He had them running about the deck to the number of twenty or more.
“What are you going to do with all these birds?” asked Dewar. “You silly old Sawbones!”
“I’m merely catching them for sport, you mouldy old logarithm,” replied Scott. “I’ll let them off again presently, that will be more sport.”
“Strange, isn’t it, my dear Dr Fungus,” said Dewar, “that they can’t fly away after they once alight on deck?”
“Not at all,” returned the surgeon, “not at all strange, Mr Five-knots-an-hour; the explanation is simple. They are attacked by mal de mer—seasickness, you know—”
“Yes, yes, I know that much French, Mr Sawbones.”
“Well, old Binnacle-lamp, I’m glad you do know something. The birds get seasick and can’t fly, and don’t care much what becomes of themselves.”
“Humph!” said Mr Dewar, walking away laughing. “Very little is fun to fools—beg pardon, doctor, I mean to foolosophers.”
In another twenty-four hours the saucy little Bunting was lying safely at anchor in Symon’s Bay. And what a lovely place is this same bay with its surrounding scenery! Oh! the beauty, the summer beauty, the spring and autumn beauty of those grand old hills that mirror their purple heath-clad heads in the placid waters of that enchanting bay! How gorgeous the flowers that blaze on its trees, how golden the sands on which the waves break in streaks of snowy foam! Its very rocks are tinted, and bronzed with the sunshine of ages, even its most barren spots, where, high up among the mountains, the soil peeps through, are rich in brooms and lichen-grey, for Time himself has been the artist here.
Captain Wayland had half, or nearly wholly expected to find Midshipman Milvaine here waiting for him. He was quite uneasy when a steamer straight from Zanzibar and Seychelles came in, and reported that no slave dhow with a prize crew had been seen at the former town.