Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/47

 crunching jaws and deliberately ate out the inside.

But this was only the beginning of his breakfast, for he was an epicurean.

He skirted the shore for half a mile until he came to a favorite rookery for the sea birds, then he began a slow and arduous ascent of the cliffs. Half-way up, there were hundreds of the nests of sea-gulls, or shags, as the sailors call them. Although the angry birds swooped and screamed at the robber, yet he kept doggedly on his way. Finally he discovered a nest within his reach which the frightened mother shag had left. He lifted the egg gently in his mouth and continued his desperate climb to the top of the cliff. When he had scaled the last breathless twenty feet, he lay down upon a rock and, breaking a small hole in the large end of the egg, deliberately sucked it to the last drop.

He paid no more attention to the screaming gulls, auks and kittywinks, than he would have to flies.

But when he had finished his egg, he had to