"There goes an eider duck! And another!
And another! _Their_ eggs are fine and big! Let's find the nests!"
Presently they discovered, under a low, scrubby bush, a down-lined nest
containing eight greenish-drab eggs.
"There's one!" shouted Jimmy. "This is an eider's nest."
And so, hunting among the bushes and rocks, they soon had their bags
filled with eider duck, tern, gull, and booby eggs, while the birds in
hundreds flew hither and thither, violently protesting, with discordant
notes, the invasion and the looting. But the eggs were good to eat, and
the boys smacked their lips over the feasts in store--and Mrs. Abel
wanted them; that was the chief consideration, after all.
"Now," said Jimmy, "let's go over to the mainland and boil the kettle.
It's away past dinner time and I'm as hungry as a bear."
"All right," agreed Bobby. "I'm so hungry I've just got to eat. Where'll
we go?"
"I know a dandy place over here, and there's a brook coming in close to
it where we can get good water. It's just a few minutes' pull--just
below the ledges."
Ten minutes' strong rowing landed them on a gravelly beach near the
mouth of a brook, which rushed down to the bay through a deep gulch. To
the eastward the gulch banks rose into high cliffs which overhung the
sea. Kittiwakes, tube-nosed swimmers, ivory gulls, cormorants, little
auks and other birds were flying up and down and along the cliff's face,
or perching upon ledges on the rock, and, like the birds on the island,
making a great deal of discordant noise.
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