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They polished and sharpened them in the same way, and made them fast to pieces of the fir with the sinews of the white bear; feathers of sea-fowl being tied with the filaments.
The lugger was actually of about one hundred and eighty tons admeasurement, but her dark paint and low hull gave her an appearance of being much smaller than she really was; still, the spread of her canvas, as she came down before the wind, wing-and-wing, as seamen term it, or with a sail fanning like the heavy pinions of a sea-fowl, on each side, betrayed her pursuits; and, as has been intimated, the mariners on the shore who watched her movements shook their heads in distrust as they communed among themselves, in very indifferent Italian, concerning her destination and object.
If I could take you with me up to Scotland, take you, for instance, along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld, or up Strathmore towards Aberdeen, or up the Dee towards Braemar, I could show you signs, which cannot be mistaken, of the time when Scotland was, just like Spitzbergen or like Greenland now, covered in one vast sheet of snow and ice from year's end to year's end; when glaciers were ploughing out its valleys, icebergs were breaking off the icy cliffs and floating out to sea; when not a bird, perhaps, was to be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant upon the rocks but a few lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and such like desolation and cold and lifeless everywhere.
They feed entirely on fish, yet their flesh has not that rank fishy taste which is so common in sea-fowl, but is extraordinarily well tasted. Penguin, the name of this bird, is not derived from the Latin pinguedo, fatness, as the Dutch author of this voyage would have it, and therefore spells the word pinguin.
The stormy petrels, driven in from the Atlantic, are skimming like black swallows over the bay beneath us. Long strings of sea-fowl are flagging on steadily at railroad pace, towards the sands and salt-marshes of Braunton.
Some are small and low, like emeralds just rising out of the ocean, with a few cocoa-nut palms waving their tufted heads above the sandy soil. Others are many miles in extent, covered with large forest trees and rich vegetation. Some are inhabited, others are the abode only of sea-fowl. In many of them the natives are naked savages of the most depraved character.
Standing on the black cliffs against which the sea was dashing with terrific force, listening to the scream of the sea-fowl and the weird noise produced by the waves in a hollow cave, the white man could easily understand how this dread place came to be regarded by the Maoris as the gateway into the unseen world.
There was no other building within sight; and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be the world's end.
As we drew nearer the land, I hailed with delight the appearance of innumerable sea-fowl. Screaming and whirling in spiral tracks, they would accompany the vessel, and at times alight on our yards and stays.
"Now, I will not hear any excuses; I am going with the lady, who is ill, and will pine to death if she is kept shut up in this way; and, if you do not think we are able to take care of ourselves, you can come too. It is a pity we have not got wings, and then you might clip them as they do those of the wild sea-fowl, to prevent their flying away."
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