THE SEA-BIRDS' HOME 



59 



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 ? HH\ 



the bases from the tide-line ^S-^ 



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 

 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 

 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 

 arches, was the flapping and screaming of the birds 



TUFTED PUFFINS 



