220 THE LAND'S END 



places on the coast, but they did not protect them 

 from persecution, although the chief persecutors were 

 their own children. People, natives and visitors, 

 amused themselves by shooting the gulls along the 

 cliff and in the harbour. Harrying the gulls was the 

 most popular amusement of the boys ; they were 

 throwing stones at them all day long and caught 

 them with baited hooks and set gins baited with fish 

 on the sands and no person forbade them. Then 

 Mr. Ebblethwaite appeared on the scene. He came 

 from a town in the north of England, in broken 

 health, and here he stayed a number of years, living 

 alone in a small house down by the waterside. He 

 was very fond of the gulls and fed them every day, 

 but his example had no effect on others, nor did his 

 words when he went about day after day on the 

 beach trying to persuade people to desist from these 

 senseless brutalities. Finally he succeeded in getting 

 a certain number of boys summoned for cruelty 

 before the magistrates, and though no convictions 

 followed nor could be obtained, since there was no 

 law or by-law to help him in such a case, he yet 

 in this indirect way accomplished his object. He 

 made himself unpopular, and was jeered and looked 

 black at and denounced as an interfering person, es- 

 pecially by the women, but some of the fishermen 

 now began to pluck up spirit and second his efforts, 

 and in a little while it came to be understood that, 

 law or no law, the gulls must not be persecuted. 



That is what Mr. Ebblethwaite did. For me it 

 was to " say something," and I have now said it. 



