ould like to shoot," exclaimed Fred,
pointing to a bird that hovered over his head, and throwing forward the
muzzle of his gun.

"Fire away, then," said his friend, stepping back a pace.

Fred, being unaccustomed to the use of fire-arms, took a wavering aim
and fired.

"What a bother! I've missed it!"

"Try again," remarked Tom with a quiet smile, as the whole cliff vomited
forth an innumerable host of birds, whose cries were perfectly
deafening.

"It's my opinion," said Fred with a comical grin, "that if I shut my
eyes and point upwards I can't help hitting something; but I
particularly want yon fellow, because he's beautifully marked. Ah! I see
him sitting on a rock yonder, so here goes once more."

Fred now proceeded towards the coveted bird in the fashion that is known
by the name of _stalking_--that is, creeping as close up to your game as
possible, so as to get a good shot; and it said much for his patience
and his future success the careful manner in which, on this occasion, he
wound himself in and out among the rocks and blocks of ice on the shore
in the hope of obtaining that sea-gull. At last he succeeded in getting
to within about fifteen yards of it, and then, resting his musket on a
lump of ice, and taking an aim so long and steadily that his companion
began to fancy he must have gone to sleep, he fired, and blew the gull
to atoms! There was scarcely so much as a shred of it to be found.

Fred bore his disappointment and discomfiture manfully. He formed a
resolution then and there to become a good shot, and although he did not
succeed exactly in becoming so that day, he nevertheless managed to put
several fine specimens of gulls and an auk into his bag. The last bird
amused him much, being a creature with a dumpy little body and a beak of
preposterously large size and comical aspect. There were also a great
number of eider-ducks flying about, but they failed to procure a
specimen.

Singleton was equally successful in his scientific researches. He found
several beautifully green mosses, one species of which was studded with
pale yellow flowers, and in one place, where a stream trickled down the
steep sides of the cliffs, he discovered a flower-growth which was rich
in variety of colouring. Amid several kinds of tufted grasses were seen
growing a small purple flower and the white star of the chickweed; The
sight of all this richness of vegetation growing in a little spot close
beside the snow, and a