PAGE 6
The Glistering Beaches
by
But as they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and patiently and pathetically waggle that strange head.
“It is the Great Auk itself–we have found it!” said Anna in a hushed whisper.
“Hold the candle till I kill it with a stone–or, see! with this bit of timber.”
“Wait!” said Anna. “It looks so old and feeble!”
“Our hundred pounds,” said Simeon.
“It looks exactly like your grandfather,” said Anna; “look at his eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!”
“Wouldn’t I just–for a hundred pounds!” said Simeon briskly, looking for a larger stone.
“Don’t let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is enough. None shall be so great as we.”
The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place. Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.
Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after him.
The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading right for the North and the Iceland skerries–where, it may be, he abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the island of Suliscanna.
The children reached home very late that night, and were received with varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.