No, she did not care for fish. 'It was nearly all fish in the camp,' she told Mrs Skipper Paterson; but the English bacon was a treat, and the English toast, and, 'Oh those eggs, how beautiful! What are they?'
'Sea-gulls', dear, from the rocks of Tromsö.'
'How large and pointed they are, and so sweetly green; and what are those curious streaks of black and brown, like a baby's writing, all over them?'
'Well,' said Mrs Skipper, who was just a little romantic, as all true sailors are, 'well, Lotty, I think that every egg is a love-letter written by a gull to her charming mate.'
'It seems such a pity to break them though.'
'So I have often thought, but one doesn't mind so much when one is hungry.'
'I love the sea-gulls,' said Lotty, 'and they all love me, and don't mind coming close up; and then they are so neat and so clean, never a feather awry, and with eyes ever so clear and bright. I think they are just little bits of the waves with souls put into them.'
When Lotty got on deck she could hardly keep upright, for it was blowing half a gale from the west, and now the bonny bark, with her close-reefed topsails and storm staysails, was standing nor'-east, and away where black clouds had painted the sky from zenith to horizon. The girl looked a queer figure—a wee sou'-wester on her head, which could not hide her hair nor her beauty, and a huge pilot jacket belonging to Ben, the sleeves a bit too long and the garment itself coming right down to her heels. She swayed and swayed till the red-faced mate came to her assistance, tucked her under his arm, and trotted her off for a stroll under the weather bulwarks. Then she felt as if she had been at sea all her life.
Kaye—kaye—kaye! screamed the birds, for there were sea-gulls even here, playing at tack and half-tack around and over the quarterdeck, darting through the fountainheads of wind-vexed seas, circling, swirling, swishing in every beautiful attitude conceivable—kaye—kaye—kaye! Oh, how happy, how glorious, those feathered children of the ocean!
Lotty just longed to catch one, tie a message to its leg, kiss it, and tell it to fly home with this to the little gipsy camp by the lone seashore.