WATCHING SHAGS AND GUILLEMOTS 171 



beats it into foam so that it looks like the wake of 

 a steamer, he raises only a little silvery sprinkling of 

 spray, for he but just flips the surface of it with the 

 tips of his quill feathers. All the while his little, 

 upturned, fanned tail keeps waggle - waggling, but 

 this, too, acts more like a light shuttlecock than a 

 powerful screw. Nor does he dip so much or make 

 such violent motions as of a mad water-dance. The 

 cormorant's performance is strong an epic. His 

 is lyrical rather. No lofty genius but a pretty little 

 minor poet is the black guillemot, and after each 

 little water-verselet he rises pleasedly and gives his 

 wings an applausive little shake. You might think 

 he was clapping them and himself." 



Gargoyle idylls, " Now I have found a nest with 

 the bird on it, to see and watch. It was on a ledge, 

 and just within the mouth of one of those long, 

 narrowing, throat-like caverns into and out of which 

 the sea with all sorts of strange, sullen noises licks 

 like a tongue. The bird, who had seen me, con- 

 tinued for a long time afterwards to crane about 

 its long neck from side to side or up and down 

 over the nest, in doing which it had a very demoniac 

 appearance, suggesting some evil being in its dark 

 abode, or even the principle of evil itself. As it was 

 impossible for me to watch it without my head being 

 visible over the edge of the rock I was on, I collected 

 a number of loose flat stones that lay on the turf 

 above, and, at the cost of a good deal of time and 

 labour, made a kind of wall or sconce with loopholes 

 in it, through which I could look, yet be invisible. 

 Presently the bird's mate came flying into the cavern, 

 and wheeling up as it entered, alighted on a sloping 



