Loon

“ As he said this, the big Loon strutted back and forth in the space between the throne of King Bal and the prisoners, and the other Loons seemed much impressed by his defiance. But suddenly there came a sharp report and Panta Loon instantly disappeared, to the great astonishment of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Woot the Wanderer, who saw on the spot where the big fellow had stood a little heap of flabby, wrinkled skin that looked like a collapsed rubber balloon. ”

“ It flies heavily, in a circle, round those who have disturbed it in its haunts, its loud and melancholy cry resembling the howling of a wolf, or the distant scream of a man in distress. When the “Loon” calls frequently, it is supposed to portend a storm. In the bad weather which precedes the advent of winter on the northern American lakes, previous to migration, the wild weird note of the Loon is so unnatural that the Indians ascribe to it supernatural powers. ”

“ On land it is a very awkward and ungainly bird, and can hardly move along; but in the water it is a thing of beauty, and as a diving bird it has, perhaps, no equal. It has a strange mournful cry, and seems to utter its melancholy notes more frequently before an approaching storm than at any other time. The Indians, who are most excellent judges of the weather and quick to notice any change, have great confidence in the varied cries of the loon. ”

“ In building its nest, the loon usually seeks a situation at once secluded and difficult of access. She also defends her nest, and especially her young, with great courage and vigor. She strikes with her wings, and thrusts with her sharp bill as a soldier does with his bayonet. ”

“ I never knew a man more principled in his every action, than Charles Van Loon. Nothing could intimidate or bribe him to turn aside a moment from what he believed to be the path of God's requirements, or descend from the eminence of acknowledged rectitude to a mean action. ”

“ They are satisfied as the Great Spirit made them. They are slow about hiding their eyes. At last, they peek and realize that it is all a trap and the Loon shouts: "Nana-bo-jou is killing us! It is all a trick! Fly for your lives!"
As they all run away, Nana-bo-jou pursues the Loon, hitting him behind with the club, which is the reason that the Loon has no tail and has been lame behind ever since.
The Loon shouts the Loon battle-cry, a high-pitched quavering LUL-L-L-O-O-O and faces Nana-bo-jou; the animals rally around the Loon and the Coyote to attack the magician. ”

“ When Raven saw how comical Loon looked, he laughed so much that Loon became ashamed and ran away to a near-by pond. Loon always faces a person so as to show his white breast and hide the spots on his back. Raven refused to be painted in that way. He ran away.
Guillemots.—Some Eskimo children were very fond of playing on the level top of a high cliff near their village, while the larger ones watched them. Now this cliff overhung the sea and the sea was still covered with ice. There was an icy strip near the shore, so that even the seals could not approach. ”

“ Loons are strong fliers, but like the Grebes, because of their small wings they must get their first impetus from the water in order to rise; in case there is any wind blowing they also make use of this by starting their flight against it. They are very peculiar birds and the expression "crazy as a loon" is not a fanciful one, being formed from their early morning and evening antics when two or more of them will race over the top of the water, up and down the lake, all the while uttering their demoniacal laughter. They vie with the Grebes in diving and disappear at the flash of a gun. ”

“ For to-day children please themselves and not their parents." And she said, "I will marry only some one who can amuse me and interest me and keep me company. I have scant liking for dull people." One day Loon came to see her. He was very good looking although he was somewhat tall and skinny, and his neck was a bit longer and more scrawny than ordinary, but he wore good clothes and he had great skill as a fisherman. He came because he thought he was very handsome, and he believed that his good looks would win the maiden. But she had no love for Loon, for he had not a word to say. ”

“ Twenty-five miles west and south is Loon Lake, the centre of your field, where it is best that you should live, if you can; and then further away up toward the Pass they tell me there is a queer kind of ungodly settlement—ranchers, freighters, whisky-runners, cattle thieves, miners, almost anything you can name. You'll have to do some exploration work there. ”

“ Carrigan loved that sort of sound, even when a pendulum was beating back and forth in his head. It was like medicine to him, and he lay with wide-open eyes, his ears picking up one after another the voices that marked the change from day to night. He heard the cry of a loon, its softer, chuckling note of honeymoon days. From across the river came a cry that was half howl, half bark. ”

“ Charles Van Loon, whose rare talents, unbending integrity and generous affections were cheerfully dedicated to the cause of the poor and oppressed, and gave promise of usefulness to man and glory to God. ”

“ Til Loon was one of those who ran against his thorn and many others suffered the same fate. The creatures could not escape from the enclosure, but in their fright many bounded upward and caught branches of the trees, and then climbed out of reach of the dreaded thorn.
Woot was getting pretty tired chasing them, so he stopped and came over, panting, to where his friends were sitting, still bound.
"Very well done, my Wanderer," said the Tin Woodman. "It is evident that we need fear these puffed-up creatures no longer, so be kind enough to unfasten our bonds and we will proceed upon our journey." ”

