“While we are here?”
“Yes, while we are here. I pray it may be so, for we ought to be out into blue open water by the beginning of August, and homeward bound.”
“Happy thought!” said Claude, after a pause; “I’ll send off another bird.”
“I would certainly do so; and say in your message the sun has come, that all is well and happy; give latitude and longitude exactly.”
“Do you really think these birds ever reach home?”
“Now,” said Dr Barrett, “that is a question that many would ask. Many doubt the capabilities of flight or home instincts of sea-birds. I am as firmly convinced that a seagull, which has been reared in captivity from an egg procured from the parent nest and hatched under a duck or fowl, can be made the best of carriers of messages over sea and land, as I am that the sun we have just seen will rise again to-morrow.”
“It is not that I altogether doubt it,” said Claude; “but you know the story I have confided to you about my love for Meta and my quarrel with my mother—alas! that I should have to give it so harsh a name. Well, although I do not doubt, I sometimes fear.”
“I can fully appreciate your feelings, my dear sir,” was the reply. “Rough old sea-dog though I be, I, too, have had my little romance in life. Yes, let the poor bird fly; it will reach in safety.”
But it may be as well to say at once here that the good doctor was rather sanguine, for of all the six sea-birds that had been, or would be, let fly, only two reached Iceland safely. One of these had been thrown up near Desolation Point; it was that bird which reached home.
“Ought I to communicate the safety of her son to the proud Lady Alwyn?” had been Meta’s thought on receiving the welcome intelligence. She dreaded doing so; she feared to put harder feelings in the lady’s heart against poor Claude than she already possessed. “Besides,” argued Meta, “the Kittywake will soon return and bring her the news that I do not doubt she is pining to hear, if she only loves him half as much as I do.”