In the Land of the Great Snow Bear: A Tale of Love and Heroism

Chapter Eight
“Till Frozen Seas do Meet.”

“Mr Lloyd,” said Claude to his first mate, the morning after the Icebear sailed away from the Orkneys on the wings of a favouring breeze, “I am not going to call my men together and make a speech. That style of thing is far too stagey. We have picked our crew, and I believe they will be good men and true, every one of them. Well, I will try to be a kind and considerate captain; and I’ll tell you now what I should like. I want, then, in a word, all the discipline and cleanliness of a man-o’-war, with a good deal of the cheerfulness and light-heartedness you find on a well-appointed yacht or best class of merchantmen. Let them sing below if they like, or even on deck for’ard during smoking hours: I won’t object to a little music. You understand?”

“Perfectly, my lord.”

Claude held up a finger.

“My lord is too formal for a ship’s quarter-deck,” he said.

“Beg pardon, sir. I really had forgotten for the moment.”

The captain and mate were on the quarter-deck, the latter taking his orders for the day.

As shrewd and sturdy a sailor as ever faced the billows was Lloyd. And not only a sailor, but a thorough iceman. He had been going “back and fore,” as he phrased it, to Greenland ever since he was a boy of ten, and he was now nearly thirty. He had come through every peril that one can think of; he had been cast away as often as he had fingers on his left hand – there were only four, one had been shot off – his ship had been burned at sea, and he had drifted for weeks on an iceberg, with nothing to eat at last except boot leather; he had once even been dragged under water by a shark, and was saved by his sea-boot coming off – one of the best pairs of boots he ever had, he used to tell his mates; – but, for all the dangers he had come through, he dearly loved the regions round the Pole.

“Greenland has been like a mother to me,” he had been heard to say; “and I hope to die there, and be frozen up in an iceberg, where I’ll keep fresh till the crack of doom.”²

That first day at sea – for these hardy mariners had not considered themselves afloat till now – was a very busy one. It was a very beautiful one too, for the matter of that, when one had time to look around him.

When any one did, it was when the breeze slackened a bit, or blew stiffer, or changed its course a point or two, or did any one of the score of things that the wind that wafts a ship along is constantly doing.

The captain walked all round the ship about eight bells, and found everything taut and trim and clear, and no complaints.

The second and third officers had been with Claude before for many voyages. The surgeon was a man of over forty, and as grey as a badger. It was not years alone that had changed the colour of his hair, however, but a lifetime of abstruse study. His studies had been of a very mixed nature – better call him a scientist at once and be done with it; but he was a musician and poet also. By the way, every naturalist is a poet, whether he writes or not; for true poetry consists, not in writing verses, but in being and in feeling yourself part and parcel of all the life and loveliness around you, of loving all things and all creatures, and thus, unwittingly it may be, worshipping in the truest Way the great Being who made them.

But the surgeon’s character will come out as we go on in our story; suffice it to say here that although Claude had known him but a very few months, he already liked and respected him very much.

Claude felt happy and contented in having so good a crew, and officers he could trust by night or day. For though I may have seemed in my last chapter to be sneering at good Professor Hodson and his brother savants, they really were men who had the interests of science at heart, and this ship was going on no insignificant errand to the land of the snow bear.

The sea got up towards evening, and sail was taken in; and as the breeze still freshened, still more sail, and she was practically made snug for the night.

Before leaving Aberdeen – some days indeed – Claude had written to his mother, filially and affectionately bidding her good-bye. Thus far he had bent his pride; yes, and had she asked him to come home for a day – well, perhaps he would have thrown all his pride to the winds and obeyed.

But the time flew by, and there came no reply of any kind, and Claude was sad About an hour before he sailed, a telegram was put into his hand. It was brief, thus —

“Lady Alwyn wishes her son well.”

So far the proud Lady of the Towers had melted. Claude put the telegram in his Bible. It was something precious, for he could read between the words. So he was happy.

But he would not write again.

The ship was steered for the nor’-nor’-west; and as it neared Iceland, Claude grew more and more impatient. How would Meta look when she heard the news? – for in the few letters he had written – there were few mails to Iceland – he had not told her all the truth.

When at length the Icebear cast anchor before the quaint, old-fashioned town of Reykjavik, after what had appeared to Claude an interminable time, they found their store-ship in waiting. Claude boarded her; and finding that everything had gone all right, directed his men to pull him on shore.

Burning with impatience though he was to get away from the town – the reader will guess whither – it was hours before he could leave old friends, so warmly did they welcome him.

