ormorants
diving in search of prey, and they came up with eels in their mouths.
One had caught a big eel, which it battered against the rock until it
had killed it; but others gobbled down small eels without the slightest
hesitation. The young birds were the oddest-looking creatures
imaginable. Their covering was a hard black skin, with here and there
black woolly down upon it. The old birds' heads and necks were black,
speckled with white feathers, while the upper part of the body was brown
mingled with black. They had also white patches on their thighs, and
yellow pouches under the throat edged with white. They were fully three
feet long; so that, with their strong beaks, they were formidable
antagonists.

The gulls were even more numerous than the cormorants. Though they kept
out of our way, they did not appear otherwise to fear us. They looked
very large on the wing, as their white feathers glanced in the rays of
the setting sun; but they are not more than half the size of the
cormorant. They act the useful part of scavengers on the coast, and
eagerly pick up all the offal thrown on the shore.

We returned to the yachts, and once more made sail. We got a good view
through our glasses of the old towers of Dunstanborough Castle. As the
wind fell light, we pulled in to have a look at it, papa being anxious
to do so, as he had visited it in his younger days. The weather-beaten
ruin stands on the summit of a black cliff, rising sheer out of the
ocean. Three towers, one square, and the others semicircular, remain,
with the greater portion of the outer wall, enclosing several acres of
green turf, over which, instead of mail-clad warriors, peaceable sheep
now wander. The principal tower overlooks a deep gully or gap in the
rocks, up which the sea, during easterly gales, rushes with tremendous
force and terrific noise, lashed into masses of foam, which leap high
over the crumbling walls. This gully is known by the significant name
of the Rumble Churn. This ocean-circled fortress was erected--so say
the chroniclers--in the fourteenth century, by Thomas, Earl of
Lancaster. Many a tale of siege and border warfare its stones could
tell; for the Cheviot hills--the boundary between Scotland and England--
can be seen from the summit of its battlements. Having bravely held out
for Queen Margaret of Anjou, it was completely dismantled in the reign
of Edward the Fourth, and has ever since remained like a lion deprive