SEVEN MARLIN SWORDFISH IN ONE DAY 



and grand in the blue. He soared, he floated, he 

 sailed, and then, away across the skies he flew, 

 swift as an arrow, to slow and circle again, and 

 swoop up high and higher, wide-winged and free, 

 ringed in the azure blue, and then like a thunder- 

 bolt he fell, to vanish beyond the crags. 



Again I saw right before me a small brown hawk, 

 poised motionless, resting on the wind, with quiver- 

 ing wings, and he hung there, looking down for his 

 prey — some luckless lizard or rat. He seemed sus- 

 pended on wires. There, down like a brown flash 

 he was gone, and surely that swoop meant a desert 

 tragedy. 



I heard the bleat of a lamb or kid, and it pierced 

 the melancholy roar of the sea. 



If there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there 

 was indeed rapture here high above it, blown upon 

 by the sweet, soft winds. I heard the bleat close at 

 hand. Turning, I saw a she-goat with little kid 

 scarce a foot high. She crossed a patch of cactus. 

 The kid essayed to follow here, but found the way 

 too thorny. He bleated — a tiny, pin-pointed bleat 

 — and his mother turned to answer encouragingly. 

 He leaped over a cactus, attempted another, and, 

 failing, fell on the sharp prickers. He bleated in 

 distress and scrambled out of that hard and pain- 

 ful place. The mother came around, and presently, 

 reunited, they went on, to disappear. 



The island seemed consecrated to sun and sea. 

 It lay out of the latitude of ships. Only a few 

 Mexican sheep-herders lived there, up at the east 

 end where less-rugged land allowed pasture for their 

 flocks. A little rain falls during the winter month;;, 



199 



