CHAPTER VI 



THE SHETLANDS IN THE BIRDS' NESTING SEASON 



' . . . The living clouds on clouds arise, 

 Infinite wings ! till all the plume dark air 

 And rude resounding shore are one wild cry.' THOMSON. 



THERE is a story of a little boy who used to feel sick 

 when he sat in a carriage with his back to the horses. 

 So long as he was small enough to sit on his mother's 

 knee, or as a third on the front seat without crushing 

 his sister's frock and making her a figure, his weakness 

 did not much signify. But when he grew too big for 

 this, his mother told him he must try to be a man, and 

 get over it. He wished to please her ; and, having a 

 fairy godmother who helped him when she saw he was 

 trying in earnest, succeeded so well, that soon he had 

 learned to travel backwards as no other boy before or 

 since has done. Often he would shut his eyes and spin 

 back at first for hundreds, and then, as he grew more 

 accustomed to it, thousands of years, until one very hot 

 steaming day as it seemed to him though at home it 

 was cold enough for a fire in the schoolroom as he 

 skirted, with boots very wet with red mud, a wood of 

 overgrown mares' tales, he nearly trod on a Pterodactyl, 

 which he had not noticed in a reed-bed till he was close 



