to be only a round basin of rock, full of the purest water, and
beyond a narrow bank of gravel. Then they saw the eye of the sea shining
in, and the edge of a white breaker lashing into the mouth of the cave.

But as they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight
which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique
and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the
pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white
eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing
turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they
saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken
that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and
patiently and pathetically waggle that strange head.

"It is the Great Auk itself--we have found it!" said Anna in a hushed
whisper.

"Hold the candle till I kill it with a stone--or, see! with this bit of
timber."

"Wait!" said Anna. "It looks so old and feeble!"

"Our hundred pounds," said Simeon.

"It looks exactly like your grandfather," said Anna; "look at his
eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!"

"Wouldn't I just--for a hundred pounds!" said Simeon briskly, looking
for a larger stone.

"Don't let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is
enough. None shall be so great as we."

The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just
at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of
the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled
over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place.
Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.

Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after
him.

The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading
right for the North and the Iceland skerries--where, it may be, he
abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the
island of Suliscanna.

The children reached home very late that night, and were received with
varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people
of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk
swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.

BOOK SECOND

INTIMACIES

I

_Take cedar, take the creamy card,
With regal head at angle dight;
And t