June 17, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
933 
the time are called the stinkers. They are 
carrion birds, and, of course, not good to eat. 
They are about the size of a turkey, and would 
eat blubber until not able to fly. The stinkers 
were with us all the year round, and many a 
barrel of blubber they scoffed (ate). They 
have a very keen sight; sometimes when we 
would kill an elephant, no stinker was to be 
seen in any quarter; but within five minutes 
they would heave in sight and soon would be 
squatting around waiting to take their turn at 
the carcass. I remember that one time a barrel 
of blubber was left unprotected for an hour 
and when we came back there was none there, 
the stinkers had made way with it. They were a 
terrible nuisance and gave us much trouble. 
The captain saw them breeding at Long Beach. 
'“The shags had a rookery on the iceberg near 
the water. Every morning about daylight a 
crew of them would start off and make a cir¬ 
cular flight about fifteen miles out to sea. They 
are thus a good guide to the mariner making 
Kerguelen or Heard’s. The shags would be 
gone on this voyage two or three hours, when 
they would come ashore, and another crew 
would go out. They lay on the bare ice or in 
the tussock, breeding in January and into Feb¬ 
ruary and leave the island the last of March, 
from which time to January again they would 
live on the sea. They were fishy and tough, and 
though we tried, we could not eat them. Two 
or three of the Portuguese once ate a couple ot 
shags that had been boiled a long time, but they 
did not know what it was.” 
There were a few other birds on the island, gulls 
which bred high up on the cliffs, cape pigeons 
and a few Mother Carey’s chickens that stayed 
no length of time. Few fish were seen, yet on 
two or three occasions after the fall of some 
tremendous pinnacles of ice some fish would 
be hove ashore dead or so stunned as to be 
easily caught. 
For fifteen years there had been here no seals, 
it was said, but nine fur seals were taken which 
came in February, and, if they had not been 
killed, would have left in May. A few sea 
leopards—also seals—visited the island from 
time to time. The blubber is poor, but good 
use was made of the skins for mittens, stock¬ 
ings and bootlegs. 
“'As I have before said, we had nothing on 
Heard’s Island for amusement but to be pa¬ 
trolling the beaches for something to eat; and 
as the weather during all these months was 
mostly cheerless and gloomy, we all came to 
be in despair of keeping up our spirits. Heard’s 
Island is as barren and bleak and dreary a bit 
of land as Desolation and deserves the name 
equally with that. 
‘‘But the thing that troubled us most of all 
was that we did not know whether we should 
ever make out to get off from our island prison, 
nor whether we should ever see our wives and 
children any more; and we thought it hard that 
neither Lawrence & Co. nor the Government 
should send a relief ship to take us off the 
island. But none came; and so it went on until 
we had been castaways fifteen months; and it 
was a sorry New Year’s day we had when 1882 
came and found us still in our cabins, or mak¬ 
ing our way along the shore on the lookout for 
a vessel. What added much to our misery was 
that we had been now eight months shut up on 
this island without tobacco; and many of the 
men thought that this was the greatest hard¬ 
ship of all, as in truth it was. 
“Among the Portuguese was a big black fel¬ 
low called Bernaline, an artful rogue, who was 
always up to some deviltry. He once gave a 
false alarm of a ship in sight, and for some 
prank of his, on a certain occasion I had for¬ 
bidden him ever to set foot in my shanty again. 
He never dared to show himself there until one 
day, the 12th of January, he came running in, 
greatly excited and grinning all over. 
" 'Get out of this, you black rascal,’ said I, 
starting toward him to throw him out, ‘and 
never let me catch you in this shanty again.’ 
“‘You see ship?’ cried Bernaline. 
“ ‘Ship? Where?’ and I ran out. 
“ ‘There!’ and looking to the northwest where 
he pointed, sure enough I saw a man-o’-war 
rounding to, for the gangs in the other shanties 
had already seen her and hoisted their signal, at 
which she had hove to. 
“But it wasn’t half a minute before I had the 
flag run up to the peak of my own signal pole, 
and when the ship saw this she made it out to 
be the true signal, and rounding the point of 
the island, she came to and anchored a mile to 
the eastward of my shanty and a half mile off 
shore. 
