Chapter 1 - Page 2

the rocks. When they first started, the sea-birds were dozing on their
perches, waiting for the dawn, and their unwonted silence lent a
stronger sense of loneliness to the gray, misty waters. But as they
approached the pillars of Hoy, the wind rose and the waves swelled
refulgent in the crimsoning east.

Then the man at the wheel was seen in all his great beauty--a man of
lofty stature perfectly formed and full of power and grace in every
movement. His head had an antique massiveness and was crowned with
bright brown hair thrown backward. His forehead was wide and
contemplative, his eyes large and gray and thickly fringed, lustrous but
_not_ piercing. His loving and vehement soul was not always at their
windows, but when there, it drew or commanded all who met its gaze. His
nose was long and straight, showing great refinement, and his chin
unblunted by animal passions. A wonderful face, because the soul and the
mind always found their way at once and in full force to it, as well as
to the gestures, the speech, and every action of the body. And this was
the quality which gave to the whole man that air of distinction with
which Nature autographs her noblest work.

When they reached the Hoy he left the wheel and stood in wonder and awe
gazing at the sea around him. For some time it had been cloudy and
unquiet, but among these great basaltic pillars and into their black
measureless caves it flung itself with the rush and roar of a ten-knot
tide gone mad. Yet the thundering bellow of its waves was not able to
drown the aërial clamor of the millions of sea-birds that made these
lonely pillars and cliffs their home. Eagles screamed from their
summits. Great masses of marrots and guillemots rocked on the foam.
Kittiwakes of every kind in incalculable numbers and black and
brown-backed gulls by the thousands filled the air as thickly as
snowflakes in a winter's storm; while from shelves and pinnacles of the
cliffs, incredible numbers of gannots were diving with prodigious force
and straight as an arrow, after their prey--all plunging, rising,
screaming and shrieking, like some maddened human mob, the more terrible
because of the ear-piercing metallic ring of their unceasing clamor.

After a long silence John Hatton turned to his Captain and said,

"Is it always like this, Captain?"

"It is often much livelier, sir. I have seen swarms of sea-birds miles
long, darkening the air with their wings. Our Great Father has many sea
children, sir. Next summer--God willing!--we might sail to the Faroe
Islands, and you would be among His whales, and His whale men."

"Then you have been to the Faroes?"

"More than once or twice. I used to take them on my road to