Pulwick from Scarthey!... What a long time it seemed then since I had left those rooms the windows of which now sent us back the rays of the setting sun! and I had no desire to return, though return I must on the morrow.
René, of course, had left everything in his usual trim order, so all we had to do was to see to the lamp. It pleased my fantasy to light the beacon of Scarthey myself, and I struck the steel and kindled the brimstone and set fire to the huge, ill-smelling wicks until they gave a flame as big as my hand; and "there is the light of Scarthey at close quarters," I thought. And the Light-keeper was bending over me with his kindly look, humouring me like a child.
As we sat there silently for a while in the twilight, there came from the little room adjoining the turret an odd sound of flapping and uncanny, melancholy cries. Sir Adrian rose, and we remembered the seagull by which he had played the part of good Samaritan.
It had happened on the second day, as the storm was at its height. There had come a great crash at the window, and we saw something white that struggled on the sill outside; Sir Adrian opened the casement (when we had a little tornado of our own inside, and all his papers began dancing a sarabande in the room), and we gathered in the poor creature that was hurt and battered and more than half stunned, opening alternately its yellow bill and its red eyes in the most absurd manner.
With a solicitude that it amused me to watch, Sir Adrian had tended the helpless, goose-like thing and then handed it to René's further care.
René, it seemed, had thought of trying to tame the wild bird, and had constructed a huge sort of cage with laths and barrel-hoops, and installed it there with various nasty, sea-fishy, weedy things, such as seagulls consider dainty. But the prisoner, now its vigour had returned, yearned for nothing but the free air, and ever and anon almost broke its wings in sudden frenzy to escape.
"I wonder at René," said Sir Adrian, contemplating the animal with his grave look of commiseration; "René, who, like myself, has been a prisoner! He will be disappointed, but we shall make one of God's creatures happy this day. There is not overmuch happiness in this world."
And, regardless of the vicious pecks aimed at his hands, he with firmness folded the great strong wings and legs and carried the gull outside on the parapet.
There the bird sat a moment, astonished, turning its head round at its benefactor before taking wing; and then it rose flying away in great swoops—flap, flap—across the waves till we could see it no longer. Ugly and awkward as the creature looked in its cage, it was beautiful in its joyful, steady flight, and I was glad to see it go. I must have been a bird myself in another existence, for I have often that longing to fly upon me, and it makes my heart swell with a great impatience that I cannot.
But I could not help remarking to Sir Adrian that the bird's last look round had been full of anger rather than gratitude, and his answer, as he watched it sweep heavily away, was too gloomy to please me: