MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS 85 



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

 kitchen floor, instead of dangling down the face of 

 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 

 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 

 overhead. But as I pulled my blanket about me and 

 lay down beside the other men the thought of what 

 the night must be on the summit made the hard, 

 damp rock under me seem the softest and warmest 

 of beds. 



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

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

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

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

 sea, the crawling, sinister sea, coiling and uncoiling 

 its laving folds about it, as with endless undulations 

 it 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 



