south or the north side of the wall, which hid approach.
Greymuzzle was slipping down the scree at the end of Wreckers’ Path, carrying a brown dry tussock of sea-thrift in her mouth, when the remote crying of gulls became loud above the cliff. Quoc-quoc-quoac! many were muttering in anger. Several hundred wheeled and floated above the otter. She heard a soughing of wings, and looking up, saw the beak and eyes of the raven growing larger as he plunged towards her. He had taken nine long hops away from the rabbit, and the tenth had taken him over the precipice edge as a man, walking fast, had taken his ninth stride round the northern wall, three hundred yards off. Kronk opened his wings when half-way down the cliff and sailed without a wing-beat round the Point.
Mewing and scolding, the gulls floated higher in the wind, and hearing them, the grey seal, who had been lolling beyond the break of rollers, swam out twenty yards and turned to watch the top of the cliff. She knew that the tossing flight and the cries of quoc-quoc-quoac! meant the presence of man.
Gre3nnuzzle swam round the Long Rock with the mat of roots in her mouth, and crawled out of the sandy surge. Tarka was lying on his back, pla3ring with a smooth green flat pebble of glass that he had carried from the bed of a pool. When he saw her, he turned on his pads—neither bone nor muscle showed in action—and ran to see what she carried. Greymuzzle lifted her burden out of his playful way, but he jostled her, wanting
98
