the mainland shore reveals all the roseate ochres and lavenders of the Isle Percée in the brilliancy of the sun. The water off its outer flank is deep enough for a battleship to anchor. The current runs high here and heaves the launch to plunge it down again excitingly. The throb of the engine beating against the sea wall of Bonaventure Island startles from their ledges the hordes of gannets, puffins, kittiwakes and sea pigeons that range these sandstone shelves like china birds in a shop. Some fly off in such a storm of wings and gleaming breasts that the sky is blotted out and the ears stunned by the uproar. The puffins, allied to the auk in species, are small white diving-birds with a short beak. Through all the turmoil consequent upon the motor's passing they sit, rows upon rows of them, rolled like demure snowballs on their high red ridges. The gannet is larger and whiter than the herring-gull. The body is three feet in length. The pouch beneath the six-inch bill has space for half a dozen good-sized fish. The gannet drops like the osprey into schools of herring, mackerel and pilchard. In their nests of grass and weeds, which are always made on the highest, steepest cliffs above the sea, one egg is laid a year, or a second, or even a third if the first is stolen. The eggs and young birds are eatable, unlike the eggs and flesh of the cormorant, which even the Greenlanders omit from their ménu.
