Living Silver 



in captivity. Its small heart would pant to a sudden unpredictable 

 stop. 



There were, of course, many other birds : scrawny bad-tem- 

 pered shags and well-dressed guillemots that preserved a polite 

 distance, but Jan divided the sea into the territories of the gull, 

 of the gannet and of the petrel ; the area of noise, where croaking 

 shite-hawks reigned ; the area of diving, where the solen-goose 

 was flung down out of the sky ; and the deep-water area of silence 

 where only the fulmars nestled in the big waves and where the 

 roar of man's machinery was the one sound that fought against the 

 screech of the wind. 



11^2 



