And the bargain was struck.  Dewhurst, with the struggling bird in his hand, went down, followed by his friends, one of the side stairs to the stone rampart, by which the jetty is defended on the east.  There they sat down.  The sun was throwing a blaze of glory over a sea which repaid the gift with a liquid splendour scarcely inferior to his of fire; and the companions of the bird, swirling in the clear air, seemed to be attracted by the sharp cries of the prisoner; but all its efforts were vain to gratify its love of liberty and their yearning.  It was in the hands of those who had neither pity for its sufferings, consideration for the lessons it carried in its structure, nor taste for estimating its beauties.  One of another kind of students might have detected adaptations in the structure of that creature sufficient to have raised his thoughts to the great Author of design and the source of all beauty,—­that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply the beak—­that beak, too, so admirably formed—­for taking up entire, or perforating the backs of the silly fishes that gambol too near the surface.  Ay, even in these fishes, which, venturing too far from their natural depths, and becoming amorous of the sun, and playful in their escapades, he might see the symbol of man himself, who, when he leaves the paths of prudence, and gets top-light with pleasure, is ready, in every culmination of his delirium, to be caught by a waiting retribution.  Ah! but our student, who held the bird, was not incurious—­only cold and cruel in his curiosity.

“Hamilton,” said he, “that bird could still swim on the surface of that sea, though deprived of every feather on its body.”

“I deny it,” replied Hamilton.  “It will not swim five minutes,”

“What do you bet?”—–­ The old watchword.

“Five pounds.”

“Done.”

And getting Campbell to hold the beak, which the bird was using with all its vigour, he grasped its legs and wings together by his left hand, and began to tear from the tender living skin the feathers.  Every handful showed the quivering flesh, and was followed by spouts of blood; nor did he seem to care—­although the more carefully the flaying operation was performed, the better chance he had of carrying his wager—­whether he brought away with the torn tips portions of the skin.  The writhing of the tortured creature was rather an appeal to his deliberate cruelty, and the shrill scream only quickened the process.  The back finished and bloody, the belly, snow-white and beautiful, was turned up, the feathers torn away, the breast laid bare, and one wing after the other stript of every pinion.  Nothing in the shape of feathers, in short, was left, except the covering of the head, which resisted his fingers.