And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of the covered winches, the foot of a mast.

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"Its difficult to identify, and to the untrained eye it looks like the European pipits, until you see its shiny ebony black legs, " he said.

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Named one of the country's top black preachers by Ebony magazine in 1993, he also regularly injects his views on the Bush administration into his discourse from the pulpit.

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Slender, sheathed in black leather, with short ebony hair sticking up in a tuft, her fingers sticking out of black woollen gloves as they skitter across a keyboard, Mara cuts through scene after scene like a swift, dark blade.

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