Sitting on the black raft he was constantly thinking of the warning words his mother of the hills had spoken -- that the sea would kiss him with cold salt lips and take him down into the depths where he would never see the light again.

O how strange the sea was to him now, how lonely, how terrible! But birds that with their wings could range over the whole world were of the land, and now seemed to bring the land near him with their white forms and wild cries.

How could they help him?
He did not know, he did not ask; but he was not alone now that they had come to him, and his terror was less.
And still more birds kept coming; and as the morning wore on the crowd of birds increased until they were in hundreds, then in thousands, perpetually wheeling and swooping and rising and hovering over him in a great white cloud.

And they were of many kinds, mostly white, some grey, others sooty brown or mottled, and some wholly black.

Then in the midst of the crowrd of birds he saw one of great size wheeling about like a king or giant among the others, with wings of amazing length, wild eyes of a glittering yellow, and a yellow beak half as long as Martin's arm, with a huge vulture-like hook at the end.