THE SEA HAWK 179 
balls of dense grey down that sullenly they will 
suffer capture. Birdlings only two or three weeks 
older have to be approached with the utmost 
circumspection. “I am a part of all that I have 
seen,” the youthful Sea Hawk seems to feel. 
Rather than be taken from the rocks they have 
learned at so early an age to put their trust in, 
chicks will run almost desperately, as if wild 
with apprehension, along the more and more 
steeply sloping crags. They do not seem to be 
frightened ; indeed rather they appear to lack 
the sense of all other fear in their intense desire 
of freedom. If rashly followed, all idea of self- 
preservation is abandoned ; they precipitate them- 
selves over the rocks into the sea beneath. Like 
Rebecca at the castle of Torquilstone, who would 
rather trust her body to the stones below her 
turret window than her honour to the Templar, 
so the Sea Hawk fledgeling will prefer death to 
the desecrating touch of man, 
The open spaces of the island were parcelled 
out amongst its Sea Hawk inhabitants. There 
was no trespassing or poaching ; the demarcations 
of the various holdings were never transgressed. 
A general good-fellowship prevailed ; the greeting 
passing between birds in the sky and those on land 
was cheerful and friendly. During these pictur- 
esque salutations the wings are uplifted and fully 
stretched as if to show the quills of the primaries, 
