Sea-mew

“ And fear the song too taught him; fear to be
Worthless the dear love of the wind and sea
That bred him fearless, like a sea-mew reared
In rocks of man's foot feared,
Where nought of wingless life may sing or shine. ”

“ There’s plenty of gentlemen with as many thousands as the Captain had hundreds, would give their eyes for the Abbot’s guest chamber in Sea-Mew Abbey. Now I’ll just leave you while I fetch some hot water and some dry clothes. They won’t fit you very well, you being thin and me fat, but we’re not much in the fashion here. Do you mind being left without a light till I come back?”
Freda did mind very much, but she would not own to it. Just as Mrs. Bean was going away with the candle, however, she sprang towards her, and asked, in a trembling voice:
“Mrs. Bean, may I see him—my father?” ”

“ Having escaped this imminent danger, both ships went farther up the river on the 9th, and came to King's Island, which they found full of black sea-mews, and almost entirely covered with their eggs; so that a man without moving from one spot might reach fifty or sixty nests with his hands, having three or four eggs in each. ”

“ He does not hurt the frailest, dearest things
As we do in the dark. See, dear, your hair—
I must unloose this hair that sleeps and dreams
About my face, and clings like the brown weed
To drowned, delivered things, tossed by the tired sea
Back to the beaches. Oh! your hair! If you had lain
A long time dead on the rough, glistening ledge
Of some black cliff, forgotten by the tide,
The raving winds would tear, the dripping brine would rust away
Fold after fold of all the loveliness
That wraps you round, and makes you, lying here,
The passionate fragrance that the roses are. ”

“ Oh God! it dies,
But after death—,
To-night the splendour and the sting
Blows back and catches at your breath,
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, the Spring,
The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted Thing! ”

“ Scarcely a trace was left of the south aisle or the south transept. Between the ruined west front and the pillars on the south side of the choir there was nothing left but grass-grown mounds of fallen masonry and one solitary pillar, massive and erect as when, seven hundred years ago, pious hands placed the stones which were to defy, through long centuries, the biting sea air, the keen north wind, the storms which beat upon the cliffs, and the waves which, decade by decade, had sapped and swallowed up, bit by bit, the once fertile Abbey lands. ”

“ Sea Gulls and Sea Mews are found everywhere, but they are most numerous on the flat and low sea-shores of the North, where 306 the dead bodies of whales and other large fish furnish them with abundant food. ”

“ In the face of these constraints, adults often shift [Pg 156] food preferences while raising nestlings (Belopol'skii 1961) . For example, female mew gulls in the Barents Sea forage in the tidal zone, eating more small invertebrates than at other times of the year, while males continue to forage at sea and consume larger quantities of fish (Fig. 13) .
Commuting distances vary tremendously among species (Fig. 14) , but the number of feeding trips to the nest per day does not correlate with foraging distance (Cody 1973; Sealy 1973a, 1973b) . ”

“ The excitement of the strange life she had led since leaving it had spoilt her for the old, calm, passionless existence. What! Never again to leave the shade of those quiet walls? Never to wander, as she now loved to do, about the ruined church of Saint Hilda, whose roofless walls, with their choir of wailing sea-birds, had grown to her ten times more sacred than the little convent-chapel? Never to see her father? Never to see—Dick?
At this thought she broke down, and resting her head upon her hands, let the tears come. And poor Dick had looked half-starved, so John Thurley said! ”

“ Crowds of children, as usual, played about the steps; riotous fisher-lads, in parties of half-a-dozen or so, streamed into the streets from the Agalyth, a row of tumble-down houses, much out of the perpendicular, that nestled right under the cliff, and some of which fell down, from time to time, into the sea. Knots of women stood gossiping at the doors; girls, in preposterous “best” hats, flaunted down the street in twos and threes. Poor Freda, with her crutch and her quaint dress, was laughed at as she sped along, her progress from time to time impeded by the crowd. ”

