THE SEA-BIRDS' HOME 



59 



TUFTED PUFFINS 



see the birds in their guano-gray rookeries, rookery 

 over rookery, gulls, cormorants, guillemots, puffins, 

 murres, encrusting the sides 

 from tide-line to pinnacles, as the 

 crowding barnacles encrusted 

 the bases from the tide-line 

 *o'-'* down. 



We had not approached with- 

 out protest, for the birds were 

 coming off to meet us, wheel- 

 ing and clacking overhead, the 

 } nearer we drew, in a constantly 

 thickening cloud of lowering 

 wings and tongues. The clamor 

 was indescribable, the tossing 

 flight enough to make one mad 

 with the motion of wings. The air was filled, thick, 

 with the whirling and the screaming, the clacking, 

 ' the honking, close to our ears, and high up in the 

 ' peaks, and far out over the waves. Never had I been 

 .; in this world before. Was I on my earth? or had I 

 t suddenly wakened up in some old sea world where 

 ; there was no dry land, no life but this? 



We rounded the outer or Shag Rock and headed 

 > slowly in opposite the yawning hole of the middle 

 3 Rock as into some mighty cave, so sheer and shadowy 

 rose the walls above us, so like to cavern thunder 

 was the throbbing of the surf through the hollow 

 l / s arches, was the flapping and screaming of the birds 



^fi*& '***&&& '/s****** *J~*. 



