He clambered down the eastern slope nearest Sark, and found the ground
there covered with a fairly deep soil, and green growths that were
strange to him. The soil was perforated with holes which at first he
ascribed to rabbits, but when he inserted his hand into one he got such
a nip from an unusually strong beak that he changed his mind to puffins,
and, standing quite still for a time, he presently saw the members of
the colony come creeping out behind their great red bills and scurry off
across the water in search of breakfast.
Then the great semi-detached pinnacle below attracted him, and he
scrambled down amid the complaints of a great colony of gulls and
cormorants but found the tide still too full for him to cross the
intervening chasm. Those wonderful great green waves out of a smooth sea
came roaring along the sides of the island and met full tilt in the
chasm below him, as they leaped exultant from their conflict with the
rocks. They hurled themselves against one another in wildest fury, and
the foam of their meeting boiled white along the ledges, and dappled all
the sea.
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