and that if he 'd a mind
to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard
my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books
overboard. A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our
luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk,
but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea,
and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and
the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is
always as true as the Gospels.'

"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books
about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea-
air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,--
after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we
hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him
something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down
after him; and when we got on deck he looked towards the northeast, and
if ever I saw a chap wonder-struck, he was. Right ahead of us was a
bold, rocky island, with what looked like a great snow bank on its
southern slope; while the air was full overhead, and all about, of what
seemed a heavy fall of snow. The day was blazing hot, and there was n't
a cloud to be seen.

"'What in the world, Skipper, does this mean?' says he. 'We're sailing
right into a snow-storm in dog-days and in a clear sky.'

"By this time we had got near enough to hear a great rushing noise in
the air, every moment growing louder and louder.

"'It's only a storm of gannets,' says I.

"'Sure enough!' says he; 'but I wouldn't have believed it possible.'

"When we got fairly off against the island I fired a gun at it: and such
a fluttering and screaming you can't imagine. The great snow-banks
shook, trembled, loosened, and became all alive, whirling away into the
air like drifts in a nor'wester. Millions of birds went up, wheeling
and zigzagging about, their white bodies and blacktipped wings crossing
and recrossing and mixing together into a thick grayish-white haze above
us.

"'You're right, Skipper,' says Wilson to me;

Nature is better than books.'

"And from that time he was on deck as much as his health would allow of,
and took a deal of notice of everything new and uncommon. But, for all
that, the poor fellow was so sick, and pale, and peaking, that we all