CHAPTER X.

THE GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL.

WHEN I see a cob or a great black-backed gull in a collection of stuffed birds, my thoughts fly to a bare expanse of sands, the monotonous level broken by the timbers of ill-fated vessels which stick up here and there; with these, the never-to-be-forgotten sight of dead men's bodies, storm-tossed and battered from their contact with wreckage that had, in our homely phrase, "come ashore." When the same sands are sleeping under the hot sun, the gulls daintily stepping along their edge, or floating light as a cork on the calm water beyond, one can hardly realise the danger of those treacherous deadly quicksands, the Goodwins, the name of which has struck terror to the heart of so many a gallant sailor.

I have seen them when a mass of foaming water boiled and hissed over them, and the cry had reached our homes that a vessel had struck; and have watched the grand sea-bird, as, beaten to leeward, it made tacks to get up again, partly succeeding, to be caught again by the wind, and blown like a sheet of paper over the beach. Even then the "cob's" courage never failed him. He would beat back, and flap along the breakers just off shore, marine vulture that he is, in search of some ghastly prey. As a child, I looked on him with awe, when he came on our dangerous coast from the open sea, and flapped to and fro over the sandhills, with their scanty vegetation-sea-holly, creeping convolvulus, and bents, diversified here and there with patches of sea-kale-and then flew into the salt flats close at hand, where, on one leg, he would rest for a while. by the side of some pool that glistened among tangled patches of sea blite and samphire, far enough away from the sandhills to be out of reach of all harm, even from a long duck-gun. When the fishermen's wives caught sight of him they would grow uneasy about their husbands and sons who were away out at sea. They said the cob knew

all about the storm that was brewing, and had come into the quiet marsh to hearken as it came up over the dreary flats. Then I would creep into some old crone's dwelling, and sit listening with fear, mixed with a gruesome delight, to the stories of long-past storms and the havoc they had wrought amongst our folk. And when the narrator paused to take breath and some strong puffs at her short black pipe, I thought of my friends Scoot and Winder outside with their father's boats, and pictured them drowned and driven up ashore to their mothers' doors.

Somehow, in my boyish fancy, the idea of the cob was always associated, too, with those daring old sea-dogs, incorrigible smugglers, the heroes of our lads, one or two of whom flashed only like occasional meteors across our horizon, running ashore at our port from time to time, then vanishing and being unheard of for years. When such a visitant was in our midst, his presence was felt in every dwelling on the flats, and the social atmosphere seemed charged with an electricity that was an unmixed source of joy, to the younger members at least of the community.

It had been a beautiful day on one of the loneliest parts of our lonely foreshore. After the heat of the sun had left the pebbly beach, a slight breeze had sprung up, just strong enough to stir the sand on the hillocks, and to cover up the prints of the dotterels' feet and the traces of the lizards that had revelled in the warmth and been running about all the day long. The tide was coming in, and the gulls beat lazily to and fro, looking for what it might cast before it. Curlews were busy with their sickle-like bills, trying to get a meal before the water reached them. These, with a few dotterels that piped as they ran, were all that was to be seen in the way of bird-life.

Our community of fisher-folk was moved to the core. The wildest and most daring of the searovers who hailed from our port had come back to die-he was fast nearing the last moorings. His noted grey brig, which it was said had only been seen in the most fearful weather, dashing round about the Goodwins, the Flying Dutchman of those boiling seas, would never be sighted again. "He was born when the tide was full, he will go at its ebb," they said.

When the night came, and the moon silvered the waters and lit up our sandhills, the man so much talked of was close to his port, watched only by a woman as brave as himself, one who held many a gruesome secret in her keeping. True to her past, she allowed no one to hear the last murmurs from the lips of her husband. Yet her head was bowed and her heart breaking. As the tide turned on the ebb in the grey of the morning he passed from her. The great gull brings back the scene of that morning, the sun shining in on a dead, upturned face, and a lonely, weeping woman; two or three fishermen's wives standing on the threshold of the open door, with children clinging to their skirts and looking fearfully within.

Our men used to bring home in the boats young cobs that had been taken from their breeding stations. Great, brown, speckled creatures they were, of most grave demeanour. One wing was always carefully clipped. That grave bearing was not at all confirmed by their tricks and manners, as I have found to my cost. If you attempted to stroke one he would bite most ferociously, lacerating your fingers, and then setting up a querulous cry