he Eperquerie," he added quickly, nodding in front of him.

The island of Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs,
with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun
and softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty,
this youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the
emerald archipelago between the great seas.

The outlines of the coast grew plainer as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer
and nearer. From end to end there was no harbour upon this southern
side. There was no roadway, as it seemed no pathway at all up the
overhanging cliffs-ridges of granite and grey and green rock, belted
with mist, crowned by sun, and fretted by the milky, upcasting surf.
Little islands, like outworks before it, crouched slumberously to the
sea, as a dog lays its head in its paws and hugs the ground close, with
vague, soft-blinking eyes.

By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling,
rising and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their
bodies smooth and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their
feathering tails spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient
air. In the tall cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the
edge of a rocky bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping
to the little ones without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull,
looking-looking out to sea like some watchful defender of a mystic
city. Piercing might be the cries of pain or of joy from the earth, more
piercing were their cries; dark and dreadful might be the woe of those
who went down to the sea in ships, but they shrilled on unheeding, their
yellow beaks still yellowing in the sun, keeping their everlasting watch
and ward.

Now and again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in
among the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks,
and turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak
extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe
birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests,
or on some near sea rocks, sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the tall
bright cliffs and the lightsome legions nestling there.

These swart loiterers by the happy nests of the young were like spirits
of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living,
yet who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the
feast, the impress