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CHAPTER A251 
GULLS AND GIBBON 
LL doubt as to the real nature of these horrid 
feastings of the herring-gulls on floating car- 
cases of kittiwakes is now at an end. I had been 
watching the seals in one pool, when, turning to the 
other, I saw, as I thought, two gulls fighting together 
on one of the great rocks in the midst of it—a 
smaller “stack” one might almost call it. Raising 
the glasses, the truth was revealed. It was a herring- 
gull murdering a young kittiwake, and very soon it 
would have been “got done”—as Carlyle says with 
such a gusto—if I had not, in rising to follow it 
more closely, alarmed the murderer, who at once flew 
away. The poor little kittiwake got up—for it had 
been thrown on its back—and stood without moving 
on the rock, presenting a sick and sorry appearance, 
though there was as yet no blood about it, and it did 
not appear to have been seriously hurt. Its only 
chance now was to have flown away, but it stayed and 
stayed, seeming to doze after a while—the certain 
victim of the returning gull, as soon as the latter 
should have watched me off. 
Turning my eyes from this disquieting spectacle— 
one brick in God’s architecture—I looked over the 
water, and there, in this quiet little bay, which seems 
such a haven of rest and peace—i/ mio retiro, one 
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