82 SUMMER 



gether. While one is brooding, the other is off on 

 its wonderful wings away off in the wake of your 

 ocean steamer, perhaps, miles and miles from shore. 

 But when darkness falls it remembers its nest and 

 speeds home to the rock, taking its place down in 

 the little black burrow, while the mate comes forth 

 and spreads its wings out over the heaving water, 

 not to return, it may be, until the night and the day 

 have passed and twilight falls again. 



We landed on a ledge of Shag Rock, driving off 

 a big bull sea-lion who claimed this particular slab of 

 rock as his own. We backed up close to the shelf in 

 a yawl boat, and as the waves rose and fell, watched 

 our chance to leap from the stern of the little boat 

 to the rock. Thus we landed our cameras, food and 

 water, and other things, then we dragged the boat 

 up, so that, a storm arising or anything happening 

 to the small steamer that had brought us, we might 

 still get away to the shore. 



It was about the middle of the forenoon. All the 

 morning, as we had steamed along, a thick fog had 

 threatened us ; but now the sun broke out, making 

 it possible to use our cameras, and after a hasty 

 lunch we started for the top of the rock a climb 

 that looked impossible, and that was pretty nearly 

 as impossible as it looked. 



It had been a slow, perilous climb ; but, once on 

 the summit, where we could move somewhat freely 

 and use the cameras, we hurried from colony to 



