THE BIRDS ON STAGK LEE. 93 



long before dawn the following morning a man is 

 lowered to each. Here he sits, motionless as a 

 statue, and at the first suggestion of daybreak the 

 birds stream up from the sea and alight upon him, 

 thinking he is a rock, and are promptly secured 

 and killed. As many as a hundred may be killed 

 in this way in an hour, I was told, by one man 

 alone. Directly it becomes light enough to dis- 

 tinguish the fowler from a rock, the birds steer 

 clear of the ledge on which he sits and he is 

 hauled up. 



Our old friend Martin says that he was told by 

 the steward " that a red-coat had been found in one 

 Solan Goose's nest, and a brass sun-dial, an arrow, 

 and some Molucca beans in another." 



One writer mentions that while on a voyage to 

 St. Kilda, the boat in which he was travelling was 

 sailing at a great pace before the wind, when a 

 Gannet, having marked a fish just in front, stooped 

 and drove its powerful beak through the bottom of 

 the vessel, breaking its neck in the collision. 



When we finally left St. Kilda on board the 

 Hebridean, we were told that the captain intended 

 to steam round by Stack Lee in order to give his 

 passengers a sight of the birds upon it. As the boat 

 came abreast of the towering rock, some members 

 of the crew loaded and ran out a small brass 

 cannon. The tip of a red-hot poker applied to the 

 touch-hole of the gun produced a deafening ex- 

 plosion, which seemed to be instantly flung back 

 at us by Stack Lee, and then thundered and rever- 

 berated from crag to crag along the rocky sides 

 of Borrera, sending a great white cloud of startled 

 Gannets into the air above us. Yet in spite of this 

 vast multitude wheeling round and round, and rising 

 slowly higher and higher, the birds on Stack Lee 