“We were all too happy then to sleep much 
that night, and by daylight next morning all 
hands had assembled on the beach near my 
shanty. At seven o clock the boat’s crew came 
off from the ship. Taking up a big sea ele¬ 
phant s bone, I held it high and carried it along 
the beach until I came to a safe place to land, 
where I dropped it and then the boat came 
ashore. 
“ ‘Man-o’-war?’ 
“‘Yes.’ 
“ ‘English?’ 
“ ‘No; American.’ 
“ ‘Have you any tobacco?’ 
“And when the officer handed it over, it did 
not take us long to get it into our mouths, 
either, as far as it would go among so many. 
“The ship, as we then learned, was the United 
States ship Marion, which, upon petition of our 
families, had been despatched by the Govern¬ 
ment ‘to go to 53 0 S. 70° E., Heard’s Island, in 
search of the crew of the bark Trinity, supposed 
to have been cast away there,’ and the Marion 
had found us. 
“We were then taken off from our solitary 
abode; and all hands went aboard the Marion. 
Then indeed all our troubles were at an end 
as we steamed away from Heard’s Island with 
the Stars and Stripes over our heads and bound 
for our far distant home. All our old tattered 
rags were hove overboard, and each one of us 
was dressed in a navy suit of blue. 
“We put in at Crinton Bay and took off the 
gang there and then held our course to Island 
of Desolation; and thence put out for Cape 
Town. I speak for every man in the Trinity’s 
crew when I say that we shall always remember 
with gratitude the officers and men of the 
Marion who were so kind to us, and we shall 
always love and regard the Stars and Stripes.” 
The Inspector Said 
By NEWTON CHAPIN 
N O,” replied the Inspector, as he sank 
companionably into the seat beside the 
Doctor, while I rearranged my knees to 
alternate with his in the narrow space between 
the train seats: “No, I don’t know as I can tell 
you much about the trout streams here nowa¬ 
days. I used to whip them myself now and 
then, when I was younger, and there was some 
things that happened in them days—but there, 
I guess you ain’t looking for history.” 
My cigar case came out at once, while the 
“Judge”—his profession was the law, whence 
the appellation—simultaneously extracted his 
match-box and completed the conquest. The 
ensuing formalities over, we settled back to 
drink in whatever oracular statements might be 
forthcoming. We were on our annual fishing 
trip to Lake Obabika, and the subject about 
to be expounded was uppermost in our 
thoughts. 
The narrator was the Canadian Inspector of 
Customs and had gone through the coaches at 
the border to look over the hand-baggage. He 
passed our bags and rod cases, and a cordial in¬ 
vitation from the Doctor brought him back to 
us when his tour was finished. He looked to 
be a promising fourth to our party, as he took 
the remaining space in our doubled train-seat. 
He was to ride as far as Welland, where he 
would take the next train back to the border. 
There was just about an even six feet of 
spare, lanky frame, surmounted by a grizzled 
head, erect on a corded sinewy neck. His eyes, 
gray-thatched, and deep set in the rugged, 
weather-beaten face, looked out over a hawk¬ 
like nose with a glint of steely-blue, although a 
suspicion of a twinkle lurked at the corners, 
due, perhaps, to the numerous lines and 
wrinkles that focused there. In addition he 
possessed that authoritative bearing that in¬ 
variably goes with a uniform, from an elevator- 
boy to the commander of an army. Whether 
this bearing is the influence of the uniform on 
the wearer, or its effect on the unofficial be¬ 
holder, I have never quite decided. There is a 
little experience of the Doctor’s, in this connec¬ 
tion-—but I must get on. In short, then, the 
Inspector seemed the embodiment of the Can¬ 
adian wilderness. The “Judge,” with an eye to 
a long contemplated June outing, had opened 
the conversation with a question as to the 
likeliest trout streams in this section: 
“No, there ain't no trout these days like we 
used to get when I was a boy on the farm. 
Our place was twenty-five mile or so west of 
Hamilton, and they was several good-sized runs 
in the neighborhood. What with the farm 
work and the chores we didn’t get much chanst 
to go fishing, but once in awhile maybe we had 
a half day or so. The old man had learned me 
