CHAPTER XXIV 



A HEBRIDEAN ISLAND AND ITS BIRDS 



4 WAY to the west of the Isle of Mull — that romantic land 

 /\ of hill and glen — ^and set in the tireless waters of the 

 broad Atlantic is the island of which I write. 



In olden days a crofter and his family had their home 

 here and eked out a precarious existence from their small 

 croft and the fishing. But for many years now the island 

 has been deserted and is given over to the sea birds and to 

 the tribe of the seals. Lying as it does full open to the 

 south-west where the nearest land is the far-distant American 

 coast, the island stands, a diminutive barrier, against the 

 force of the Atlantic swell which, during the season of storms, 

 sweeps the smooth-worn rocks and thunders on the outlying 

 reefs for weeks on end. But with the coming of February, 

 though the storms may rage still with great violence, the air 

 is laden with a curious intangible essence — ^the forerunner of 

 the Spirit of Spring. 



First of all to respond to this impulse is the pair of dark 

 ravens that have their home on the island. Before February 

 is out the new nest is complete— or maybe, the birds content 

 themselves with repairing the nest they occupied the previous 

 season — and if the spring be an early one the hen is brooding 

 on her clutch of greenish rnottled eggs by the first days of 

 March. Most hardy of birds is the raven. No snowfall is 

 sufficiently severe to compel her to desert her eggs ; she broods 

 through a blizzard undismayed. 



But on these islands of the Atlantic snow rarely lies, and 

 the raven is able to hatch out her brood undisturbed by ice 

 and snow, and secure from the unwelcome attentions of game- 

 I 113 



