MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS 



85 



^.kittens, and as if he might have been at home on 

 ^kitchen floor, instead of dangling down the face o 

 a cliff two hundred or more feet above the sea. 



Some forty feet from the waves was a weathered 

 [niche, or shelf, eight or ten feet wide. Here we 

 stopped for the night. The wind was from the other 

 v side of the rock ; the overhanging ledge protected us 

 <>'somewhat from above, though the mist swept about 

 / the steep walls to us, and the drizzle dripped from 

 m. overhead. But as I pulled my blanket about me and 

 jjS^lay down beside the other men the thought of what 

 <v w|the night must be on the summit made the hard, 

 \ ' >damp rock under me seem the softest and warmest 



] of beds. 



sRk But what a place was this to sleep in ! this nar- 

 row ledge with a rookery of wild sea-birds just above 

 ^SiJ/it, with the den of a wild sea-beast just below it, 

 ^3 with the storm-swept sky shut down upon it, and the 

 4HPIsea, the crawling, sinister sea, coiling and uncoiling 

 '3 its laving folds about it, as with endless undulations 

 jfjSJttit slipped over the sunken ledges and swam round 

 ^and round the rock. 



What a place was this to sleep ! I could not sleep. 

 :I was as wakeful as the wild beasts that come forth 

 at night to seek their prey. I must catch a glimpse 

 of Night through her veil of mist, the gray, ghostly 

 Night, as she came down the long, rolling slope 

 of the sea, and I must listen, for my very fingers 

 , seemed to have ears, so many were the sounds, and; 



