Cast away in the cold : an old man's story of a young man's adventures, as related by Captain John Hardy, mariner . yle offood ; still I cannot say that there was so very much occasionfor being over-glad, as at best it was only ducks and eggs, andeggs and ducks, like the boy you have heard of in the story,who had first mush and milk, and then, for variety, milk andmush. So one day the Dean said to me, Hardy, cant we catchsome of these little birds, — auks you call them ? How .-*said I. I dont know, said he ; so we were just as well off as 142 CAST AWAY IN THE COLD. we had been before. But this
Cast away in the cold : an old man's story of a young man's adventures, as related by Captain John Hardy, mariner . yle offood ; still I cannot say that there was so very much occasionfor being over-glad, as at best it was only ducks and eggs, andeggs and ducks, like the boy you have heard of in the story,who had first mush and milk, and then, for variety, milk andmush. So one day the Dean said to me, Hardy, cant we catchsome of these little birds, — auks you call them ? How .-*said I. I dont know, said he ; so we were just as well off as 142 CAST AWAY IN THE COLD. we had been before. But this set us to thinking again ; andthe birds being very tame, and flying low, it occurred to usthat we might make a net, and fasten it to the end of our nar-whal horn, which we had thus far only used while making ourhut. Luckily for us, the Dean — who, I need hardly say, wasa very clever boy in every sense—had learned from one ofthe sailors the art of net-making ; and out of some of the nar-whal sinew he contrived, in two days, to construct quite agood-sized net. And now the difficulty was to stretch it; but. Changing the Diet again. by this time our inventive faculties had been pretty well sharp-ened, and we were not long in finding that we could make a CAST AWAY IN THE COLD. 143 perfect hoop by lashing together three seal ribs which wepicked up on the beach; and, having fastened this hoopsecurely to the narwhal horn, we sallied forth to the north sideof the island, where the auks were most abundant. Hiding ourselves away among the rocks, we waited untila flock of the birds flew over us. They flew very low, — notmore than five feet above our heads. When they were leastexpecting it, I threw up the net, and three of them flew banginto it. They were so much stunned by the blow, that onlyone of them could flutter out before I had drawn in the net ;and the Dean was quick enough to seize the remaining twobefore they could escape. This, being the first experiment,gave us great en
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookpublisherbostonleeandshepar
