ST. GOELAND AND THE SEAGULL.
It came to pass that a ship filled with pilgrims was making for the land, and would have come and anchored in the bay when the wind veered, and the old gull gave its note of warning; but St. Goeland was too feeble to rise, and the tears came into his eyes. The pilgrim ship was sailing joyously towards destruction, and the bell was silent! The gull cried louder; the wind rose, and the ship was on her way; soon she would be on a lee shore, and then——
St Goeland made a supreme effort, and clutched the rope. "My God!" he shrieked, and fell, and the bell sounded. But the gull heard the shriek and the bell's note mingled, and carried it against the wind; and those on board the pilgrim ship heard, and drew off the land, saying, it was "St. Goeland's warning," which it was, only they did not know that the saint passed away when the bell pealed his requiem.
From that time the sea-gull's cry is that of a human soul in agony mingled with the note of a "passing bell." All mariners, and fishers, and dwellers by the sea, know it well, and woe to the man who lays finger on a gull, except in kindness!
"The sea-gull," said Guy, "is an utterly unproductive animal, fit for nothing but to look at. What it destroys is incalculable, and yet some yarn like this, invented Heaven knows when, makes it almost a sacred bird."
The Bookworm had little to say, except that people were more influenced by sentiment than they knew or suspected.
Guy pooh-poohed "sentiment," and said he'd wring a couple of gulls' necks the next morning before breakfast.
He went out with that idea, but a warning voice reached him. Then he tried to "negociate" a purchase, and a big fist brought down in the man's palm warned him that the transaction was, in diplomatic language, "delicate." Guy owned up that there was something, after all, in "sentiment."
Sea-gulls are privileged in this part of the world.