1856.] The Ravens — A Stratagem. 433 



peared, find nothing remained but the bare bones. The skeletons laj 

 on the shores like the hulls of the Spanish Armada, keel and timbers, 

 the planks torn off by the natives. Everybody thought the ravens 

 would withdraw, but no diminution appeared in their number. Week 

 after week, the old marshal and his subalterns led the sorties to the 

 breach. A council of war was held, but no person could suggest a 

 remedy. Some shots were fired, and a few ravens hung in irons on the 

 hights ; but the rest merely croaked as they saw their companions 

 swinging in the gale. 



At length a man named Finlay Morrison hatched a plot which pro^ 

 duced a goodly gosling. Finlay had been often in St. Kilda, where he 

 saw the gannets slain in the following manner: 



The bird-catcher slips down a long rope, fastened above by a peg, 

 until he gets upon a shelf where the gannets have roosted. He ap- 

 proaches cautiously, seizes the first one between his knees, to prevent 

 it from flapping its wings, thereby frightening the rest; dislocates its 

 neck by a sudden jerk, and then leaves it there stark dead. In this 

 way he kills scores each night. 



Finlay crawled cautiously up the rock to which the ravens retired 

 at night, laid hold of an old rascal and killed him ; then another and 

 another, until at length he had slaughtered more than a score. 

 ^ This was repeated several nights in succession. Still no diminu- 

 tion was perceptible in the army, and the islanders were apprehensive 

 of a famine, for the ravens had attacked their barley. Finlay scratched 

 his head one night as he sat by the fire, right over the organ of inven- 

 tion, which being electrified, out came a spark, which, passing through 

 the other organs, produced a scheme, and a funny one, too, as will 

 presently be seen. He rose up, dark as it was, and took two of his 

 companions. They walked to the rocks, clambered up as usual to the 

 raven roosts, laid hold of half a dozen birds, plucked them completely, 

 leaving only the wing and tail feathers, and let them loose. By this 

 time it was dawn. The plucked ravens screamed violently ; the whole 

 flock screamed and fled. Nothing was to be heard on the island but 

 one desperate and incessant scream. The natives, terrified, got out of 

 bed and came abroad. The denuded ravens naturally sought their 

 companions, but the latter had no compassion upon them. They fled 

 from them in all directions, terrified at the unnatural and never-seen 

 spectacle. One night only did the ravens remain on the island. Some 

 herdsmen saw them at sunrise wing their flight in a body northward, 

 over the Atlantic, leaving behind them their luckless companions, 

 which, naked and persecuted, soon perished. 

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