ing I had Halyard's luggage stowed away in the
cat-boat, and the pretty nurse's effects corded down, with the newly
hatched auk-chicks in a hat-box on top. She and I placed the osier
cage aboard, securing it firmly, and then, throwing tablecloths over
the auks' heads, we led those simple and dignified birds down the path
and across the plank at the little wooden pier. Together we locked up
the house, while Halyard stormed at us both and wheeled himself
furiously up and down the beach below. At the last moment she forgot
her thimble. But we found it, I forget where.

"Come on!" shouted Halyard, waving his shawls furiously; "what the
devil are you about up there?"

He received our explanation with a sniff, and we trundled him aboard
without further ceremony.

"Don't run me across the plank like a steamer trunk!" he shouted, as I
shot him dexterously into the cock-pit. But the wind was dying away,
and I had no time to dispute with him then.

The sun was setting above the pine-clad ridge as our sail flapped and
partly filled, and I cast off, and began a long tack, east by south,
to avoid the spouting rocks on our starboard bow.

The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the black
surf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tipped
wings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth.

Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in the
ocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in the
Atlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen or
unseen, always impresses the human mind--perhaps oppresses it. We were
very silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened to
crimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long after
the rose-tint died out in the zenith.

Our progress was slow; at times, although the sail filled with the
rising land breeze, we scarcely seemed to move at all.

"Of course," said the pretty nurse, "we couldn't be aground in the
deepest hole in the Atlantic."

"Scarcely," said Halyard, sarcastically, "unless we're grounded on a
whale."

"What's that soft thumping?" I asked. "Have we run afoul of a barrel
or log?"

It was almost too dark to see, but I leaned over the rail and swept
the water with my hand.

Instantly something smooth glided under it, like the back of a great
fish, and I jerked my hand back to the tiller. At the same moment the
whole surface of the water seemed to begin to purr, wit