After "positive philosophy," the croak of ravens, the hoot of owls, anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have reached the desired island.
Not to find eiders, though, but only Saddle-Back Gulls, a crowd of which arose on our approach, and hovered about at safe, yet tantalizing distance, keeping up their monotonous, piping scream. The saddle-back, a large, powerful white bird, with a patch of black crossing it like a saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air, cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond gun-shot range, screaming, as if it said, "Why don't you fire? Fire!--who cares?" I came at length to cherish toward them no little animosity, and would willingly have played Kearsarge upon them, could any challenge have drawn them from port. But during the whole cruise not one of them consoled us with so much as a feather.
The flight of this bird meanwhile is magnificent,--so full of powerful grace, of achieving leisure and ease. Nothing can be more striking than its contrast with the labored propulsion of the duck. A few slow waves of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline, but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats, and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged only in airing its pinions. One might fancy it the very spirit of motion imaged in a picturesque symbol.
In that delightful book, "Out-Door Papers," the author celebrates charmingly the charm of birds; but I, who am more humanist than naturalist, would say rather, What exhaustless fascination in their flight!--for this appears to touch by some subtile suggestion upon the hope or dream of man. I am, indeed, now--though always, please God, a boy--not so young a boy as once, when I could be unhappy for the want of wings, and deem, for a moment, that life is little worth without them; yet never does a bird fly in my view, especially if its flight be lofty and sustained, but it seems to carry some deep, immemorial secret of my existence, as if my immortal life flew with it. Sweet fugitive, when will it fly with me? Whenever it does,--and something assures me that one day it will,--then the new heavens and new earth! Meanwhile the intimation of it puts to the lip some unseen cup, out of which, in a soft ecstasy of pain that is better than pleasure, I quaff peace, peace. It is not always nor often that one is open to this supreme charm; but it comes at times, and then to hope all and believe all is easy as to breathe.