in

through the gorge. In this manner another five hundreds yards were passed, and still the lifeless rocks gave no sign of hidden enemies. Mortimer halted and glanced swiftly around. The interval since the last signal had been given from above that all was clear seemed to be growing dangerously long. At the same stant came the sound of a sharp tap on the stones a few paces in front of him. His eyes had scarcely turned in that direction when there followed another similar sound close beside him. Simultaneously he saw what looked like a slim, bare, yellow reed fall point foremost on a rock and rebound to the ground. "Form square!" he shouted, and the long twisting line behind him broke into a mass of running figures. The confusion was only apparent. In a wonderfully short space of time the rapidly moving crowd had sorted itself and assumed comparative quiescence, presenting to an onlooker the spectacle of a closehuddled crowd of men crouching beside their boxes and bundles, and entirely surrounded by an irregular circle of khaki-clad soldiers, who knelt firing and loading with mechanical swiftness, while among and around them arrows fell like rain. In front and on both sides innumerable black heads peered momentarily over the rocks, and as suddenly vanished again. Baban Miji continued firing till the hot barrel blistered his left hand, and his right grew numb and stiff as in feverish alternation it flung the sliding bolt of his rifle backwards and forwards, and pulled the trigger. Then, redoubling the echoes so that they roared without ceasing over the hills, bursts of fire were heard from the heights on either hand. The flanking parties, delayed by an unexpectedly precipitous ascent, had at last closed in on the pagans. Mortimer caught the added sound, and again his voice LIVING AGE VOL. LX. 3164

rose above the din. "Prepare to charge!" he shouted, and hurried round the square repeating the command. As he passed, Baban Miji, drawing his bayonet, looked closely at him, and with the look came recognition. He knew now why, even in the commotion of the flight, the strong clear voice had strangely stirred the deeps of memory. "Charge!" yelled Mortimer. Baban Miji sprang instinctively to his feet and began to run. The shower of arrows was visibly thinning. Mortimer was now close beside him, leaping from rock to rock. Baban Miji, profiting by bare feet and native agility, had just passed him when an arrow, soaring high up in the air, began descending in a direct line for Mortimer. "Ga kibia-an arrow!" he cried, and ran obliquely across. Mortimer crashed into him. "What the devil-" he began, and then stopped, as he saw the soldier begin to tug at the arrow shaft which hung from his forearm. "This way!" said Mortimer breathlessly, and led him forward. "We shall find our doctor on ahead, and you must lie down and take the medicine he gives you." Thus the two proceeded until a sudden faintness came over Baban Miji, and he sank gently in a heap to the ground. By him raced a crowd of charging men, shouting triumphantly.

Henson raised the flap, and emerged from the green canvas tent that served as field-hospital.

"Where's Fitzgerald?" he asked.

"Going round the picquet line," replied Mortimer, who lay bareheaded, his shoulders against a rock. "He doesn't expect any trouble to-night. We've given them far to big a hammering for that, but one can't be too careful after to-day's experiences. How are your casualties?"

"Oh, there's only one I have any

fear about, and that's the man you brought to me. The others-there are only four of them-will be fit for duty again in a week or two, though Sergeant Adamu will carry a nasty scar, I'm afraid."

"I'm going to help you to-night," said Mortimer. "That fellow Musa is one of our newly joined, and I've an idea that when he crossed me in that charge it wasn't altogether accidental. Anyhow, but for him running in front I should certainly be in your care at this moment, if not beyond it." Henson sat down, and began to roll up a coil of linen.

"I daresay you're right," he said; "but you can help best by getting a good night's sleep. I can manage well enough, and you've done the work of three men to-day."

"Well, anyhow," the other went on, "if the fellow is going to peg out I shall expect you to wake me. Now, you quite understand that?"

"All right," said Henson, a little surprised at this unusual manifestation of sympathy. "To tell you the truth," he added gravely, "I shouldn't be surprised if he did peg out. The poison must have been fresh, and an artery was pierced. Ah! here comes Fitzgerald."

In the fast deepening twilight the three men divided a rude meal of biscuits and tinned beef.

"We have fairly given them the knock." said Fitzgerald, lighting a pipe. "A hundred and fifty counted dead, and lots more carried away."

