junction they project flatly
into encircling shelves, from top to bottom, rising one above another
in graduated series. And as the eaves of any old barn or abbey are
alive with swallows, so were all these rocky ledges with unnumbered
sea-fowl. Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests. Here and there were
long birdlime streaks of a ghostly white staining the tower from sea to
air, readily accounting for its sail-like look afar. All would have
been bewitchingly quiescent, were it not for the demoniac din created
by the birds. Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they flew
densely overhead, spreading themselves into a winged and continually
shifting canopy. The tower is the resort of aquatic birds for hundreds
of leagues around. To the north, to the east, to the west, stretches
nothing but eternal ocean; so that the man-of-war hawk coming from the
coasts of North America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his first land at
Rodondo. And yet though Rodondo be terra-firma, no land-bird ever
lighted on it. Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a falling into
the hands of the Philistines, when the poor warbler should be
surrounded by such locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long
bills cruel as daggers.
I know not where one can better study the Natural History of strange
sea-fowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light here
which never touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone;
cloud-birds, familiar with unpierced zones of air.
Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is
the widest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. What
outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical,
they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting
the next range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen;
their bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at
their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to
Carnival nor Lent; without exception the most ambiguous and least
lovely creature yet discovered by man. Though dabbling in all three
elements, and indeed possessing some rudimental claims to all, the
penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the
air it flops. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly
child hidden away at the ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan,
and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo.
But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf
above? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of
Orders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern
pouches suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A
pensive race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull,
ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with
cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the
clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat
down and scraped himself with potsherds.
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- Chunk 2