DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 243 



would be a useless toy amongst such a ship's 

 company, so I whispered Harry to fetch a bottle, 

 which, when opportunity offered, I secretly handed 

 to M'Cabe telling him the men would expect a 

 taste during such a long pull. Within a mile of 

 our starting-place three seals were sighted that 

 took such lively interest in our proceedings as 

 enabled the boat to approach well within range, 

 but the bullets went so wide as to cause a rower to 

 remark : " Indade it's a dhrop of the crathur the 

 pair of ye are needing." M'Cabe, who had missed 

 an easy shot, evidently agreed, for, after helping the 

 sergeant, he helped himself and then corked the 

 bottle and made pretence of putting it away ; but 

 this brought so much Irish talk that it ended in 

 each thirsty throat getting what proved to be a 

 thirst provoker. There is some excuse, when a 

 salmon is on the grass, or a stag is killed, to take 

 a nip, but to drink each time a seal is missed was a 

 new experience that soon made us wish seals were 

 less plentiful or the riflemen more expert. For 

 some time I thought it a wonderful bottle to have 

 contained so much but later I knew that there were 

 others which possibly the men we left behind had 

 seen ; hence their sorrowing faces. 



When we reached the point and faced the open 

 we found the waves had each a notion of its own as 

 to the direction it would take and, to get their way, 

 they jostled one another in such angry fashion as 

 made a loppy sea. Now and then a huge wave 

 would override all obstacles and come at us 

 threateningly but our boat would glide up with a 

 lurch, to fall down the other side with another 

 lurch in the opposite direction. In one of these 



