58 SUMMER 



beginning to reach us as flocks of the birds passed 

 around and over our heads. 



The fog was lifting. The thick, wet drift that had 

 threatened our little launch on Tillamook Bar stood 

 clear of the shouldering sea to the westward, and in 

 over the shore, like an upper sea, hung at the fir-girt 

 middles of the mountains, as level and as gray as 

 theseabelow. There was no breeze. The long, smooth 

 swell of the Pacific swung under us and in, until it 

 whitened at the base of the three rocks that rose out 

 of the sea in our course, and that now began to 

 take on form in the foggy distance. Gulls were fly- 

 ing over us, lines of black cormorants and crowds 

 of murres were winging past, but we were still too 

 far away from the looming rocks to see that the gray 

 of their walls was the gray of uncounted colonies of 

 nesting birds, colonies that covered their craggy steeps 

 as, on shore, the green firs clothed the slopes of the 

 Coast Range Mountains up to the hanging fog. 



As we ran on nearer, the sound of the surf about 

 the rocks became audible, the birds in the air grew 

 more numerous, their cries now faintly mingling with 

 the sound of the sea. A hole in the side of the middle 

 Rock, a mere fleck of foam it seemed at first, widened 

 rapidly into an -arching tunnel through which our 

 boat might run ; the swell of the sea began to break 

 over half -sunken ledges; and soon upon us fell the 

 damp shadows of the three great rocks, for now 

 we were looking far up at their sides, where we could 



