ernel would be sure to come as soon as the tide served at
night, and he would net be sorry for a change of diet; meanwhile, he
could get along all right with the unwilling assistance of the puffins.

The birds had all crept out of their hiding-places, and were wheeling
and diving and making up for lost time and busily discussing late events
at the tops of their voices whenever their bills were not otherwise
occupied. Where they had all hidden themselves during the storm, he
could not imagine, but there seemed to be as many of them as ever, and
they were all quite happy and quarrelsome, except the cormorants, who
were so ravenous that they could not spare a moment from their diving
and gobbling, even to quarrel with their neighbours.

He levied on the puffins again, and, after a meal, prowled curiously
about his rock to see what damage the storm had done, but to his
surprise found almost none.

It seemed incredible that all should be the same after the deadly
onslaught of the gale. But it was only in the valley of rocks that he
found any consequences.

There the huge boulders had been hurled about like marbles: some had
been tossed overboard, and some, in their fantastic up-piling, spoke
eloquently of all they had suffered.

But one grim--though to him wholly gracious--deed the storm had wrought
there. For, out of the pool where the devil-fish dwelt, its monstrous
limbs streamed up and lay over the sloping rocks, and he dared not
venture near. But, in the afternoon when he came again to look at it,
and found it still in the same attitude, something about it struck him
as odd and unusual.

The great tentacles had never moved, so far as he could see, and there
was surely something wrong with a devil-fish that did not move.

He hurled a stone, picked out of the landslip at the corner, and hit a
tentacle full and fair with a dull thud like leather. But the beast
never moved.

He was suspicious of the wily one, however. The devil, he knew, was
sometimes busiest when he made least show of business. And it was not
till next morning, when he found the monster still as before, that he
ventured down to the pool and looked into it, and saw what had happened.

The waves had hurled a huge boulder into it--and there you may see it to
this day--and it had fallen on the devil-fish and ground him flat, and
purged the rock of a horror.

Gard examined the hideous tentacles with the curiosity of intensest
repulsion; yet could no