Free at last! Free and away, and fleet was the sturdy pony that carried him. Only an Iceland horse could have done so, for even in summer the country is dangerous. Summer had not yet come, and the hills still wore the garb of winter, and the higher paths were often slippery with melting ice.

He sees the strange old cottage at last, and faster still he rides, for it is nearly night. He sees Byarnie. Byarnie sees him, and, after one wave of the arm to bid him welcome, rushes indoors. Poor, innocent, beautiful Meta had had no thought of his coming that night, but, strange to say, she was dressed exactly as he had first seen her. But now the love-light was in her eyes, and tear-drops quivered on their long lashes.

“I thought,” she said, “you would never, never come again.”

Claude remembered his dream.

The quaint old room when it was lit up looked cosier than ever, with the great fire of turf and wood burning on the hearth, the raven nodding on a log, the great cat on a stool, the snow-flea in its cage, the table laid for supper, the aunts – still witch-like and ugly – one sitting spinning like Fate in a picture, the other with book and spectacles in a high-backed chair, and great, awkward Byarnie laying supper.

It was all like a vision of happiness to Claude. He thought he should like to stay here all his life.

Perhaps Meta could read his thoughts in his eyes. I do not myself believe in thought-reading; but if there be such a faculty, it surely is the gift of true lovers.

“Oh! stay with us for ever,” she whispered.

“Would I could,” he answered. “Would that I could.”

“But you will for months?”

“Nay, but for one short week.”

The bright face fell, and tears again bedimmed the eyes.

“Dearest Meta,” he murmured —

 
“‘I could not love thee half so much
Loved I not honour more.’”
 

Next day, when alone with her, he bravely told her all. She was convulsed with grief. He knew she would be so. He let her weep on for a time. Tears bring such relief.

“I love you just the same, and will marry you on my return.”

She turned to him, her face very pale and wet with tears, but calmness and heroic determination in her eyes.

“Lord Alwyn,” she said. Then she noticed the pain the words gave him. “Claude, then,” she continued, “I will never marry you without the consent of your mother. That consent will not be given. So I will never marry you —never.”

There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart.

“Then,” he said, “you do not, you cannot lo – ”

“Stay!” she interrupted; “stay, Claude, stay!” She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. “I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet.”

The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time – spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now.

“Sit down, dear Meta,” he said at last; “we still are lovers.”

“Yes,” in a low, sad voice.

“Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, ‘Till frozen seas do meet’?”

“There is a legend,” she replied, “that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. I do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that ships would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then the frozen seas would meet, and this world would be all one shining ball of ice-clad snow. But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt – the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,” – here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream – “and I will love you, Claude, till frozen seas do meet.”

Chapter Nine
The Parting

Among the Northern nations, especially the Norse, you meet types of men and women as utterly different from those of Southern climes as if they belonged to another sphere. The same blessed religion nevertheless binds us all with its golden chain. Natures like those of Meta and honest Byarnie – who, be it remembered, are not creatures of the imagination, but true examples of a class – I have never met elsewhere.

The nearest approach to them in manners and ways of thinking, I have found in my own dear Highlands of Scotland.

Very many, both of the Norse, such as those met with in Shetland and Iceland, as well as our Highlanders, are very deeply imbued with the spirit and true sentiment of religion. It is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Religion is the weft in the beautiful web of such lives as these.

When women like Meta love it is very pure love, for the very reason I have stated, for Meta was not ashamed to go on her knees with her love. A very peculiar girl, you say? Would to Heaven there were millions like her in this fair land of ours.

On the very evening of their reunion, Claude left his bride-elect, and went thundering away through the moonlight along the stony path on his sure-footed pony.

He would come again, next day or next, he told her, but duty was duty, and must be obeyed.

He was more happy than might be expected – happy because hopeful.

He found everything well on board, just as he had expected he would.

“I’ve engaged a few more hands, sir,” the mate told him. “The right metal I like a mixture of nationalities, and yet I don’t. Bother the foreign scum that they man British ships with nowadays, sir, leaving honest English Jack on shore to starve. – But give me a crew like what we now have, sir – a crew mostly Scotch and English; then I say one or two Norwegians or Danes don’t do much harm.”

“Right, Mr Lloyd. And now I must tell you I am going to engage an extra hand. Can you make room?”

“Put him in a bunk, sir.”

“A bunk, Mr Lloyd? He’d never be able to get in, and if he did he couldn’t stick his legs out. He is seven feet high and over, and broad in proportion.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the mate. “But I have it, sir; I’ve got a hammock big enough to hold an elephant.”

“That’ll do. Good night, then.”

