.

"What on earth have you got?" I exclaimed, approaching as near as I
could, "and how did you get out there?"

"Don't you come any closer!" she cried. "You'll sink up to your waist!
I got here by treading on the little hummocks and holding on to that
dead branch; but don't you take hold of it, for you'll break it off,
and then I can't get back."

"But what is that thing?" I repeated.

"It's a young pelican," she replied. "I found a lot of nests on the
ground over there, and this was in one of them. I chased it all about,
until it flopped out here and hid itself on the other side of this
tree. Then I came out quietly and caught it. But how am I going to get
it to you?"

This seemed, indeed, a problem. Euphemia declared that she needed both
hands to work her way back by the means of the long, horizontal limb
which had assisted her passage to the place where she sat, and she also
needed both hands to hold her prize. It was likewise plain that I could
not get to her. Indeed, I could not see how her light steps had taken
her over the soft and marshy ground that lay between us. I suggested
that she should throw the pelican to me. This she declined to do.

"I could never throw it so far," she said, "and it would surely get
away. I don't want to lose this pelican, for I believe it is the last
one on the island. If there are other young ones, they have scuttled
off by this time, and I should dreadfully hate to go back to the yacht
without any pelican at all."

"I don't call that much of one," I said.

"It's a real pelican for all that," she replied, "and about as curious
a bird as I ever saw. Its wings won't stretch out seven feet, to be
sure."

"About seven inches," I suggested.

"But it is a great deal easier to carry a young one like this," she
persisted, "and I expect a baby pelican is a much more uncommon sight
in the North than a grown one."

"No doubt of it," I said. "We must keep him now you've got him. Can't
you kill him?"

"I've no way of killing him," returned Euphemia. "I wonder if you could
shoot him if I were to hold him out."

This, with a shot-gun, I positively declined to do. Even if I had had a
rifle, I suggested that she might swerve. For a few moments we remained
nonplussed. I could not get to Euphemia at all, and she could not get
to me unless she released her bird, and this she was determined not to
do.

"Euphemia," I said, presently, "the ground seems hard a little way in
front of y