While I Watched Them They Watched Me;
Not Gathered In Groups, But Singly Or In Pairs, Scattered Up
And Down All Over The Face Of The Precipice Above Me, Perched
On Ledges And On Jutting Pieces Of Rock.
Standing motionless
thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like
sculptured figures of gulls, set up on the projections against
the rough dark wall of rock, just as sculptured figures of
angels and saintly men and women are placed in niches on a
cathedral front.
At first they appeared quite indifferent to
my presence, although in some instances near enough for their
yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were very
silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their
whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to
and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of
bathing in the warm lucent air. Gradually a change came over
them. One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to
some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting
my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was
plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had
made the discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old
travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have passed for a
Branscombe villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of
the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a
rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and
as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes
fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned
to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and
came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others
and join in the loud chorus of alarm.
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