As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram.

He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay – the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy.

He slept and dreamt about this.

Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony’s hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude.

It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy.

“Have you got good news?” was Meta’s first question.

She answered it herself before he got time to speak.

“Yes, you have,” she said; “I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?”

Claude’s face fell just a little.

“I wish it were,” he replied. “No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram.”

They went and sat down to read it.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “Why didn’t she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!”

Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public document, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines.

Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening sunshine.

Claude laughed again, and caught her hand.

“I don’t mean in that way, silly child,” he said. “There; we will read between the words in the way I mean.”

Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart – and a deal more I need not note.

“Don’t you see, Meta?”

“Dark and dim, as through a glass,” said Meta, musing. “Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy.”

“Well, I am, because I feel she will relent.”

“I wonder what she is doing now?”

And Meta’s question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.

I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on sunshiny days, and call him “Diogenes?” But here comes Janet at last.

“Just one question, Janet, and I’ll let you go. How did Lady Alwyn feel when Claude went away?”

“Oh, sir,” says Janet, “she was far too proud to express her feelings to me in that way. You know, sir, when glad she always told me, but her sorrow she invariably kept to herself.”

“So, as she said nothing, you inferred she was unhappy?”

“For that reason I knew she was. Did I put in the diary, sir, that our poor boy, Claude, told me about his dream – consulted me ere he had that terrible interview with her ladyship?”

“Yes, yes, Janet, that is here.”

“Well, sir, it was first Fingal’s going away, trotting so sad-like after his master, and he never once looking back, and then the snow-bird going next. That, I think, nearly broke her heart. But oh, she was proud, sir.”

“She never owned her grief, then?”

“No, sir; but I’ve caught her often in tears, though she tried to hide them. She grew far more active than ever after that. She seemed to hate the very sight of indoors, and, wet day or dry day, she would be always out.”

“Doing good, doubtless?”

“Visiting the sick, sir; ay, and often sitting down sewing in a sick person’s room. The neighbours noticed her grief. They all loved her, they all pitied her. But it was at night, I think, she suffered most. Her room was next to mine, and it is often, often I’ve heard her pacing up and down the floor till nearly morning. On stormy nights, sir, when the wind was roaring round the old turrets, and howling in the trees then she would send for me.

“‘Janet,’ she would say, with her sad, beautiful smile, ‘I cannot sleep to-night. You must read to me.’”

As Janet is now feeling in her pocket for her handkerchief, and tears are choking her utterance, I gently dismiss her, and go on writing.

“Yes, Meta,” replied Claude, “and I often wonder too; but there is one thing that does give me joy, and that is this: she knows I love her and am not really unfilial.”

Claude found Meta much more hopeful next day, and more happy. Sometimes she was almost gay.

“By-the-by, Claude,” she said, “I’ve something to show you. You must promise to believe all I say.”

“Implicitly.”

“And not laugh at me?”

“Never a smile.”

“Well, follow me.”

Claude did.

She led him round to the back of the cottage, and there in a big aviary – evidently the work of Byarnie’s hands – were seven great sea-birds.

“Now you’re going to laugh,” cried Meta, with a warning finger.

“Well, no wonder. Such queer pets, Meta!”

“But they’re not pets, Claude, though I love them. They are all going with you.”

“All going with me! Those funny old things! Ha! ha! ha! Forgive me, darling, I can’t help it.”

“Well, I do forgive you. And when I tell you that this particular seagull makes the best carrier in the world, far before any pigeon, because it can fly ten times as far, and never get lost at sea – ”

“I reared those from the shell,” interrupted honest Byarnie, his big face all smiles. “And I’ve reared many such.”

“Byarnie,” said Claude, “you’ll come with me, and look after these birds, eh?”

Byarnie jumped and laughed, clapped his hand upon his leg, and jumped and laughed again, and then went skipping round with all the grace of an infant elephant, till Claude and Meta also laughed to see his uncouth exuberance.

“My brother will come here, and my sister too, and look after the house and farm,” he cried. “He! he! ho! ho! Byarnie’s the happiest man ’tween Reykjavik and Christiansund.”

Day after day went by, but still Claude was at the little capital of Iceland, or with Meta. He was waiting the arrival of the mail: she had broken a shaft or something, and eager and able though he was to get away to the land of the Northern Lights and the sea of ice, he did not begrudge himself the respite.

The mail was sighted and signalled at last, however, and came puffing and blowing in.

Claude had letters from his employers and from many a friend, but none from his mother.

But Janet’s letter must in some measure have made up for this, else he would not have ridden right away out to Meta’s dwelling.

