rychnine; and so he did.

And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness, in
thousands and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brant
geese, harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews and
goosanders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and
razor-bills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all
naming or numbering; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combed
and brushed themselves on the sand, till the shore was white with
feathers; and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered and
screamed and whooped as they talked over matters with their friends, and
settled where they were to go and breed that summer, till you might have
heard them ten miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was no
one to hear them but the old keeper, who lived all alone upon the Ness,
in a turf hut thatched with heather and fringed round with great stones
slung across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow
the hut right away. But he never minded the birds nor hurt them, because
they were not in season; indeed, he minded but two things in the whole
world, and those were, his Bible and his grouse; for he was as good an
old Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter's night: only, when all
the birds were going, he toddled out, and took off his cap to them, and
wished them a merry journey and a safe return; and then gathered up all
the feathers which they had left, and cleaned them to sell down south,
and make feather-beds for stuffy people to lie on.

Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom to
Shiny Wall: but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to the
Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one to
Iceland, and one to Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall. So the
good-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the way
themselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen's Land; and
after that he must shift for himself.

And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away in long black lines,
north, and north-east, and north-west, across the bright blue summer
sky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten
thousand peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed the
young rabbits, and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which was
rough practice, certainly; but a man must see to his own family.

And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward