tting very still among the rocks. _Pip, pip, pip,
hurrah!_ they piped as they came down.

But the mother bird, who had noted me and my pile of fish the first
thing as she rounded the point, swept in swiftly with a curious,
half-angry, half-anxious chiding that I had never heard from her
before,--_Chip, chip, chip! Chip! Chip!_--growing sharper and shriller
at each repetition, till they heeded it and swerved aside. As I looked
up they were just over my head, looking down at me now with eager,
wondering eyes. Then they were led aside in a wide circle and talked to
with wise, quiet whistlings before they were sent back to their fishing
again.

And now as they sweep round and round over the edge of a shoal, one of
the little fellows sees a fish and drops lower to follow it. The mother
sees it too; notes that the fish is slanting up to the surface, and
wisely lets the young fisherman alone. He is too near the water now; the
glare and the dancing waves bother him; he loses his gleam of silver in
the flash of a whitecap. Mother bird mounts higher, and whistles him up
where he can see better. But there is the fish again, and the youngster,
hungry and heedless, sets his wings for a swoop. _Chip, chip!_ "wait,
he's going down," cautions the mother; but the little fellow, too
hungry to wait, shoots down like an arrow. He is a yard above the
surface when a big whitecap jumps up at him and frightens him. He
hesitates, swerves, flaps lustily to save himself. Then under the
whitecap is a gleam of silver again. Down he goes on the instant,--_ugh!
boo!_--like a boy taking his first dive. He is out of sight for a full
moment, while two waves race over him, and I hold my breath waiting for
him to come up. Then he bursts out, sputtering and shaking himself, and
of course without his fish.

As he rises heavily the mother, who has been circling over him whistling
advice and comfort, stops short with a single blow of her pinions
against the air. She has seen the same fish, watched him shoot away
under the plunge of her little one, and now sees him glancing up to the
edge of the shoal where the minnows are playing. She knows that the
young pupils are growing discouraged, and that the time has come to
hearten them. _Chip, chip!_--"watch, I'll show you," she
whistles--_Cheeeep!_ with a sharp up-slide at the end, which I soon grow
to recognize as the signal to strike. At the cry she sets her wings and
shoots downward with strong, even plunge,