WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 65 



and heroines of Park Lane and country mansions, into which 

 I sometimes dip a little just to give renewed zest for the wide 

 horizon and the tang of wind and sea out-by. And he 

 measured this and that, and, much to our joy, he practically 

 accepted the Norwegian Lloyd registration, and put us down 

 at sixty-nine tons instead of a larger figure, which we feared ; 

 now, registered as under seventy tons we need not have pilots, 

 and we save in many w r ays on entering port. 



Sunday afternoon with Norwegians is a playtime and 

 holiday, so our master and mates and engineers had a Satur- 

 nalia of shag or cormorant shooting and rather shocked the 

 natives of Lerwick who heard the shooting. Our men 

 rejoice more heartily at banging down these marauders than 

 you and I, gentle reader, would rejoice at clawing down the 

 highest birds in Britain, and we all eat them. To cook them, 

 we skin them first, then lay breast and limbs, without the 

 back, in vinegar and water for a night, and wash them in milk 

 and water next morning, then they are stewed ; there is a 

 good deal of trouble taken with the cooking, and when done 

 they are extremely bad to eat ! 



My Sunday, however, was passed in unbroken peace and 

 quiet at Lochend on the west of Shetland. There is a silence 

 at Lochend and on the silvery shingle beach, and over the 

 crystalline rippling green bay that is astounding ; a bee 

 humming over the patch of yellow oats sounds quite loud, 

 and a collie barking in the distance beside one of the grey 

 thatched cottages sounds quite close. Haldane's white, thick- 

 walled stone house looks out on to a silvery shingle that 

 makes a perfect crescent between a fresh-water lake of brown 

 peaty water and the sea-loch where the water is green above 

 the white sand, and purple above tangle. 



Ah ! the purity of the air there, with its scent of peat ! 

 How I have longed for it in town, and even in warm South 

 Norway counted on breathing it again, and at every breath 

 thanked heaven for its restorative energy. The morning 

 dive was past expectation how the Shetland sea makes the 

 blood tingle and the skin glow ! And the contrast from the 

 outside keen air, after days buffeting on the North Atlantic 

 or North Sea, to come into the warm stone house, to sit by 







