Perched on the hillside are the scattered houses 
where the people live. In the midst of these 
stand two or three stores and in front of them 
the fishermen and lobstermen meet when they 
are not at work. They sit in the sunshine and 
smoke their pipes, and as they look out over the 
bay they tell many a tale of the stormy seas. 
One of the men who used to sit here was Mark 
Thaw. His hands were rough, and his boots 
often went long without a shine; but his eyes 
were kind, and the stories he told were good to 
hear. 
It was from him that I first learned of 
Hardheart, the gull. And now we must im- 
agine that we have climbed into one of the boats 
at the wharf, and sailed away for a mile to an- 
other island known as No-Man’s-Land. That 
was the home of Hardheart, and there is where 
our story should really have begun. 
No-Man’s-Land is rightly named, for in fact 
it belongs to the birds, as any one can tell who 
will go there in summer and see the great cloud 
of herring gulls that always hover over it. The 
big gray-winged flyers begin to arrive in May 
4 
