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Winter bent over, keen to discern the gray-backed fish which must be lurking in those clear depths and rippling shallows. The sun, transmuted into Greenwich time, exercised an extraordinary influence on the seemingly humdrum life of Steynholme that day. A few minutes after three o'clock just too late to observe either Winter or Siddle P.C. Robinson strolled forth from his cottage.

Until 1909, the inhabitants consisted of the Laysan albatross, black-footed albatross, sooty tern, gray-backed tern, noddy tern, Hawaiian tern, white tern, Bonin petrel, two shearwaters, the red-tailed tropic bird, two boobies and the man-of-war bird. Laysan Island is two miles long by one and one-half miles broad, and at times it has been literally covered with birds.

Although the poet tells of a voyage in eastern seas, he is describing the German ocean: "Then was sorely troubled, Sorely wrought the whale-mere. Wallowed there the Horn-fish, Glode the great deep through; and the gray-backed gull Slaughter-greedy wheeled. Dark the storm-sun grew, Waxed the winds up, grinded waves; Stirred the surges, groaned the cordage, Wet with breaking sea."

Pepeeta answered with a sigh. "Cheer up, child," he cried in his hearty fashion. "Your voice sounds like the squeak of a mouse! B-b-be gay! Be happy! How can you be sad on a morning like this? Look at the play of the muscles under the smooth skins of the horses! Remember the b-b-bright shining dollars that we coaxed out of the tightly b-b-buttoned breeches pockets of the gray-backed Q-Q-Quakers.

And there are gulls in hundreds, you see, large and small, gray-backed and black-backed; and over them all two or three great gannets swooping round and round. Oh! one has fallen into the sea! Yes, with a splash just like a cannon ball. And here he comes up again, with a fish in his beak. If he had fallen on your head, with that beak of his, he would have split it open.

Robins and bobolinks and blue-birds and sundry other favorites furnish the warp, and color and characterize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning; while the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral ground tones, and bring the sweeter and more elaborate notes into beautiful relief.

"Hardly enough even by your count, as the officer nurses a cracked rib, while the priest would prove of small moment when it came to blows. I am for bearing down upon the knaves in sudden onset; it will require but a crack or two ere the villains let us by." "May the God of Battles place me within fair stroke of that accursed gray-backed emissary of Rome," snorted the Puritan, his red hair erect.

Apparently this was to find new feeding grounds. While we were resting under a spruce I espied a white-breasted, blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the bark.