A NEW-FANGLED EXTRACTOR 223 



My extractor was a complicated new-fangled patent 

 invention, and already that day it had caused me to lose 

 a pair of Buffon's skuas. I had shot a young dunlin on 

 the muddy margin of the inland sea, breaking with the 

 same barrel the wing of an old dunlin ; with the second 

 barrel I killed a Little stint. The wounded bird lay a 

 few yards off, when suddenly, down there flew upon it a 

 couple of Buffon's skuas, who quarrelled over it and 

 carried it off before — unable to reload — I could wade 

 through the mud to the rescue. 



After securing the owl, I carried my trophy home in 

 triumph, overtaking my companion by the way. On 

 reaching the wreck, we finally settled the question of 

 evening or morning. We satisfactorily established that 

 it was the former, so we dined and went to bed again. 



The next day the gale continued, but there was some 

 sunshine, and the cold kept the mosquitoes at bay. I 

 spent my morning superintending the cooking of the 

 swan our men had brought the preceding day. Mean- 

 while Harvie-Brown went out to the far end of the 

 inland sea, and got a little distance from the spot where 

 we had found the last nest of the Little stint. He 

 came upon two more. We had by this time twenty of 

 these birds' eggs ; all miniature dunlins' eggs, and like 

 them, varying in colour. These two nests were not built 

 on the tundra proper, but on the feeding-ground — a flat 

 sandy strip of land on which grew short grass and bunches 

 of a thick-leaved yellow-flowering plant, sprinkled here 

 and there with dried-up or drying pools, and with drift- 

 wood lying scattered about in all directions. The tundra 

 stops at some 150 yards from the seashore, and this 

 stretch of feeding ground lies between it and the water's 

 edge. 



After lunching on the baked breast of the swan, I 