"Yes," said Henson; "the back of the thing is broken. They've begun coming in already asking for peace. It seems they had massed here in full strength, hoping to surprise us, and half their leading men are among the killed. It will be my turn with them now, I expect, and you fellows have to sheathe your swords."

will

"Well, don't let them off too lightly,"

said Mortimer. "One of them nearly finished my meteoric career."

Fitzgerald and Mortimer prepared for sleep, while Henson returned to the stricken man in the tent. Baban Miji lay in a corner on the ground covered with blankets. A hand lantern hung above him, throwing its dim rays on the wounded arm that lay bandaged across his chest. At intervals he murmured unintelligible words. Henson sat on a box beside him and waited. At last the muttering stopped and Baban Miji opened his eyes. They looked clear and intelligent.

"I want to speak to Dan Giwa," he said, giving the name by which Mortimer was known to the soldiery. "With Dan Giwa alone."

Henson roused Mortimer.

"I don't think he'll last long," he whispered, "though at present he seems collected enough. He says he wants to see you. Call me if he gets worse."

Mortimer entered the tent, and stood facing the figure under the blankets. The indistinct muttering had begun again.

"No mark at all! Let all behold, there is no mark of any kind!"

Mortimer caught the words, rapidly uttered, and started. The bandaged arm was raised a moment in the air and then sank downwards. Presently the eyes opened again and gazed long at Mortimer.

"Thou it is," the voice whispered from the darkness, "thou-thou-at Manga

The words died away into silence. The unwounded hand was lifted, and all the fingers straightened themselves with their tips towards Mortimer, who had knelt down in the attitude of one who receives a bitter reproach. A moment later he had hurried from the tent.

"You had better go to him now,"

So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling aside the dryasdust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical biologist, and just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring as that of gulls ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing combers that break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, its insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to the land animals that dwell in sight of it. Yet the gulls sit on the curling rollers as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an impression of unconscious courage very remarkable in creatures that seem SO frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or instincts equally irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that lashes the sea to fury, for they dread it in its hour of rage as little as on still summer nights when, in their hundreds, they fly off the land to roost on the water outside the headlands.

It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of "four great beasts," but of seafowl never a word, though one sees them in abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have been expected to weave them into the rich fabric of their

poetic imagery as they did the pelican, the eagle and other birds less familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority of folk living far inland, symbolical of the August holiday at the coast, and their splendid flight and raucous cries are among the most enduring memories of that yearly escape from the smoke of cities.

The voice of gulls can with difficulty be regarded as musical, yet those of us who live the clock round by the sea find their plaintive mewing as nicely tuned to that wild environment as the amorous gurgling of nightingales to moonlit woods in May. Their voice may have no great range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the playful imagination laughter, tears, and other human moods to which they are in all probability strangers. The curious similarity between the note of the seagull and the whining of a cat bereft of her kittens is very striking, and was on one occasion the cause of my being taken in by one of these birds in a deep and beautiful backwater of the Sea of Marmora, beside which I spent one pleasant summer. In this particular gulf, at the head of which stands the ancient town of Ismidt, gulls, though plentiful in the open sea, are rarely in evidence, being replaced by herons and pelicans. I had not therefore set eyes on a seagull for many weeks, when early one morning I heard from the farther side of a wooded headland, a new

note suggestive of a wild cat or possiply a lynx. My Greek servant tried in his patois to explain the unseen owner of the mysterious voice, but it was only when a small gull suddenly came paddling round the corner that I realized my mistake.

In addition to being at home on the seashore, and particularly in estuaries and where the coast is rocky, gulls are a familiar sight in the wake of steamers at the beginning and ending of the voyage, as well as following the plough and nesting in the vicinity of inland meres and marshes. The black-headed kind is peculiarly given to bringing up its family far from the sea, just as the salmon ascends our rivers for the same purpose. It is not perhaps a very loving parent, seeing that the mortality among young gulls, many of which show signs of rough treatment by their elders, is unusually great. On most lakes rich in fish these birds have long established themselves, and they were, I remember, as familiar at Geneva and Neuchâtel as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in the California Sierras, itself two hundred miles from the Pacific and more than a mile above sea-level. Gulls also follow the plough in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is, not unreasonably, sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have no taste for grain. Unfortunately the ordinary scarecrow has no terror for them, and I recollect, in the neighborhood of Maryport, seeing an immense number of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity to several crows that, dangling from gibbets, effectually kept all black maurauders away.

