Autumn’s little summer, when day and night were equal, and only the woodlark sang his wistful falling song over the bracken, was ruined by the gales that tore wave and leaf, and broke the sea into roar and spray, and hung white ropes over the rocks. Fog hid cliff-tops and stars as Tarka travelled westwards. One night, as he was drinking fresh water from a pool below a cascade, he was startled by immense whooping bellows that bounded from the walls of mist and rebounded afar, to return in duller echoes as though phantom hounds were baying the darkness. Tarka slipped into a pool and hid under lifting seaweed; but the sounds were regular and harmless, and afterwards he did not heed them. On a rock below the white-walled tower of Bull Point lighthouse, whose twin sirens were sending a warning to sailors far out beyond the dreadful rocks, Tarka found again the trail of White-tip, and whistled with joy.
Travelling under the screes, where rusted plates of wrecked ships lay in pools, he came to the end of the land. Day was beginning. The tide, moving northwards across Morte Bay from Bag Leap, was ripped and whitened by rocks which stood out of the hollows of the grey sea. One rock was tall above the reef—the Morte Stone—and on the top pinnacle stood a big black bird, with the tails of mullet sticking out of its gullet. Its dripping wings were held out to ease its tight crop. The bird was Phalacrocorax Carbo, called the Isle of Wight Parson by fishermen, and it sat uneasily on the Morte Stone during most of the hours of daylight, swaying with a load of fishes.
Tired and buffeted by the long Atlantic rollers,
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