174 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



prophet Jonas, because West Indian negroes happen to call 

 a ghost " duffy ! " All of which reads very much like non- 

 sense, worse nonsense indeed than Jack's own phrases — 

 which, like all good fairy-tales, have most meaning when 

 they have none at all. 



However all this may be, the salts of the past thought 

 the stormy-petrel a bird of ill-omen, and they were not 

 far wrong, for when all the other birds, dreading the 

 coming tempest, had left the ship, the chickens remained. 



" Still ran the stormy-petrels on the waves." 



Being alone, they became conspicuous, and though they had 

 been there all along, but unobserved when flying with larger 

 birds, the sailors, noticing them for the first time, thought 

 they had just arrived as heralds of the squall. For no 

 weather, however bad, will drive the petrels to shelter, and 

 so deft are they with wing and foot, that when the seas are 

 driving "mast high" they may be seen paddling and skipping, 

 on tip-toe as it were, over the green curves of the breakers, 

 or runninof alono" them sheltered from the ""ale under their 

 lee. And though it is no larger, this tiny scoffer of the 

 hurricane, than a starling, it is curious to think how many 

 hundreds of brave men have felt a sinking at the heart 

 when they saw the black diminutive bird skimming the 

 furious billows that pursued the vessel. Nowadays, going 

 under steam instead of canvas, the seaman does not trouble 



