332 NETHER LOCHABER. 



the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand still ; but that 

 if he got up and flew onward, they must go forward ; but that if 

 he flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no 

 reply, but drew his bow and shot at the bird, and hit him and 

 killed him ; and as the augur and some others were very angry, 

 and wished imprecations upon him, he answered them thus : — 

 ' "Why are you so mad as to take this most unhappy bird into your 

 hands ? for how can this bird give us any true information con- 

 cerning our march, which could not foresee how to save himself % 

 Por had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not 

 have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam 

 the Jew would shoot him as he has done, and kill hirtL' " The 

 men, who had listened most attentively, smiled as we concluded, 

 and agreed that Mosollam must have been a very sensible man ; 

 and vowed that for the future they would attach no more meaning 

 or importance to a circling, screaming gull, than to the chirping of 

 a wren in the elder bushes at the cottage doors. And what after 

 all, the reader may ask, brought the black-backed gull circling and 

 screaming over your heads? Well, from its great and immense 

 spread of wing, it was probably the leader and guardian of its own 

 particular flock, and as such thought it his duty to reconnoitre in 

 person, in case the five men about the boat on the beach should 

 have sinister intentions as to him or his. His scream or guiUag 

 was just his way of telegraphing the results of his observations to 

 his distant companions ; or he may have been scolding us in his 

 own manner for our manifest intention of leaving the land, and 

 invading what he considered his own proper element and territory, 

 the sea. A more prosaic explanation, if it please you better, 

 is perhaps to be found in the fact that the boat was internally 

 largely incrusted with fish scales, and smelt strongly of fish, and 

 that that, to one of his sensitive olfactory nerves, was the only 

 or main attraction, the rest being mere idle curiosity, from which 



