Robert W. Chambers

“ That luminous glare which sometimes lingers after the stars go out threw a trembling nebulous radiance over sand and cove. I heard the seething currents under the breakers' softened thunder louder than I ever heard it. Then, as I closed my window, lingering for a last look at the crawling tide, I saw a man standing ankle-deep in the surf, all alone there in the night. But—was it a man? For the figure suddenly began running over the beach on all fours, like a beetle, waving its limbs like feelers. ”

“ I tried to realise that I was gazing upon the last two individuals of an all but extinct race—the sole survivors of the gigantic auk which, for thirty years, has been accounted an extinct creature.
I believe that I did not move muscle or limb until the sun had gone down and the crowding darkness blurred my straining eyes and blotted the great silent bright-eyed birds from sight. ”

“ Yes; that slate-coloured thing with gills that looks like a man—and, by Heaven, is a man!—that's the Harbour-Master. Ask any quarryman at Port-of-Waves what it is that comes purring around their boats at the wharf, and unties painters and changes the mooring of every catboat in the cove at night! Ask Francis Lee what it was he saw running and leaping up and down the shoal at sunset last Friday! Ask anybody along the coast what sort of a thing moves about the cliffs like a man, and slides over them into the sea like an otter! ”

“ No man in his senses would keep two such precious prizes in a pen in his back-yard, I argued, and I was perfectly prepared to find anything from a puffin to a penguin in that pen.
I shall never forget as long as I live my stupor of amazement when I came to the wire-covered enclosure. Not only were there two Great Auks in the pen, alive, breathing, squatting in bulky majesty on their seaweed 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. ”

“ I said, dropping rifle and knapsack on the fresh-cut fragrant pile of pine. "Are you Halyard?"
"No, I 'm Francis Lee, bossing the mica-pit at Port-of-Waves," he replied; "but this letter is from Halyard, asking me to look out for a man in a hurry from Bronx Park, New York."
"I 'm that man," said I, filling my pipe and offering him a share of the weed-of-peace; and we sat side by side smoking very amiably, until a signal from the locomotive sent him forward and I was left alone, lounging at ease, head pillowed on both arms, watching the blue sky flying through the branches overhead. ”

“ Once I met a group of quarrymen, faces burned brick-red, scarred hands swinging as they walked. And, as I passed them with a nod, turning, I saw that they also had turned to look after me, and I caught a word or two of their conversation, whirled back to me on the sea-wind. ”

“ The proposition appeared to take his breath away—at least he said nothing more; and I finished my cigar in peace and tossed the stump into a saucer.
"Now," said I, "what price do you set upon your birds, Mr. Halyard?"
"Ten thousand dollars," he snapped with an evil smile.
"You will receive a certified cheque when the birds are delivered," I said quietly.
"You don't mean to say you agree to that outrageous bargain?—and I won't take a cent less either. Good Lord! haven't you any spirit left?" he cried, half rising from his pile of shawls. ”

“ I exclaimed; "here is a man living all alone on a strip of rock and sand between the wilderness and the sea, who wants you to send somebody to take charge of a bird that doesn't exist!"
"How do you know," asked Professor Farrago, "that the bird in question does not exist?"
"It is generally accepted," I replied sarcastically, "that the Great Auk has been extinct for years. ”

“ Then I made a clean breast of the matter, telling him that it was I who had doubted; that my chief, Professor Farrago, had sent me against my will, and that I was ready and glad to admit that he, Mr. Halyard, was a benefactor of the human race.
"Bosh!" he said; "what good does a confounded wobbly, bandy-toed bird do to the human race?" ”

“ I sat bolt upright in bed, blinking at Halyard, who, clad in a dressing-gown and wearing a night-cap, had wheeled himself into my room with one hand, while with the other he solemnly waved a candle over my head.
"I 'm so cursed lonely," he said; "come, there 's a good fellow—talk to me in your own original impudent way." ”

“ He lives at a cove called Black Harbour, and all his truck goes through to him over the company's road. We receive it here, and send a pack-mule through once a month. I 've met him. He 's a bad-tempered hypochondriac, a cynic at heart, and a man whose word is never doubted. If he says he has a Great Auk you may be satisfied he has."
My heart was beating with excitement at the prospect; I looked out across the wooded headlands and tangled stretches of dune and hollow, trying to realise what it might mean to me, to Professor Farrago, to the world, if I should lead back to New York a live auk. ”

“ I 'd be a fool to go into details with a scientific man. You 'll hear about the Harbour-Master—perhaps you will see the Harbour-Master. In that event I should be glad to converse with you on the subject."
I could not help laughing at his prim and precise manner, and, after a moment, he also laughed, saying—
"It hurts a man's vanity to know he knows a thing that somebody else knows he doesn't know. I 'm damned if I say another word about the Harbour-Master until you've been to Halyard's!" ”

“ Halyard."
A mental vision of Halyard in a night-cap, very mad, nearly sent me laughing again.
"Like the King of Yvetot, he wears his crown in bed." I said flippantly.
"The King of Yvetot might have made that remark," she observed, re-threading her needle.
It is unpleasant to be reproved. How large and red and hot a man's ears feel.
To cool them, I strolled out to the porch; and after a while the pretty nurse came out, too, and sat down in a chair not far away. She probably regretted her lost opportunity to be flirted with. ”

“ Halyard said: "You saw the Harbour-Master—that 's what you saw!"
I looked at him without a word.
"Don't mistake me," he said pettishly; "I don't think that the Harbour-Master is a spirit, or a sprite, or a hobgoblin, or any sort of damned rot. Neither do I believe it to be an optical illusion."
"What do you think it is?" I asked.
"I think it 's a man; I think it 's a branch of the human race—that 's what I think. Let me tell you something. The deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean is a trifle over five miles deep ”

“ I replied angrily; "and neither did you."
"No, I never did," he said in a curiously placid voice; "but there 's a man with gills like a fish who lives in the ocean out there. Oh, you needn't look that way: nobody ever thinks of doubting my word, and I tell you that there 's a man—or a thing that looks like a man—as big as you are, too, all slate-coloured, with nasty red gills like a fish ”

“ It is within the range of possibility that this story may be doubted. It doesn't matter; nothing can add to the despair of a man who has lost two Great Auks.
As for Halyard, nothing affects him, except his involuntary sea-bath, and that did him so much good that he writes me from the south that he's going on a walking tour through Switzerland, if I 'll join him. I might have joined him if he had not married the pretty nurse. I wonder whether—— But, of course, this is no place for speculation.
In regard to the Harbour-Master, you may believe it or not, as you choose. ”

“ Then I asked him whether these birds of Halyard's were really Great Auks, and he replied somewhat indifferently that he supposed they were—at least, nobody had ever before seen such birds near Port-of-Waves.
"There's something else," he said, running a pine-sliver through his pipe-stem; "something that interests us all here more than auks, big or little. ”