The Gull Pond 31 



other is the sight that waits him. A myriad black 

 and white things are fluttering and calling over a 

 pond of many islands ; their plumage is a-sheen with 

 love and spring ; their voices, trained amid rock and 

 breaker, are harmonised into such an inimitable echo 

 of the sea's music as might convince the most doubting 

 that, even as the piping wind has been the music- 

 master of lesser songsters, so the mew has learned his 

 note from the voices of his native element. Wave 

 a white handkerchief till all but the most maternal 

 of mothers have sprung with a gleam into the noisy 

 circle, and you might imagine a nor'-easter was driving 

 his white water-hounds upon a rocky coast. Sit down 

 quietly on a tree-stump till the excitement subsides, 

 and lo ! the noise is diminished to that of summer 

 waves on a sandy shore. Except in the dead of 

 night it is never absolutely stilled. There is such a 

 constant coming and going, a bickering and gossiping 

 and jabbering, as makes you think of the motion of a 

 bee-hive and the riot of a rookery. 



The gull is more picturesque than the rook, but he 

 has not that black citizen's sturdy and staying quali- 

 ties. You may shoot a rookery till you think that 

 scarce a fledgling can be left ; and yet the parents 

 who hate and fear gunpowder with a peculiar intensity 

 will reappear next season and brave it all over 

 again. A gull does not lend itself twice to an affront 

 of that sort. Many old haunts have been forsaken for 

 what the rooks would think no reason at all. For 



