Now, on the verge of sleep, seeing that picture pass before me—the ineffable sadness of the lonely hunter in the wilderness, the vision, the unutterable joy, and the fearful end, I thought (for thought now came to me) of my own case—my loneliness, for I, too, was lonely, not because I was there by myself on that promontory, but because a whole ocean and the impassable ocean of death separated me from my own people. Then it came into my mind that I, too, fast falling into oblivion, would experience that blissful vision; that the hoarse sound of the sea far below on the rocks would sink and change to the sound of the summer wind in the old poplars, that I would see the old roof and all those I first knew and loved on the earth—see them as in the old days "returned in beauty from the dust," and seeing them should start forward "in act to rise," and so end my wanderings by falling from that sloping, perilous rock!
In a moment I became wide awake, for I did not wish to perish by accident just yet, and, jumping up, I stretched out my arms, stamped with my feet, and rubbed my eyes vigorously to get rid of my drowsiness; then sat down quietly and resumed my watch of gulls and gannets.
[Original]
CHAPTER VII THE BRITISH PELICAN
The gannet—Gannets at St. Ives—At Treen Dinas—Appearance of the bird when fishing—The rise before the fall—Gannet and gull—A contrast—Gull and Great Northern Diver—Gulls and gannets in the pilchard season—Bass, pollack and sand-eels—An extraordinary accident.
BRITISH pelican" may seem almost too grand a name for a bird the size of our gannet, or Solan goose; but he is of that family, and was once, in the Linnæan classification, of the very genus—a Pelicanus. Moreover, in this land of small birds—thanks to the barbarians who have extirpated the big ones—the Sula bassana is very large, being little inferior to the goose, though he is certainly small compared with his magnificent rose-coloured relation, the greatest of the true pelicans.