“Do they catch oysters?”
“Never saw one do it, but they eat the limpets like fun. Now then, sit fast. Here’s a shot.”
Max sat fast and shrinkingly, for he was not accustomed to a gun being fired close to his ears. He watched eagerly as a couple of birds flew toward them with outstretched necks and quickly beating, sharply-pointed wings, but they turned off as the gun was raised, and, though Kenneth fired, there was no result.
“Waste of a shot,” he said, reloading.
“What were those?”
“Sheldrakes. How shy they are, Scood!”
Max thought it was enough to make them, but he did not say so, and he scanned the island as they sailed on, with the sensation of gliding over the beautiful sparkling water growing each moment more fascinating as his dread wore off. They were passing a glorious slope of shore, green and grey and yellow, and patched with black where some mass of shaley rock jutted out into the sea to be creamed with foam, while everywhere, as the tide laid them bare, the rocks were glistening with the golden-brown seaweed of different species. Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains in the distance: the scene was lovely, and the London boy’s eyes brightened as he gazed with avidity at the ever-changing shore.
“Is that a castle?” he said, as a square ruined tower gradually came into sight at the point of the island.
“Yes; there are lots about,” said Kenneth coolly. “There’s another yonder.”
He nodded in the direction of the mainland, so cut up into fiords that on a small scale it resembled the Norwegian coast, and, on shading his eyes, Max could see another mouldering pile of ruins similar in structure to Dunroe, with its square mass of masonry and four rounded towers at the corners.