22 THE LAND'S END 



and scared them off. He said afterwards that they 

 had devoured half his catch, yet the men who had 

 been standing by looking on had made no real attempt 

 to save the fish. 



The gulls know their fiends very well ; with the 

 man in sea-boots and oilskins they are tamer than any 

 domestic bird ; they will take food from his hands 

 and love to settle to rest on the boats and to sit 

 perched like swallows on the mast top. They have 

 not the same confidence towards strangers, and they 

 positively dislike small boys. When boys appear 

 they fly away to a distance. One evening, the men 

 being out of sight, I found three urchins amusing 

 themselves by throwing stones at a few small gulls 

 flying about the sand in search of scraps. " What 

 would you get," I asked them, "if one of the men 

 caught you stoning the gulls ? " " Oh ! " cried the 

 biggest of the three, drawing his head down between 

 his shoulders in a most expressive way, "we'd get our 

 ears well cuffed." " Very well," I said, " I'm here in 

 their place to-day to look after the birds." In a 

 moment they dropped their stones and taking to their 

 heels vanished in a neighbouring court. 



Yet these very boys in a few years' time, when they 

 will be in the boats too, will have the same feeling as 

 the men, and be ready to inflict the severest punish- 

 ment on any youngster they may catch throwing a 

 pebble at one of their sacred birds ! 



One day I caught sight of a large ivory-white gull 

 of an unknown species sitting on the water some 

 distance from the shore, and was very anxious to see 