“ Freda’s last thought as she fell asleep, watching the dancing light of the fire on the roughly white-washed beams of the ceiling, was, however, neither of quiet nuns at their prayers in the convent by the sea, nor of Crispin Bean with his rugged face and hard voice, but of Oldcastle Farm and one of its occupants.
The girl was tired out; so utterly weary that she was ready to lie like a log till morning. But presently she began to dream, with the leaden drowsiness of a person in whom some outward disturbance struggles with fatigue, of thunder and battling crowds of men. ”

“ They fly very rapidly, even against the strongest wind. They pursue the Sea Mews and the Terns most inveterately, and sometimes even Boobies and Cormorants, their only aim being to deprive these birds of the prey they have caught; for the Sea Mews and the Terns are their purveyors. Incessantly do they pursue, harass, and beat these species until they have forced them to disgorge and drop their booty: before the fish falls into the sea it is caught by the active persecutors. ”

“ She was soon satisfied: first the distant mutterings, far underneath her feet, then the mounting of slow feet up stone steps; the voices subdued, but nearer; the moving of heavy burdens; a sound of weights falling; the chink of glasses; a low murmur of talk in men’s voices, the sounds gradually dying away. That was all. An hour, by the little clock on her mantelpiece, from the first sound to the last. Then all was quiet till morning, when Freda, after a disturbed night of short snatches of sleep, woke with a start to the memory of her undertaking. ”

“ The gentle thrush that had his nest the perfumed pines among;
The chaffinch with his sudden note, his song so clear and bold;
The sad rhyme of the robin, too, that came when winds grew cold;
The happy lark whose benison fell from the sunny sky ”

“ But no man can move mountains in a day.
⁠So this hard thing is yet to do.
But first I want your life:— before I die I want to see
⁠The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes,
There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be,
⁠Yet on brown fields there lies
A haunting purple bloom: is there not something in grey skies
⁠And in grey sea?
⁠I want what world there is behind your eyes,
⁠I want your life and you will not give it me. ”

“ She would not let him speak, but stamped her crutch impatiently on the stones. Barnabas was as weak as water with any one who had a will; whistling to himself as if to prove that he was carrying out his own intentions instead of somebody else’s, he went straight to the place where his horse was put up. Within ten minutes the cart was jogging down slowly through the crowded street, with Barnabas and Freda side by side on the seat, the farmer shouting to the crowd to keep out of the way. ”

“ He was not yet out of Freda’s sight when a sharp report, followed by a second, and then by a hoarse cry, broke upon their ears. There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of galloping hoofs upon the snow. A riderless horse, bearing a man’s saddle, came down the hill, with nostrils dilated and frightened eyes. Barnabas, who considered a horse as rather more a fellow-creature than a man, set to work to stop the animal before making his way to the human beings. ”

“ The bare, ill-lighted cellar grew empty of all except the leader as if by magic, the men seeming to disappear into the bowels of the earth. As she looked, bending her head lower and lower with straining eyes to spy out the reason of this, Freda involuntarily drew a long breath of amazement. The solitary man left in the cellar looked up, as he was in the act of filling his own glass once more from the stone jar. The girl drew back with a cry, for a look of intense malignity passed over the man’s wrinkled face. ”

“ She had been told where the Vicarage was, knew that she must turn to the left, and go down Church Street until she came to it. But the sound of her footsteps and her crutch on the rough stones of the narrow street frightened her. The little irregular, old-fashioned shops, with their overhanging eaves and tiny windows, seemed to the scared girl to have a threatening aspect; she fancied every moment that one of the desperate characters with whom her imagination peopled them was lying in wait for her at the entrance of one of the squalid courts which ran between the houses. ”

