ed hungry men for killing enough birds and
taking enough eggs to supply their families. But the eggers saw red,
and just went on shooting and trampling without excuse.

"Years of that kind of thing turned many an island into a graveyard.

"Well, when they had gathered some eggs and smashed the rest, they
picked up the dead birds they wanted and carried them back to the
boat.

"They jerked off the feathers and broiled the sea-pigeons. Then they
brought out big, black bottles of rum to take away the oily, fishy
flavor, and filled themselves with strong drink and bird-flesh.

[Illustration: OFF DUTY]

"They fell asleep, snoring drunk, and dawn found them piled about the
deck helplessly.

"But when they got back to the island from which they started on their
journey, they found that rivals had landed there, and were killing
birds which they looked on as their own.

"There was a fight at once.

"The men who were coming back home fired a volley and then took their
guns as if they were clubs and rushed toward their enemies.

"Then, man to man, they fought like wild beasts. One man was carried
to the boat with his skull fractured: another limped off with a bullet
in his leg: a third was feeling his jaw to learn how many of his teeth
had been driven through a hole in his cheek.

"So they fought till they tired of it, and then they pulled out the
rum-bottles, and drank themselves into forgetfulness of their fierce
battle.

"With the next morning came a hundred honest fishermen who wanted
nothing more from the islands than the birds and the eggs they
actually needed for their hungry wives and little ones at home.

"They had been eating salt meat for months: scurvy had broken out, and
they wanted a change of diet.

"But the pirate eggers were bound they shouldn't have it. The
fishermen brought no guns: they weren't looking for trouble: they were
taken by surprise when the eggers rushed down on them like tigers
roused from their lairs.

"One of the eggers, who had not slept off the effects of the carousal
of the night before, shot one of the fishermen. Then the fishermen,
who outnumbered the eggers about ten to one, gave the latter the
beating of their lives. Fortunately, the fisherman who had been shot
was not killed.

"That was the sort of thing that happened again and again in the bad
old days.

"No wonder Audubon, as a great lover of birds, was very angry at these
men who were making it impossible for b