Towards sunset I came out on a sheer granite cliff where the sea-birds
were whirling and clamoring, and the great breakers dashed, rolling in
double-thundered reverberations on the sun-dyed, crimson sands below
the rock.
Across the half-moon of beach towered another cliff, and, behind this,
I saw a column of smoke rising in the still air. It certainly came
from Halyard's chimney, although the opposite cliff prevented me from
seeing the house itself.
I rested a moment to refill my pipe, then resumed rifle and pack, and
cautiously started to skirt the cliffs. I had descended half-way
towards the beech, and was examining the cliff opposite, when
something on the very top of the rock arrested my attention--a man
darkly outlined against the sky. The next moment, however, I knew it
could not be a man, for the object suddenly glided over the face of
the cliff and slid down the sheer, smooth lace like a lizard. Before I
could get a square look at it, the thing crawled into the surf--or, at
least, it seemed to--but the whole episode occurred so suddenly, so
unexpectedly, that I was not sure I had seen anything at all.
However, I was curious enough to climb the cliff on the land side and
make my way towards the spot where I imagined I saw the man. Of
course, there was nothing there--not a trace of a human being, I mean.
Something _had_ been there--a sea-otter, possibly--for the remains of
a freshly killed fish lay on the rock, eaten to the back-bone and
tail.
The next moment, below me, I saw the house, a freshly painted, trim,
flimsy structure, modern, and very much out of harmony with the
splendid savagery surrounding it. It struck a nasty, cheap note in the
noble, gray monotony of headland and sea.
The descent was easy enough. I crossed the crescent beach, hard as
pink marble, and found a little trodden path among the rocks, that led
to the front porch of the house.
There were two people on the porch--I heard their voices before I saw
them--and when I set my foot upon the wooden steps, I saw one of them,
a woman, rise from her chair and step hastily towards me.
"Come back!" cried the other, a man with a smooth-shaven, deeply lined
face, and a pair of angry, blue eyes; and the woman stepped back
quietly, acknowledging my lifted hat with a silent inclination.
The man, who was reclining in an invalid's rolling-chair, clapped both
large, pale hands to the wheels and pushed himself out along the
porch. He had shawls pinned about him, an untidy, drab-colored hat on
his head, and, when he looked down at me, he scowled.
"I know who you are," he said, in his acid voice; "you're one of the
Zoological men from Bronx Park. You look like it, anyway."
"It is easy to recognize you from your reputation," I replied,
irritated at his discourtesy.
"Really," he replied, with something between a sneer and a laugh, "I'm
obliged for your frankness. You're after my great auks, are you not?"
"Nothing else would have tempted me into this place," I replied,
sincerely.
"Thank Heaven for that," he said. "Sit down a moment; you've
interrupted us." Then, turning to the young woman, who wore the neat
gown and tiny cap of a professional nurse, he bade her resume what she
had been saying. She did so, with deprecating glance at me, which made
the old man sneer again.
"It happened so suddenly," she said, in her low voice, "that I had no
chance to get back. The boat was drifting in the cove; I sat in the
stern, reading, both oars shipped, and the tiller swinging. Then I
heard a scratching under the boat, but thought it might be
sea-weed--and, next moment, came those soft thumpings, like the sound
of a big fish rubbing its nose against a float."
Halyard clutched the wheels of his chair and stared at the girl in
grim displeasure.
"Didn't you know enough to be frightened?" he demanded.
"No--not then," she said, coloring faintly; "but when, after a few
moments, I looked up and saw the harbor-master running up and down the
beach, I was horribly frightened."
"Really?" said Halyard, sarcastically; "it was about time." Then,
turning to me, he rasped out: "And that young lady was obliged to row
all the way to Port-of-Waves and call to Lee's quarrymen to take her
boat in."
Completely mystified, I looked from Halyard to the girl, not in the
least comprehending what all this meant.
"That will do," said Halyard, ungraciously, which curt phrase was
apparently the usual dismissal for the nurse.
She rose, and I rose, and she passed me with an inclination, stepping
noiselessly into the house.
"I want beef-tea!" bawled Halyard after her; then he gave me an
unamiable glance.
"I was a well-bred man," he sneered; "I'm a Harvard graduate, too, but
I live as I like, and I do what I like, and I say what I like."
"You certainly are not reticent," I said, disgusted.
"Why should I be?" he rasped; "I pay that young woman for my
irritability; it's a bargain between us."
"In your domestic affairs," I said, "there is nothing that interests
me. I came to see those auks."
"You probably believe them to be razor-billed auks," he said,
contemptuously. "But they're not; they're great auks."
I suggested that he permit me to examine them, and he replied,
indifferently, that they were in a pen in his backyard, and that I was
free to step around the house when I cared to.
I laid my rifle and pack on the veranda, and hastened off with mixed
emotions, among which hope no longer predominated. No man in his
senses would keep two such precious prizes in a pen in his backyard, I
argued, and I was perfectly prepared to find anything from a puffin to
a penguin in that pen.
I shall never forget, as long as I live, my stupor of amazement when I
came to the wire-covered enclosure. Not only were there two great
auks in the pen, alive, breathing, squatting in bulky majesty on their
sea-weed bed, but one of them was gravely contemplating two newly
hatched chicks, all bill and feet, which nestled sedately at the edge
of a puddle of salt-water, where some small fish were swimming.
For a while excitement blinded, nay, deafened me. I tried to realize
that I was gazing upon the last individuals of an all but extinct
race--the sole survivors of the gigantic auk, which, for thirty years,
has been accounted an extinct creature.
I believe that I did not move muscle nor limb until the sun had gone
down and the crowding darkness blurred my straining eyes and blotted
the great, silent, bright-eyed birds from sight.
Even then I could not tear myself away from the enclosure; I listened
to the strange, drowsy note of the male bird, the fainter responses of
the female, the thin plaints of the chicks, huddling under her breast;
I heard their flipper-like, embryotic wings beating sleepily as the
birds stretched and yawned their beaks and clacked them, preparing for
slumber.
"If you please," came a soft voice from the door, "Mr. Halyard awaits
your company to dinner."