Young gulls are, to the careless eye, apt to look larger than their parents, an illusion possibly due to the optical effect of their dappled plumage, and few people unfamiliar with these birds in their succeeding moults readily be

lieve that the dark birds are younger than the white. Down in little Cornish harbors I have sometimes watched these young birds turned to good account by their lazy elders, who call them to the feast whenever the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead pilchards lying in three or four feet of water, and then pounce on them the moment they come to the surface with their booty. The fact is that gulls are not expert divers. The cormorant and puffin and guillemot can vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far from where they were last seen, and can pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes under water. Some gulls however are able to plunge farther below the surface than others, and the little kittiwake is perhaps the most expert diver of them all, though in no sense at home under water like the shag. I have often, when at anchor ten or fifteen miles from the land, and attended by the usual convoy of seabirds that invariably gather round fishing-boats, amused myself by throwing scraps of fish to them and watching the gulls do their best to plunge below the surface when some coveted morsel was going down into the depths, and now and again a little Roman-nose puffin would dive headlong and snatch the prize from under the gulls' eyes. Most of the birds were fearless enough; only an occasional "saddleback"-the greater black-backed gull of the text-books-knowing the hand of man to be against it for its raids on game and poultry, would keep at a respectful distance.

Considered economically, the smaller gulls at any rate have more friends than enemies, and they owe most of the latter not so much to their appetites, which set more store by offal and carrion than by anything of greater value, as to their exceedingly dirty habits. These unclean fowl are in fact anything but welcome in har

bors given over to smart yachting craft; and I remember how at Avalon, the port of Santa Catalina Island (Cal.), various devices were employed to prevent them alighting. Boats at their moorings were festooned with strips of bunting, which apparently had the requisite effect, and the railings of the club were protected by a formidable armor of nails. On the credit side of their account with ourselves, seagulls are admittedly assiduous scavengers, and their services in keeping little tidal harbors clear of decaying fish which, if left to accumulate, would speedily breed a pestilence, cannot well be overrated. The fishermen, though they rarely molest them, do not always refer to the birds with the gratitude that might be expected, yet they are still further in their debt, being often appraised by their movements of the whereabouts of mackerel and pilchard shoals, and, in thick weather, getting many a friendly warning of the whereabouts of outlying rocks from the hoarse cries of the gulls that have their haunts on these menaces to inshore navigation.

Seagulls are not commonly made pets of, the nearest approach to such adoption being an occasional pinioned individual enjoying qualified liberty in a backyard. Their want of popularity is easily understood, since they lack the music of the canary and the mimicry of parrots. That they are, however, capable of appreciating kindness has been demonstrated by many anecdotes. The Rev. H. A. Macpherson used to tell a story of how a young gull, found with a broken wing by the children of some Milovaig crafters, was nursed back to health by them until it eventually flew away. Not long after it had gone one of the children was lost on the hillside, and the gull, flying overhead, recognized one of its old playmates and hovered so as to attract the attention of the child.

Then, on being called, the bird settled and roosted on the ground beside him. An even more remarkable story is told of a gull taken from the nest, on the coast of county Cork, and brought up by hand until, in the following spring, it flew away in the company of some others of its kind that passed over the garden in which it had its liberty. The bird's owner reasonably concluded that he had seen the last of his protégée, and great was his astonishment when, in the first October gale, not only did the visitor return, tapping at the dining-room window for admission, as it had always done, but actually brought with it a young gull, and the two paid him a visit every autumn for a number of years.

On either side the gulls, and closely associated with them in habits and in structure, is a group of birds equally characteristic of the open coast, the skuas and terns. The skuas, darker and more courageous birds, are familiar to those who spend their August holiday sea-fishing near the Land's End, where, particularly on days when the east wind brings the gannets and porpoises close inshore, the great skua may be seen at its favorite game of swooping on the gulls and making them disgorge or drop their launce or pilchard, which the bird usually retrieves before it reaches the water. This act of piracy has earned for the skua its West-country sobriquet of "Jack Harry," and against so fierce an onslaught even the largest gull, though actually of heavier build than its tyrant, has no chance and seldom indeed seems to offer the feeblest resistance. These skuas rob their neighbors in every latitude; and even in the Antarctic one kind, closely related to our own, makes havoc among the penguins, an episode described by the late Dr. Wilson, one of the heroes of the ill-fated Scott expedition.

Far more pleasing to the eye are the