“That would be pounds sterling!” said Simeon, who was thinking.  He had a suspicion that there might be some quirk about pounds “Scots,” and was trying to explain things clearly to himself.

“Now, we are going to the Glistering Beaches to look for the Great Auk!” said Anna as a climax to the great announcement.

The water lappered pleasantly beneath the boat as Simeon deftly drew it over the sea.  There is hardly any pleasure like good oarsmanship.  In rowing, the human machine works more cleanly and completely than at any other work.  Before the children rose two rocky islands, with an opening between, like a birthday cake that has been badly cut in the centre and has had the halves moved a little way apart.  This was Stack Canna.

“Do you think that there would be any chance here?” said Anna.  The splendour of the adventure was taking possession of her mind.

“Of course there would; but the best chance of all will be at the caves of Rona Wester, for that is near the Glistering Beaches, and the birds would be sure to go there if the people went to seek them at the Beaches.”

“Has any one been there?” asked Anna.

“Fishers have looked into them from the sea.  No one has been in!” said Simeon briefly.

The tops of the Stack of Canna were curiously white, and Simeon watched the effect over his shoulder as he rowed.

“Look at the Stack,” he said, and the eyes of his companion followed his.

“Is it snow?” she asked.

“No; birds—­thousands of them.  They are nesting.  Let us land and get a boat-load to take back.”

But Anna declared that it must not be so.  They had come out to hunt the Great Auk, and no meaner bird would they pursue that day.

Nevertheless, they landed, and made spectacles of themselves by groping in the clay soil on the top of the Stack for Petrels’ eggs.  But they could not dig far enough without spades to get many, and when they did get to the nest, it was hardly worth taking for the sake of the one white egg and the little splattering, oily inmate.

Yet on the wild sea-cinctured Stack, and in that young fresh morning, the children tasted the joy of life; and only the fascinating vision of the unknown habitant of the Glistering Beaches had power to wile them away.

But there before them, a mile and a half round the point of Stack, lay the Beaches.  On either side of the smooth sweep of the sands rose mighty cliffs, black as the eye of the midnight and scarred with clefts like battered fortresses.  Then at the Beaches themselves, the cliff wall fell back a hundred yards and left room for the daintiest edging of white sand, shining like coral, crumbled down from the pure granite—­which at this point had not been overflowed like the rest of the island of Suliscanna by the black lava.

Such a place for play there was not anywhere—­neither on Suliscanna nor on any other of the outer Atlantic isles.  Low down, by the surf’s edge, the wet sands of the Glistering Beaches were delicious for the bare feet to run and be brave and cool upon.  The sickle sweep of the bay cut off the Western rollers, and it was almost always calm in there.  Only the sea-birds clashed and clanged overhead, and made the eye dizzy to watch their twinkling gyrations.