“ It suggested something less than insanity; something that might happen to a common, unintellectual sort of person. He remembered the loon, an ungainly feathered neighbor, that was popularly supposed to have lent its name to the adjective. Could it be possible that people looked upon him as one too hopelessly and uninterestingly afflicted for sympathy or companionship, too unimportant and common for even ridicule; or was this but the coarse interpretation of that vulgar girl?
Nevertheless, the next morning "after sun up" James North was at Trinidad Joe's cabin. ”

“ The late walker or sailor, in the October evenings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods ring with his wild laughter. ”

“ And out over all the lake were Loons, Loons, Loons. Four species abound here; they caterwaul and yodel all day and all night, each in its own particular speech, From time to time a wild hyena chorus from the tranquil water in the purple sunset haze suggested, that a pack of goblin hounds were chivying a goblin buck, but it turned out always to be a family of Red-throated Loons, yodelling their inspiring marching song.
One day when at Gravel Mountain, old Weeso came to camp in evident fear—"far off he had seen a man." In this country a man must mean an Eskimo ”

“ An able and eloquent man has been stricken down in our midst. The Rev. Charles Van Loon, respected for his talents, and his faithfulness as a christian minister, has died in the morning of life, being only in his 29th year, and in a career of usefulness. ”

“ It was nothing to Charles Van Loon, that the rich and polished turned the cold shoulder to these celestial enterprises. It was enough for him that they were crowned and blessed of God, and contemplated the redemption of suffering man from oppression and from crime. When Charles Van Loon was converted, he was consecrated to men as well as to God, to humanity as well as religion. As a minister of Christ, he was eminently powerfu1. Few men could command the attention of an audience, and hold the people in breathless silence, more than he. ”

“ They are glad to see their chief; they do what they can, so as to please him; he is joyful. He makes them his huntsmen and his messengers.
In all stories, as many as there are, the loons are faithful to him forever. So even to-day when the Indians hear the loons, they say: "The Loon is calling to Kuloskap" (Micmac tongue) ; (or) "he is 'looning' to Kuloskap" (Passamaquoddy tongue) .
IV. Kuloskap and the Whale. It was in old times; in the beginning when everything started, men were like animals and animals (were) men; how Winpe the great sorcerer steals Kuloskap's family ”

“ Silently we went round every point, alert to find what the bay beyond might hold. But we saw nothing; it was night when we returned. As we paddled across the lake the stars were glorious overhead and the mysterious landscape shimmered in the white radiance of the moonlight. Loons called to one another, not only uttering their goblin laughter, but also those long-drawn, wailing cries, which seem to hold all the fierce and mournful loneliness of the northern wastes. Then we reached camp, and feasted on caribou venison, and slept soundly on our beds of fragrant balsam boughs. ”

“ Loons may be likened to gigantic Grebes from which they differ externally, chiefly in the full webbed foot instead of the individually webbed toes of the Grebe, and in the sharper, msore pointed and spear-like bill. These birds are similar in their habits to the Grebes , except that their homes are generally more substantially built and are placed upon a solid foundation, generally upon an island in some inland lake.
Both Loons and Grebes are literally "Water witches," being practically, and in the case of Grebes, actually, born in the water and living in it ever afterwards. ”

“ Nothing makes one so gay as happiness; and, though this grotesque figure appeared at a very unseasonable moment, it was received with frank laughter from the blooming lips of Rose and Blanche. Having made the marshal’s daughters laugh, after their long sadness, Loony at once acquired a claim to the indulgence of the marshal, who said to him, good humoredly: “What do you want, my lad?”
“It’s not me, my lord duke!” answered Loony, laying his hand on his breast, as if it were taking a vow, so that his feather-brush fell down from under his arm. ”

“ Looney was always welcome in the hangouts of the wandering under-world. Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords of life as the Burlington Crip and the English Basher. ”

“ He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically. “Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?”
Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith. ”

“ It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect him—once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand-dunes south of Chicago, Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial by-play to enliven a dull afternoon, flung Looney into the fire. ”

“ The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney afraid of the man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without Looney's faculty for blundering. ”

“ Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed.
It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings whom he could never hope to understand ”

“ Here he takes you to the under-world of vagrants and itinerant crooks, and introduces a far from conventional hobo—a witless youth, butt of the crude jokes of coarse yeggs and dips and panhandlers, whose doglike devotion to the one bright star of his life is the appealing theme of an affecting story.
LOONEY had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive of existence to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be different, things would be better, somehow. ”

“ Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!” ”

“ Each of them carries a Winchester and blazes at every living thing that appears. They have volleyed all day at every creature big enough to afford a mouthful—Ducks, Gulls, Loons, Fish, Owls, Terns, etc.—but have hit nothing. Loons are abundant in the water and are on the Indians' list of Ducks, therefore good food. They are wonderfully expert at calling them. This morning a couple of Loons appeared flying far to the east. The Indians at once began to mimic their rolling whoo-ooo-whoo-ooo; doing it to the life. ”