andy beach upon which broke a huge surf, and which was covered
with myriads of seals. It was from them that the great bellowing went
up.

"A rookery!" I cried. "Now are we indeed saved. There must be men and
cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters. Possibly there is a
station ashore."

But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, "Still bad,
but not so bad. And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shall drift by
that next headland and come upon a perfectly sheltered beach, where we
may land without wetting our feet."

And the gods were kind. The first and second headlands were directly in
line with the south-west wind; but once around the second,--and we went
perilously near,--we picked up the third headland, still in line with the
wind and with the other two. But the cove that intervened! It
penetrated deep into the land, and the tide, setting in, drifted us under
the shelter of the point. Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but
smooth ground-swell, and I took in the sea-anchor and began to row. From
the point the shore curved away, more and more to the south and west,
until at last it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-locked
harbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny ripples where
vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from over the
frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feet inshore.

Here were no seals whatever. The boat's stern touched the hard shingle.
I sprang out, extending my hand to Maud. The next moment she was beside
me. As my fingers released hers, she clutched for my arm hastily. At
the same moment I swayed, as about to fall to the sand. This was the
startling effect of the cessation of motion. We had been so long upon
the moving, rocking sea that the stable land was a shock to us. We
expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to
swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced
ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their
non-occurrence quite overcame our equilibrium.

"I really must sit down," Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy
gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand.

I attended to making the boat secure and joined her. Thus we landed on
Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from long custom of the
sea.

CHAPTER XXIX

"Fool!" I cried aloud in my vexation.

I had unloaded the boat and carried its co