y, but if you wet them they're
tough, and no water will go through them. Mr. Jimmy puts on his
_kamelinka_, and gets in the bidarka and ties the hood around his waist,
and there he is, no matter how high the sea runs. No water gets into the
boat, and when he comes home he is dry as when he started. Pretty good
scheme, isn't it?"

They watched Jimmy for a time at his work before they finished
stretching all the meat. Then they cleaned the codfish and put them
inside the hut, so that the crows could not get them. Over the fresh
meat on the scaffold they now spread some damp grass, because it was
their intention to leave the place for a little while.

"We'll make a hunt this afternoon," said Rob, "and see whether we can
find any gull eggs. First we want to see what our resources are, and
after that we can help ourselves as need be."

Accordingly, after they had taken the cargo out of the dory, and thus
completed their labors for the time, they all four embarked in the dory,
pushed rapidly down the creek, and out into the open waters of the bay.
Here, a half-mile ahead of them, below the mouth of the creek, they saw
some rough pinnacles of rock, over which soared thousands of sea-birds.
As they approached these rocks they found a narrow beach wide enough to
hold the dory. It took them but a few moments' climb to gather all the
eggs they wanted. These they were obliged to carry in their pockets or
in the folds of their jackets. They trusted Jimmy to tell them which
were fresh. Jimmy seemed always to know what ought to be done, and now
without any advice he left the boys and proceeded to climb up to the
steeper part of the rocks, where the nests of the gulls and sea-murres
were so thick that he could scarcely avoid crushing the eggs as he
walked. Evidently it was not eggs he sought. Agile as a cat, he climbed
to the top of a sheer face of rock, and leaning over put his hand into a
hole. A moment later the boys saw a dark body hurtle through the air and
fall on the beach. It proved to be a stout, heavy, dark-colored bird
with a strong, parrot-like beak and a crest of long yellow feathers on
each side of the head.

"That's a sea-parrot," said Rob, picking it up. "Look out, Jesse, there
comes another!"

Sure enough, one after another of the dead bodies of the sea-parrots
fell on the narrow beach, until two or three dozen were lying there.

Jimmy ceased his labors, climbed down the rocks, and calmly began to
skin off the b