Ah, well, it was their last day together anyhow!

There they were together now whom seas would soon sunder – two warm, loving, hoping hearts. Would they ever meet again?

Chapter Ten
In Norland Seas

“I shouldn’t wonder if we get it from out yonder,” said Dr Barrett, pointing away south and by west, the very direction in which the Icebear was steaming.

There was a great billowy heave on the blue sea, blue everywhere, except where the light shadow of some white fleecy cloud made a patch of fleeting grey or grey-green. There was not a breath of wind “to swear by,” as Jack Scott unpoetically put it, so the long rolling swell was as smooth as glass. This swell was meeting them too, and the ship rose and fell on it with a gentle dipping motion; only now and then, when a taller wave than usual dipped in under bows and keel, she gave a quick plunge forward.

Along the horizon ahead was a bank of rock-and-castle clouds, while far away astern the jagged snowcapped peaks of Iceland were just visible above the rolling seas.

Flocks of malleys, shrill-screaming kittywakes, and different kinds of seagulls were tacking and half-tacking round the vessel, afar off, and the dark and ominous-like skua waited his chance to rob the malleys of whatever they might happen to pick up.

“Yes,” the surgeon said; “I think we’ll have it out of yonder.”

“Seems so to me, too,” said Claude. “We are all ready for a blow, Mr Lloyd?”

Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled.

“Ay, sir,” he replied, “all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I’ve come through in these latitudes, and higher up North too.”

These officers were on the bridge.

This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on passenger steamers right amidships. No, the Icebear’s bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a brass one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast.

The glass was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun’s rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves.

“Had we started sooner,” remarked the doctor, “we would have been farther off the land ere now.”

“True, my good Dr Barrett, true,” replied Claude; “but could we have done so?”

“It would certainly have been difficult I admit; but if anything short of a hurricane comes along we can face it, and the night is short.”

No, it had not been easy getting away from Reykjavik indeed. It so happens that the good people of that town are exceedingly hospitable, and it is a hospitality that comes straight away from the heart. So there had been a kind of farewell levée on board Claude’s ship, and as there happened to lie in the roadstead a French merchantman and a Danish man-of-war, and the officers from both attended it and talked much, this made matters worse – or better.

But down went the sun, and ugly and angry were his parting gleams. He sank in a coppery haze, which lit up all the sea between. He seemed to squint and to leer at our heroes as much as to say, “You’ll catch it before long; something’s brewing. Good night; I’m off to bed, for bed is the best place.”

Down went the sun and up rose the wind. Twilight is very long in these regions, and before it had quite given place to night, the sea from being rippled got rough. The breeze seemed uncertain at first where to come from, and went puffing about from three to four points of the compass. Then it appeared to say to itself, “First thoughts are best; I’ll follow the swell; I’ll soon blow that down.” So it came roaring out of the north-west. Long before it did blow “a stiffener,” as the mate called it, looking up ahead through the gloaming air, you could have seen mysterious-looking great grey blankets of clouds, drifting fast and furiously towards the south-east. They might have been a few miles high, but soon the stream of clouds was lowered and thickened and darkened, till the horizon was hardly three cables’ length away all round. Then it was night – night with an ever-increasing breeze and a choppy, frothy sea.

The wind did blow the swell pretty flat, but substituted in its place genuine waves, as ragged and jagged as the mountain peaks of Iceland.

And the good ship by-and-by creaked and groaned in every timber, and thick darkness fell, and Claude had to trust to Providence, to steam, and the compass. There were two men at the wheel at midnight, and at that time probably the gale was at its worst, for on heaving the log it was found she was barely making one knot an hour. The seas – whole water – were coming in over the bows by tons, and sweeping right aft like a miniature Niagara; but the hatches had been battened down early in the evening, and the boats secured, so there was little injury done, though the load of water sadly hampered the vessel’s motion: it was not able to get away fast enough.

About two bells in the middle watch the Icebear struck.

Struck? But what or where? I know not; I cannot tell; it was no island, no rock. It may have been the carcase of some floating monster of the deep; or – who knows? – some wretched derelict or a portion of a wreck. It was a mystery. But she struck with a dull thud that quite stopped her way, and for a time made every heart beat with fear for her safety. She must have struck not only on the bows, but gone over something; all along her keel was the quivering grating felt, as if of a substance underneath.

For a while, too, the rudder and screw were hampered and the vessel’s way all but stopped.

As it was she staggered and began to broach to. It was a moment of the greatest danger, but only a moment. Then it was over, and the Icebear was struggling once more with the stormy head wind and raging sea.

