MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS 199 



don before that. But the sea is in me, though I 

 go back beyond the Vikings for it. And there is 

 something of the stormy petrel in us all, I think, 

 for who can meet the little mariner on the waves 

 and not follow him up and down, up and down, 

 till the wonderful wings bring him to Shag 

 Rock? 



Shag is an immense pile ; not a pile of rocks, 

 but a single rude block of weathered basalt, longer 

 than a city "block" and more than three hundred 

 feet high. Wherever birds can find a foothold, 

 and shelf enough for an egg, there they breed, 

 a single pair, a rookery of thousands. The pet- 

 rels nested on the top, coming and going only in 

 the dark; and a night on the summit to see them 

 come in to their burrows was to crown our trip 

 to the Reservation. 



Just to sleep in such a bed would be enough. 

 To wrap one's self in one's blanket as the sun 

 sinks behind the round of the Pacific, to see the 

 night settle down upon the Rocks, to feel the 

 large sea-wind sweep over the summit, to hear 

 the swash on the ledges, the boom in the hollow 

 caverns far below, and, close to one's head, the 

 strange, wild clangor of the sea-birds — it would 



