At low water, the lagoon became a lake. Seals had played there in the old days, before they were shot or moved on to quieter locations. Now eider hens used it for a nursery. The cottage stood on one side of the lagoon; the other side was sea-bird territory. Guano streaked the granite like snow, and white as snow were the nesting gulls and terns and the long, showy borders of daisies in every rocky crevice. On the highest outcropping, a black-backed gull with a single chick had taken up residence, a huge bird with black wing feathers and a beak like a bird of prey. Their distinct separation from the rest of the settlement seemed to express superiority, contempt. Now and then, as if in distraction, the gull would make its way down the mountain to devour an eider chick. Hundreds of screaming birds would rise in a cloud each time and, one by one, dive steeply on the gull—but never come too close. And the lord of the island would snap at them absent-mindedly and return to his own territory, where he would stand stock-still, distinguished, statuesque on the atoll’s highest point.
