"Water--water," sighed Paul Reeves; "when ashore, I will never drink aught but pure spring water again."
"Bide ye, messmate, and dinna gut a swimming fish; or, as we say in Orkney, cut up nae herrings till ye have them in your net. When you are ashore!--ashore indeed--when shall we ever see the shore?"
Even the strong mind of the hardy Hans was wandering now. The wind kept tolerably fair, and though by alternate spells at the oars we toiled day and night to add to the speed of our sail, we had no means of ascertaining the distance we ran; and now the pangs of hunger were alternately maddening or paralyzing, but they were trivial when compared with those of thirst. By skilfully striking with his oar, Hans contrived to kill four petrels when they came tripping by close to our boat. Since the days of Clusius and Pliny, tradition has foolishly made these poor birds the precursors of a storm; but the elements had done their worst upon us, so we cared not. They were soon plucked and demolished.
We found them very fat and nutritious, as the whole genus of petrels have a singular facility for creating and for spouting pure oil from their bills in defence of themselves and their eggs if molested; and of this oil they can produce plenty, as they feed on blubber and fish. The quantity in them astonished all but Hans Peterkin, who had been wont to harry the nests of the skua, as the petrel is named in his native isles, and who told me that whales were often discovered in the Firth of Westra and the Sound of Yell by the flocks that followed in the hope of a gorge of blubber.
"My father was drowned by a _skua_," said he.
"Ay, for so they called the petrels in Orkney once, and so they call them in Faroe now."
"He was a bold fellow who could climb the steep rocks that overhung the most furious sea, to get eggs and catch the petrels _asleep_ if possible; for the skua or fulmar supply us with feathers for our beds, medicine in illness, and oil for our lamps. My mother used to make the whole bird a candle by passing through its mouth a wick, which the fat of the body fed. My father, Magnus Peterkin, was, I have said, a bold fellow, though he wore a _glain neidr_, or adder-gem, an old amulet of the Druid days, and believed that while it hung at his neck he was safe. On a stormy night he swung himself over a rock in Pomona to pull some petrels out of their holes, but one squirted a billful of salt oil right into his eyes---just as I might a quid--which so confused him, that he quitted hold of the rope, fell upon the rocks three hundred feet below, and perished miserably--poor man!"