Enormous numbers of crabs were a prominent feature of the island when we reached it; they scuttled away with queer suggestions of terror at our arrival. Moreover, it was as though the rocks actually lived and breathed, by reason of the vast quantities of sea-birds that were everywhere, and so tame as to be ludicrous. You could go right up to them without their stirring, save to advance threatening beaks; and only when they were actually touched did they fly away, and then not very far. If they were sitting on their nests, as many of them were, they stayed put, contenting themselves with squawking and flapping their wings, which was their idea of defence.
So far as I could see—not being a naturalist—there were two kinds of birds common to the islands: the one was rather larger than an ordinary duck, brownish in colour, with big, webbed feet and a long, yellow, pointed bill. This bird—species unknown to me—emitted, when disturbed, a wild, squalling cry like an hysterical woman robbed of her only child: an infinitely pathetic sound. It made a fellow feel absolutely inhuman to touch these birds, once the queerness of it all had passed.
The other type was smaller, no bigger than an ordinary seagull, brownish-black in colour, and lacking webbed feet.
The young of the larger species, almost until reaching years of discretion, boast fluffy coats of white feathers of downy softness, and made one anxious to secure sufficient of their plumage to stuff a mattress that might be more kindly to one’s projecting bones than the “donkey’s breakfast” with which I was provided. The young of the smaller kind were quite ordinary: being, if anything, a shade darker than their parents. Flying-fish appeared to comprise the major portion of the larger birds’ dietary, for we found many of these curious fish lying about the rocks in the vicinity of the nests. Not that these nests were architectural masterpieces by any means: they were merely rough scrapings in the ever-present guano: trifling bowls just sufficient to contain the eggs or the downy young.
Mr. Wilkins soon found material for his cameras. He was keen on securing impressions of life on St. Paul’s Rocks; and quested about like a newspaper reporter in the silly season. He was fortunate enough to run upon what can only be described as a piscatorial drama: a huge crab that had discovered a dead fish and was working overtime to get it stowed inside. With all the stolidity of an Aberdeen granite-hewer, the crab was ripping off enormous chunks from its odoriferous catch and tucking them away. You’d have thought he was a small boy—not a Scout, of course—bagging apples from a forbidden orchard, with the owner of that orchard coming round the corner. Something like a score of smaller crabs were anxious to share his prize, but he had no intention of making a common cause of his salvage. Every time they advanced he dragged the fish bodily away; and when the smaller fellows showed a nasty, greedy disposition, he thought nothing of kicking them away to blazes-and-gone with his scrabbling hind-legs. Very evidently that apple “wasn’t goin’ to have no core!”