“Dear Antonio,” it read, “excuse a joke. But thinking to astonish you, I captured one of your half tame sea-gulls, and now I send him home. We are two hundred miles from land. Hope he’ll get back all right. All’s well.—Your bad boy,
“Davie Drake.”
THE END
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mullet.
[2] In a villa garden near Bombay Dr. Dimmock and myself found a tailor-bird’s nest built between two broad leaves neatly sewn together. Perhaps we looked too long at the pretty eggs to please the parent birds. Anyhow, during the night the birds managed to build another nest farther in through the shrubbery, and thither they had conveyed the eggs. Was this an instance of instinct or reason? Reason, I believe.
[3] Captain Riou, who fell in this battle, was called the gallant and good by Lord Nelson in his despatches home to the Admiralty.
[4] Cross pieces of wood and strings to prevent the dishes sliding off.
[5] Both music and words of this bold song are generally ascribed to Henry Russell. The latter wrote the music; a young Scottish poet, M‘Lean, wrote the stirring words.
[6] “Grimalkin,” Scottice = a cat.