“ Captain Mulgrave hesitated. Then he tried to speak in a peremptory and angry voice, but broke down. Turning at last sharply to the assailant, who had been watching him with hungry intentness, he made a gesture towards the wounded man.
“Here, Crispin, help me—to take him in. We must obey the ladies,” he said with a hoarse and almost tremulous attempt at levity.
The grin died out of the lean and withered face, and Freda caught upon it an expression of so much baulked malignity that she wondered whether succour at these unwilling hands would mean death to the succoured one. ”

“ There was nothing in the gallery but pictures, and a row of chairs. As she stood debating with herself, she heard footsteps, as it seemed to her, behind the panelling. In a frenzy of excitement she instantly blew out her candle, and scurried across the gallery to the furthest corner, where she crouched in a heap on the floor. She had not to wait long. A little scraping sound, and a panelled door opened from the other side. Then Freda heard a distant murmur of voices, and the next moment the man who had opened the door stepped into the gallery.
Freda need not have been afraid of discovery. ”

“ For Dick began to breathe hard, and to grow restless, as he said quickly:
“You see it’s not as if some young fellow of a suitable age, whom you—whom you—rather liked, could ever have a chance of—of asking you to be his wife. That would be a different thing altogether.”
“Ah, yes, if I were not lame! If I could ride, and row, and—and sail a boat!” said Freda with a quavering voice. ”

“ A great heap of freshly dug up snow stood almost in the middle of the road, and by the help of a shed on the right, Freda was able to identify the spot on which the body of the servant Blewitt had been discovered by Barnabas Ugthorpe.
Freda turned sick with horror. Her mind had jumped, with that splendid feminine inspiration which acts independently of logic, and which is as often marvellously right as stupendously wrong, to the conclusion that the body of Blewitt had been carried into the Abbey. ”

“ If she had not been so benumbed with amazement and grief at this discovery, she would have been frightened by the savage exclamation with which the man set his foot on the ladder. As it was, she heard nothing, saw nothing until she suddenly felt herself pulled up by the arm. Dragged to her feet against her will, paralysed with alarm, she turned to see the grinning, withered face held close to hers, full of spite and malignity.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going to give you a lesson for your disobedience.”
With a shudder and a low cry, Freda struggled with him, avoiding the meeting with his eyes. ”

“ Freda looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then she said:
“I don’t wish that. You see I’ve been obliged to think a great deal lately, and I see that there is a great deal more wickedness and unhappiness in the world than we in the convent ever thought of. And it seems to me that to shut oneself up out of it all and to try to make a little heaven for oneself and to keep apart from all the difficulties and miseries outside is selfish. So that I’m glad I can’t be so selfish any longer.” ”

“ And he began to pace up and down the choir, with his eyes on the long rough grass at his feet, and his hands behind his back. Freda felt the very faint hope she had entertained of moving him by her entreaties melt utterly away as she watched him. The whole face of the man—the steadfast eyes, square jaw, resolute mouth—all indicated strength of purpose, and a will difficult to turn. ”

“ But Freda was too much excited and exasperated to show a sign of fear now.
“You dare not hurt me,” she cried, in her high, girlish voice, that echoed among the cliffs. “If this poor man dies you may escape; but if you kill me, my father will not let you live another day.” ”

“ Extending to a depth of four feet below the surface of the floor, was one of those mysterious enclosures between the ceiling of one room and the floor of the one above, which so often exists in very old houses to testify to forgotten dangers of persecution and pursuit. It was dark, close, musty. Freda bent lower and lower, her eyes fixed in horror on an object at the bottom. Something long, swathed in white: the body of a dead man. ”

“ How can you be sorry for a father you don’t remember?”
“Oh,” said Freda, with a sob, “can’t you understand? You can love a person without knowing him, just as we love God, whom we can never see till we die.” ”

“ The bay was the point the smugglers would make for, she felt sure; it was in this direction, then, that she must go. She dared not light her lantern, but had to trust to the faint light of the moon. The way was infinitely more difficult than she had expected: to scramble, to crawl, sometimes to leap from rock to rock would have made the path a hard one for anybody; to a girl with a crutch it was absolutely dangerous. ”