all its graceful evolutions, and I felt that it was flying
and floating and gliding to and fro, and round and round, now up, now
down, on purpose to show off its powers to me, for it never occurred to
me that the bird was waiting till my eyes were closed to make a pounce
down upon the big basket and help itself to the prawns.

No, it all seemed done for my special benefit, and lulled by the lapping
of the sea, and with the fanning motion of the gull's wings having a
curiously drowsy effect, I lay there watching--watching, till I seemed
to be able to float with the gull, and to be gliding onward and onward
through space, up and down, up and down, in a soft billowy, heaving
movement, with the blue sky above me, the green cliff-side draped with
oak and ivy below, and all about me, and pervading me and sustaining me
as the sea did when I swam, there was the soft pure air.

Was I a gull or myself? I did not know, only that I seemed to be
floating deliciously on with wide-spread invisible wings, and that there
was no such thing as the earth and shore, over which I laboriously
plodded, for me.

It was one soft dreamy ecstasy, such as comes to the weary sleeping in
the summer breeze out in the open air. Now and then I seemed to hear
the wild softened harshness of the gull's cry, then all was still again,
and I was floating on and on, wishing nothing, wanting nothing, only to
go on, when all at once a huge roc-like bird seemed to sweep over
between me and the sunshine, to grasp me as Sindbad was seized, and
raise me up.

But this roc spoke and cried harshly:

"Quick! Wake up! You have been to sleep."

"Sleep?" I said, rousing myself. "Sleep?"

"Yes; we've all been to sleep, and--Here, Bob! Wake up! Wake up!"

He shook Bob Chowne, who was so sound that it was with difficulty he
could be made to sit up, and in that little interval I realised why it
was that Bigley looked so scared.

It was plain enough: tired out with our prawning, we had been
thoughtless enough to let our weariness get the better of us, and while
we had slept the enemy had not only approached, but surrounded us and
cut us off from the shore. In fact, as we stared about us, a wave
struck the rock and sent its soft spray right up to where we were
standing.

"Here, what's the matter?" cried Bob. "I say, what is it? Oh, I say,
where are the prawns?"

Prawns? They and the baskets were far away now, while the nets might be
anywhere. Between