The Lost Middy | Page 4

hooks aboard;
then, taking a little bucket, he half filled it with the crystal water of the
pool, and after placing it aboard took hold of a thin line, one end of
which was secured to a ring-bolt in a block of wreck lumber, while the
other ran down into the pool.
A pull at the line brought a large closely-worked, spindle-shaped
basket to the surface, when a commotion inside announced that the
six-inch-wide square of flat cork, which formed a lid, covered
something alive.
So it proved; for upon unfastening the lid an opening was laid bare,
and upon the "coorge"--as the fishing folk called the basket--being laid
across the bucket and turned sidewise, some ten or a dozen silvery
eel-shaped fish glided out into the bucket, and began swimming round
and round in search of an outlet.
"More bait than I shall want," said Aleck, covering and letting the
basket go back into the pool. Then, unfastening the mooring-rope, the
boy picked up a boat-hook, and by hooking on to the side rocks here
and there he piloted the boat along the devious watery lane, with the
mighty walls towering high on either side and whispering or echoing
back every sound he produced on his way out to the open sea.
It was beautiful--solemn--grand--all in one, that narrow, gloomy,
zigzag way between the perpendicular walls; and a naturalist would
have spent hours examining the many-tinted sea anemones that opened
their rays and awl-shaped tentacles below the water, or lay adhering
and quiescent upon the rocks where the tide had fallen, looking some
green, some olive, and many more like bosses of gelatinous coagulated
blood.

But these were too common objects of the seashore for Aleck Donne to
heed; his eyes were for the most part upon the blue and opalescent
picture some two hundred yards before him, where the chasm ended, its
sharp edges looking black against the sea and sky as he hooked on here,
gave a thrust there, and sent the boat along till the rift grew lighter and
lighter, and then was left behind, for a final thrust had sent the boat
right out into the sunshine, and in full view of three huge skittle-shaped
rocks standing up out of the sea, high as the wall-like cliff of which at
some time or another they must have been a portion. They were now
many yards away and formed the almost secure nesting-places of
hundreds upon hundreds of birds, whose necks stood up like so many
pegs against the sky, giving the rocks a peculiar bristling appearance.
But the sense of security for the young birds was upset by the long
flapping wings of a couple of great black-backed gulls which kept on
sailing round and round, waiting till the opportunity came to make a
hawk-like swoop and carry off some well-fatted, half-feathered young
auk. One met its fate, in the midst of a rippling purring cry, just as
Aleck laid in his boat-hook and proceeded to step the mast, swaying
easily the while with the boat, which was now well afloat on the rising
and falling sea.
CHAPTER TWO.
"My word! How she does go!" cried Aleck, a short time later. For he
had stepped the mast, hooked on the little rudder, and hoisted the sail,
the latter filling at once with the breeze which, coming from the sea,
struck the bold perpendicular rock face and glanced off again, to catch
the boat right astern. One minute it was racing along almost on an even
keel; then, like a young horse, it seemed to take the bit in its teeth as it
careened over more and more and made the water foam beneath the
bows.
Away to Aleck's left was the dazzling stretch of ocean, to his right the
cliffs with the stack rocks and a glimpse of the whitewashed group of
cottages locally known as Eilygugg, from their overlooking the great
isolated, skittle-like, inaccessible stack rocks chosen by those rather
rare birds the little auks for their nesting-place year after year.

On and on sped the boat past the precipitous cliffs, which, with the
promontory-like point ahead, were the destruction of many a brave
vessel in the stormy times; and an inexperienced watcher from the
shore would often have suffered from that peculiar sensation known as
having the heart in the mouth on seeing the boat careen over before
some extra strong puff of wind, till it seemed as if the next moment the
sail would be flat on the water while the little vessel filled and went
down.
But many years of teaching by the fishermen and Tom Bodger, the
wooden-legged old man-o'-war's man of Rockabie, had made Aleck,
young though he was, an expert manager of a fore and aft sailing boat,
and the