slab of the rock just opposite to the nest. For a little both birds uttered low, deep, croaking notes in weird unison with the surroundings and the sad sea-dirges, after which they were silent for a considerable time, the one standing and the other sitting on the nest vis-a-vis to each other. At length the former, which I have no doubt was the male, hopped across the slight space dividing them on to the nest, which was a huge mass of seaweed. There were now some more deep sounds and then, bending over the female bird, the male caressed her by passing the hooked tip of his bill through the feathers of her head and neck, which she held low down the better to permit of this. Afterwards the two sat side by side together on the nest.
"The whole scene was a striking picture of affection between these dark, wild birds in their lonely, wave-made home.
"Here was love unmistakable, between so strange a pair and in so wild a spot. But to them it was the sweetest of bowers. How snug, how cosy they were on that great wet heap of 'the brown seaweed,' just in the dark jaws of that gloom-filled cavern, with the frowning precipice above and the sullen-heaving sea beneath. Here in this gloom, this wildness, this stupendousness of sea and shore, beneath grey skies and in chilling air, here was peace, here was comfort, conjugal love, domestic bliss, the same flame burning in such strange gargoyle-shaped forms amidst all the shagginess of nature. The scene was full of charm, full of poetry, more so, as it struck me, than most love-scenes in most plays and novels—having regard, of course, to the prodigious majority of the bad ones.
