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Didn't you hear what they said? "Hello, fellows! How's the water? "Bully! Just right come in quick's you can!" So the new arrivals swoop down, spreading out their tails like fans, and dangling their feet under them, and settling in the centre of the crowd amid general hilarity. How long the gulls stay at their bath I do not know.
Though the house and its farm were so near, and I could see half a dozen other homesteads not far away, yet there was not a living soul in sight, or any sound save from the peewees and the gulls. I don't know how to convey the impression of out-of-the-worldness and back-of-beyondness produced by this sense of silence and space, and by the look of the house and its whole surroundings.
A few minutes more and she would be there, laughing so heartily as to strain every stitch of her well-filled bodice. She would throw her robust and gentle arms around him and kiss him, and in that rich sonorous voice that startles the sea gulls would give him the news of what was going on yonder. They would make a good fish soup together, and drink brandy as they chatted and caressed each other.
They were comedies not of character, in the high sense of the word, but of manners or humors. His design was to lash the follies and vices of the day, and his dramatis personæ consisted for the most part of gulls, impostors, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts, and "Pauls men."
A few sea-birds frequented this desolate coast, gulls, great albatrosses, as well as wild duck, for which Pencroft had a great fancy. He tried to knock some over with an arrow, but without result, for they seldom perched, and he could not hit them on the wing. This led the sailor to repeat to the engineer,
But this I do know, that the rumbling stones of that ancient Abbey, between which and the foam fringe of the ocean the town of seven towers once lay, now stand upon a wave-washed cliff, and that he who looks forth from its shattered mullions to-day sees only the marshland and the wrinkled waters, hears only the plaint of the circling gulls and the weary crying of the sea.
So deep was it, that they did not hear the increasing noise of the gulls as they wheeled round the beacon after having breakfasted near it; so deep, that they did not feel the sun as it streamed through an opening in the woodwork and glared on their respective faces; so deep, that they were ignorant of the arrival of the boats with the workmen, and were dead to the shouts of their companions, until one of them, Jamie Dove, put his head up the hatchway and uttered one of his loudest roars, close to their ears.
Here is a dense shoal of fish, moving slowly along near the surface. To catch some is quite easy. The Dolphin, or Shark, or other large fish-hunter, merely has to rush into their ranks with wide-open mouth. Hordes of Dog-fish feast on the edges of the shoal. And Gannets, Cormorants, Gulls and other sea-birds can take their fill with ease.
The island, where we were to camp simply for the night as we fondly thought was found to be a sprawling jumble of water-worn pebbles, boulders and sand, with a long narrow spit projecting to the east, much frequented by gulls, of whose eggs a large number were gathered.
And for my kinsman's Eldorado, never trust me if I do not believe he has found it in the pouches of some such gulls as thyself. But take no snuff in the nose about it; fall to and welcome, for here comes the supper, and I heartily bestow it on all that will take share, in honour of my hopeful nephew's return, always trusting that he has come home another man.
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