approached the rock.

"Keep your weather eye up, your Honour," exclaimed the cockswain from
his commanding point to P----, who had not seen the advancing ducks;
"keep your weather eye up. Here they come; here's provender, your
Honour."

His remembrance, no doubt, returned to the eagles on board, and which,
by the bye, had been committed to his care. But the ducks kept a pretty
good elevation, being more timid, or wary than the gulls; and my rifle
now came into play. I took a random shot at the entire group just as it
was making a masterly evolution; and a drake, evidently the general
commanding, having ceased his quacking, and tumbling in tee-totum style
to the water, sufficiently proved how correctly I had, for the first
time, done my duty. The uproar of furious gulls and routed ducks was
never heard in these silent Fiords since the Flood to such a clamorous
extent; and I would not venture to say that the echoes were not as
surprisingly loud as the cries of the birds themselves. Urged on by the
entreaties and gesticulations of the warlike cockswain, the slaughter
lasted for an hour; but seeing that we had killed an ample quantity to
feed the eagles for some days, and remembering that powder and shot
could not be bought among the mountains of Norway, we retreated from the
rock, and getting into the boat, began to gather our game. This occupied
some little time; and after collecting a decent boatful, we lighted our
meerschaums, and floated homewards.

We might have proceeded nearly half way, when P---- suddenly dropped the
pipe from his mouth, and seizing his gun, fired it towards the shore,
from which we were not twenty feet, without uttering a word.

"Be quick--load!" he said, at last, to both of us, ramming down his own
charge as fast as he could. "Here's a seal."

"Where?" I asked,--"where?"

"Why, there," and he fired without any other explanation a second time
at the, apparently, bare rock.

"I see him, and here goes," said R----, and taking a deliberate aim,
fired also. "Missed him," he murmured.

I just caught a glimpse of the seal's flat tail, as the animal slided
from the rocky shore into the water.

"We have him," said P----, with brightened eyes, "if we act properly."

"There he is!" shouted one of the sailors, with a set of lungs that
might be needful in a gale, as the seal rose about ten feet from the
spot where it first sank.

"Don't make such a confounded row; you'd frighten the devil!" said