196 "MID ICY SEAWEED. 
and phalanxes of birds had come to the shore 
to feed there, because the ground was frozen 
and like iron inland. 
You could see them—starlings, chaffinches, 
thrushes, blackbirds, larks, and a dozen others 
—moping in corners; but none seemed to 
know where to look for food, or how. 
It was the little rock-pipit and his party 
who showed them, and you could behold them 
timidly venturing down to the long, sinuous 
tide-line, fluttering away, terror-stricken, at 
each ‘ wave-burst.’ 
The terrible day drew on slowly. The 
starving, moping, half-numbed visitors to the 
shore grew more and more numerous, and 
melted away almost as fast as they came, 
driven back terrified by the appalling cold of 
the wind. 
But the rock-pipits kept gaily on. The 
rougher the sea, the more the food it flung 
up, and plenty of food meant a warm body to 
resist the cold. 
Strange, too, were these visitors, and our 
little rock-pipit and his pals needed to keep 
their sharpest of sharp eyes open. 
Now a company of great, wild geese would 
go clanging and bugling south overhead ; now 
a robber-band of gray crows would come loafing 
by, and stop to murder some half-dead bird, 
