Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/45

 year's grey mullein stalks. Within the nest were four big eggs of a dirty pale-green color, partly covered with a whitish, limey film. These treasures the black fisherman watched proudly, ready to do battle for them against any would-be thief that might approach.

In truth the nest was in a somewhat exposed position. At this point the ledge was only about four feet wide, and just behind the nest the cliff face was so crumbled away that any sure-footed marauder might easily make his way down from the cliff top, some thirty feet above. In front of the nest, on the other hand, the cliff face dropped a sheer three hundred feet to the surges that seethed and crashed along its base. Some twenty paces to the right the ledge widened to a tiny plateau, carpeted with close, light-green turf and dotted with half a dozen dark juniper bushes. A most desirable nesting place, this, but already occupied to the last available inch of space by the earlier arrivals of the cormorant migration. The black fisherman and his spouse, tardy in their wooing and their mating, had lingered overlong in the warm waters of the south and been obliged to content themselves with such accommodation as was left to them. To their courageous and rather unsociable spirits, however, this was a matter of small concern. They had the com-