DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 127 



than to the degrees of attractiveness in the allure- 

 ments. 



On the short journey home we watched the gannet 

 that we had left busy at their sport. It is a strange 

 sight to see them hovering at perhaps 100 feet abo\e 

 the sea, and then, v.ith necks stretched out and down- 

 wards, dive with their gooselike weight into the water. 

 The common belief is that they fall directly on the hsh 

 that they have marked out for prey; I am more 

 inclined to think that their dive from such a height 

 is meant to take them beneath the shoal and that it is 

 in their ascent to the surface that they seize a lish. 



Our captures were a splendid sight, and, on our 

 landing, were shown with pride to those who av/aited 

 us, and who expressed their wonder in such length of 

 glowing terms that the children who had crowded 

 roimd began to fear that they would gain no notice 

 for their captures which they had made amongst the 

 stones in httle pools the receding tide had left. Strange 

 creatures, some of them, that they desired to know the 

 names of, but their appeals to fp.ther, uncle, and grand- 

 father only proved to them, as children's questions 

 often do, how strangely ignorant grown-up people are. 



