136 THE SHETLANDS IN THE 



just enough air stirring to freshen the colours of the 

 sea, and carry the smoke of the funnel clear of the 

 deck. The sun set ' smilingly forsworn,' at twenty-five 

 minutes to nine, and as the long twilight, which brought 

 home to us that we were getting northward, set in, 

 Sheerwaters which in their habits are the owls of the 

 sea, living for the most part in their holes on shore by 

 day, and coming out at dusk shot past us, one or two 

 at a time, with quick gliding flight, on their way to 

 their feeding-grounds, the long sharp wings closing at 

 each stroke backwards, until the birds seemed to have 

 forked tails like Swallows. 



Perhaps if our experience of local weather signs had 

 been larger we might have seen a warning of what was 

 before us in the curiously angular shape of the sun as 

 it dipped ; but ignorance was bliss, and we ' turned in,' 

 happy in what we thought the certain prospect of a 

 quick and pleasant voyage, and woke to find ourselves 

 anchored for five-and-twenty hours in a dripping fog, 

 somewhere near, but no one could say how far from, 

 Kirkwall Bay. 



The interest of our trip lay more in the present than 

 the past, our object in coming so far having been not 

 so much to look for antiquities as to see the birds, 

 which in the summer gather by myriads to breed on 

 the rocks and islands of the Shetlands. Some which 

 are common here nest in few, if any, other places in 

 the British Isles. When we started we had indulged 

 in dreams of visits to Fair Island, and perhaps to Foula, 

 which lie, the one reported to be more beautiful than 



