had never before seen, clambering over their rocks.

What was different about these two? They had their young ones to
protect. Yes, but so had every bird in the great colony its young one,
or its egg, to protect, yet all the others had gone. Did these two
have more mother-love than the others? And hence, more courage, more
intelligence?

We took another step toward them, and one of the two birds sprang into
the air, knocking her baby over and over with the stroke of her wing,
and coming within an inch of hurling it across the rim to be battered
on the ledges below. The other bird raised her wings to follow, then
clapped them back over her baby. Fear is the most contagious thing in
the world; and that flap of fear by the other bird thrilled her, too,
but as she had withstood the stampede of the colony, so she caught
herself again and held on.

She was now alone on the bare top of the rock, with ten thousand
circling birds screaming to her in the air above, and with two men
creeping up to her with a big black camera that clicked ominously. She
let the multitude scream, and with threatening beak watched the two men
come on. A motherless baby, spying her, ran down the rock squealing
for his life. She spread a wing, put her bill behind him and shoved him
quickly in out of sight with her own baby. The man with the camera saw
the act, for I heard his machine click, and I heard him say something
under his breath that you would hardly expect a mere man and a
game-warden to say. But most men have a good deal of the mother in them;
and the old bird had acted with such decision, such courage, such swift,
compelling instinct, that any man, short of the wildest savage, would
have felt his heart quicken at the sight.

"Just how compelling might that mother-instinct be?" I wondered. "Just
how much would that mother-love stand?" I had dropped to my knees, and
on all fours had crept up within about three feet of the bird. She still
had chance for flight. Would she allow me to crawl any nearer? Slowly,
very slowly, I stretched forward on my hands, like a measuring-worm,
until my body lay flat on the rocks, and my fingers were within three
INCHES of her. But her wings were twitching, a wild light danced in her
eyes, and her head turned toward the sea.

For a whole minute I did not stir. I was watching--and the wings again
began to tighten about the babies, the wild light in the eyes died down,
the long, sharp beak turned once more tow