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Funk Island, especially, contained an enormous breeding colony. For years fishermen going to the Banks in early summer depended on Auks for their meat supply. The birds probably bred as far south as Massachusetts, where it is known a great many were killed by Indians during certain seasons of the year.
"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."
Before reaching the cases in which the interesting sub-families of the Gulls are exhibited the visitor should remark the varieties of the Grebes in case 152; the two following cases devoted to the Auks from the arctic regions; and the true Auks of Britain; the varieties of the Penguins, or marine parrots; and the Guillemots.
"John Gayther," said the Master of the House, "you will not make me believe that you ever knew two such fools." "In the course of my life," said the Old Professor, "I have known several of them." "Not looking for auks' eggs?" inquired the Next Neighbor. "Something just as impracticable," he said. "The North Pole, for instance," suggested the Mistress of the House.
The lines in turn were fastened by Attalaq and Papik to harpoons, which were to be driven into the walrus, the natives' chief prey of the arctic sea. A babel of conversation swayed to and fro among this northernmost fringe of the human race. Now and then it was drowned in the raucous, deafening shriek of auks which swarmed from nearby cliffs and soared in clouds over the shore. "Aveq soah! Walrus!
The great boats moved! They were off! The children all sat together in the bottom of the boat, but the twins and Koko were big enough to see over the sides. While the babies played with the dogs, they were busy watching the things that passed on the shores. Soon they passed the Big Rock with little auks and puffins flying about it.
They seemed profanation, and I did not need them. I found a French novel, but the place held me and I stayed. I sat down in an arm-chair before the fireplace and the stone birds. Very odd those gawky things, like prehistoric Great Auks, looked in the moonlight. I remember that the alabaster moon shimmered like translucent pearl, and I fell to wondering about its history.
"So," I said, picking up my hat, "I am to start north to find a place called Black Harbor, where there is a man named Halyard who possesses, among other household utensils, two extinct great auks " We were both laughing by this time. I asked him why on earth he credited the assertion of a man he had never before heard of.
"So one day the Dean said to me, 'Hardy, can't we catch some of these little birds, auks you call them? 'How? said I. 'I don't know, said he; so we were just as well off as we had been before.
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.
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