By morning light, though the wind still held, it was less furious, and the seas but broke in froth and spray against the descending bows, and went singing aft on each side, their tops twisting and curling in the gale.

Down in the darkened wardroom at breakfast that morning the talk was naturally about the storm. Although Claude retained his own quarters abaft, still he preferred taking all his meals with his officers.

“What was it we struck, do I think?” said the doctor in answer to a question put by Lloyd. “Some unhappy fishing-boat or walrus-hunter on his way to the east shores of Greenland.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Claude, with a slight shudder. “Would we not have heard a scream or yell?”

“Never a scream or yell in that roaring gale,” replied Dr Barrett, coolly. “Bless you, sir, I’ve run them down before. Steward, another cup of coffee, please.”

“You’ve been often to these regions, doctor?”

“I’ve been often everywhere. I’m the veriest old son of a gun of a sea-dog of a doctor.”

“It’s as well no one else said that about you.”

“I wouldn’t mind. My skin is as hard as tortoise-shell. I’ve been married so often, you know.”

“Have you really now?” said the second mate, a merry-eyed little dark man. “Are all your wives dead?”

“What a question!” said Claude.

“Ah! never mind,” quoth the surgeon; “I’ll answer him, if he’ll only cut me another slice of that delicious corn-beef. Mind, it isn’t for a lady, so you may cut it as thick as you please.”

“But about your wives?”

“Oh yes, the wives. I don’t think many of them are dead.”

“Doctor!” cried Claude, “you dreadful man!”

“Well, you see,” said the doctor, tapping the edge of his cup with the spoon as if counting, “I’ve been married just exactly fifty-nine times. My ships, messmates, are my wives.”

“Well, you’ve had many a honeymoon,” said Lloyd.

“Ay,” replied Dr Barrett; “and many more I hope to have.”

An able seaman popped his head in past the door curtain at this moment, and drew it out again.

“Don’t duck your head out and in like an old turtle, man,” cried the doctor; “come right in. Anybody sick?”

“Which I didn’t know, sir, the cap’n was ’ere. Nobody sick, but knew ye liked curios, doctor, sir.”

“Well?”

“Well, beggin’ yer parding, sir, likus the cap’n’s, but there be a bird wot our cook calls a sea-swallow a-perchin’ on the main yard. Shall one of us go up and fetch him? He’s mighty sea-sick I knows, and couldn’t fly to save his life.”³

“Certainly, bring it down.”

The officers went on with breakfast, and had forgotten all about Tom Scott and his sea-swallow, when suddenly the man appeared again, bearing under one arm a beautiful snow-bird.

It escaped almost at once, and fluttering upwards alighted on the compass that depended from the skylight.

All eyes were fixed on it. It did not seem a bit frightened, but looked downwards with one crimson saucy eye at the table.

“It looks like a spirit,” said Lloyd, half afraid, for, like most sailors, he was superstitious.

“It’s a spirit that will bring us luck. They always do,” said the second mate.

“Are you ill, sir?” exclaimed the doctor, addressing the captain.

One might have thought so. His face was pale, mouth a little open, brows lowered, and eyes riveted on the bird.

“Were such a thing possible,” he muttered, “I’d believe that was my snow-bird Alba.”

To the amazement of every one, no sooner were the words uttered, than with one quick glance of recognition, down flew the bird and nestled, as it was wont to do, on its master’s hand, held close up on his breast.

Yes, every one was astonished, but poor McDonald, the third mate, was frightened; and when, after receiving a few caresses, Alba jumped on to the table and began pattering around and saying, “Poor Alba wants his breakfast; Alba wants a sop of food,” McDonald could stand it no longer: he left the table and hurried on deck.

“It’s no canny,” he said to the steward; “it’s no canny, and if I could steal a boat I’d leave the ship and brave the stormy ocean.”

“Lord Alwyn – I mean sir,” said the mate, “a hundred years ago you’d have been burned for a witch.”

“Or a wizard,” remarked the doctor, laughing. “But I am not astonished. The captain has already told me the story of his snow-bird. The wonderful power of sight, scent, and probably hearing in gulls is scarcely yet known to naturalists; and the same may be said about nearly all sea-birds. They either have an instinct that we possess not, or the faculties they possess, in common with other animals, are most marvellously developed.⁴ Just look at that lovely bird now, and listen to its marvellous prattle.”

Pattering round the table went Alba, in a very excited condition, only every now and then flying off to Claude’s breast as if he could hardly believe in his own happiness. He jumbled up his sentences, too, as most talking birds do when excited.