ng or echoing back every
sound he produced on his way out to the open sea.

It was beautiful--solemn--grand--all in one, that narrow, gloomy, zigzag
way between the perpendicular walls; and a naturalist would have spent
hours examining the many-tinted sea anemones that opened their rays and
awl-shaped tentacles below the water, or lay adhering and quiescent upon
the rocks where the tide had fallen, looking some green, some olive, and
many more like bosses of gelatinous coagulated blood.

But these were too common objects of the seashore for Aleck Donne to
heed; his eyes were for the most part upon the blue and opalescent
picture some two hundred yards before him, where the chasm ended, its
sharp edges looking black against the sea and sky as he hooked on here,
gave a thrust there, and sent the boat along till the rift grew lighter
and lighter, and then was left behind, for a final thrust had sent the
boat right out into the sunshine, and in full view of three huge
skittle-shaped rocks standing up out of the sea, high as the wall-like
cliff of which at some time or another they must have been a portion.
They were now many yards away and formed the almost secure
nesting-places of hundreds upon hundreds of birds, whose necks stood up
like so many pegs against the sky, giving the rocks a peculiar bristling
appearance. But the sense of security for the young birds was upset by
the long flapping wings of a couple of great black-backed gulls which
kept on sailing round and round, waiting till the opportunity came to
make a hawk-like swoop and carry off some well-fatted, half-feathered
young auk. One met its fate, in the midst of a rippling purring cry,
just as Aleck laid in his boat-hook and proceeded to step the mast,
swaying easily the while with the boat, which was now well afloat on the
rising and falling sea.

CHAPTER TWO.

"My word! How she does go!" cried Aleck, a short time later. For he
had stepped the mast, hooked on the little rudder, and hoisted the sail,
the latter filling at once with the breeze which, coming from the sea,
struck the bold perpendicular rock face and glanced off again, to catch
the boat right astern. One minute it was racing along almost on an even
keel; then, like a young horse, it seemed to take the bit in its teeth
as it careened over more and more and made the water foam beneath the
bows.

Away to Aleck's left was the dazzling stretch of ocean, to his right the
cliffs with the s