When he heaved himself up on his front flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his weight, if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly seven hundred pounds.
Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head over heels right and left.
He raised himself on his
flippers with an angry movement.
"Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause ma sez I'm keerless." He rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of
flippers, and a sou'wester.
The long neck was far outstretched, and the four
flippers with which it swam were working with powerful strokes, carrying it forward at a rapid pace.
It was not until one of these creatures wriggled on to a sand-bank within a few hundred yards of us, and exposed a barrel-shaped body and huge
flippers behind the long serpent neck, that Challenger, and Summerlee, who had joined us, broke out into their duet of wonder and admiration.
Only his short arms in respectable white shirt-sleeves re mained very visible, propped up like the
flippers of a seal reposing on the strand.
And then ounly percave the cuteness of the swate angel, for no sooner did she obsarve that I was afther the squazing of her
flipper, than she up wid it in a jiffy, and put it away behind her back, jist as much as to say, "Now thin, Sir Pathrick O'Grandison, there's a bitther chance for ye, mavourneen, for it's not altogether the gentaal thing to be afther the squazing of my
flipper right full in the sight of that little furrenner Frinchman, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns."
Meantime the old salt ("ex-coasting skipper" was writ large all over his person) had hobbled up alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and, waving an arm, short and thick like the
flipper of a seal, terminated by a paw red as an uncooked beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled, faint, roaring voice, as if a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life had been permanently lodged in his throat: "Haul 'em round, Mr.
Thus, we can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that the same bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the
flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals.
"I am glad to meet you, sir," said he, putting out a broad, fat hand like the
flipper of a seal.
my boy, trust to this --I say, trust to this.' I saw him extend his short
flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river,--seemed to beckon with a dis- honoring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.