With nature and a camera

Chapter III. The birds and fowlers of St Kilda (continued)

The reward of intelligence

I went below once, and found the saloon tenanted only by a burly horse-dealer and another man, having the appearance of a whisky traveller, holding high debate with a strapping farmer's daughter from North Uist on certain equine ills. I think I fell asleep during a lull on ring-bone, and woke up in the middle of a storm on spavins. The young woman was more than a match for her adversaries, and when she saw me smite approval at some little advantage she had gained in her war of words, promptly walked over to where I was sitting and rewarded my intelligence with a handful of oat bannock and skimmed-milk cheese which she took from a small hand-bag.

We reached Oban Bay at three o'clock in the morning, and as day dawned fifteen minutes later, I heard a Thrush begin to sing and a Cuckoo to "tell his name to all the hills around."

As it was Saturday, and I was anxious to spend the following day at home before returning to business in London early on the Monday morning, I left the boat, and several other passengers followed my example; amongst them my twice-shipwrecked friend, and the little man who had striven so strenuously and vainly to assume the appearance of courage. As the first train did not start south until six o'clock and all the hotel keepers were locked in slumber, we went into the night porter's room at the railway station, where there was a good fire, and sat round in sombre meditation.

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Our little friend feeling sleepy, stretched himself face downwards on a huge table with his field-glasses for a pillow. He snored magnificently for the space of twenty minutes, and then startled us by jumping up as if he had been shot and yelling out, "We've been on the rocks! we've been on the rocks!"

Not recognising either of his late shipmates, be began to tell us a tale of his adventures and hairbreadth escapes, that went far towards eclipsing the ups and downs of Robinson Crusoe, and made me long madly after the godlike gift of picturesque exaggeration.

Puffin