ls--"Reddies" we boys called them--with
here and there a rare and beautiful cowrie of banded jet black and
pearly white. The sea-wall of rock has here but few pools, being split
up into long, deep, and narrow chasms, into which the gentle ocean swell
comes with strange gurglings and hissings, and groan-like sounds, and
tiny jets of spray spout up from hundreds of air-holes through the
hollow crust of rock. Here for the first time since the town was left,
are heard the cries of land birds; for in the wild apple and rugged
honeysuckle trees which grow on the rich, red soil of the spurs they are
there in plenty--crocketts, king parrots, leatherheads, "butcher" and
"bell" birds, and the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon--while deep within
the silent gullies you constantly hear the little black scrub wallabies
leaping through the undergrowth and fallen leaves, to hide in still
darker forest recesses above.

There are snakes here, too. Everywhere their sinuous tracks are visible
on the sand, criss-crossing with the more defined scratchy markings of
those of iguanas. The latter we know come down to carry off any dead
fish cast ashore by the waves, or to seize any live ones which may be
imprisoned in a shallow pool; but what brings the deadly brown and black
snakes down to the edge of _salt_ water at night time?

Point after point, tiny bay after bay, and then we come to a wider
expanse of clear, stoneless beach, at the farther end of which a huge
boulder of jagged, yellow rock, covered on the summit with a thick
mantle of a pale green, fleshly-leaved creeper, bearing a pink flower.
It stands in a deep pool about a hundred yards in circumference, and as
like as not we shall find the surface of the water covered by thousands
of green-backed, red-billed garfish and silvery mullet, whose very
numbers prevent them from escaping. Scores of them leap out upon the
sand, and lie there with panting gill and flapping tail. It is a great
place for us boys, for here at low tides in the winter we strip off, and
with naked hands catch the mullet and gars and silvery-sided trumpeters,
and throw them out on the beach, to be grilled later on over a fire of
glowing honeysuckle cobs, and eaten without salt. What boy does care
about such a thing as salt at such times, when his eye is bright and his
skin glows with the flush of health, and the soft murmuring of the sea
is mingling in his ears with the thrilling call of the birds, and the
rustling hum o