In Search of the Unknown | Page 6

replied, with something between a sneer and a laugh, "I'm
obliged for your frankness. You're after my great auks, are you not?"
"Nothing else would have tempted me into this place," I replied,
sincerely.
"Thank Heaven for that," he said. "Sit down a moment; you've
interrupted us." Then, turning to the young woman, who wore the neat
gown and tiny cap of a professional nurse, he bade her resume what she
had been saying. She did so, with deprecating glance at me, which
made the old man sneer again.
"It happened so suddenly," she said, in her low voice, "that I had no
chance to get back. The boat was drifting in the cove; I sat in the stern,
reading, both oars shipped, and the tiller swinging. Then I heard a

scratching under the boat, but thought it might be sea-weed--and, next
moment, came those soft thumpings, like the sound of a big fish
rubbing its nose against a float."
Halyard clutched the wheels of his chair and stared at the girl in grim
displeasure.
"Didn't you know enough to be frightened?" he demanded.
"No--not then," she said, coloring faintly; "but when, after a few
moments, I looked up and saw the harbor-master running up and down
the beach, I was horribly frightened."
"Really?" said Halyard, sarcastically; "it was about time." Then, turning
to me, he rasped out: "And that young lady was obliged to row all the
way to Port-of-Waves and call to Lee's quarrymen to take her boat in."
Completely mystified, I looked from Halyard to the girl, not in the least
comprehending what all this meant.
"That will do," said Halyard, ungraciously, which curt phrase was
apparently the usual dismissal for the nurse.
She rose, and I rose, and she passed me with an inclination, stepping
noiselessly into the house.
"I want beef-tea!" bawled Halyard after her; then he gave me an
unamiable glance.
"I was a well-bred man," he sneered; "I'm a Harvard graduate, too, but I
live as I like, and I do what I like, and I say what I like."
"You certainly are not reticent," I said, disgusted.
"Why should I be?" he rasped; "I pay that young woman for my
irritability; it's a bargain between us."
"In your domestic affairs," I said, "there is nothing that interests me. I
came to see those auks."

"You probably believe them to be razor-billed auks," he said,
contemptuously. "But they're not; they're great auks."
I suggested that he permit me to examine them, and he replied,
indifferently, that they were in a pen in his backyard, and that I was
free to step around the house when I cared to.
I laid my rifle and pack on the veranda, and hastened off with mixed
emotions, among which hope no longer predominated. No man in his
senses would keep two such precious prizes in a pen in his backyard, I
argued, and I was perfectly prepared to find anything from a puffin to a
penguin in that pen.
I shall never forget, as long as I live, my stupor of amazement when I
came to the wire-covered enclosure. Not only were there two great auks
in the pen, alive, breathing, squatting in bulky majesty on their
sea-weed bed, but one of them was gravely contemplating two newly
hatched chicks, all bill and feet, which nestled sedately at the edge of a
puddle of salt-water, where some small fish were swimming.
For a while excitement blinded, nay, deafened me. I tried to realize that
I was gazing upon the last individuals of an all but extinct race--the
sole survivors of the gigantic auk, which, for thirty years, has been
accounted an extinct creature.
I believe that I did not move muscle nor limb until the sun had gone
down and the crowding darkness blurred my straining eyes and blotted
the great, silent, bright-eyed birds from sight.
Even then I could not tear myself away from the enclosure; I listened to
the strange, drowsy note of the male bird, the fainter responses of the
female, the thin plaints of the chicks, huddling under her breast; I heard
their flipper-like, embryotic wings beating sleepily as the birds
stretched and yawned their beaks and clacked them, preparing for
slumber.
"If you please," came a soft voice from the door, "Mr. Halyard awaits
your company to dinner."

IV
I dined well--or, rather, I might have enjoyed my dinner if Mr. Halyard
had been eliminated; and the feast consisted exclusively of a joint of
beef, the pretty nurse, and myself. She was exceedingly attractive--with
a disturbing fashion of lowering her head and raising her dark eyes
when spoken to.
As for Halyard, he was unspeakable, bundled up in his snuffy shawls,
and making uncouth noises over his gruel. But it is only just to say