AN EVENING ON HALL ISLAND 233 



cry made a perfect tumult of sound. Horned puffins 

 stood here and there, showing their orange-vermilion 

 feet, their bright-yellow bills tipped with the same orange- 

 red, their white breasts and faces and dark-brown backs, 

 with a line of black extending around the face and bound- 

 ing it. As we looked over the cliffs we saw a flock of 

 harlequin ducks swimming in the water hundreds of feet 

 below. Fulmars were flying about here and there, and 

 one was seen sitting upon her egg on a ledge of the cliff. 



As I stood watching the birds, a little paroquet auklet 

 sat confidingly close beside me upon the cliff. It had a 

 red, snub, upturned bill, gray feet, and a fine white line 

 of feathers extending back of the eye. It sat alone on 

 the rocks with its feet planted squarely upon the ground, 

 holding the body erect; its breast was white, its back dark 

 grayish-brown and its throat light grayish-brown a 

 sober little fellow with a note that seemed like a low, 

 trembling, squeaky wail. I noticed a cormorant with 

 conspicuous white flank patches (probably the red-faced 

 cormorant) and many kittiwake gulls. Another gull that 

 we found here, for the first time, was in the purity of its plu- 

 mage as lovely among sea birds as the hyperborean snow- 

 flake among land birds. Indeed the great Point Barrow 

 gull is without a trace of black the snowy whiteness of 

 its plumage being relieved only by the pale pearl-blue of 

 its mantle, and by its bright-yellow beak, spotted with 

 vermilion near the tip of the lower mandible. It is one 

 of the noblest of sea birds, and the picture of a creature 

 so lovely in such a dreary region, swinging about the dark 

 storm-swept cliffs of Bering Sea, riding upon waves and 

 air and mastering them, is one that once seen will long 

 haunt the memory. 



At eleven o'clock the steamer returned and we left the 

 beach, the fire of driftwood on the shore still glowing 

 through the mist as we rowed away. 



