Was pining to be free,
And never a goose in the farmyard wide
Hissed half so sore as he!
That’s how it went!” laughed airy Sybil.
“Come now! to my mind that goes better than the other,” chuckled the mariner, whose one idea of verse was a lyric or a limerick. “Poetry that has no rhyme to it is a lame makeshift, like a ‘jury rig’ replacing real spars. So your little sister laughs at your—um-m—poetic wing-feathers, does she?” looking directly at Olive. “Well, I wouldn’t stunt ’em for all that! Seems to me, now, that Council Fire is a pretty good incubator for the hatching out of new wing-feathers—or pin-feathers, eh?” chuckling again.
“Jolly Neptune! which wing are they waving now, the right or the left—or have they grown a third, a new-fangled one, all in a hurry?” he inquired of his invisible sea-god, after an interval, as strange, crooning syllables, weirdly repeated, fell upon his ear:
“Gā’ hyo nē’ he
Hé ga’ hyo nē he ya
Gā hyo nē’ hé
Hé ga hyo nē he ya