"Much better than Ducks; and how they bob up and down like little boats when they float!" "Wake! wake! wake! wake!" screamed half a dozen, flying up as if to tell the Brotherhood of the coming of strangers.
"What can be the matter with all those Sea Swallows on the other side of the island ?" asked Nat as they walked across, and a flock of a hundred or more Terns angled by, crying mournfully.

"What a very sad noise they are making--do you think they are afraid of us ?" "They have reason enough to cry and be sad," answered Olaf, who was walking on, a little way ahead.

"They have been driven from almost all these islands--shot for their pretty feathers, and had their nests robbed.

There wouldn't be any here now, only that some people pay the light-keeper at the little island yonder to see that the law is kept and that no one hunts them here.

See! He is coming over now to find out what we are doing here!" "Who are the people that pay him, Uncle Roy ?"' asked Dodo; "the Wise Men ?" [Illustration: Common Tern.] "Yes, the Wise Men, and some Wise Women too.