A DAY BY THE SEA. 113 
weed, which they knew very well how to fling 
aside; and then something moving, a mere 
glisten, it may be, by a tiny pool, sent the 
mother-rook hopping ungainly hops in that 
direction, and before she well knew what she 
was doing, she had pulled an eighteen-inch eel 
up on the mud. 
The sight of the wriggling thing sent her 
scuttling out of reach for dear life when she 
realised its size, and then they sat down to 
besiege it by a series of tweaks, lacking pluck 
to hop in and actually kill. 
An eel, however, can squirm like—well, 
like an eel. This one got round the young 
rook’s neck, and the bird ‘towered,’ so that 
the amazed parent beheld her son go up like 
a slow rocket to a speck, and the eel come 
down again like the stick thereof when it 
finally untwined. . 
This almost finished friend eel, and all but 
did for young rook as well; and mamma was 
just about to sidle in and feast, when wings, 
like the wings of Azrael, hanging over her, 
made her look up, and, falling sideways, flee 
for her life from the presence of a great black- 
backed gull, whose pinions appeared to be 
about six feet across. 
He scientifically bashed out what life the 
eel may have had left as a man uses a rope- 
